Epilog

Epilog – Part I

Sixteen Years Later

Garibaldi watched the stars on the view screen jump every ten seconds as the Polo made its way to the entry point of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge back to their home universe. The ship was packed with people, way beyond the capacity of the life support system to maintain for long. Yet, the trip to the wormhole and from system M-51120 back to Starbase Nine would only take a few weeks using the Holtzman drive.

Many of the ship's crew had established families among themselves and had children during their stay on Neo Europa. Some had obtained spouses from the Greek colonists. All of the ship's crew and their families were aboard for the trip back to the Federation. The shuttle bay and lab spaces had been converted to temporary quarters to accommodate the extra people during the flight back to the Federation.

During the preceding years Garibaldi and his crew had monitored the continually changing conditions within the Empire; the apparent death of Paul Atreides and his sister Alia's appointment as Regent while Leto II was still in his minority.

The stars on the view screen stopped jumping.

"Jump sequence suspended, Captain," Lieutenant Commander DePaul began. "We're at the coordinates of the wormhole."

"Very well," Garibaldi replied. He looked over his shoulder. "Commander Bolt, warp drive status?"

"Commander Schwartz reports that drive is set for all warp speeds," Bolt replied after a quick call to Engineering.

"Scan for the anomaly," Garibaldi then ordered.

"Scanning," Commander Giacconi replied. "Captain, I'm picking up a subspace distortion, the entry to the Einstein-Rosen Bridge is exactly where it should be," he reported a moment later.

"Very well," Garibaldi replied. "DePaul, plot our entry course into the bridge. Lieutenant Commander Hansen, program a Holtzman jump for one light year to any clear space as soon as we emerge from the other side of the wormhole. We will probably loose warp and impulse drive again during the transition and I don't want us to have any future worm hole trips."

"Aye, sir," DePaul and Hansen both replied. A moment later both reported that the preparations were ready.

Garibaldi turned to Bolt standing next to the center seat. "This is the moment you have been waiting for. Would you like to give the order?"

"Gladly, Captain," Bolt replied while standing up a little straighter. "Lieutenant Commander Hansen, ahead warp one point one. Let's go home."

Epilog – Part II

Alia floated in the observation room of the little used, minor maintenance space station high over Richese. Beside her floated the director of engineering for her warp drive project. Outside the view port floated a highly modified frigate. The most striking detail of the modifications was the two outriggers protruding from the frigate's aft section.

"We are ready to begin the test, Regent Alia," the director said.

"You may proceed," she replied.

The director motioned to a communications technician who sent a signal to the crew on board the frigate. Moments later the hemispherical forward caps on the frigate's outriggers began to glow as plasma from the ship's fusion drive was fed to the nacelles. Then suddenly the ship dissolved into a streak of light.

Half a minute later a call came in and the communications technician passed a note to the director who quickly read it.

"The crew reports success, Regen Alia," he reported. "Warp one was achieved for three seconds before the drive overheated and shut down."

"Excellent work, Director," she replied. Please continue with the full test schedule as planned."

Alia thought back on her stay on Neo Europa and the conversations she had overheard between her brother, Paul, now presumed dead, and her mother. She had come to realize that her home society was horribly stagnant. The cause was obviously the Empire's dependence on the Spice and the Great Convention. She had seen how free the people on the Federation colony were. The people there limited only by their imagination from doing anything they wanted. Their computer use did not deaden their minds but freed them contrary to the teachings of the Bene Gesseret.

During her mind melds with Ensign T'Palla she had seen T'Palla's home world, Vulcan and what T'Palla had seen of the Federation and how rich the societies there were compared to the colony. Also, though T'Palla had tried to hide it, how the Federation was in a different universe than her own. Finally, she had seen what T'Palla knew of Federation technology. Now, T'Palla did not have a background in propulsion engineering, but the basics of the warp drive was known to most, if not all, Federation citizens and that was enough for Alia. Most damning of all were the teachings of Surak she had received during the formal lessons from Lieutenant Sotar and from her mind melds with T'Palla. They established a basis for a society much freer than the Empire's.

A plan had formed within her mind, a plan as ruthless as any devised by her grandfather, the Baron Harkonnen. She would wrest the Empire out of its stagnation and free its people from the Spice forever.

Epilog – Part III

Admiral Poulianos floated within the space dock, the very same facility constructed for the repair of the USS Marco Polo two decades ago. Moored within the dock was one of the colony's system defense cutters. The ship had been highly modified with the addition of two outriggers protruding from the ship's aft section. The forward caps of the outriggers, warp nacelles, began to glow with the powering up of the ship's drive.

"Admiral, today's test is a repeat of yesterday's to establish the operational limits of the prototype warp drive. Continued success and the data from the tests will allow us to field an operational unit capable of up to warp 3.1 using our hydrogen fusion power plants."

"How's the progress on the antimatter reactor going," Poulianos asked.

"We have solved the problem of containment," the director replied. "The reactor will take some time. We're still having problems regulating the flow of anti-matter in the test reactor. We should have a revised design for the prototype once we have resolved that issue."

"Very well, keep me up to date," Poulianos said as he watched the warp test bed ship leave the space dock for the day's tests.

Epilog – Part IV

The old Fremen man sat alone in his cave. No one knew of the cave's location, a small, unmapped outcropping of rock deep within the equatorial desert on Arrakis. A smile crossed his face as he saw the tendrils of time and space start to converge upon the alternate path of future history he had seen so many years ago in a similar cave with his mother.

Soon, he thought. Soon the civil war will start and the Great Convention and the Guild will be dust. Though many will die, many more will be freed. Arrakis will also die and with it the Spice. Then too the Bene Gesseret will become irrelevant without the Spice and with the freer movements of people throughout the stars. There will no longer then be the need to proceed down the Golden Path.

Then a frown creased his face as he thought about his mate and their children. All on Arrakis would die with the death of Arrakis. So too would those throughout the Empire that were dependent on the Spice. Paul felt within his pocket for the old Federation communicator, long ago given to his father. Perhaps they can be saved, he thought. Then Paul saw the departure of the USS Marco Polo from his universe back to their home, the Federation. He knew, though, if he called that he could contact their colony world and that they would come for him and his children leaving the civil war to be fought between his sister Alia supported by House Richese and House Ix against a resurgent House Corrino supported by the Guild and the Bene Gesseret. The death of Arrakis and the transformation of the Empire would occur.

Finis