Flying through space, Xerxes wore his most imposing mechanical body ever, the form of an immense prehistoric bird with a ferocious pointed head turret, glistening fangs, and feral red optic sensors like the eyes of a predator. The flyer form simulated the motion of a great condor in flight, even in the vacuum, but it was as large as a battleship. Deep within the raptorlike body, a preservation canister held the ancient cymek’s brain, filled with thoughts of how he would win this glorious victory against the fanatical hrethgir— and, he hoped, the admiration of General Agamemnon. For centuries Xerxes had tried unsuccessfully to please his commander.
In his raptor form, the Titan cruised back and forth in space, inspecting one line of ships after another in strike formation. Neo-cymeks and robot-controlled warships reflected the harsh solar wind. This time, with so many robotic warships arrayed against the Army of the Jihad, nothing could go wrong. He would annihilate the humans.
“Enemy vessels are in position,” a neo-cymek officer reported over the communication frequency, in coded machine language.
Then he detected a small silver-and-black-vessel approaching from deep space, an update ship on schedule, arriving with the current copy of Omnius. Xerxes transmitted orders for it to remain on the outskirts of the planetary system with the picket line of machine sentries. Fortuitous timing. Within a day, he would be able to restore even the loss of the evermind below— what a victory!
While the Titan and other neo-cymeks hung back under the protection of the heavily armed robot fleet, machine ships advanced in precise attack formation toward the doomed humans. Perfect. Xerxes decided that the odds were stacked sufficiently in his favor now, so he issued the command.
“Full strike mode. All battleships to the vanguard. After what the vermin just did to Omnius, spare nothing, no matter the robot casualties. Just wipe out the hrethgir.”
Besides, he thought, we can always make more machines.
* * *
FROM THE BUBBLEPLAZ bridge of his ballista flagship, Xavier had a clear view of open space, of stars twinkling in a deceptively serene tableau. Below, orange streaks across the planet’s atmosphere marked the paths of Jihad rescue ships racing back to the fleet. But there was no safety here either.
He thought of Octa and his daughters, and of his peaceful estate on Salusa Secundus, with olive groves and vineyards. The memory of old Manion and his winemaking gave him a warm feeling. Oh, how he wanted to survive this day and return home.
“They’re on the move again, Primero,” a nervous voice reported over the comline. “Even more ships heading our way than before. They have five times as many warships as we do, and I think they mean it this time.”
Through the plaz, Xavier saw thousands of silvery machine vessels rise over the curve of Ix, seemingly enough to overwhelm the scattered stars.
“Only half of our rescue ships have returned to the ballista bays, sir. Casualties are—”
The Primero cut him off. “I don’t want to hear about casualties yet.” We’ll have plenty more in just a few minutes. He barked commands and watched tactical images through multiple screens on the bridge. As he called out configurations for the fleet, he watched his ballistas fall into defensive positions.
The mercenary teams on the surface had accomplished their task; Xavier would not allow the Army of the Jihad to do any less. Panels on the ballista hulls glowed orange as weapons systems powered up. He hoped their shields were sufficiently cooled for a long engagement, and that Tio Holtzman’s flicker-and-fire systems— phasing the shields in and out between weapons fire— were up to the task.
From all of his military instruction and training, Xavier knew the success or failure of a battle sometimes hinged more on luck than skill. Holtzman’s shields would protect his ships from the first pummeling of the robot fleet, but even his most conservative planning had not allowed for such an incredible buildup of frontline machine warships. The enemy could keep pounding and pounding, and eventually the Army of the Jihad would crumble… one vessel at a time.
“We will hold as long as we can, and strike at the first opportunity.” He tried to sound braver than he felt. “The rebels down there faced worse odds than this, and survived for most of a year.”
Ahead, the machine fleet split in two, with an advance force hurtling toward him at ramming speed. The Titan Xerxes transmitted loudly over an open channel that he knew the humans would overhear. “The hrethgir can only hope to delay the inevitable. Block off their escape.”
Xavier had positioned his smallest shielded ships in the front and saw them bend as the assault force hit them. Behind these small ships, the overlapped shields of the foremost ballistas flickered imperceptibly in precise timing as they launched a volley of defensive projectile fire, driving back the first robot assault, annihilating many of the machine suicide ships before they could get through.
Immediately after the first wave of ramming ships came a squadron of neo-cymeks in bizarre flying and fighting forms led by an enormous winged form shaped like a bird of prey but as large as a ballista. Undoubtedly, the Titan commander himself. The larger robotic warships regrouped, clustering for the second attack phase.
“Hold on,” Xavier said. “Keep the line solid, or we’re all lost.”
But as the stampede of robot battleships surged forward, he knew his forces could not withstand another impact. He thought of his brother Vergyl’s ship destroyed by cymeks at IV Anbus, and his heart sank.
Someone would have to tell Emil Tantor that his only remaining son had been lost.
* * *
INSIDE THE GIANT asteroid controlled by Hecate, Iblis Ginjo felt anxious, hoping that the eccentric female cymek— his ally, in theory?— would come through, as promised.
Her ornate dragon walker-form had retreated, disengaging from the preservation canister. Hecate had loaded her brain into the intricate systems that controlled her huge artificial rock while it cruised between the stars.
“Hecate, what is happening?” Iblis stood with fists clenched at his sides, looking around the crystal-mirrored chamber that imprisoned their ship. He could feel the acceleration as the asteroid hurtled across the distance.
Hecate’s feminine voice tinkled through speakers hidden within the rock walls. “I am doing exactly what you asked me to do, dear Iblis. Observe now— your ‘secret weapon’ is about to strike.” Her laughter was like a tinkle of ice.
With that, one of the flat crystal surfaces on the cave wall shimmered and became a projection screen of the planetary system they were fast approaching.
“Look, we have arrived at Ix, and it appears that your concerns were well founded. A disaster in the making! Your Army of the Jihad has put up an extraordinary resistance— just look at all the wreckage in orbit— but they are about to be obliterated anyway.”
“Do something!” Iblis demanded. “We have invested a great deal to liberate Ix. It’s taken years, and we must have victory.”
“I will do what I can, Iblis,” she answered with a lilt in her voice. “My, I had forgotten how impatient mortal human beings can be.”
From high above the ecliptic, Hecate’s giant asteroid plunged down toward Ix. Glints of spaceships and flares of weapons fire sparkled in the crowded expanse of orbital paths.
Silent but intense, the Jipol commander studied the situation on the screen. No emotions showed, and he said nothing.
In contrast, Floriscia Xico squirmed with excitement and anxiety. “But what can this asteroid do in a battle zone, Grand Patriarch? Hecate is only one cymek against an entire fleet.”
Iblis didn’t point out that this flying rock was massive enough to shatter all of the robotic battleships in a single impact, but he hoped Hecate’s plan went beyond a simple collision course. “Just watch and see, Sergeant. Let the Titan impress us with her abilities.”
Feminine laughter tinkled through the speakers. “I have fallen far indeed if my life is devoted to impressing a man like you, Iblis Ginjo. I do this for my own reasons… and I
believe I have found a sufficiently dramatic way for me to reappear on the stage for all to see. What a shining moment this is. Juno would absolutely loathe my audacity.”
The asteroid’s crater-sized thrusters glowed, hurling it at ever-increasing speed toward the machine battleships that pummeled the crumbling Jihad war fleet.
“Now watch what I can do with my kinetic launchers.”
* * *
“OUR SHIELDS ARE failing, Primero!” the weapons officer cried. Xavier had already seen it for himself, but could do nothing about it.
“We’ve lost all contact with a third ballista, sir. Scanners show wreckage, hundreds of lifepods….”
“Give me a weapons update,” Xavier said, refusing to succumbto despair. “Best-case scenario. How many of these machine bastards can we take out before—”
Suddenly, behind the majestic and terrifying raptor form of the Titan battle commander, Xavier noticed a large and unexpected object moving at high speed, coming from high above the orbital plane. “What in the seven hells is that? Get me a preliminary scan.”
“It seems to be an… asteroid, Primero. Reading trajectory and velocity. Incredible! It’s like a stone hurled by the gods, and it’s heading right at the heart of our enemy!”
The enlarged image showed a hurtling hunk of cratered rock accelerating directly toward the clustered machine fleet. The trajectory, velocity, and other data appeared at the bottom of the screen. Its mass was a hundred times the aggregate mass of the robot ships.
“Impossible,” Xavier said. “No asteroid flies like that.”
Behind the celestial intruder, huge crater pits glowed like the hot exhausts of immense engines. Some of the machine ships changed course, scattering in confusion at this sudden, mysterious visitor. A buzz of coded communication assailed the hurtling rock, and the thinking machines chattered with each other in a flurry of exchanged data.
In response a shower of dense spherical projectiles blasted out of scattered craters on the craggy surface, like cannonballs at incredible velocities. Before the thinking machines could respond, kinetic spheres obliterated two of their largest battleships.
Moving like a Salusan bull on a rampage, the asteroid careened into the thick of the machine fleet, moving as swiftly as their fastest vessels, but many times their size. By its sheer momentum and mass, the asteroid battered dozens of the armored vessels as if it were crushing insects. The neo-cymeks were the first to scatter, and as the huge condor-shaped Titan tried to withdraw, the rotating asteroid caught it a glancing blow, sending Xerxes tumbling out into an extended orbit.
The jihadi soldiers yelled in confusion and disbelief as the asteroid abruptly changed course and smashed through the robot ships again. Turning to face this new, more threatening attacker, the machine fleet responded by firing useless explosive projectiles at the already-cratered asteroid surface, causing little damage. In retaliation, the mysterious attacker launched another set of dense stone spheres, wreaking even more havoc among the robots.
None of the desperate Jihad vessels were hit in the scatter shot.
Xavier hardly had time to consider what the Fates were doing on his behalf, nor did he question the sudden turn of fortune. He would not complain about an unexpected ally. Not yet.
He took a deep breath, knowing that his soldiers wanted nothing more than to escape, now that they had been given a second chance. But he would not let this battle for Ix, and all the sacrifices his people had made, be for nothing.
“Regroup and select new targets. Hit the machines while they’re still reeling. This is a critical moment.”
With his damaged flagship leading the way and his overheated shields useless, Xavier Harkonnen plunged headlong into the fray, into the midst of all the chaos and destruction. This presented a distinct danger: the mysterious attacker could just as easily turn on his forces next.
The neo-cymeks sent frantic calls to their Titan leader, but Xerxes was already accelerating out of the system, fleeing for his life.
Abruptly, the mysterious interstellar visitor, after destroying half of the machine fleet by itself, veered into space and vanished long before Xavier could either ask questions or express his gratitude. He was left to mop up, which he did with great flourishes of violence.
* * *
LEAVING THE TUMULT behind, Hecate’s asteroid soared out of the Ixian system, its fusion engines drawing raw power and achieving incredible thrust. “There now, Grand Patriarch— I believe I’ve done my part and shown the capabilities I can offer. Good thing I arrived when I did.”
“You didn’t destroy them all,” Yorek Thurr said, his voice thin and hard.
Hecate sounded petulant. “Oh, your Primero can finish off the damaged stragglers. I wouldn’t want to deprive him entirely of the satisfaction of victory.”
“You did a fine job, Hecate,” Iblis said. He couldn’t wait for a full intelligence assessment of everything the League could use on the captured Synchronized World. “Those industries on Ix will be a huge boon to our war effort.”
Floriscia Xico could barely contain herself. “That was incredible! The people will rejoice when they learn of our new ally.”
Iblis frowned as the consequences of her words raced through his mind. He attempted to sort out the best way to handle the situation, and how to properly integrate the turncoat cymek into Jihad strategies. The female sergeant’s eyes shone with delight and fervor.
Never one to shrink from hard decisions, Thurr swiftly reached a conclusion. Without signaling his intentions to Iblis, he stepped close behind the enthusiastic Xico. “You have served the Jipol well, Floriscia,” he said, his voice soft and quiet in her ear. “From this day forward you’ll be on the list.”
“The list?” Her brow wrinkled.
“Of martyrs.”
Thurr thrust a short dagger into the back of the young sergeant’s neck, sliding the point between two vertebrae to sever the spinal cord. She was paralyzed instantly and died with very little twitching or bleeding. In the low gravity of the asteroid, the smaller Thurr held her body up until her struggles faded, then let the dead woman slide to the polished floor. She lay supine, her eyes open wide in shock.
Iblis turned to him, astonished and angry. “What are you doing, man? She was one of ours—”
“She was obviously incapable of holding her silence. Couldn’t you hear it in her voice? The moment we returned to Salusa, she would have jabbered to everyone within earshot.” The small bald man looked up, seeing his reflection in the myriad facets of the walls. His ghastly gaze darted back and forth. “Hecate is our secret weapon. No one knows— and no one must know— that she is in alliance with us. Not yet. If she retains her covert nature, we keep the element of surprise. This Titan will be part of our coup de grâce against the thinking machines.”
Iblis looked at the Jipol commander and understood. He was absolutely correct. “Sometimes you terrify me, Yorek.”
“But never will I disappoint you,” he promised.
Plans, schemes, talk… It seems we spend all our lives in discussion and virtually no time in meaningful action. We must not fail to seize our opportunities.
— GENERAL AGAMEMNON, battle logs
Memories.
Seurat had a lot of them, neatly sorted and filed, available for instant inspection and reflection. It was completely unlike the internal recollections of human beings, with their random-recovery features and recall-by-association techniques. If he wanted a supply of puns or riddles, Seurat had all of them at his mechanical fingertips. If he wanted to review the effect his jokes had on other machines or on humans, he had files for that as well. And a lot more.
But at the moment none of that gave him comfort. He felt oddly lonely as he traveled the long update route by himself.
In the library of his gelcircuitry brain, he had a personal journal of experiences compiled from his regular update runs between the various Synchronized Worlds. His information was broad-based but not particularly deep. He interacte
d with the Omnius worlds only at a surface level, within the parameters of his duties.
Now, after a quarter century of unavoidable delay, his first stop would be Bela Tegeuse, a small and relatively unimportant planet in the Omnius network. The evermind incarnation there would be the first to receive a copy of the defunct Earth-Omnius’s final thoughts. Though Seurat’s “update” was long outdated, it nonetheless contained vital information, the true records of what had happened on the annihilated machine world, the last, failed decisions of the evermind incarnation.
After delivering his update to Bela Tegeuse, Seurat would hurry to the next machine planet, and the next. Soon, everything would be in order once again.
The robot stood on the bridge of his update ship, scanning the infinity of star systems. His past, present, and future lay out there, a sequence of events that was supposed to be entirely reliable, set up by the evermind’s comprehensive downloads. But machines could only establish programs with probable outcomes, not certainties. Seurat’s interactions with Vorian Atreides had added an unanticipated element.
Most disturbing.
Within his gelcircuitry brain, Seurat encountered a thought that was not his own: an Omnius implant, one of thousands in the independent robot’s subset of databases that guided him along the proper paths, as constructed for him by the evermind.
But I have my own thoughts.
Seurat experienced a brief tug-of-war in his internal programming as he tried to assert himself. A defensive swarm of data inundated the robot captain… Omnius implants keeping him from slipping off-program.
Since he had worked closely with a trustee human, the robot had developed enhanced flexibilities in order to deal with the irrational creatures. He had a rudimentary emotional core that simulated certain basic feelings of humans, just enough to interact with them.
At least that was the way it was supposed to be. But Seurat missed the enjoyable times he had had with Vorian Atreides, the strategy games, the stimulating banter. How many humans does it take to come up with one good idea? The joke danced in his consciousness, and he brought up the punchline: No one can count that high, not even Omnius.
Dune: The Machine Crusade Page 30