Erasmus feigned interest, as he often did. He activated a cleaning mechanism that sterilized the tip of his probe, which then snaked back into its hiding place beneath the robe. “I defer to your judgment, Omnius. I have no expertise in military matters.”
“That is exactly why you should heed my words. You always say you want to learn. When Barbarossa defeated my gladiator robot in exhibition combat, he requested the chance to strike against the League Worlds, as a boon from me. The remaining Titans are convinced that without these hrethgir, the universe would be infinitely more efficient and tidy.”
“How medieval,” Erasmus said. “The great Omnius would follow the military suggestions of a cymek?”
“Barbarossa amused me, and there is always the chance that some of the Titans might be killed. That is not necessarily a bad thing.”
“Of course,” Erasmus said, “since programming restrictions prevent you from harming your creators outright.”
“Accidents happen. Regardless, our offensive will either subsume the League Worlds or exterminate the fragments of humanity there. I do not care which. Very few humans are worth keeping around…perhaps none at all.”
Erasmus did not like the sound of that.
The mind commands the body and immediately it obeys. The mind orders itself, and meets resistance.
—ST. AUGUSTINE,
ancient Earth philosopher
Though the cymeks had only begun their assault on Zimia, Xavier Harkonnen knew that free humanity must make its stand, here and now. And make it count.
The weapon-studded warrior-forms strode forward in lockstep. Raising silver arms, they launched explosive projectiles, spewed gouts of flame, spread poison gas. With each smashed wall, the cymeks drew closer to the main shield-generator station, a soaring tower of parabolic curves and intricate latticework.
At the fringes of Salusa’s atmosphere, an orbital array of redundant satellites wove a crackling fence with amplifiers at each node. Across the continents, transmission towers beamed up the substance of the Holtzman scrambler field, crisscrossing it into an intricate mesh high above the planet, an impenetrable tapestry of energy.
But if the cymeks took out the primary towers on the surface, vulnerable gaps would open in the shield. The whole protective fabric could unravel.
Coughing blood from his searing throat and lungs, Xavier shouted into his comline, “This is Tercero Harkonnen, assuming command of local forces. Primero Meach and the control center have been wiped out.” The channel remained silent for several long seconds, as if the entire Militia had been stunned.
Swallowing hard, Xavier tasted rusty blood in his mouth, then he issued his terrible order: “All local forces, form a cordon around the shield-transmitting towers. We do not have the resources to defend the rest of the city. Repeat, pull back. This includes all combat vehicles and attack aircraft.”
The expected complaints poured in. “Sir, you can’t be serious! The city is burning!”
“Zimia will be undefended! This must be a mistake!”
“Sir, please reconsider! Have you seen the damage those cymek bastards are already causing? Think of our people!”
“I don’t recognize the authority of a tercero to issue orders of such—”
Xavier countermanded all of them. “The cymek objective is obvious: they intend to bring down our scrambler fields so the robot fleet can destroy us. We must defend the towers at all costs. At all costs.”
Blatantly ignoring his order, a dozen pilots flew kindjals overhead, continuing to dump explosives upon the cymek walkers.
Xavier growled in an uncompromising voice, “Anybody who wants to argue about it can do so afterward—at your court-martial.” Or mine, he thought.
Droplets of scarlet splashed the inside of his plaz mask, and he wondered how much damage the poisonous fumes had already done. Each breath became difficult, but he put such concerns out of his mind. He could not sound weak, not now. “All assets, pull back and protect the towers! That is an order. We need to regroup and change our strategy.”
Finally, Salusan ground units retreated from their pitched defenses, drawing back toward the shield-transmitter complex. The rest of the city lay as vulnerable as a lamb prepared for slaughter. And the cymeks took advantage with gleeful mayhem.
Four warrior-forms crashed through a statue park and destroyed fabulous works. The mechanical monsters annihilated buildings, blasting and burning museums, dwelling complexes, hazard shelters. Any target suited them.
“Stand firm,” Xavier commanded on all channels, overruling howls of outrage from the troops. “The cymeks are trying to lure us away.”
The warrior-forms set fire to a resonant bell tower erected by Chusuk to commemorate a successful defense against the thinking machines, four centuries ago. The ornate bells clanged and gonged as the tower collapsed onto the paving stones of an open gathering square.
By now most of Zimia’s populace had rushed to armored shelters. Fleets of medical and fire-suppression craft dodged enemy blasts to fight the increasing disaster. Many rescue attempts became suicide missions.
In the midst of the Militia crowded around the transmitting towers, Xavier felt a flash of doubt, wondering if he had made the right decision but not daring to change his mind now. His eyes stung from smoke, and his shredded lungs sent shocks of agony through his body each time he drew a breath. He knew he was right. He was fighting for the lives of everyone on the planet. Including Serena Butler’s.
“Now what, Tercero?” said Cuarto Jaymes Powder, coming up behind him. Though the subcommander’s angular face was partially covered in a mask, his eyes still revealed his outrage. “Do we just sit back and watch these bastards level Zimia? What good is it to protect the shield transmitters if there’s nothing left of the city?”
“We can’t save the city if we lose our shields and open up the whole planet to machine attack,” Xavier rasped.
The Salusan troops mounted a defense around the parabolic latticework of transmitting towers. Ground forces and armored equipment were arrayed on the surrounding ramparts and streets. Kindjals circled the skies and fired their weapons, keeping the cymeks away.
Gripping their weapons, the nearest Militia members seethed. The frustrated men wanted to rush forward and engage the attackers…or perhaps tear Xavier limb from limb. With each explosion or leveled building, the angry troops edged one step closer to outright mutiny.
“Until reinforcements arrive, we’ll need to concentrate our forces,” Xavier said, coughing.
Powder stared at the tercero’s plaz faceplate, noticed blood on the inside. “Sir, are you all right?”
“It’s nothing.” But Xavier heard the liquid wheezing of his mangled lungs with every breath he took.
Feeling unsteady as the poison continued to burn his soft tissues, he gripped a plascrete bulwark for support. He studied the last stand he had assembled on short notice and hoped it would hold. Finally, Xavier said, “Now that these towers are held and protected, we can go out and hunt down some of our attackers. Are you ready, Cuarto Powder?”
Powder brightened, and soldiers cheered. Several men fired their weapons into the air, ready to charge pell-mell into the destruction. Like a rider at the reins of a willful horse, Xavier held them back.
“Wait! Pay close attention. There is no clever trick we can use, no inherent weakness that will allow us to outsmart the cymeks. But we have the will to succeed and the need to succeed…or we will lose everything.” Ignoring the blood in his mask, he didn’t know how he was able to summon unwavering confidence in his voice. “This is how we will beat them.”
During the initial frantic skirmishes, Xavier had seen at least one of the gargantuan invaders destroyed by multiple, concentrated explosions. Its articulated body was now nothing more than a smoking hulk. However, the scattered bombers and armored ground units had spread their attacks across too many targets, diluting their efforts.
“This will be a coordinated strike. We will select
a single target and crush it, one cymek at a time. We’ll hit it and hit it again until there’s nothing left. Then we’ll go on to the next one.”
Though he could barely breathe, Xavier chose to lead the squadrons himself. As a tercero, he was accustomed to being in the thick of the action during training exercises and simulations.
“Sir?” Powder said, surprised. “Shouldn’t you be in a secure area? As the acting commander, standard procedure requires—”
“You’re absolutely right, Jaymes,” he said quietly. “Nevertheless, I’m going up there. We’re in an all-or-nothing situation. You stay here and protect those towers at all costs.”
Subterranean elevators brought more kindjals to the surface, ready for launch. He climbed into one of the mottled gray craft and sealed himself into the cockpit. Troopers raced to their assault ships, shouting promises of revenge to their comrades who were forced to remain behind. As he transferred the kindjal’s comchannel to his command frequency, Xavier issued new instructions.
Tercero Harkonnen adjusted the cockpit seat and launched his kindjal. The rush of acceleration pushed him backward and made his breathing even more difficult. Hot blood trickled from one corner of his mouth.
Soaring away from the central transmitting towers, aircraft followed him, while a small number of armored ground vehicles moved away from the generating facility, heading for their designated intercept positions. Weapons primed and bombs ready to drop, the kindjals descended toward the first cymek target, one of the smaller machines. Xavier’s voice crackled in the cockpit of every aircraft. “On my mark, strike—now.”
The defenders pounded the crablike body from all directions until the warrior-form lay crushed, its articulated legs blackened and twisted, the brain canister destroyed. Cheers and catcalls resonated across the comchannels. Before the cymeks could react to the new coordinated tactic, Xavier chose a second target. “Follow me. Next one.”
The Militia squadron came in like a hammer, converging on a single mechanical body. Mobile armored ground units opened fire from the surface, while kindjals dropped powerful bombs from above.
The second cymek target saw the attack coming and raised its spiked metal legs to open fire with white-hot sprays of flame. Two of Xavier’s flanking kindjals went down, crashing into already-ruined buildings. Stray bombs leveled a square block of the city.
But the remainder of the concentrated assault struck true. The multiple explosions were more than the robotic body could withstand, and another cymek was battered into wreckage. One of its metal arms twitched, then fell out of its socket into the rubble.
“Three down,” Xavier said. “Twenty-five more.”
“Unless they retreat first,” said another pilot.
The cymeks were individuals, unlike most of Omnius’s thinking machines. Some of them were survivors of the original Titans; others—the neo-cymeks—came from traitorous human collaborators on the Synchronized Worlds. All had sacrificed their physical bodies so they could be closer to the supposed perfection of thinking machines.
Among the troops surrounding the field-transmission towers, Cuarto Powder used everything in his combined arsenals to drive back four cymeks that had gotten close enough to threaten the vital structures. He destroyed one warrior-form and forced the other three to limp away and regroup. Meanwhile, Xavier’s forces in the air crushed two more cymeks.
The tide was turning.
Xavier’s bomb-laden kindjals came around again, closing on a new wave of invaders. Followed by armored ground vehicles and artillery guns, the Salusan Militia launched volley after volley at the foremost cymek. The bombardment damaged the machine’s legs, obliterated its weapons. Kindjals circled around to deliver the final blow.
Surprisingly, the central turret containing the cymek’s human brain detached itself. With a bright flash of ignition, locking bolts blasted clear of the set of articulated legs. The armored spherical container rocketed skyward, beyond the reach of Salusan weapons.
“An escape pod to protect the traitor’s brain.” Xavier’s words caused him to wheeze and cough more blood. “Open fire on it!” His kindjals launched their weapons as the cymek pod soared into the smoky sky with enough thrust to reach escape velocity.
“Damn!” The pilots shot at the fading exhaust trail, but the cymek’s escape pod rapidly dwindled from sight.
“Don’t waste your weapons,” Xavier said over the comline. “That one’s no longer a threat.” He felt dizzy, either fading into unconsciousness…or dying.
“Yes, sir.” The kindjals turned back toward the ground, concentrating on the next cymek.
However, when his assault squadron converged on another enemy, that cymek also launched its escape pod, shooting the brain-case like a cannonball into the sky. “Hey,” a pilot complained, “he retreated before we could give him a black eye!”
“Maybe we activated their ‘turn-tail-and-run’ programs,” another pilot said with a snort.
“As long as they’re retreating,” Xavier said, barely able to hold on to consciousness. He hoped he didn’t spiral down and crash. “Follow me to the next target.”
As if in response to a signal, all the remaining cymeks abandoned their warrior-forms. Escape containers blasted upward like fireworks, vaulting blindly through the scrambler net and out into space, where the robotic fleet could retrieve them.
When the cymeks abandoned their assault, the surviving Salusan defenders set up a ragged cheer from the wreckage on the ground.
OVER THE NEXT several hours, Salusan survivors emerged from shelters, blinking into the smoke-filled skies with a mixture of shock and triumph.
After the cymeks had retreated, the frustrated robot fleet had launched a swarm of missiles at the ground, but their gelcircuitry guidance computers also failed. Standard Salusan missile-defense systems obliterated all of the machine weapons before they could reach their targets.
Finally, when the recalled battle groups began to converge on the robot fleet, charging in from the perimeter of the Gamma Waiping system, the thinking machines recalculated their chances for success, didn’t like the odds, and decided to retreat, leaving much wreckage in orbit.
On the surface, Zimia continued to burn, and tens of thousands of bodies lay in the rubble.
Xavier had held himself together for the battle, but in its aftermath was barely able to stand. His lungs were full of blood; his mouth tasted of acid. He had insisted that the medics and battlefield surgeons concentrate on the more seriously wounded out in the streets.
From a balcony on the top level of the damaged Hall of Parliament, he gazed out at the horrendous damage. The world turned a sickly red around him, and he wavered on his feet, then reeled backward. He heard aides behind him, summoning a doctor.
I cannot consider this a victory, he thought, then retreated into black unconsciousness.
In the desert, the line between life and death is sharp and quick.
—Zensunni Fire Poetry from Arrakis
Far from thinking machines and the League of Nobles, the desert never changed. The Zensunni descendants who had fled to Arrakis lived in isolated cave communities, barely subsisting in a harsh environment. They experienced little enjoyment, yet fought fiercely to remain alive for just another day.
Sunlight poured across the ocean of sand, warming dunes that rippled like waves breaking upon an imagined shore. A few black rocks poked out of the dustlike islands, but offered no shelter from the heat or the demon worms.
This desolate landscape was the last thing he would ever see. The people had accused the young man and would mete out their punishment. His innocence was not relevant.
“Begone, Selim!” came a shout from the caves above. “Go far from here!” He recognized the voice of his young friend—former friend—Ebrahim. Perhaps the other boy was relieved, since by rights it should have been him facing exile and death, not Selim. But no one would mourn the loss of an orphan, and so Selim had been cast out in the Zensunni version of justice.
From the caves, the tribe began to throw stones. One sharp rock struck the cloth he had wrapped around his dark hair for protection against the sun. Selim ducked, but did not give them the satisfaction of seeing him cringe. They had stripped almost everything from him, but as long as he drew breath they would never take his pride.
Naib Dhartha, the sietch leader, leaned out. “The tribe has spoken.”
Protestations of his innocence would do no good, nor would excuses or explanations. Keeping his balance on the steep path, the young man stooped to grab a sharp-edged stone. He held it in his palm and glared up at the people.
Selim had always been skilled at throwing rocks. He could pick off ravens, small kangaroo mice, or lizards for the community cookpot. If he aimed carefully, he could have put out one of the Naib’s eyes. Selim had seen Dhartha whispering quietly with Ebrahim’s father, watched them form their plan to cast the blame on him instead of the guilty boy. They had decided Selim’s punishment using measures other than the truth.
Naib Dhartha had dark eyebrows and jet-black hair bound into a ponytail by a dull metal ring. A purplish geometric tattoo of dark angles and straight lines marked his left cheek. His wife had drawn it on his face using a steel needle and the juice of a scraggly inkvine the Zensunni cultivated in their terrarium gardens. The Naib glared down as if daring Selim to throw the stone, because the Zensunni would respond with a pummeling barrage of large rocks.
But such a punishment would kill him far too quickly. Instead, the tribe would drive Selim away from their tight-knit community. And on Arrakis, one did not survive without help. Existence in the desert required cooperation, each person doing his part. The Zensunni looked upon stealing—especially the theft of water—as the worst crime imaginable.
The Butlerian Jihad Page 4
