The Machine Crusade

by Brian Herbert

  At the end of the carnage, Erasmus stood beside Gilbertus Albans, looking at the scene. Serena lay dead, appearing almost peaceful. What does she know? Even in death, she seemed convinced of her victory.

  The robot's young ward looked green. Though he'd never been trained in emotions and had been raised under the robot's care, Gilbertus seemed to have an innate humanity. He stared at the fallen Priestess.

  "I am deeply saddened, Father." The young man seemed to be struggling with his thoughts. "But more than that I am angry. She was brave and admirable. This did not have to happen."

  Erasmus nodded his silvery head. "Exactly as I expected you to feel as a human being. Omnius will never understand why you say these things, but I do. When time permits, we shall explore your feelings in more detail."

  Finally, the remaining combat robots returned to their positions, and the evermind's voice boomed from all walls. "But why did she do that, Erasmus? Explain it to me."

  The robot paced back and forth, sorting his thoughts. "I am concerned about this, Omnius. Very concerned."

  Despite the death and tragedy here, the independent robot suspected that it had all played out precisely as Serena Butler choreographed it. Erasmus feared the consequences. Inadvertently, they might have unleashed the most dangerous weapon of all.

  I control the manner in which I live my life. How history remembers me is another matter altogether.

  —Aurelius Venport, private administrative testament, VenKee Enterprises

  Disaster struck on their return to the shipyards of Kolhar. Aurelius Venport sat in the passenger seat, deep in thought, while Zufa guided their conventional craft through an asteroid belt near Ginaz. Holtzman shields protected them from the peppering impact of small space debris, though the protective system frequently overheated from hours of constant use. He hoped they would not remain inside the field of space debris for much longer.

  Still mystified by his own feelings, the merchant held the flashy Manion Cross in his hand, a gaudy but impressive ornament that symbolized so much. Somewhat drunk with the praise and rewards he had received from the Priestess of the Jihad, and the lucrative long-term business concessions, he had resigned himself to the loss of his space-folding merchant ships. For now.

  But in the long run, his name would be emblazoned in the annals of history as a tremendous benefactor of the Jihad; that was not something money could buy. During his life's work, Venport had never considered himself a selfless patriot; but the accolades and sincere gratitude made him feel as vertiginous with pleasure as if he had taken a strong dose of melange.

  How odd.

  He tried to assess his shifting fortunes and feelings as Zufa piloted their ship back to Kolhar. When he noticed her glancing at him, Venport tried to imagine what the statuesque woman must be thinking. Was she actually… proud of him, for a change?

  Venport could parlay his new respectability into even greater profits for VenKee Enterprises, more merchant business. Certainly, he still had his traditional cargo haulers, which had already proved successful. Even before the end of hostilities he would have all the capital he needed to start construction on a new spacefolder merchant fleet, using the patents and designs the company still owned. He smiled to himself.

  At that moment the waiting cymeks launched their ambush from within the asteroid field.

  Beowulf, the oldest of the turncoat neo-cymeks, along with ten other fanatically devoted converts from the populace of Bela Tegeuse, had lain in wait among the space rubble. Their source in the League had said it would be the perfect ambush. Knowing that the great Sorceress and the powerful merchant would have to pass the asteroid field on their return to Kolhar, Beowulf wanted to strike an important blow against their hrethgir enemies, and most especially against the Sorceresses of Rossak.

  No cymek had ever forgotten the mayhem and damage the witches had inflicted on their numbers. Thanks to a Sorceress trained by Zufa Cenva herself, Beowulf's mentor and friend Barbarossa had been annihilated on Giedi Prime, the first victim of their insidious telepathic mindstorms. Now he was delighted to have an opportunity for revenge…

  With uncharacteristic prescience brought about by her abilities, Zufa Cenva sensed the danger moments before she saw the sparkling silver forms emerge like hornets from the drifting rocks. Shouting to Venport, she took evasive action, spinning their small ship and changing course so sharply that both of them were nearly thrown out of their seats. Venport grabbed the console to stabilize himself.

  Surprised at her swift reaction, the cymek ambushers opened fire with a spray of wild projectiles that flew off into open space. Three explosive rounds struck the drifting debris, pulverizing the ice and rock into fine gravel. Two other projectiles slammed into the ship's weakening Holtz-man shields, dissipating the missiles' kinetic energy.

  Zufa's face was hard, her icy eyes afire as she cruised tightly around a large tumbling asteroid. After four more direct hits, the shields hummed, overheated… and finally failed. She increased speed, risking an imminent crash, but she needed to put distance between her ship and the attackers.

  "We have little chance of surviving this, Aurelius," Zufa said.

  He looked at her and swallowed hard. His face turned almost as milky pale as her natural coloring. "Trust me, I appreciate your honesty, but I'd rather hold onto a little hope."

  "Any suggestions?"

  Venport sagged in the seat. "You never looked to me for direction before, Zufa."

  Without a plan, Zufa fired a spread from their ship's defensive artillery. The volley of shells struck a glancing blow off one of the cymek ships, causing sufficient damage to send the enemy craft reeling out of control. The neo-cymek fired stabilizing thrusters to regain his orientation, but before he could steady himself, his ship slammed into a jagged chunk of rock and exploded.

  Ten more cymek marauders remained, closing in on Venport's ship.

  Beowulf transmitted in an artificially loud, booming voice, "Prepare to be boarded and dissected — or face destruction."

  Venport said, "Let's negotiate a third option… as soon as I think of one."

  Beowulf responded, "There is no other option. We intend to acquire the details of your space-folding technology for General Agamemnon."

  Shocked, Venport looked at Zufa Cenva. "How could they possibly know? And how did they know to intercept us here?" Then he gave a contemptuous snort to cover his fear. "They're deluded if they believe either of us actually understands Norma's calculations… or even that we'll permit ourselves to be taken alive."

  Ignoring him, the Sorceress coldly responded over the comsystem. "You would be better off simply destroying us. You are wasting your time if you believe we will divulge any such information."

  Beowulf responded, "We would be happy to distill it directly from your brain cells."

  Just what I'm worried about, Venport thought. With a show of bravado, wondering if he'd have the nerve to follow through, he called up routines in the ship's control panel. While Zufa flew wildly, he tried to concentrate, step by step, on setting up the vessel's emergency self-destruct sequence.

  The cymek ships dodged the asteroid debris and continued firing, attempting to damage the engines. Zufa took a risky course, flying close to hazardous obstacles. Three cymek projectiles struck home, damaging the thrusters and navigation stabilizers, sending the vessel out of control. The Sorceress fought with the remaining systems, doing her utmost to keep from careening into a drifting mountain.

  The neo-cymeks closed in like bloodthirsty wolves from the black pit of space. Venport could almost imagine dripping mechanical fangs as they pressed in for the kill. He finished the preparation sequence; the self-destruct was ready.

  Zufa's forehead furrowed with intense thought as she aimed carefully and shot her last five explosive projectiles. She seemed to be using her own telekinetic abilities to nudge them in the right direction. Four of the shots struck the nearest cymek ship, destroying it.

  "We're making progress," Ve
nport said. "That's two of them."

  "But too many remain." She looked at him grimly. "And we have no more ammunition."

  "Surrender and prepare to be boarded," Beowulf demanded.

  In response, Venport activated the comsystem and shouted into it. "You should know that our pilot is a Sorceress of Rossak, and cymeks are certainly familiar with what they can do. If you come aboard, trust me: she will vaporize your brain."

  The cymek called his bluff. "And yours. And her own. We know all about the witch Zufa Cenva — and about your space-folding ships, Aurelius Venport. Her psychic blast may kill one or two of my neos, but in the end we will still have your vessel and its records. General Agamemnon will find them most useful."

  Venport flipped off the system, muttered. "The self-destruct looks like our only option."

  "They are just trying to intimidate us," Zufa said. A cymek shot struck their bow, and sparks flew from her control panel. Zufa shut it down, glanced at the ruined components. "That was our whole comsystem — the transmitter and the receiver."

  "I didn't want to hear more cymek threats anyway."

  Then, as if the gods were smiling on them, a large ellipsoidal rock deviated from its course in the scattered debris field and began to pick up speed, in defiance of celestial mechanics. The huge asteroid accelerated toward the clustered attackers, on an apparent collision course.

  "What is… that?" Venport asked, leaning close to the front viewport.

  Gripping the controls, trying to find a way to evade the object, Zufa saw the asteroid hurtle in amidst the converging cymeks. As the silvery ships scattered, kinetic spheres discharged from the giant space rock, coming out of weapons ports disguised as craters. Dense stone globes shot out at near relativistic velocities. The kinetic spheres needed no explosives, only the incredible energy delivered by their speed and mass. The aim was true — and four more cymeks exploded.

  Thrown into chaos, Beowulf and his fellow marauders spun about to face this unexpected new threat. The silver ships strafed the giant asteroid's crust, but caused only cosmetic damage. A shotgun spray of more kinetic spheres flew like a deadly hailstorm from the crater ports.

  Almost caught in the crossfire, Zufa struggled to maneuver her crippled ship away from the battle.

  The mysterious asteroid's weaponry complement seemed inexhaustible. Hundreds of kinetic spheres showered out, a relentless bombardment against the overconfident machine attackers. Metallic wreckage from the cymek ships littered the Ginaz asteroid belt.

  Beowulf, in the last surviving cymek ship, headed straight up out of the asteroid plane, swerving to dodge the kinetic storm. A dozen more stone bombs rained out of the asteroid's crater launchers. One clipped and breached the hull of Beowulf's ship; another crushed the cymek's engines. Dark and out of control, the last silvery attacker careened off into space, drifting away. ;

  Even after seeing the cymek marauders wiped out, Zufa felt little cause for rejoicing. She wrestled with the controls to squeeze more speed from the damaged propulsion system while evading the natural — but still deadly — asteroids that hurtled toward them from all directions. :

  "Ginaz is close," she said through clenched teeth. "If we can get out of the debris field, I intend to make a break for the planet. Maybe we can survive a crash landing on one of the Ginaz islands."

  "Better than being captured by a cymek, I suppose… but neither alternative sounds particularly attractive to me." He looked down at the activated self-destruct system, which awaited his final command.

  Back in the heart of the rubble belt, with all the cymeks obliterated, the artificial asteroid altered its trajectory yet again and accelerated toward them. The giant rock closed in swiftly, seemingly intent on its new target.

  "It destroyed those cymeks," Venport said. "But that asteroid wants to capture us instead."

  "It could have easily blasted us out of space before," she said, sitting straight and ominous. "I think it has something worse in mind for us."

  Venport felt cold to his marrow. "Somebody betrayed us. The enemies of humanity want to get their metal claws on the space-folding technology."

  Limping away, Zufa could barely maneuver. Their attempt to escape from the asteroid was pathetically feeble. The huge rock closed in, looming up out of the glittering backdrop of space. A large crater appeared in the front like a gaping mouth, the open maw of a hungry shark ready to swallow them.

  Venport looked down at the self-destruct sequence again and swallowed hard. Almost time…

  Disabling energy bursts lanced out from implanted projectors, strange weapons that Venport had never seen before. They struck the ship like disruptive lightning, crackling along the barely functioning engines and burning out the remainder of their gasping systems. The cockpit was smothered in darkness.

  Zufa looked ashen with fear in the faint starlight that seeped through the viewports. She couldn't maneuver, couldn't power up the emergency illumination. "Everything's dead, even life support. We're completely helpless."

  Venport looked at the blank screens, knowing that the self-destruct routines had also been wiped. "I should have acted sooner."

  The giant asteroid narrowed the gap, filling their front viewport and finally engulfing them. As tractor beams drew them into the yawning gullet and along a deep shaft to an inner chamber, Venport saw firefly lines of lights, mechanical systems… and several motionless mechanical walkers with empty sockets waiting for a brain canister to be installed.

  "It's another cymek ship." Zufa's voice sounded bleak. "It's no surprise they have factions in their rebellion. Remember… remember what Xerxes did to Norma."

  Venport said, "Damn, even if we can't give any technical details about the spacefolding engines, you and I would make valuable hostages to the cymeks."

  He saw a stony determination on Zufa's face that rivaled the furious dedication she had had when she was younger, training her first Sorceress commandos to become telepathic weapons against the loathsome machines with human minds.

  "We can still be heroes." Refusing to look at him, she stared fixedly forward as they were drawn deeper into the asteroid chamber.

  "The self-destruct is disabled," he said.

  "Mine isn't," she answered, then said nothing more.

  When metal doorplates sealed behind them, garish lights filled the room. The uneven curved walls were linked with mirrored crystals that refracted the light as if through a diamond lens. He and Zufa sat side by side, shielding their eyes and only opening them narrowly.

  Finally, they made out movement emerging from one of the tunnels, an ornate jewel-armored walker that was more magnificent and gaudy than any cymek monstrosity they had ever seen. Zufa's upper lip curled back as she thought of the traitorous human mind installed in this extravagant, dragonlike machine form.

  Then her face calmed, her expression cleared, and she looked at Venport. "It won't be long now." She closed her eyes to concentrate.

  "Shouldn't we wait and see what it wants?"

  "It's a cymek," she said, her voice filled with a lifetime of hatred. "We know what it wants."

  The dragon-walker approached their ship and attempted to work the hatch from the outside. Slowed by the locks and the shorted electronic systems, the cymek began to use powerful tools to cut through the door hatch.

  With their systems obliterated, Venport could transmit no distress call, nor could he communicate with the thinking machine. "We're trapped," he said.

  "But not helpless." Zufa drew deep breaths, and her skin became translucent, shimmering from within. She clutched Venport's hand. He could feel that her fingers were hot. Her hair began to crackle and writhe above her head with static electricity.

  "Norma learned how to control this," she said. "Of all my Sorceresses, only my own daughter knew how to survive such a blast. Unfortunately, I never acquired the skill."

  Psychic energy welled within her, building to a critical point. She had taught so many others how to do this, how to let loose a mental
blast against the hated cymeks. Considering its power, this dragon-creature must be an important enemy, perhaps even one of the surviving Titans.

  Someone worth sacrificing myself for.

  The cymek captor pried their ship open, and worked to squeeze part of its body inside. A mechanical arm and claw thrust through the gap. Venport clenched his teeth… and waited.

  "I'm sorry I can't control it, Aurelius… I'm sorry for many things."

  "I just hope you're right."

  The dragon-walker finally inserted a bulky head turret into their ship and announced through its speaker patch, "I am the Titan Hecate —"

  It was all she needed to hear. Zufa unleashed her unstable psychic strength. As so many other Sorceresses had done before her, she broke down the barriers and emptied her reservoirs of mental energy.

  The shockwave from Zufa's psychic blast erupted like a supernova. Her last thought was a calm pride that she would obliterate one of the terrible enemies of mankind. Her purifying energy shot outward and boiled away every organic brain within range — Venport's, Hecate's, and her own.

  After accelerating to intercept the fleeing ship, Hecate's asteroid drifted out of the Ginaz rubble belt. When Zufa's blast obliterated the Titan's mind, it severed all thoughtrode connections to the sophisticated navigation and guidance systems.

  Out of control and captainless, the massive asteroid careened out of the rocky belt before falling down the gravity well and plunging like a cannonball into the atmosphere of Ginaz.

  We carry graveyards in our souls, and lives resurrected.

  —Swordmaster Jav Barri

  Late at night, the master mercenary Jool Noret stood exhausted and sweating, but feeling intensely alive after hours of strenuous training. He was only thirty-two years old, but he felt like an ancient man. He had seen more combat and destroyed more machines than the most battle-scarred member of the Council of Veterans. And still he felt he had so much to do, many more enemies to destroy… a lifelong debt to repay.