We may die tomorrow, but we must hope today. Though it will not extend our lives, at least it will make them more meaningful.
— ABULURD HARKONNEN,
Journal of the Last Days of Salusa Secundus
Even with the population of Salusa Secundus devoted to a full-scale effort, one month was not nearly enough time to evacuate an entire planet. They had to prepare for the worst.
While the main task of assembling sufficient ships, volunteer crews, and nuclear warheads consumed the League, Abulurd Harkonnen was left to help his brother Faykan administer the great exodus from the capital world.
Supreme Commander Atreides had gathered his spacefolder fleet over Salusa in a military force like nothing humanity had ever seen. One battle group after another activated their space-folding engines and vanished. It would be a long time before complete reports would come back to the League, but Abulurd had faith in the desperate plan. Every morning when he woke up after a scant few hours of sleep, the young officer knew that more Synchronized Worlds must have been vanquished out in the thinking-machine empire.
However, from the images Abulurd’s father and brother had brought back from Corrin, they all knew what sort of threat was on its way to the League capital. Even if the Great Purge succeeded in destroying the enemy at its core, Salusa Secundus was almost certainly doomed.
Abulurd could not save everyone, but he worked around the clock to get as many people away as possible. Faykan issued directives from Zimia, commandeering every ship, every able-bodied person.
That very morning, Abulurd had removed his comatose mother from the City of Introspection and placed her on an evacuation ship. Since there would not be enough room to take everyone away before the time ran out, some people had looked at the young man with anger, obviously wondering what good it would do to ensure Wandra’s safety at the expense of others. His mother was not conscious of anything, could not appreciate her peril or the fact that she was being saved.
Abulurd understood the impossible choice, had even considered leaving Wandra in a fortified, subterranean section of the City of Introspection. But no one could take care of her there. So many things to consider, so many critical decisions to make. Each breath his mother took was important to him, for it left open the possibility— however remote— that she might survive. He could not leave her behind. Such choices reminded him of Ix, when Ticia Cenva had played God, determining who would be rescued and who would stay behind….
In the end, he turned a deaf ear to complaints and to the accusations of favoritism. She is my mother, he told himself, and she is a Butler! He cited Faykan’s authority, gave his orders, and made sure they were followed.
Every day, Abulurd watched crowds rush across the spaceport to clamber into any available ship, packing the cargo decks and passenger cabins with far more people than they had ever been designed to hold. He saw the panic on their faces and knew that he couldn’t sleep until it was all over. He found himself taking regular doses of melange— not to protect himself from the Scourge anymore, but to give himself the energy to keep moving.
He looked up into the sky as ship after ship departed from Zimia Spaceport. Many of the captains would return for more passengers; others, fearing the imminent arrival of the Omnius fleet, would simply stay away, leaving Abulurd fewer and fewer options to rescue the populace.
The lifeboat vessels and a few remaining quarantined craft had already been taken out of the system to an isolated rendezvous point. There, far from any signaling devices, they hoped to remain hidden from the incoming robot battle fleet.
Faykan handled the massive administrative details, constantly accompanied by his pallid niece, who had stayed with him ever since arriving here from Parmentier. Even in the midst of the frantic evacuation, though, ghostly Rayna Butler seemed to have her own agenda. She spoke clearly and forcefully in front of any audience that would listen, and since she had come through the Scourge, many League citizens paid close attention to what she had to say. The girl had an eerie voice that could carry over great distances. To the crowds, Rayna declared her passionate mission: the destruction of all thinking machines. “With God and Serena Butler on our side, we cannot lose.”
Hearing that, Abulurd thought, they had nothing to fear. He wished he could inspire Faykan and Rayna to incite the mobs into helping or into building something, instead of simply proclaiming their rigid beliefs and wreaking havoc.
There was no feasible means to impose order upon the frenzied exodus. Within two weeks, everyone who wanted to leave and who had access to a ship had departed, but many of the vessels did not have much range or adequate supplies to keep the passengers safe for the duration of the emergency, since no one knew exactly when Omnius’s battle fleet would arrive.
A completely separate effort involved digging in and hoping for the best. Engineering crews from the Army of the Jihad excavated giant underground shelters, reinforced them with alloy mesh and support girders, and filled them with stockpiles of supplies. Those who did not make it off the planet in time would be rushed into the underground warrens, where they would take shelter from the initial bombardment by the extermination fleet.
Based on previous experience, the thinking-machine army would attack and then likely retreat. If, however, the robots decided to obliterate all vestiges of the League capital and establish a new Omnius network here, then the survivors would be trapped underground with little likelihood of survival. Even so, they had no other choice.
Many people whose families had lived for generations on Salusa did not want to leave. They chose to remain here and take their chances against the invading machines, though Abulurd thought they would change their minds as soon as they saw the incoming robotic warships.
The task seemed impossible, hopeless. But Abulurd would do no less than his utmost. Vorian Atreides had entrusted him with this task— that was all the incentive Abulurd needed.
Evacuation ships continued to depart from Zimia Spaceport and other landing pads across Salusa. At first, teams of monitors attempted to keep records of who had escaped, where they had gone, and who still needed to be rescued. But the overwhelming numbers quickly crushed the effort. Abulurd and his comrades spent their days simply getting people off-planet. If they survived, they could sort it all out later.
If the Great Purge worked perfectly and all incarnations of the Omnius evermind were destroyed, Abulurd’s father, Supreme Commander Atreides, and whatever remained of the space-folding Jihad fleet would return here for a final stand against the now-leaderless robotic extermination force.
For now, as a last tenuous line of defense, the few League warships without Holtzman engines remained in orbit, a pathetic defensive cordon around the world. All of the jihadi soldiers who had stayed behind knew they would die here. They had seen the size of the fleet Omnius had launched against them.
But Abulurd would not give up— not yet. Out there somewhere, Vorian Atreides and Quentin Butler were leading the Purge. Day after day, world after world.
He watched more ships streak to the skies. Each one of those vessels contained a handful of human survivors that would likely escape Omnius’s wrath. It would have to be good enough. Somehow, together, they would wrest a victory from this moment of hopelessness.