For months the citizens of Sietch Impiam had been building their defenses, rushing as they believed an enemy would crash down on them at any moment. That attack never came, the Sietch continued building anyway. Their defenses were mighty, as the whole of their activities had been toward their protection.

Soaring upward into the sky were massive stone walls, seemingly natural formations which had been built by the civilian laborers of the Sietch. Some of the walls were natural formations, but all were honeycombed with tunnels and outposts. In each of these outposts were weapons of terrible power, the technological know how of the Sietch being placed into them. Each wall was built to channel wind through it, that wind being trapped by windmills which produced electricity. That electricity kept the modern facilities running, as well as some of their most powerful weapons. In most of those rooms one would find massive metal rails, two of them, held tightly in place and connected to power generators. Beside these rails were stores of ammunition, bullets the size of softballs. They were railguns, made with an extremely simple frame. Just two rails attached to a current, when a round was placed between the rails it completed the current and created the magnetic field that would launch it out at speeds upwards of four thousand meters a second. Explosive warheads? The Sietch needed none, the kinetic energy behind one rail blast was greater to a warhead of the same size as their bullets. Beside these rails were sniper rifles, long range guns with scopes attached.

Beyond the devastatingly powerful guns were the Ornithopters, small airships which ran on a mixture of electricity and liquid fuel. The crews of these deadly weapons were highly trained and always ready to move for combat. Each craft was armed with a devastating mixture of rapid firing cannons as well as explosive KE penetraters.

Beyond the massive formations which protected the Sietch was an endless maze of sand. And buried deep beneath that sand were thousands upon thousands of landmines, both remote detonations and pressure sensitive. Any invading army would first have to find the Sietch, then make their way through the landmines only to come in range of the KE penetration weapons and other Sietch defenses. Attacking the Sietch was not a smart idea.

Within the Sietch life had turned to a new direction. The defenses were set, it was time to set in motion several plans the Mother Superior had. One of which was the building of an army. This army would be a strange one, a fearsome one. For the entirety of that army would be Gholas and Face Dancers, the genetically enhanced creatures of the Bene Tleilaxu. It would take time, several years to gather enough forces for a powerful army, but when those years were over, Hell would be unleashed on Utopia