Dune: The Battle of Corrin

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  A shudder ran down Istian’s spine. Trig had chosen his own path. Istian could have done nothing to prevent this. His thoughts spun as he examined his own actions.

  The Cultists’ long indrawn breath created a vacuum of silence. Istian felt his heart sink as he took in the expressions on their faces.

  Chirox stood motionless, as if he had calculated that the ordeal was now over. He had defeated his antagonist, and with the completion of his victory he wanted to leave.

  “It was a fair challenge,” Istian shouted to the mob. “Nar Trig was defeated by his opponent.” He didn’t think fairness and honor were foremost in the minds of the Cultists.

  “That thinking machine murdered our swordmaster!”

  “It killed a human!”

  “All machines must be destroyed.”

  “He is not our enemy,” Istian cried, wiping blood out of his eyes.

  “A thinking machine cannot change what it is! Death to the machines!”

  Chirox straightened his metallic torso and retracted his blood-spattered blade arms. With weapons drawn, Istian took his place beside the mek. “Chirox did nothing wrong! He has trained countless swordmasters, and he has shown us how to fight the thinking machines. He is our ally, not our enemy.”

  “All machines are our enemies,” shouted someone.

  “Then you need to consider your enemies more carefully. This training mek is an ally of humanity. He has proved that machines can serve our cause as well as warriors.”

  But the furious outcry from the incensed Cultists suggested otherwise. The people were armed with only crude weapons: cudgels and clubs, makeshift swords or knives. All through Zimia the large-scale uprising continued as fanatics set fires and destroyed everything technological they could get their hands on, even innocuous and useful devices.

  “You may claim the whole city,” Istian said, “but you cannot have Chirox.”

  “Death to machines!” someone from the mob repeated, and Istian stepped in front of the combat mek, holding out his weapons.

  “He is on our side. If you are too blind to see it, then you are not worthy members of the human race. I will drive off anyone who tries to damage him. I’ll kill you if I have to.”

  Someone laughed. “Do you expect to stand against us— one swordmaster and a robot?”

  “Honor guides my actions.”

  Chirox spoke again. “Do not sacrifice yourself for me, Istian Goss. I forbid it.”

  “That isn’t open for discussion.” Istian raised his pulse-sword. It was not a terribly useful weapon against a mob, but he would use it to its best effect, nevertheless. “It’s what… what Jool Noret would have done.”

  The Cultists pushed to get closer to Trig’s decapitated body, feeling their own anger and thirst for vengeance. Though their crude weapons might not be effective against Chirox, their sheer overwhelming numbers would be sufficient. Istian could see this was going to be a bloodbath.

  “I will defend you,” he said firmly, casting a glance over his shoulder at the sensei mek. Shielding Chirox, he turned a brave face toward the angry crowd.

  “No. You will die. Many of these people will die,” the mek said. “I cannot allow that.”

  His back to the robot, Istian confronted the oncoming throng. Behind him, Chirox stood erect with all of his weapons extended. “No, this must stop— stop— “

  Torn between watching his frenzied attackers and figuring out what the sensei mek intended to do, Istian glanced back to see that the multi-armed combat mek had frozen in place. Chirox bowed down in front of the blood-spattered, headless corpse of Nar Trig. His arms were extended, each one tipped with a flowmetal-formed weapon, but they hung useless, not moving.

  “I will not allow… you to die… defending me,” said the sensei mek, his voice slurred and slowing. “It does not… match the proper… criteria.” The combat machine’s voice faded and stopped, swallowed up in a cold silence, and the bright optic threads in Chirox’s face grew dull and lifeless.

  Istian turned to stare at the motionless robot. After so many years of training swordmasters, learning the ways of the human race, the combat mek had made this difficult decision in his own mind— a freewill choice that he had not been programmed to make.

  Stricken with grief and confusion, Istian tried to make sense of the tragedy. In his hands, his weapons felt like cold, useless sticks. The combat mek was as dead as Nar Trig. Each had sacrificed himself for his ideals.

  Perhaps, Istian thought, we have much to learn from the machines as well.

  “We’ve lost two great fighters today— for no fathomable reason,” Istian said, his voice quiet. He was not sure that any of the fanatics could hear him.

  The shock of the events had defused the destructive frenzy of the crowd. They seemed deflated and frustrated at having had their scapegoat stolen from them.

  When two men strode forward, clearly intent on smashing the already deactivated hulk of Chirox, Istian guarded the motionless combat robot with his pulse-sword in one hand, ceremonial dagger in the other, and murder in his eyes. The angriest members of the mob glared at him, hesitated, and finally backed down, not wanting to pit themselves against a veteran swordmaster.

  Rayna’s revolt continued through the city, and gradually the fanatics dispersed to find other targets.

  For many hours, Istian Goss remained steadfast beside the shutdown form of Chirox and the headless corpse of his former friend Trig. Though years ago atomics had wiped out all strongholds of the thinking machines, Istian could see that in the human heart the Jihad was still far from over.

  Do not be deceived. Until the last vestiges of Omnius are obliterated, our war against the thinking machines will never end— and neither will my resolve.

  — SUPREME BASHAR VORIAN ATREIDES

  After the death of Quentin Butler and the violent elimination of Dante, Vor sat alone, stunned and reeling, in the Dream Voyager. He let the ship drift as he sifted through the mountain of suffocating memories.

  He admired Quentin enough not to grieve for the supreme sacrifice he had made. Once his human body had been stripped from him, what more could a great military leader have hoped for? At least Vor had tried to make the primero understand his son Abulurd in the end. Now he would deliver a message to the younger man and tell him what his father had accomplished.

  Vor took the ship back to Hessra, landing on the icy plains at the base of the dark, half-buried Cogitor fortress where the last Titans had established their outpost. He stepped out of the Dream Voyager and stood alone, the only human on a whole planet. Even wearing his flight suit, Vor felt the penetrating cold. The thin arctic breezes whistled around him, and the starry sky overhead bathed the rugged landscape in a milky glow.

  As he approached the Cogitors’ former citadel, he saw that Quentin’s explanation of Agamemnon’s “dead man” switch had been correct. On his walk across the ice, Vor encountered seven scattered forms, mechanical bodies that had collapsed. They looked like dead insects, metal arms and grappling legs extended at odd angles, some still twitching. The neos’ canisters were a murky red, electrafluid mixed with exploded brain tissue and hemorrhages.

  One of the neo walkers, still clinging to a shred of life, emerged from the dark mouth of the doorway underneath the citadel. It swayed and staggered, walking in circles because only one set of legs functioned properly. Vor stood silently, watching the machine lurch forward and then collapse.

  “If I knew how to prolong your agony, I would,” he said, then walked past the still-shuddering hulk and into the citadel.

  Two of the tortured secondary-neos clattered forward, disoriented. Vor marveled at their determination to live. He had no great love for Cogitors, whose naïveté and clumsy politics had incited Serena to martyr herself, but he felt a twinge of sympathy for the poor human secondaries that the cymeks had forced into slavery. “You still survive.”

  “Barely,” one of the monk neos answered. The tones coming from the speakerpatch were distorted.
“It seems… we secondaries… have developed a higher threshold… of pain.”

  He stayed with them for hours, until they both died.

  A similar die-off would happen on the handful of other cymek worlds over the course of the next year, when the surviving neos failed to receive the necessary check signal required to keep them alive. Vor wondered if some of them would learn what had happened to the Titans and scramble to find a way to save themselves. He doubted they would succeed— General Agamemnon was quite thorough about such things.

  Vor shook his head sadly. “There is no end to the delusions we will follow….”

  After seeing what he needed to see, knowing the cymeks would all die, he walked back toward the Dream Voyager. He felt cast adrift, like a lost fishing boat on a Caladan sea. The Jihad had been his life and his focus for so long. What was he without it? So much had already been lost, so many billions of lives. And now he had killed his own father. Patricide. A terrible word for a horrendous deed. He felt sickened to think that it had been necessary… that any of it had been necessary.

  Vorian Atreides had left a wake of blood across the ocean of his life, but every tragedy and victory had been necessary for the sake of humanity. He had been instrumental in the downfall of the thinking machines— from the Great Purge of the Synchronized Worlds to the destruction of the Titans.

  But it wasn’t over. One last target remained.

  * * *

  ON HIS RETURN to Salusa Secundus, Vor transmitted no celebratory messages. He didn’t need any accolades or attention, though he intended to make certain Quentin Butler was honored as a genuine hero.

  Although he had left the Army of Humanity and departed from the League more than two months before, he easily arranged a meeting with the Viceroy as soon as he returned home. No one but Abulurd had ever known the actual reason Vor had resigned his commission, but now they would learn he had gone off to hunt the cymeks. And he had succeeded….

  Passing through Zimia, Vor witnessed the aftermath of the recent riots— windows boarded up, ornamental trees on the boulevards blackened and twisted from fire, smoke staining the alabaster walls of governmental buildings. The fires had been put out and the Cultist mobs dispersed, but the damage remained. As he approached the Hall of Parliament, he looked around in sick amazement.

  I did not fight the only battle.

  Inside, distracted with picking up the pieces, reassuring the shaken populace, and making enough concessions to Rayna’s growing movement to keep them somewhat under control, Viceroy Faykan Butler paused in between frantic committee meetings to see the Supreme Bashar. “I need to tell you about your father,” Vor said.

  Faykan was astonished and pleased to hear of the death of the Titans, then saddened to learn about his father’s tragic yet heroic end. “For years, I was very close to him,” he said, sitting formal and rigid at his desk. As a politician he had learned to control his expressions. “I confess that when I discovered he was alive but converted into a cymek, I wished he were dead— so did he, apparently.”

  He straightened a set of documents waiting for his signature. “Now after hearing this… well, I suppose it’s the best we could hope for. He lived and died by the same credo— that Butlers are servants unto no one.” He drew a deep breath that trembled at just the last moment. Faykan spoke louder, as if convincing himself. “My father would not let himself become a slave to the cymeks.”

  The Viceroy cleared his throat and seemed to put on his political mask again. “Thank you for your service, Supreme Bashar Atreides. We will make an official announcement with this great news about the end of the Titans. I am pleased to formally restore you to your rank in the Army of Humanity.”

  * * *

  THOUGH ABULURD HAD not been close to his father, the younger man seemed far more affected by the news of Quentin’s death. He was a sensitive person and felt pain and tragedy with his whole heart, whereas Faykan had learned how to wall himself off from any unwanted responses to the horrors of war or the unpleasantness of life.

  Abulurd smiled, and for a moment the grief washed from his face. “I grieve for my father, sir… but in truth, I was much more concerned about the risks you were taking and the ordeals you went through.”

  Vor swallowed at the lump that formed in his throat, to think of the odd twist of circumstances: This talented officer was the son of Quentin, who had not appreciated him… while Vor’s own sons on Caladan wanted little to do with him. Looking at Abulurd, he saw his real reason for remaining part of the League. “Your father was always a hero. History will remember him properly. I’ll make sure of that.”

  Abulurd hesitated, bowed his head. “If only Xavier Harkonnen had the same opportunity. I fear the task force has made no progress in clearing his name. Now many of the historical records are destroyed— how will we ever prove the truth? Or will that make the job easier?”

  Vor straightened. “It is long past time that we removed the unfair stain from the Harkonnen name. Especially now that I’ve defeated the Titans, maybe I can push a resolution through.”

  Abulurd looked weak with relief.

  “First, though,” Vor said in a steely voice, “there is one last thing I intend to accomplish. One large strategic blot remains on our own record. Given sufficient resolve and determination, I believe the Army of Humanity can succeed, where they have not in the past. If I don’t seize the opportunity now, I fear the League will never do it.”

  Abulurd blinked at him. “What do you intend to do, Supreme Bashar?”

  “I plan to go back to Corrin— and destroy it completely.”

  Abulurd jerked his head back in surprise. “But you know how many defensive ships the robots have put in orbit. We’ll never break through.”

  “We can break through— if we bring a big enough hammer and swing it with sufficient force. The sacrifice may be high, both in ships and in human lives. But since Omnius is trapped on Corrin, this may be our last chance. If the thinking machines ever escape and proliferate, we’ll be back where we were a century ago. We cannot allow that to happen.”

  Abulurd squirmed. “How will you ever convince the Parliament? Are soldiers still willing to fight and die against such an uncertain threat? No one seems to see it as a clear enough danger, even after the piranha mites. I think they’ve lost their resolve.”

  “I have listened to their excuses for years, but now I will make them see,” Vor said. “I have the Titans and cymeks, and I understand the danger from the thinking machines better than any man alive. I won’t rest until humanity is safe from them. An all-out attack is our best strategy. I have to finish the job. Don’t underestimate my powers of persuasion in something that matters so much to me.”

  The two walked together for a long time in contemplative silence before Abulurd said, “When did you become such a hawk, Supreme Bashar? You used to rely on tricks and deception, but now your tactic is a full-fledged military strike? It reminds me…”

  “Reminds you of Xavier?” Vor smiled. “Though we might have disagreed when he was alive, my old friend proved himself right. Yes, I have become a hawk.” He clapped his hand on Abulurd’s shoulder. “From now on the hawk will be my symbol. It will always remind me of my duty.”

  Each society has its list of cardinal sins. Sometimes these sins are determined by condemning acts that tend to destroy the fabric of social organization; sometimes sins are defined by leaders seeking to perpetuate their own positions.

  — NAAM THE ELDER,

  First Official Historian to the Jihad

  As if forgetting their recent violent demonstrations, the people went wild celebrating the return of Vorian Atreides. The cymeks were dead, the last of the Titans destroyed, another threat to humanity removed from the universe.

  When his armored limocar proceeded along the wreckage-strewn boulevards of Zimia, throngs of cheering people threw orange marigolds at him. Many carried placards bearing his stylized gallant image and the words “Hero of the Jihad, Defender of Humanity, Con
queror of Titans.”

  Rayna Butler had rejoiced in the “righteous execution” of the last machines with human minds, happily adopting Vor— “a true friend and follower of Serena herself!”— as part of her movement.

  The Supreme Bashar had never felt comfortable with the sort of attention he was receiving now. Regardless of his rank, he had always done his job for Serena and her Jihad, with no thought of personal aggrandisement or advancement. He wanted to destroy the enemy, nothing more.

  Looking at the throng that had gathered for his celebration, Vor didn’t think he had seen such adulation or jubilant relief since the end of the Great Purge. Perhaps now, in the time when he needed it most, he could turn this energy to his benefit. He would use any tool necessary to achieve the final victory.

  These Cultists, who found even simple household machinery threatening, could not possibly stomach the thought of allowing Omnius to remain a constant threat to humanity, safe in his stronghold on Corrin. To them, it was the lair of all demons.

  Now, as his vehicle neared the Hall of Parliament, Vorian saw a larger crowd in the memorial plaza. Some of them carried cloth signs on mobile frames, ornately bordered and lettered, while others handed out paper sheets on which a long proclamation had been printed. In wild revelry, they piled electronic devices and computerized apparatus in the center of the square and poured fuel on them to set the offending articles ablaze.

  Zimia security forces stayed a safe distance from the demonstration, working to clear a path for Vor’s groundcar at the base of the wide stairs leading to the Hall of Parliament. When the demonstrators saw him, they issued another loud cheer. He kept his focus forward as he exited the vehicle and climbed the steps. Vor passed through the colonnade with its Grogyptian columns and paused at the main entrance of the building, where he saw an immense cloth sign crudely nailed on the door. Discarded leaflets fluttered along the ground, bearing the same printed message.