Disclaimer: I am not Frank Herbert. I am making no profit from this, nor do I ever expect to. Skaters have no money for literary rights.
It was at the crisp, cold end of autumn that the boy, Duncan, found himself racing under the fiery colors comprising the oaks, elms, and maples of the Geidi Prime lowlands. His breath came short in his chest as he passed the occasional pine or spruce, lone verdant sentries against the onrushing winter. Stinging sweat poured into the thirteen year old's cave-sitter eyes in defiance of the chilly air, a result of his mad exertion.
Only short days before, soldiers of the House Harkonnen had come and taken the young boy from the Idaho household, killing the youth's father and taking his mother for enslavement in the pleasure-houses. Duncan had been "lucky"; he had been taken to the game preserves.
He reflected bitterly upon his fate under the Harkonnens, "Game" preserves. What a name to put onto murder. Harkonnen bastards, damn you all to the nether pits of Hell! I will kill as many of you as I can. For my mother, my father, and all of the rest of the people whose lives you have destroyed, I will have my vengeance.
Not wasting the breath to voice the curse, the youth continued his loping stride under the falling canopy. The indigo sky overhead was beginning to darken, marking the swift fall of night as the boy searched for good cover, any cover at all from the sensors that the hunters would be using to follow him. He knew, as surely as he knew the gasping-to-come that was beginning to scream in his chest, that to be found out in the open once night had fallen would be his death. All the same, he knew that he was doomed unless he could find shelter from the cold this night. For, even in the lowlands, Geidi Prime was a cold world, a harsh world.
As the ground ahead became rockier and the forest thinned considerably, the boy began to worry that perhaps he would not be able to find better shelter than what he had already passed and deemed too thin. His eyes searched the tortured ground for a hiding place, just as the knife-like rocks underneath began to turn his unshod feet the colors of autumn. His sharp senses revealed what appeared to be naught but a small depression off of the main path as a deep cavern, someplace that the hunters would have to enter single-file in their bulky, heated armor. Perhaps they could track him there, but they would be vulnerable to him as they entered.
Duncan patted the small knife that he had managed to keep hidden from all searchers for the long days and cold nights of his imprisonment. The short blade was not much, but at least it would give the youth a chance to sell his life as dearly as possible when the hunters came. He crawled into the cavern, finding that it swelled outward once past the small entrance as far as his senses could reach in the failing light. The granite and basalt of the large area was jagged and harsh against the boy's unprotected skin as he rested, gathering his strength.
Only then did he reflect upon the fate of the other four adolescents that had been "released" by the hunters only to be tracked and killed, one by one. He had not known these other youths, barely more than children, but they had shared a common bond in the hatred of the Harkonnen animals that had kept them imprisoned and starved as they awaited their fates. One by one, Duncan had heard a high-pitched scream in the distance, followed by the laughter of the soldiers and then silence as they moved on to the next youth. Thrice had he heard this, and it seemed a cruelty to him that they were saving him for last. Only because he had earned the soldiers enmity through being tough enough to not cry out during the constant beatings were they saving him for the final hunt this night.
He looked out of the small entrance to the cave, seeing that the cold sky overhead had already matched the foliage and was beginning to darken towards deepest navy. He watched and waited, his breath finally slowing and the cold finally wicking the sweat from his brow. In the distance, over the chill air, the sound that he had been dreading floated to him. A scream, followed by laughter and then silence.
You will pay for them as well, he thought to himself. You will pay for all those whose lives you have taken. All those who have never been able to stand up to you. All those who have never had a chance to fight back. All those who died to give you pleasure, or profit, or sport. You will pay.
As the sky continued to darken overhead, the youth readied himself, falling back into the little training that his father, a rebel against the Harkonnen machine, had given him. His breathing came in deep, even tides. His muscles relaxed as much as he could get them to, stretching in the confined space. He tested the footing of the razor edges underneath his feet, ignoring the pain of the shreds of skin hanging from them. Let them come, he thought.
Finally, the skywas fading to jet as the first man made his difficult way through the narrow passage. The knife flashed downward into the weak point at the neck seam, spurting carmine all over the youth. The man's last view of this world was one of shock, seeing the small boy standing there with a tiny knife, spitting athim. Then, his world went as dark as the night sky itself…
Duncan came back out of his reverie. Sitting in a chair at his console in the no-ship, he wondered to himself, Why do I think of my first kill? Why does that memory from my first life intrude right now? He knew thatit would haunt him until he could better understand the questions necessary to frame the problem.