BOOK ONE - CHAPTER FOURTEEN
 

Space travel is the limiting factor of the Imperium. Without interstellar transport, opposing Houses are trapped on their respective worlds, thus preventing war. Growth, internal shifts of power and exchanges of goods are ultimately dependent on space travel, and are therefore determined by those who control transport. The Guild, as the sole provider of this service on a galaxy-wide scale, is a most important balancing force in this particular structure of dependencies and limitations. However, it would be counterproductive to exploit this monopoly to the point where the structure itself dissolves. The desire for an increase of wealth must be balanced by the intent to perpetuate the current status of the Guild.
-Spacing Guild Analysis-
 

Teg awoke, the sudden and intense awareness of pain almost causing him to lose consciousness again, and noticed he was being dragged across a metal-plated floor. His arms and legs were tied by bounds too strong for him to break free from.

He tried to look around, the pain in his jaw limiting the movement of his head. While he was being lifted onto what he thought to be some sort of examining table, he saw who had abducted him.

Face Dancers, hidden by no-fields! Despite their unusual attire, Teg recognised the undifferentiated features these creatures possessed when not impersonating another.

For a moment, he thought he he had been taken to the underground base, but the fact the no-field signature was different - small disturbances in the way the cloaked objects appeared to him allowed him to infer certain qualities of the no-fields that hid them - made him retract this hypothesis.

Where the hell am I?

"We know you can see us," one of the Face Dancers, possibly the leader, said in a strange accent. The Face Dancers present became visible one by one, indicating they were not cloaked by a collective field, but had somehow found a way to make no-generators small enough to be carried around.

I had no idea Ix had managed to refine no-technology to this extent!, Teg thought. The smallest no-generators Ix had offered to the Bene Gesserit weighed as much as a full-grown man. In his visions, Idaho had somehow managed to tap into knowledge on how to make smaller ones, but that technology was believed to be from beyond the Old Empire.

The Bashar could not speak, but fervently wished bad things would happen to his abductors, and knew that his mental maledictions would manifest themselves on his face in the type of angry look that had even managed to intimidate Alma Mavis Taraza once.

The leader appeared to notice this, but did not react beyond displaying a barely detectable frown, betraying no emotions. He reached for something outside Teg's field of vision, and moved his hands towards Teg's temples. The intense pain Teg felt while the probes were inserted into his skull through his temples was the last sensation he ever experienced.

**********

The Net has reappeared! Idaho almost began to panic. They've found me again! I need to get away from them!

The Teg-ghola had just returned to its cage in the bowels of the no-ship, when the hyper-sensitive scanners picked up minuscule disturbances all around the vessel.

"What does it mean?", Scytale asked, having joined Idaho in the control room.

"After Sheeana returned with the information she heard from Teg, I rigged the ship's no-generator to respond if any resonance with another no-field was detected."

"There's a no-field out there?"

Idaho produced a fake laugh. "Several thousand of them, actually. We need to leave."

He activated the no-ship's engines and lifted off, seeing the world that had been their home for the past months drop away beneath him. He watched the Bene Gesserit and the Jews flee from the boosters ... hot exhaust gases, and felt no remorse at leaving them there to die. When he was far away enough from the planet to execute a space fold, he punched in a set of coordinates at random, and watched the planet and the stars disappear, the viewscreen briefly showing static as the outward sensors failed to register anything they could process.

In his vision, he could see the old couple behind the net fading away, and soon thereafter the net itself disappearing as well.

Do you know where we're going?, a familiar voice inside his head asked him tauntingly.

Leto?

Yes.

You want to know where we are going? I don't know. Far away, I hope.

Certainly, far away from here. But perhaps it's time to visit some old friends. I need to be with my children again and many events will converge where we are going. I helped you choose this destination. I hope you don't mind.

All of a sudden the no-ship's engines stopped humming, and the viewscreen showed stars all around them winking back into existence. Idaho panned the viewscreen image to the right, absorbing the relative positions of the stars, his Mentat brain computing the observable patterns telling him where the spacefold had brought them. A planet came into view, a wide desert belt flaring outward from the equator.

"Chapter House!", Idaho shouted in amazement.

Scytale gasped, and walked up next to Idaho. "Is this Chapter House?"

"Yes."

"But the desert - it's so large! You said they had released the sandtrout a mere decade ago. The time I was allowed to venture outside the no-ship I observed there was still a lot of moisture in the air."

Idaho started to speak, but his first words were drowned out by the blare of the ship's alarm. "Proximity alert!", he yelled.

"Is it one of the no-ships from the planetary defense barrier?"

Idaho checked a monitor on his left displaying data from the external sensors. "No, these objects are much larger."

"Well, what are they?"

Idaho and Scytale looked up to the viewscreen, where large black shapes appeared all around Chapter House, their individual size and sheer number blotting out many of the stars.

Idaho sighed. "I've seen this before."

"What?"

"In a vision. The enemies of many faces - the threat that chased the Honoured Matres back to the Old Empire. I've led them straight to Chapter House."

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