The Moment of Truth
The roar of heavy machinery echoed across the isolated valley, drowning out the crisp morning air with the unmistakable sound of construction. Towering scaffolds stretched skyward as reinforced concrete was poured, massive earthen berms were raised, and thick ballistic shielding was installed with the kind of diligence one typically associated with BattleMech training grounds.
Which, as far as Agents Markham and Dorsey were concerned, was entirely too much for a normal firing range.
Markham, the more experienced of the two, stood with arms crossed, watching the work crews with a mixture of satisfaction and mild exasperation. Dorsey, his younger counterpart, flipped through his datapad, his expression darkening as the latest expenditures flashed across the screen.
"You ever notice," Dorsey muttered, "how the budgets on these projects always start 'reasonable' before ballooning into the equivalent of a small city's annual GDP?"
Markham snorted. "Welcome to military contracting, kid."
That earned him a glare, but Dorsey let it slide. They both knew this wasn't just another range. The moment the specifications had crossed their desks, the answer had been obvious.
"The freaking shield belt," Dorsey muttered, running a hand through his hair.
Markham gave him a dry look. "Took you this long to figure it out?"
"Hey, I wanted to believe we were just getting a nice, well-fortified and purpose-built firing range for reasons." Dorsey shot another glance at the towering ballistic barriers. "But yeah, no, this is for testing that thing, isn't it?"
Markham nodded. "And let me tell you something, kid. You ever see the brass move this fast on anything that isn't a war plan? Because I sure as hell haven't."
Both were read through and part of the security of one Juan Holtzman, whom both also believed was that rare once in a lifetime polymath genius that would rock the world of humanity and leave a lasting impact.
They read Dune, and because of outside circumstances were not part of the security detail that had accompanied Juan Holtzman to his publisher to leave the sequel called Dune Messiah for publishing, a fact that those fucking bastards crowed in victory and held it over theirs and the rest of the agents' heads over.
It was a simple equation, really. The shield belt was real.
The kind of real that kept MIIO and DMI up at night. The kind of real that had sparked hushed conversations in secure rooms, the kind of real that made even First Prince Ian Davion prioritize it personally.
(And another question that made them stare in the ceiling of their bedroom was if that was able to be made real from Dune, what else could be made real from that book into real life? Someone even made a proposal to create stillsuits!)
Which meant that the normal routes of military testing in places like say, Albion Military Academy, the most prestigious institution in the Federated Suns were not an option.
Markham could already picture it. Some overeager cadet catches a glimpse of something he shouldn't, whispers start flying, instructors start asking questions, and before long, bam! The rumor mill kicks into overdrive. And in a realm where a single juicy piece of classified tech could spread faster than an FTL courier network, that was the last thing they needed.
And then it comes to the attention of nobles with a need for compensation to throw their names and connections around to get what the fuss was all about and bring even more attention.
There was always the option of taking draconian (urgh, bad pun) security measures, but if they started emulating the Dracs and Cappies by black-bagging every soldier who so much as breathed near the project, it would only generate more scrutiny.
No, this had to be handled internally. Privately.
Which was why this facility was explicitly built under personal Davion control, with handpicked security and minimal outside interference and was their best shot at keeping things quiet.
Another black site then, connected to Villa Rustica.
Or at least, as quiet as one could keep a project that involved literal shield technology.
The other issue, of course, was the nature of the tests themselves.
"You heard the chatter?" Markham asked, nodding toward the far end of the range.
Dorsey grimaced. "Yeah. Apparently, someone's been whispering that we'll be testing the belt against serious firepower."
"'Serious' as in—?"
Dorsey gave him a look.
Markham sighed. "Of course. Heavy ordnance."
It made sense. The first tests had been small arms. Then it had escalated to sniper rifles, then anti-materiel rounds. The next logical step? Something that could punch through BattleMech armor.
Which meant infantry portable missiles, lasers, autocannons.
Then escalate to battlemech-scale weaponry to really test the shield belt to its utmost limit.
(If they could upsize it to vehicle and mech scale… dear God.)
The thought of strapping the shield belt to a dummy and hitting it with a PPC was, in a word, insane. But if the belt could hold up against that—if it could withstand the kind of punishment that turned conventional infantry into vaporized mist… then everything changed.
And both of them dearly wished to have that technology yesterday.
Because the Inner Sphere was a dangerous place, and in a universe where even the most advanced personal armor was little more than an inconvenience to BattleMech-scale weaponry, this?
This could be the great equalizer.
Of course, that was assuming it actually worked.
If it failed, well…
Markham glanced at the reinforced bunkers, the thick layers of shielding, the sheer overkill built into every aspect of this facility's construction.
If it failed, at least the test site would survive.
Probably.
===
The sun had barely begun its descent when the latest round of tests commenced, the air thick with the acrid scent of explosives and cordite. The open firing range, still under construction, bore the scars of earlier trials with blast marks pockmarking reinforced concrete, the ground churned up by repeated detonations. It was more akin to a professional military proving ground than anything one would expect outside Albion's training facilities. But considering what they were testing, that was only appropriate.
Two Davion agents stood behind the reinforced observation barricade, one of them checking his chronometer while the other focused through a pair of high-magnification binoculars at the dummy standing fifty meters downrange. The mannequin, rigged with sensors and armored with the prototype shield belt, had already endured small arms fire, anti-material rifles, and even high-velocity flechette rounds. Now, it was time for something nastier.
"Another one," Agent Mathers ordered, gesturing toward the demolitions expert kneeling at the firing station. "This time with an expanded fragmentation casing."
The sapper nodded, setting the charge and retreating to safety before triggering the remote. A dull thump echoed across the range as the grenade went off, sending a spray of ball bearings and metal shards in all directions. The air shimmered for the briefest of moments around the mannequin, the telltale glow of the shield belt flaring as it absorbed the incoming storm of shrapnel.
Mathers exhaled, shaking his head. "Damn thing's still standing."
"Of course it is," his companion muttered.
Mathers turned to glance at the other man, Agent Rourke, a veteran of the service whose tenure in intelligence work had left him with a cynical wit sharper than a monoblade. "You think we're going about this wrong?"
"I think we're looking at this too narrowly," Rourke replied, folding his arms. "So what if the shield stops the shrapnel? You know what I'm not hearing? Screams. That's what tells me we need to start thinking bigger."
A voice interrupted them. "What you really should be thinking like is me."
Both men turned to see Juan Holtzman strolling up to the barricade, hands in the pockets of his lab coat. He had the air of someone who had long since resigned himself to watching less imaginative people stumble their way into conclusions he had reached hours, if not days, before.
Mathers scowled. "This a bad time to be nosing around, Holtzman?"
"Not at all," Juan replied, eyeing the blast zone. "I came because I had a feeling you'd reach this particular wall soon enough."
Rourke gestured to the dummy. "You got a fix for it?"
"Oh, absolutely," Juan said. "But I'm going to make you figure it out."
Mathers groaned. "For god's sake, just tell us."
"Alright," Juan said, sighing dramatically. "Look at what you're doing. You're escalating the problem in a linear fashion. Bullet didn't work? Try a bigger bullet. Grenade didn't work? Try a bigger grenade. But if you're smart, and I like to think you are, you stop thinking about what you're throwing at the shield and start thinking about what happens around the shield."
He gestured at the testing zone. "Your survivorship bias is showing, gentlemen. You're looking at what the shield belt stops and ignoring what it doesn't. Sure, your hypothetical infantryman isn't full of holes, but you drop a big enough blast near them, and they're gonna be coughing up blood from the sheer force of it. Hell, even if they don't die, they'll still be a mess. Staggering. Dazed. Maybe their eardrums are blown out. Maybe their lungs are perforated. Maybe they're concussed beyond recognition."
Rourke nodded slowly. "So you're saying we need to go bigger."
"I'm saying you need to go smarter," Juan corrected. "Heavier anti-vehicle ordnance. Airburst detonations. Anything that puts them in a situation where the shield doesn't mean shit. They won't die from bullets, but they'll sure as hell still die from physics."
Mathers exhaled. "Shit. You're right."
Juan smirked. "I usually am."
Matherws crossed his arms. "You know, you're awfully cavalier about giving out the possible weaknesses of the shield belt you've made. Some intellectuals I know would be awfully defensive of their golden goose and would try to insist that the results and data were wrong compared to their tests."
This time Juan shook his head. "I am not egotistical enough to proclaim that my work is the absolute, and this is the time to temper the expectations that this is not a wonder weapon that can solve everything. And contrary to what you and the rest are thinking, this is not Lostech, rather a walk through the paths not taken, of the new ways without looking backwards and I will insist on that till the day I die. Take that as you will. "
"Hmph." Rourke turned to the demolitions expert. "Alright. What do we have in the way of bigger toys?"
The sapper's face lit up. "I got a few shaped charges that'll rattle its teeth, plus some concussive bombs that'll turn that dummy into jelly if the shield doesn't compensate."
"Then let's get to work," Mathers said, rolling up his sleeves. "Because if we're gonna break this thing, we're gonna do it properly."
Juan clapped him on the shoulder. "That's the spirit. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment with a chair and a cup of coffee while I watch you all scramble to prove my point."
As he walked away, Mathers shook his head. "That kid is going to be insufferable when this is over."
Rourke chuckled. "If he wasn't already, we wouldn't be here."
===
So in the testing grounds, Markham and Dorsey were doing the grunt's work here.
Because despite what cocky MechWarriors liked to believe, despite all their boasts about the dominance of the almighty 'Mech, artillery was still the king of battle.
And the number-one killer of infantry? Shrapnel.
Not Firestarter 'Mechs. Not screaming hordes of armored troops. Not even precise headshots from crack Davion snipers. No, the grim reality of warfare was that the most common killer on the battlefield wasn't some dramatic holovid duel between warriors. It was the indiscriminate, all-consuming storm of hot metal and jagged death thrown into the air by high-explosive blasts.
And that was exactly what they were here to test.
The first test was simple. A fragmentation grenade, standard Davion-issue, thrown by an armorer from a safe distance.
The shield belt, strapped to a human-shaped testing dummy, flickered to life as the grenade detonated. A plume of smoke and dirt blasted into the air, and when it cleared, the dummy was still standing.
The high-speed cameras confirmed it—shrapnel simply stopped at the shield barrier, bits of twisted metal and ball bearings suspended for a fraction of a second before falling harmlessly to the ground.
One test down.
Then came the claymores, directional charges meant to turn infantry into shredded meat. Again, the shield flared, and again, the storm of steel found no purchase. The belt didn't even seem to strain against the impact.
Next, they escalated to land mines.
Dorsey sucked in a breath as a triple-stacked anti-personnel mine rig exploded beneath the dummy's feet. The fireball engulfed it, the sheer force sending up a spray of dirt and debris, but when the dust cleared—
Still standing.
The shield held.
"Son of a bitch," Dorsey muttered. "That thing's eating everything we throw at it."
Markham wasn't so sure.
Sure, the shield belt was handling shrapnel. That was good. That was damn good. But explosions weren't just about flying bits of metal.
Shockwave and overpressure would also have their due.
The next phase of the test confirmed his suspicions (and that Juan guided his superiors to).
They rigged up a larger explosive, a buried charge with the same force as an infantry IED. The kind that had turned APCs into burning coffins during the Succession Wars. The shield flickered as the blast hit, its protective barrier effortlessly halting the shrapnel.
But the dummy itself?
It was hurled several meters through the air, slamming into the dirt like a ragdoll.
Dorsey winced. "Yeah. That's a problem."
The cameras captured it all in slow motion. The shield prevented penetrating damage, but it had no answer for the sheer physics of an explosion's concussive force.
If a person were wearing that belt in a real fight, they wouldn't be shredded by shrapnel, but—
"They'd be getting knocked flat, or worse," Markham muttered. "Ribs broken, concussed, internal bleeding if the blast was big enough."
Which meant that against infantry explosives, the shield belt was good, maybe even amazing, but it wasn't a magic solution. It wouldn't let a soldier charge through an artillery barrage unscathed. It wouldn't let a general stride through a minefield with impunity.
Though they still needed the mortars and artillery testing, just to be sure and get that hard, certain data else it would end up being speculation.
It was armor, not an act of God wonderweapon.
But when he compared it in his past experience where it was certain death and now changed it to a good chance of likely living through injuries?
Holy shit the shield belt was revolutionary. He was going to goddamned ensure to highlight that part of the shield belt's utility in his after action report.
Then came another round of testing borned from someone doing something stupid yet somehow it worked.
It had started as an offhand suggestion, a jest thrown out by one of the testing officers after an exhausting day of watching increasingly ridiculous amounts of firepower failing to break the shield belt. Someone (no one would later claim responsibility) had muttered something about, "Well, what if we just hit it with a sword?"
Somehow, this idea had passed the scrutiny of high command. Whether it was genuine curiosity, bureaucratic inertia, or the lingering romance of pre-spaceflight history that had lodged itself in the heads of some senior officers, no one knew. But once the order was given, it became official: melee weapons were to be tested against the shield belt.
The logic, at least on the surface, was sound. If bullets, grenades, and explosives were having mixed results, what about direct impact with edged or blunt instruments? After all, the Inner Sphere, particularly in those parts where 'tradition' and 'honor' were euphemisms for 'suicidal close combat' had never quite let go of the sword, the axe, or the warhammer. The Combine still had its 'samurai' warriors, Canopian duelists favored ostentatious blades, and more than one Free Worlds League officer was known to carry a melee weapon for duels that still somehow was a valid and legal way of settling disputes.
And so, a separate set of tests was scheduled.
The first weapons chosen were simple: clubs, maces, and sledgehammers. If raw kinetic energy could overwhelm the shield, then a well-placed overhead swing should do the trick. The first test subject, a burly special forces trooper, took a massive steel maul and swung it in a full arc, striking the shielded training dummy dead center. The shimmering field flared, absorbed the impact, and the maul bounced back with a sickening jolt that nearly wrenched the weapon from the trooper's hands.
Further attempts, including a two-man battering ram, yielded similar results. The shield held. The testers even brought out a real warhammer—an honest-to-god, hafted, spiked piece of brutal engineering with a solid steel head. It produced a spectacular flash when it struck, but again, the shield remained intact.
Axes and swords came next, but the results were nearly identical. Whether it was a Combine officer's heirloom katana, a brutal executioner's axe, or a Federated Suns cavalry saber, every stroke was met with resistance. Even if the weapon was sharp enough to split ceramite, the shield simply flared and refused to let anything pass.
It was a stunning display of the shield belt's effectiveness until an accident revealed something unexpected.
It was pure chance that revealed the shield's Achilles' heel. One of the melee testers, idly toying with a combat knife while waiting for his turn, attempted to poke the dummy's shielded torso out of curiosity. Unlike the high-speed slashes and brutal strikes, his slow, deliberate movement was… unimpeded. The knife, moving with almost lazy precision, passed through the shield's field as if it wasn't there.
Silence followed.
Then, with the sort of morbid curiosity that defined military research, the testers had him do it again. And again. A pattern emerged.
If a blade moved slowly enough if it wasn't a sudden, aggressive attack… it could breach the shield entirely. The implications were immediate. The shield could resist even the heaviest of battle-axes and claymores, but a steady, measured insertion of a dagger? That could slip through. The shield was an incredible defense against brute force, but it could not distinguish between a hostile attack and a casual motion.
That fact alone changed everything.
After the revelation, one of the agents in charge groaned audibly and rubbed his temples. The others turned to him in mild amusement.
"Something on your mind, Mathers?"
"Yeah," Mathers muttered. "I just realized what this means for the Combine."
The room collectively winced.
"If, no, when this thing gets out," he continued, "we're going to have every Combine samurai and their dog claiming divine inspiration because now they can duel like something out of a romanticized samurai epic. They'll say their slow, disciplined precision is proof of their superiority. Their stupid bushidononsense is going to get another round of justification, and you just know that someone's going to start prattling on about ancient swordmasters or some mystical energy guiding their strikes."
"At least it means they can't just hack at us like axe-wielding maniacs," someone else pointed out.
Mathers sighed. "No, they'll just start treating sword fights like religious ceremonies instead of the dumb, suicidal things they already are."
Someone in the back coughed. "You think they'll actually try it?"
The room was silent for a long moment before Juan Holtzman, who had been sitting off to the side, chuckled. It was not a reassuring sound.
"You know they will," Juan said. "If you give a Drac a weapon, he'll find a way to make it part of his stupid bushido playacting. And if you give a Drac a shield belt? Well…" He smiled wryly. "Congratulations, you just made every sword-wielding lunatic in the Combine think he's a damned Jedi."
Mathers groaned again. "Oh, goddammit."
While the shield belt proved an incredible defense against ranged and melee attacks alike, its one weakness—the slow, deliberate movement of a blade—was noted, catalogued, and immediately classified.
The last thing House Davion needed was the Combine getting wind of it and turning every would-be samurai into an insufferable duelist, pontificating about how only the 'purity of the blade' could pierce an unworthy foe's defenses.
And if that happened? Well, that would just be another thing to blame Juan Holtzman for.
The final test was, perhaps, the most important.
The Laser Question.
Juan Holtzman stood a good distance from the test range, arms crossed, watching as the shielded dummy was prepared for its next ordeal. The previous trials had already given him invaluable data: the shield belt shrugged off bullets, laughed at explosives, and only showed a single exploitable weakness to slow, deliberate melee attacks.
But now came the real moment of truth.
Lasers.
In Dune, shields and lasguns did not mix. That was an absolute, inviolate rule, burned into the fundamental physics of that fictional universe. When a high-energy beam met a shield, the result was catastrophic: a subatomic explosion of devastating proportions, taking out both the shooter and the target in spectacular mutual annihilation. That was why shields had fundamentally altered the course of warfare in Herbert's universe, why ranged combat had been reduced to archaic melee duels, why knife-fighting had become the pinnacle of martial training.
But Battletech wasn't Dune.
The weapons of this universe had their own physics, their own quirks, their own bafflingly inconsistent rules. The lasers of the Inner Sphere were not simply directed energy beams; they operated on an entirely different technological tree, forged in a setting where Newtonian physics had occasional screaming fights with whatever passed for fucking handwavium here.
So, Juan had no intention of making any assumptions. Assumptions got people killed.
The old saying was: "Assume makes an 'ass' out of 'ú'and 'me'."
He had ensured that the test conditions were as controlled as possible. He'd personally reviewed the shielding systems, made sure that the measuring instruments were precise, and triple-checked that nothing was out of place.
Now came the test.
The first shot came from a standard infantry laser rifle, one of the many models available in the Federated Suns' armory. A technician sighted in carefully, steadied his aim, and fired a clean, controlled burst at the shielded dummy.
A brilliant flash erupted from the point of impact. The shield flared, the energy spreading in a rippling wave across its surface.
Juan felt his breath catch.
There was no explosion. No subatomic detonation.
Just heat.
Readings came in immediately. The shield belt held, absorbing the impact with that same impossibly efficient energy dissipation it had shown against ballistics and melee attacks. But unlike kinetic projectiles, which it batted away effortlessly, the laser was different. The shield ate the energy, but at a cost.
Fifteen percent integrity loss. From a single shot.
And the dummy inside? The sensors were going wild. The heat transfer was brutal. If there had been a real person inside, they wouldn't have been reduced to a fine mist, but they would be experiencing something close to experiencing flashes of heat inside their own armor.
Three more shots caused the sensors in the shield belt to blurt an alert that 25% integrity remained and the heat the dummy was getting was slowly getting cooked.
Juan's mind raced.
"Well," one of the MIIO agents muttered, shaking his head. "That's a hell of a way to go."
"Slow roast," another agreed. "Jesus. I'd rather take a bullet."
Juan exhaled, rubbing his chin. "That's attrition for you. No shield belt's going to hold out against concentrated laser fire."
Mathers, one of the agents who had been present for the melee tests, grimaced. "The Dracs are going to field test this crap. You know some idiot with a sword and delusions of grandeur is going to charge a battle line."
Juan nodded. "And if they do, massed laser fire will ruin their day."
It was a simple numbers game. Unlike traditional ballistics, which relied on physical impact, lasers were pure energy. They didn't get deflected, they didn't ricochet, they just transferred heat straight into the shield. That meant a wall of laser fire, like the infamous Imperial Guard wall of guns Juan remembered from his old life, would be fiendishly effective at cutting down shielded troops.
And that gave him an idea.
He turned to the tech overseeing the range. "Get me a standard laser rifle from the armory."
The man blinked. "Sir?"
"I need to run some numbers," Juan said. His mind was already moving ahead, fitting the pieces together. "If I can modify one of those with my Holtzman mathematics, I might be able to tweak the energy output."
Mathers gave him a suspicious look. "Define tweak."
Juan smiled. "Oh, just some optimizations. See if we can improve efficiency."
He wasn't about to tell them what he was really thinking.
The standard lasers of this universe were energy weapons, yes, but they weren't Holtzman energy weapons. And that meant there was an avenue of experimentation that no one else had ever considered. If he could somehow hybridize the technology… if he could take this universe's relatively crude laser weaponry and enhance it with Holtzman physics…
What would happen?
Would it just be a more efficient energy weapon?
Or would it become something far, far worse?
Would it become the forbidden weaponof Dune?
If he could crack this, if he could create an actual Holtzman lasgun, then, then—he might finally be sitting on something that nobody would dare to touch without gloves made of pure fear.
For now, though, he kept that thought to himself.
"Let's take this one step at a time," he said, watching as the shielded dummy was wheeled off the range, still smoldering from the laser fire. "After all, I wouldn't want to assume anything."
===
A week after that series of extensive testing, Juan got an offer he did not expect.
Juan Holtzman sank into the comfort of his study chair, finally taking a moment to breathe. Villa Rustica,the sprawling estate that was now his home had taken time to grow on him, but at least he finally had a name for the place. Very Roman, verypatrician, and just ridiculous enough that he couldn't help but smirk at the irony.
Here he was, a self-proclaimed nobody, sitting in a miniature aristocratic palace, experimenting with physics that should not be, and now...
Now, apparently, he was being offered a position as creative advisor on a Dune movie.
"What?"
Agent Voss, his increasingly apparent handler, handed him the official correspondence. "Gregory Vance. He's a senior executive at New Avalon Pictures, one of the biggest studios in the Federated Suns. He petitioned First Prince Ian Davion directly—rather effectively, I might add—to have you personally oversee the production. Your book is a cultural phenomenon, Holtzman. And since you can't exactly be in the public eye, they need your blessing. If this goes forward, you'll have complete authority over creative direction."
Juan scanned the neatly typed letter, feeling a surreal sense of detachment.
So… they want me to oversee the adaptation of my own book?
"A surprise," he muttered, "to be sure, but a pleasant one."
Voss didn't so much as blink at the reference (if she even got it). She was all business, standing with the poise of someone used to playing politics from the shadows.
"The First Prince approved this," she added. "Which means this isn't just a corporate venture. This has state backing. It's too much of a cultural export to leave in the hands of amateurs, and Ian Davion unlike some of his predecessors actually understands that. Letting Dune run wild without oversight could have… unintended consequences."
Juan frowned. "Like some nepo baby producer inserting their brilliant ideas into it?"
Voss allowed herself a thin, knowing smile. "Or someone trying to inject ideological nonsense. Yes."
That was enough for Juan. He might have been grateful to House Davion for the protection, funding, and general not letting him die policies, but he had no intention of letting his work get mangled. He'd seen what happened to historical adaptations that fell into the hands of visionless studio heads: entire messages twisted, themes diluted, characters made into caricatures and praised as the only way, stories reduced to empty spectacle for that elusive "modern audience".
He lived through that unfortunate time and would not wish that bullshit on this pillar of science fiction.
Not Frank Herbert's book.
Not this time.
He took out a fresh sheet of paper and, under Voss's watchful gaze, began to write his response in his own hand.
The letter was polite, even gracious, but it left no room for negotiation. If New Avalon Pictures wanted his involvement, then they had to do it on his terms.
Holtzman wrote that he was honored by the offer, deeply gratified that Dune had resonated so strongly across the Federated Suns and beyond. It deserved to be treated with the care and reverence of an epic, not turned into a disposable blockbuster.
If he was to be involved, then Dune needed to remain Dune. That meant he retained full creative control. He would not see its core themes compromised, watered down, or twisted to fit the whims of marketing departments.
The vision had to be pure.
He went further. The film must strive for authenticity. The worlds he had written about had a tangible texture to them, an underlying reality that had made them feel lived-in, and the movie had to reflect that. He insisted on the use of practical effects where possible, rejecting the overreliance on digital fakery that so many films fell prey to.
And, since they wanted his expertise, he would provide it in the best way he knew how.
By the time he finished, the letter was sharp-edged and undeniable. It was an acceptance, but one with conditions that would make anyone in Vance's position sit up and reconsider just how much control they were willing to cede.
Juan set the pen down and slid the letter toward Voss.
It would be a poor contribution if all he did was put his name on the film and nod sagely from the sidelines. No, he would build something. A working stillsuit, perhaps, maybe dozens if he could push it. Nothing as advanced as the ones in the book, but something close. A prototype. A proof of concept.
Let them see that Dune wasn't just a story, but something that could exist.
Juan set the pen down, flexing his fingers as he slid the paper toward Voss. She reviewed it with the sharp, calculating gaze of someone who had spent a lifetime reading between the lines.
And then he opened his mouth.
"You're serious about R&D for stillsuits?" she asked, one eyebrow raised.
"Why not?" Juan replied. "Would be a poor creative advisor if I didn't contribute anything besides my name. A Dunemovie should have Dune tech, don't you think?"
Voss exhaled, shaking her head. "You really are impossible."
Juan smirked. "And yet, here I am, with a blank check from House Davion to play mad scientist. Might as well put it to good use. Besides..."
He gestured to the corner of his study, where the sandworm model Elias had given him sat on a pedestal. The intricately detailed sculpture seemed to stare at him with knowing amusement, as if approving of his latest scheme.
Shai-Hulud wills it