No matter where I go, the universe always finds me.
— SUPREME BASHAR VORIAN ATREIDES,
Reflections on Loss
At Zimia Spaceport, a hawk-featured man walked around an old-design update vessel, making his final inspection before takeoff. Freshly painted and overhauled, the old black-and-silver ship reflected the golden rays of the setting sun. Once he left, he doubted anyone here would ever see him again.
Vorian no longer wore any uniform. He tried to imagine what true freedom would be like, away from the duties that had imprisoned him for decades. It was time he left and flew far away, to the Unallied Planets and beyond. He would not regret leaving anything behind. Gone would be the cares of the Jihad, and he would rarely think of Abulurd, Agamemnon, Omnius, or any of the others who had inflicted so much pain on him.
His long career as a fighting man was concluded, and he did not know what lay ahead for him. He had lived two human lifetimes so far, and might easily have more than that remaining in his supercharged genes. He had begun to show faint signs of aging— he looked thirty at the most— but in his bones, in his very soul, he carried the fatigue of a thousand years. The Jihad and all of its tragedies had taken a great deal out of him, and he didn’t know when, or if, he would ever recover.
Maybe he would stop on Rossak to visit his dedicated granddaughter Raquella, who worked there with the surviving Sorceresses. He had no idea what they were doing, or why, but he looked forward to finding out. Maybe he would even go back to Caladan. He should at least say goodbye to his sons and grandchildren.
He felt like a galactic tourist with no schedule to keep, none of the pressures to which he had grown so accustomed over the past century.
For backwater trips on planets, he had brought an inflatable boat and suspensor-driven platforms that were compact and stowed away in the Dream Voyager‘s storage compartments. He also had enough provisions to last for a long time. Vor could roam anywhere he wanted, discovering anything he liked. Most of his life had been devoted to learning and perfecting the art of war, but he had no use for such skills anymore.
Ironically, he did have a use for something he had learned early in life, long before he’d ever become a famous Hero of the Jihad, back to the easy days when he and Seurat had made update runs between Synchronized Worlds. Days of simplicity. This ship, once filled with computerized systems, now had only a manual operation system. With the redundancies that Vor had specified in the reconstruction, the craft would serve him well. Fewer parts and less sophisticated systems meant increased reliability, fewer breakdowns.
He boarded the Dream Voyager and took off a day ahead of schedule, so that he could avoid any fanfare or goodbyes. As he rose through the atmosphere, a huge weight lifted from his shoulders, replaced by a sensation of raw excitement, as if he were newly born into a life full of promise again.
A bad decision requires only a moment to make, but future generations can suffer for centuries as a result.
— SUPREME BASHAR VORIAN ATREIDES,
Final Assessment of the Jihad (Fifth Revision)
Abulurd Harkonnen went into exile on the cold backwater world of Lankiveil. Banished for cowardice and reviled by the League, he accepted his fate in this forbidding and unwelcome place. He wanted nothing more than to withdraw and never be seen again.
Though Abulurd had wanted only to save the innocent human shields at the Bridge of Hrethgir, and though the machines had been vanquished in the end, Vorian was never able to forgive him for disobeying orders. The Supreme Bashar had considered the act not only a betrayal of his military duties, but of their relationship as well.
After all his service, unable to recover from his disgrace, Abulurd was disgusted with the League of Nobles, with his brother Faykan and his petty politics— and most of all with Vorian Atreides, the man whom he had loved but who had proved to be just as inhuman as the Titan Agamemnon.
Abulurd had expected to be forgiven, but coldhearted Vorian Atreides had shown no compassion whatsoever.
Worst of all, Vorian would never follow through on his promise to remove the unfair stain from Xavier Harkonnen’s name. If Abulurd had returned a hero, he and Vor could have rehabilitated Xavier’s memory, making the League of Nobles remember his grandfather as the great man he truly was. Just as he went into exile, the parliamentary task force that Vor had set up to look into the matter was disbanded.
Before Abulurd’s trial, the Supreme Bashar had briefly visited Abulurd in his Zimia holding cell. He stared at the prisoner in silence for a long moment, and Abulurd waited, prepared to endure what he had to.
Measuring his words carefully, Vor said, “Xavier was my friend. But it is no longer possible to sanitize the Harkonnen name. People will say the blood runs true, that the taint of dishonor from your grandfather has passed through to you. Because of your treachery, you’ve lost whatever glory your family had.” Contempt and scorn etched his face, and he left.
The encounter had lasted less than a minute, yet it burned like acid in Abulurd’s memory. At the time, he had been deeply hurt; now, thinking back on Vor’s words, he felt simmering anger.
But even banished from the League of Nobles, Abulurd had enough income to sustain himself on Lankiveil. Viceroy Faykan Corrino, wrapping himself in his protective and glorious mantle, had proclaimed that Abulurd and all his descendants must retain the reviled Harkonnen name. And in time, few would remember that Harkonnens and Corrinos had ever shared blood ties….
Abulurd built his new home in the heart of a dismal village at the head of a steep-walled fjord on Lankiveil. The people were fishermen and farmers, living outside the influence of the League and uninterested in politics or current affairs. They did not care about their new lord’s shame, and eventually he learned to live with it, still convinced of his own rightness at the Battle of Corrin.
After a few years, he married a local woman and produced a family with three sons. After he told them of his past, his wife and children fantasized about the riches that had been stolen from their family, and seethed about the opportunities forever denied to the Harkonnens. They resented the very thought of Vorian Atreides. Abulurd’s sons came to see themselves as princes in exile, cut off from their noble heritage even though they themselves had never done anything wrong.
One day, one of Abulurd’s sons— Dirdos— found his father’s old green-and-crimson uniform from the Army of Humanity, neatly pressed and stored away, and tried it on. It hurt Abulurd to see his son in the once-revered uniform, and he immediately took it away and burned it. But that only inspired the Harkonnen children to make up new tales of lost glory.
Decades later, when Abulurd and his wife both died from a fever that swept through the fishing village, the Harkonnen sons blamed Atreides. Without any proof to support their claim, the sons said Vorian Atreides himself had spread the malady, just to wipe out their family.
Abulurd’s sons passed countless stories to their own children, exaggerating how important the Harkonnen family had been and how far they had fallen. All because of Vorian Atreides.
Isolated on Lankiveil, later generations swore vengeance against their mortal enemies the Atreides. In the centuries that followed, by the time the Harkonnens made their tentative return to the new Corrino empire, their stories became accepted as fact. And the Harkonnens never forgot.