Dune: The Machine Crusade

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  Normally, Vor loved to attend parties and tell stories about his battles, about his terrible cymek father, about growing up under the domination of thinking machines. Listeners would gather around him, awed by his tales, and he reveled in all the attention.

  Now, though, the two men sat in companionable silence, needing to impress no one. They savored their wine, enjoyed the panorama of the vineyards and olive groves. As always in these rare, quiet times between Jihad missions, they discussed their successes and defeats, the fellow jihadis and mercenaries who had given their lives.

  “Our problem all along,” Vor said, “is that Iblis unleashes the fervor of his converts rather than adhering to a coordinated military strategy. Like flames following the fastest fuel, they burn bright, but don’t necessarily accomplish the true objective. Personally, I think our Grand Patriarch just likes to bask in the glow.”

  Xavier nodded. “The Jihad has gone on for decades, and the basic struggle against Omnius for a thousand years before that. We must maintain our intensity and dedication, or our fighters will fall into despair.”

  Even after a year, the terrible loss of Vergyl Tantor still weighed heavily on both of them. While Xavier had loved his adoptive brother and tried to shepherd him through his military career, Vor had befriended the lad, socializing with the lower ranks in ways that stiffly formal Xavier could not. Seeing Vor and Vergyl laughing together had often made Xavier feel a flicker of envy. But it was too late now for him to make it up to his little brother….

  Vor continued to stare out at the hills. “Thinking machines see the big picture, their overall plan. I don’t think our Army of the Jihad has such a concept. Omnius may yet win— not through military strength, but through the apathy weakening our forces.”

  They talked about the smuggled reports from Ix, where the situation was particularly dire. Assassin robots and one of the Titan cymeks had begun a campaign of outright genocide, as they had done earlier on Earth. The Grand Patriarch had called for an all-out offensive not a moment too soon, according to Xavier. The Army of the Jihad could not abandon the brave fighters of Ix. Xavier himself had volunteered to lead the major assault. Meanwhile, in response to Iblis Ginjo’s pleas, masses of exuberant new recruits had already volunteered for the conflict.

  Vor frowned. “I see each of those victims on Ix as people, who are fighting for freedom and their very lives. We should not throw them away indiscriminately.”

  Xavier shook his head. “The insurgents on Ix do not need to become sacrificial lambs if a leader emerges to turn them into something more. That will be my responsibility.”

  Vor swallowed a tiny spiced egg and licked his fingers. “I understand that you’re willing to achieve victory at any cost— you demonstrated that well enough on IV Anbus— but our Jihad will be better served by focusing on alternatives that hurt the machines without such a terrible cost in lives. The Ixian mission is… a mistake. Iblis has chosen it for no other reason than he wants its industrial centers intact.”

  “Industries build weapons and ships, Vorian. That is what drives the Jihad.”

  “Yes, but is a head-on military collision with the best forces of Omnius truly the wisest strategy?”

  “You mean we should use more parlor tricks, like your virus against the machine battleships at IV Anbus? And your make-believe fleet at Poritrin?”

  Pointedly, Vor cleared his throat. “Both of those tactics worked, didn’t they? I’ve said it plenty of times before. Our greatest advantage is in our sheer unpredictability.”

  He finished his wine with a flourish, then reached over to take the bottle, refilling Xavier’s glass and then his own. “Take the Poritrin ploy, for example. We couldn’t afford to lose Holtzman’s weapons laboratories, couldn’t afford to devote a large Armada contingent to patrolling the orbit. My way, we achieved our aims at a relatively low cost, with no human casualties.” Vor raised his eyebrows. “You just have to understand how machines think.”

  Xavier scowled. “I’m not as good at that as you are, my friend. Considering how long you lived with them.”

  Vor’s gray eyes flashed. “Which means?”

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  Vor clinked his glass against Xavier’s. “My way or your way, let’s hope Omnius pays the price.”

  * * *

  VOR TRIED TO keep the machines guessing, and he had developed this ability far beyond even what Agamemnon had taught him. Not wanting his cymek father to predict his moves, he needed to stay one step ahead, just like a strategic gamble in a final round of Fleur de Lys.

  Vor used his access codes to enter the armored laboratory room where the stolen copy of Omnius had been hooked up to carefully monitored computer substations. Salusans avoided this building, this prison for the demon Omnius, with a superstitious fear.

  Vor entered the chamber and stood before the input screen and the Omnius speaker. He, a mere human and once a trustee of the computer evermind, now held it in complete thrall. What an astounding course of events his life had taken.

  “Vorian Atreides,” Omnius said. “You, of all the reckless, wild humans should recognize the folly of the Jihad. You understand the purpose and efficiency of the Synchronized Worlds, yet you turn your loyalty to this outright mayhem and wanton destruction. It defies logic.”

  Vor crossed his arms over his chest. “It merely defies your comprehension, Omnius, because thinking machines do not appreciate the value of freedom.”

  “Erasmus proved to me that no human could be trusted. It would have been to my advantage if I had eliminated all of your kind on the Synchronized Worlds. That was a missed opportunity, an unfortunate decision.”

  “You’re paying for it now, Omnius, and you’ll continue to pay until thinking machines are obliterated and humans can colonize any place they choose.”

  “What a disturbing thought,” Omnius said.

  Since Vor had been raised on Synchronized Worlds, he had a familiarity with programming, had even designed some segregated systems himself. For more than a year now, he had worked with portions of this Omnius update, extracting and manipulating information. The evermind sometimes understood what he was doing, but in other instances Vor was able to delete and manipulate any evidence of the changes he had wrought.

  For years he had watched the tedious, unimaginative, even inept interrogations and attempted exploitation of this evermind copy. The scientists of the League, even Savant Holtzman, were too afraid of taking risks, fearful of causing damage to the captive Omnius. But what else was it for? Vor knew what he was doing, and preferred to take a chance at victory. He had always been independent, acting on his own impulses and usually succeeding.

  If this plan succeeded, the Synchronized Worlds would reel, indeed. It was worth the risk, and Vor didn’t want anyone else meddling with his scheme. They couldn’t help him anyway.

  By the time Xavier departed with his massive battle fleet for Ix, Vor hoped to be finished with his devious alterations to this update sphere. Teams of League cybernetic scientists had previously squeezed all possible intelligence from this captive copy. Even Savant Holtzman had been unable to wring further insights from the silvery gelsphere.

  Now Vor would turn Omnius himself into a lethal weapon against the thinking machines. And the evermind incarnations on various Synchronized Worlds would never know what happened to them.

  Cool and formal but with the subtlest undertone of indignation, Omnius said, “If you achieve your aims, Vorian Atreides, you will have to live with your folly. You will soon realize that human inefficiency can never replace the thinking machines. Is that truly what you desire?”

  Grinning maliciously, Vor pointed out the computer’s main weakness. “We have an advantage you can never comprehend, Omnius, and it will be your downfall.”

  “And what is that, Vorian Atreides?”

  The dark-haired military officer leaned close to the screen, as if springing the punch line of a good joke. “We humans are endlessly inv
entive… and deceptive. Machines don’t realize that they can be fooled.”

  Omnius made no response as he processed the statement. Vor knew, of course, that humans could also be deceived, but the evermind could not think in such terms. No machine could.

  The army fosters technology, and technology breeds anarchy because it distributes the terrible machines of destruction. Even before this Jihad, one man alone could create and apply enough violence to ravage an entire planet. It happened! Why do you think the computer became anathema?

  — SERENA BUTLER, Zimia Rallies

  As their numbers dwindled, the surviving cymeks saw their conspiracy against Omnius fading. The chances for success and a bright new Time of Titans dimmed with each passing year. Twenty of the original conquerors had joined forces to overthrow the Old Empire, but after losing Ajax, Barbarossa, Alexander, Tamerlane, Tlaloc, and all the others, only four remained.

  Not nearly enough to destroy Omnius.

  At times, Agamemnon had considered simply destroying all of the parasite watcheyes and fleeing into space, never to return. He could take his lover Juno with him and Dante— perhaps even the dolt Xerxes. They could set up an empire of their own far from the oppressive evermind.

  But that would be foolishness. Utter failure.

  The cymek general doubted Omnius would bother to hunt them down, and the evermind certainly could not grasp the concept of revenge, but Agamemnon and his comrades had been Titans, exalted conquerors of the Old Empire. If they fled into darkness— a quartet of survivors ruling nothing— that would be a more shameful defeat than their outright destruction. No, Agamemnon wanted to conquer the Synchronized Worlds for himself. He would settle for nothing less than total domination.

  Returning from their assignments and depredations, stamping out flickers of rebellion that continued to flare into bonfires on random Synchronized Worlds, he and his fellow Titans held a meeting in the wilderness of deep space.

  Agamemnon had hoped for a secret gathering, since he had rarely been able to orchestrate his plans under the constant scrutiny of Omnius’s watcheyes, whether they were fixed or mobile units. But this time he, Juno, Dante, and Xerxes were joined by the relative newcomer Beowulf, and Beowulf had not been able to shake his surveillance. They would have to be especially careful.

  Agamemnon had always been slow to trust anyone, even another cymek who had endured for centuries. The Titans must always be cautious. Still, the general was intrigued by Beowulf’s audacity.

  Their ships linked up in deep space, and their hatches joined to form a cluster of artificial craft like a geometrical space station in an empty void far from any solar system. Stars sparkled like jewels all around them in the vastness of the cosmos. The middle of nowhere.

  Installing his preservation canister into a small, resilient walker form, Agamemnon scuttled out of his ship and through the hatchway connected to Juno’s vessel. The two of them strode side by side on limber segmented legs into the central vessel. Dante entered from the opposite side.

  Standing beside Beowulf’s walker-form, Xerxes was already there, on leave from his orgy of mayhem on Ix. Xerxes seemed agitated or perhaps eager, but Agamemnon was accustomed to the weak-willed Titan overreacting under most circumstances. The sooner Xerxes returned to Ix, the happier Agamemnon would be.

  Overhead, lenses gleamed on hovering mobile watcheyes, recording every moment. Agamemnon chafed under the constant surveillance, as he had for the past eleven centuries.

  “Hail to Lord Omnius,” he said, sounding bored at the formal beginning of their meeting. His words were spoken with no particular enthusiasm. The computer evermind did not know how to interpret inflections of voice.

  “On the contrary,” Beowulf said boldly, “curses upon Omnius! May the evermind wither and the Synchronized Worlds fall into ruin until cymeks rule again.”

  Astonished, Juno reared back in her crablike body, though she harbored the same thoughts herself. The watcheyes glimmered down at them, and Agamemnon wondered what punishment Omnius would devise for the cymeks once the recordings were analyzed. The cymeks could not simply destroy the watcheyes before they reported to the evermind, or that would tip their hand and set back their plans, which were already centuries in the making.

  Thanks to Barbarossa’s ancient programming restrictions, the evermind could not kill any of the original Twenty Titans. However, as a mere neocymek, brash young Beowulf had no such protection. Despite his vulnerability, he had just called down a death sentence upon himself.

  Xerxes could not contain his glee. “You have done it then, Beowulf? You’ve achieved success after all this time?”

  “The reprogramming was straightforward enough. The real trick was to do it in such a way that Omnius would never suspect.” With a segmented limb, he gestured toward the floating spherical lenses. “These watcheyes are diligently recording a completely artificial version of our meeting, an innocuous discussion of the human rebels. Omnius will be satisfied— and we can speak those thoughts that must be aired.”

  “I… do not understand,” Dante said.

  “I suspect we have been tricked, my love,” Juno said to Agamemnon.

  “Wait and listen,” he answered, remaining motionless. His optic threads glimmered in the direction of Beowulf.

  “I put him up to this, Agamemnon,” Xerxes said with pride. “Beowulf hates Omnius as much as we do, and he’s been under the evermind’s control for nearly as long as we have. I believe his skill can bring much to our plans. Now, at last, we have a chance.”

  Agamemnon could barely contain his outrage. “You have plotted against Omnius, and now you attempt to implicate us? Xerxes, you are more of a fool than even I suspected. Do you mean to destroy us all?”

  “No, no, Agamemnon. Beowulf is a programming genius, just like Barbarossa was. He’s found a way to create an instructional loop that places false recordings into the watcheyes. Now we can meet whenever we wish, and Omnius will never know the difference.”

  Beowulf twitched his mechanical legs and took two steps forward. “General Agamemnon, I trained under your friend Barbarossa. He taught me how to manipulate the thinking machines, and I have continued to study secretly for centuries. I had hoped the Titans were chafing under the evermind’s rule, as I have been… but I was not certain until Xerxes approached me.”

  “Xerxes, you have placed us all at terrible risk,” Agamemnon growled.

  But Dante, ever logical, ever methodical, pointed out the obvious. “The four of us are too few to accomplish what must be done. If more cymeks join our ranks, we have a better chance against Omnius.”

  “And a greater chance that one of them will betray us.”

  Even Juno agreed. “We need fresh blood, my love. Unless we recruit new conspirators, we will spend another millennium talking and complaining… those of us who survive. With Beowulf’s help, we can at last move forward. By planning openly and frequently, we will achieve more in a few months than we have been able to accomplish in decades.”

  Still anxious, Xerxes said, “If we take no risks, we are no better than the apathetic humans who wallowed in the excesses of the Old Empire.”

  Beowulf waited for judgment to be passed on his inclusion in the conspiracy. Agamemnon admitted to himself that, of all the neo-cymeks, Beowulf would have been his first choice.

  Despite his annoyance with the unilateral behavior of Xerxes, the general could not convince himself to refuse the offer. Finally he said, “Very well. This gives us the breathing room we need, the chance to move our plans forward.” He swiveled his head turret, scanning Juno, Dante, Xerxes, and finally the expectant Beowulf. “Working together, we shall bring about the fall of Omnius. At last, the waiting is over.”

  There is a certain momentum to victory… and to defeat.

  — IBLIS GINJO, Options for Total Liberation

  With the Grand Patriarch due to arrive on Poritrin at any moment, Lord Bludd had staged yet another lavish festival, so that the population could keep c
elebrating their victory over the thinking machines. Stands were erected around the edges of the riverside amphitheater, colorful banners were hung, and feasts were prepared, all to welcome Iblis Ginjo.

  Amid such chaos, Aurelius Venport decided he would be able to sneak the outdated cargo ship unnoticed to the new laboratory.

  Tuk Keedair had gone to Rossak to fetch the vessel from its spacedock and had arrived back in the Poritrin system at just the right moment, as he intended. With the Grand Patriarch’s pageant preoccupying everyone, Venport was sure they could bring the big vessel down to Norma Cenva’s new laboratory complex without drawing any undue attention. He wanted to keep a low profile on this project.

  He had no real interest in noisy revelry tonight anyway. The profits from Holtzman’s work— rightfully, Norma’s work— had flooded Poritrin with more wealth than the most extravagant person could squander in a dozen lifetimes. Venport was confident that Norma’s new space-folding project would make more money than anyone could possibly imagine.

  Though the big hangar of the new research facility was not yet complete, Norma lived at the distant work site. Her first priority had been to convert the office space inside the old mining operations headquarters so that she could continue to study and modify her calculations. While construction supervisors roamed the fenced-in area and gave orders to labor crews for the necessary renovations, Norma had immediately dived back into her scientific designs.

  Thinking of her utter devotion, Venport smiled wistfully. Unlike most people, who drifted through life seeking success or just a comfortable existence, dear Norma had no doubts about her mission. Her concentration was unerring and her focus sharp.

  Without disturbing the genius, Venport made it his job to take care of all other details, shuttling back and forth to Starda to arrange for supplies and equipment, furniture, and temporary work crews. To add another layer of security for the project, Venport had decided that the slaves building the hangar and restoring the decommissioned mining facilities would not remain there long enough to see what Norma actually intended to do.