en- captors bare-handed Henh gathered a great fleet of Landsraad armies spearheaded by Sardaukar shock Coops The Sardaukar were to recapture the forts and outposts, the Landsraad troops to invade the LC planets Henh made a bloody example of those planets He adopted a policy of ruthless assaults followed by the razing of the captured territory The Sardaukar retook their own bastions without encumbering themselves with prisoners They then attacked the planets of Lishash and its allies from widely separated directions The speed and ferocity of these combined thrusts routed the LC armies Lishash was the first planet to fall Its major cities were burned, its rulers public ly executed, its citizens indiscriminately put to the sword The Lishash colonies suffered the same fate The LC allies sued for mercy, at first without success One by one they were trampled Then Landsraad General Tomigh sickened by the carnage he witnessed as his units mopped up in the track of the Lion, objected to the Regent I speak for the Joint Landsraad Command Tomigh said Your point has been made As for us we are soldiers not executioners This sounds like a threat Henh said Not even an implied one Have you en forced Comno authority or ha\e you not? If the rebellion is over are you not violating the spint, if not the letter ot the Oreat Convention by maintaining the lighting' By God Sir Tomigh Henh shouted you 11 either fight or hang' By God Sir Regent I H neither fight nor hang'1 And with that Tomigh returned to the Landsraad Council and disbanded the Land sraad forces True to the quick witted nature of the Sardaukar, Henli did not try to enforce his orders Many observers believe he welcomed Tomigh's protest caught between the Landsraad and the Lion, he had to satisfy both Without the Landsraad units, he could end hostilities and blame the concession on the Landsraad Tomigh was satisfied, the Sardaukar were satisfied, and Comno su premacy was upheld without more massacre Thus Lishash was scoured, but many of its allies survived to see another year After the I C rebellion armed revolt occurred only among civilizations much farther from the Imperium's center, and was earned out mainly by those who never knew of the grand feudal order rather than by those who did not wish to partake of it The Landsraad itself generally welcomed the Sardaukar because the Imperial troops allowed the Great Houses to expand without disturbance from their rivals Warfare among Landsraad members was strictly regulated by the Convention, SARDAUKAR SARDAUKAR TITLES and the regulations were enforced by the Sardaukar So they expanded, at the expense of peripheral planets that sometimes did not know of the Impenum until told of it by an mvasidn force from a Great House Similar expansion by the Comnos became the relief valve for the Sardaukar It brought economic benefits, kept the Sardaukar combat-ready, and sated the military desire for action on conquest instead of intrigue Now that the Impenum was stable, the Lion needed to be given leash beyond tt The campaigns of expansion tested the soldier-fanatics against a variety of adversaries, terrains, weapons, and tactics As Sardaukar conquests added victory after victory to the list, the myth of invincibility was created Concurrently, the duration and scope of Padishah predominance caused the Impenum to be widely perceived as the natural order Pharaonic rulers would naturally be supported by military supermen As a result, theindomi-tabihty of Sardaukar arms impressed itself on the Impenum until even dissidents shared and sustained the Sardaukar's belief m themselves Fact reinforced myth, and vice versa As the centuries passed, die lowly origin of the Sardaukar as a cattle-herding tribe on an infertile jungte planet was forgotten Salusa Secundus became notorious as the prison planet of the emperors, not as the world from which (hey had escaped at the first opportunity Vet both planet and tnbe, one may feel, deserved each other And 8,700 years after their separation, they were reunited, by the order of Muad'D* S T NOTE 'Otto Aramsham, Sardaukar Victorious, tr Uaiwid Gwihvz (Kaitam Varna) Farther references: SALUSA SECUNDUS Otto Aram sham The Sardattter Strdce Is Su Daiwid Gwilivz (Kaitam Varna), Ittprgl Maun, The influence of Space Power on History (Salusa Secundus Gravlak), Rakol rai Foezek "The Influence of the Laadsraad in the LCR Settlement," Studtcs m Imperial History (Old Senes) 3440-68 115 SARDAUKAR TITLES, ORDERS, AND AWARDS.