AT MAXIMUM SUSTAINABLE speed, the unified Armada’s journey took over a month. Xavier wished there were some way to make the voyage faster. Even while outrunning photons in space, traversing great distances between star systems required time, too much of it.
As the task force approached Earth’s solar system, Segundo Harkonnen shuttled from one battleship to another, reviewing the troops and equipment for the upcoming engagement. From the bridge of each vessel he spoke to groups of soldiers, inspiring them, instructing them.
The waiting was almost over.
By now, just under half of the Armada ships had been equipped with Holtzman’s shield generators, and the atomics had been dispersed among both shielded and unshielded vessels. Xavier had considered waiting for more, but finally decided that further delay would cause greater harm than the installation of extra mechanisms could justify. Besides, some conservative nobles from individual planetary fleets had expressed skepticism about the unproven new technology. While those lords used planetary scrambler shields to cover their major cities and moons, they preferred to use reliable, proven technology in their warships. They knew the risks and accepted them.
Xavier focused on maintaining his own determination through the end of the horrific battle. After the attack on Earth, controversy would always be associated with his name, but he would not allow it to deter him. Achieving victory required him to utterly destroy the birthplace of the human race.
With such a terrible feather in his cap, how could history not curse the name of Xavier Harkonnen? Even if the machines were destroyed, no human would ever want to live on Earth again.
ON THE DAY before the powerful Armada reached Earth, Xavier summoned Vorian Atreides to the bridge of the ballista flagship. Xavier did not entirely trust the former Omnius collaborator, but kept his personal feelings separate from the needs of humanity.
Vor had made a compelling case that his first-hand technical knowledge of Earth-Omnius’s capabilities made him a valuable asset. “No one else knows as much about the robotic forces. Even Iblis Ginjo doesn’t have the background I do, since he was just a construction crew boss. Besides, he prefers to remain on Salusa.”
Despite the blessing Vorian had received from the Sorceresses of Rossak and their proven ability to expose lies, Xavier could not help distrusting the son of Agamemnon for spending his life serving the machines. Was he a clever infiltrator sent by Omnius, or could Vor truly provide intelligence that would allow the Armada to exploit vulnerabilities on the Synchronized Worlds?
Vorian had been thoroughly interrogated—even examined by doctors familiar with implanted espionage devices—and everyone had proclaimed him clean. But Xavier wondered if the machines had somehow anticipated all those precautions and cleverly concealed something in his brain, a tiny, potent device with machine components that could be triggered at a critical point and cause him to take some devastating action against the League of Nobles?
Serena had said that all humans must be freed from the oppression of thinking machines. She wanted Xavier to start with this one man, by giving him a chance. In her heart, she wanted to believe that any person, once exposed to the concepts of freedom and individuality, would reject the robotic slavemasters and choose independence. And when Serena asked it of him, Xavier could not refuse her.
“All right, Vorian Atreides,” he had said. “I will grant you the opportunity to prove your worth—but under strict controls. You will be confined to certain areas, and watched at all times.”
Vor had given him a wry smile. “I am used to being watched.”
Now the two men stood together on the flagship bridge. Xavier paced the deck, hands clasped behind him and shoulders squared. He looked across empty space toward the bright yellow home star, which grew larger every hour.
Vor remained silent, keeping his thoughts to himself and considering the star-studded blackness. “I never thought I would return so soon. Especially not like this.”
“Are you afraid your father will be there?” Xavier asked.
The dark-haired young man stepped closer to the broad window, staring at the growing blue target planet. “If no humans survive on Earth, the Titans have little reason to stay. They have probably been sent to other Synchronized Worlds by now.” He pursed his lips. “I hope the Earth-Omnius has not maintained a large neo-cymek force.”
“Why? Our firepower could destroy them just as easily.”
Vor gave him a wry glance. “Because, Segundo Harkonnen, thinking machines and robotic ships are predictable, set in their ways. We know how they will respond. Cymeks, on the other hand, are volatile and innovative. Machines with human minds. Who knows what they might do?”
“Just like humans,” Xavier said.
“Yes, but with the ability to cause much more destruction.”
With a grim smile, the Segundo turned to look at his turncoat companion. “Not for long, Vorian.” They were men of the same age, and haunted beyond their years. “After today, nothing in the universe will match our ability to cause destruction.”
THE ARMADA BATTLE group converged on Earth like a gathering storm. Pilots ran across the interior decks to their individual ships, preparing to launch. Battleships and destroyers spat out swarms of kindjals, bombers, and scout ships. Patrol craft and point ships flew fast reconnaissance, verifying and updating the data provided by Vor Atreides.
The birthplace of humanity was a verdant sphere mottled with fleecy white clouds. Xavier Harkonnen gazed at the remarkable world. Even infested with the scourge of machines, it looked pristine, fragile, and vulnerable.
Soon, though, Earth would be nothing more than a blackened, lifeless ball. In spite of all he had said to convince skeptics and detractors, Xavier wondered how he could ever consider such a victory acceptable.
He drew a deep breath, not taking his eyes from the planet, which shimmered through a thin veil of his tears. He had a duty to do.
Xavier transmitted his order to the fleet. “Proceed with full-scale atomic bombardment.”
Technology should have freed mankind from the burdens of life. Instead, it created new ones.
—TLALOC,
A Time for Titans
On Earth, Omnius’s perimeter sensors detected the invading force. The evermind was astonished at the unpredictable audacity of the feral humans, as well as the sheer number and firepower of the combined vessels. For centuries, the hrethgir had hidden behind defensive barriers, afraid to venture into machine-controlled space. Why had no computer projection or scenario anticipated this bold assault on the Synchronized Worlds?
Via screens and contact terminals dispersed around the city grid, Omnius spoke to robots that were at work repairing damage from the recent abortive slave rebellion. He would have liked to discuss strategy with Erasmus—who, despite his myriad flaws, seemed to have some understanding of human irrationality. But the frustratingly contrary robot was out of touch, fled to distant Corrin.
Even his remaining Titans, who could occasionally explain human reactions, had been sent away to less-stable worlds, preventing the spread of the revolt. Thus, the evermind felt isolated and off-balance.
Reviewing scanner readings, Omnius determined that the human vessels must be loaded with nuclear warheads. Again, entirely unexpected! He calculated and recalculated, and all the scenarios turned out badly for him. He felt the initial glimmerings of what humans might have called “shocked disbelief.”
Since he could not disregard his own projections, the Earth-Omnius responded accordingly. He launched robotic vessels in a full-scale defensive cordon to prevent the League warships from breaking through to Earth. He dispersed a swarm of mechanical watcheyes into orbit, to observe the engagement from all points of view. Through separate subroutines, he ran more than five thousand alternate simulations, until he was satisfied that he could choose the correct tactics for his robotic fleet.
But Omnius did not yet know about Holtzman’s shields.
When the thinking machines fired explosi
ves and kinetic projectiles, the front line of Armada battleships simply shrugged off the counterattack. The blasts echoed harmlessly through the vacuum of space. And the League vessels kept coming.
Rebuffed, the robot ships regrouped and waited for modified orders, while Omnius’s internal gelcircuitry paths sizzled with his struggle to comprehend.
The first hrethgir bombers streaked into the atmosphere, hundreds upon hundreds of mismatched ships coming toward the surface. Each one of them carried an old-style nuclear warhead.
Omnius made new projections. For the first time, he considered the realistic odds of his own destruction.
INDEPENDENT AND DETERMINED, Vorian Atreides flew a small, shielded craft, one of the Salusan kindjals with augmented weaponry. He carried no atomics himself—Segundo Harkonnen did not trust him that far—but Vor could do his part to guard against enemy ships and allow the warhead-laden bombers to complete their mission.
This was quite different from his duties aboard the Dream Voyager.
Segundo Harkonnen had wanted to keep him tucked safely out of the way aboard the flagship, where Vor could provide tactical advice against the machines. But he had begged for hands-on participation in the defeat of Omnius. As the son of Agamemnon, Vor had already provided exhaustive information on thinking-machine warships, their armor, their integral weapons. Now it was time to put that knowledge to work.
“Please,” he had said to Xavier. “I brought Serena back safely to you. If for no other reason, won’t you grant me my request?”
The Segundo’s stricken expression told Vor that Xavier still loved her deeply. The officer had turned his back on Vor, as if to hide his emotions. “Take a ship, then. Get yourself in the thick of the fighting…but come back alive. I don’t think Serena could tolerate losing you on top of all the other pain she has suffered.” These were the first kind words Vor had heard from this enigmatic man, the first time anyone had suggested that Serena cared anything for him.
Xavier finally looked over his shoulder and gave him a guarded smile. “Don’t betray my trust.” Vor had sprinted to the ballista’s bays and chosen a kindjal of his own….
Now, the human strike force funneled toward Omnius’s central computer complex. The thinking machines hammered the dispersed Armada ships with suicidal determination, destroying hundreds of unshielded bombers, patrol craft, and kindjals. Some of the shields failed, overheated or poorly installed, and the battle grew more furious. Vor flew in the thick of it.
Then, in the midst of a free-for-all dogfight, Vorian saw a slower thinking-machine ship rising up, escorted by a dense cluster of automated vessels. The solitary guarded craft plowed through the swarm of Armada ships, avoiding direct confrontation.
Trying to sneak away.
Vor narrowed his gray-eyed gaze. At a time like this, why would a single robot ship be outbound, heading into space? Omnius should have been drawing together all of his resources. The young man’s instincts told him that this lone vessel should not be ignored.
Trying to concentrate on the fight around him, Vor fired his projectile weapons. Energy shells vaporized several robotic ships and disoriented others, allowing four more Armada bombers to get through.
All the while, high above him, the fleeing robot vessel continued out of the atmosphere on an escape trajectory, leaving the great battle behind. What could Omnius possibly be planning? What was that ship carrying? None of the other Armada fighters took any notice of it.
Vor knew he had to do something. This was vital—he could sense it in his gut.
Segundo Harkonnen had given him strict orders to accompany the warhead-carrying ships until they dropped their nuclear payloads. But things could change in the heat of battle. Besides, he wasn’t a machine, blindly following orders. He could innovate.
As he continued to watch the vessel climb beyond the thinning ionosphere, he had a sudden realization of what must be happening. It was an update ship, carrying a complete copy of Earth-Omnius, the thoughts and data of the evermind up to the very moment of the attack! It would include a comprehensive record and analysis of the slave uprising and the orders to exterminate all humans.
If such information were uploaded to other incarnations of Omnius, all Synchronized Worlds would be warned! They could prepare defenses against future League attacks.
Vor could not allow that to happen. “There’s something I have to do,” he transmitted on the local channel to his nearby escorts. “I can’t let that robot ship get away.” Abandoning the bombers under his protection, he swung his kindjal up and away, breaking from his original course.
Vor heard howls of outrage from the human captains he’d been assigned to guard. “What are you doing?” A robotic defender surged into the gap and fired upon the Armada ships.
“It’s an update ship! It carries a copy of Omnius.” He raced farther away, just as two robot vessels converged on the carriers Vor had been assigned to protect. His comrades cursed him as the robots opened fire, making short work of the human vessels. But Vor set his jaw, knowing his decision was morally and tactically right.
Seeing his departure, other Armada ships shouted curses after him. “Coward!”
“Traitor!”
Resigned, Vor said, “I’ll explain later.” Then he switched off his comsystem so he could concentrate on his quarry. His background with thinking machines would always make humans think the worst of him. The prospect of censure and ill-will did not bother him. He had a job to do.
Within moments, Omnius’s fighters had struck one of the forsaken bombers, but fresh Armada escorts came in and shot two of the machine ships out of the sky. The remaining bombers kept flying, on course.
Earth’s open sky was filled with the ion trails of large and small Armada ships sowing nuclear warheads like kernels of grain. Robotic defenders targeted the falling atomics, exploding them in the air and dispersing clouds of radioactive shrapnel. This foiled the delicate detonator mechanisms and prevented nuclear chain reactions.
Even so, some of the atomics should get through.
AT THE HEIGHT of the battle, Earth-Omnius ran out of viable options. With the Armada fleet spread like a swarm of killer insects, the robotic defenders sacrificed themselves by careening into clusters of kindjals.
To Segundo Harkonnen, it became painfully obvious that only those vessels protected by Holtzman’s shields had any chance of survival. A few of the systems had failed, leading to the destruction of even the shielded ships. But there could be no turning back now.
The twenty largest Armada battleships hung in stationary orbit, dispatching wave after wave of small attackers, emptying the stockpiles of League atomics. At the same time, five destroyers descended to dump patterns of guided nuclear missiles. The wide dispersal created enough coverage from overlapping blast pulses to assure that all Omnius substations would be fried.
In a last vengeful attack, AI projectiles converged on the huge ballistas. Bombs with computer minds, the projectiles were intent on reaching their programmed targets. Ignoring the smaller bombers and kindjals, they looped back to intercept any evasive trajectories the battleship captains might attempt, and disregarded defensive decoys that were fired to draw the robots off.
On the receiving end of the defensive volley, Xavier Harkonnen stood on the bridge of his flagship, gripping the control rails, muttering a silent prayer to the genius of Tio Holtzman. “Let’s hope those overlapped shields hold! Hang on!”
Six self-guided projectiles slammed at near-relativistic speeds into the ballista’s Holtzman barriers and detonated. But the shimmering shields held.
Xavier’s knees felt weak with relief. The battleship crew cheered.
But around him, other Armada spacecraft—those without shields—did not fare so well. Although the hodgepodge of League ships fired a constant stream of suppressant shots, several AI projectiles broke through, vaporizing any unshielded human vessel in their way. Even one of the protected ballistas suffered from vulnerable spots when two of the small
layered shields flickered, creating a chink in the armor. With the constant pummeling from the thinking machines, several robot missiles broke through.
Eleven of the largest battleships were vaporized into glowing wreckage, with all hands lost. Only eight of the huge vessels, each one covered by Holtzman shields, remained intact. A large percentage of the overall Armada fleet had already been annihilated.
Battered and shaken, Xavier watched the damage continue. He clenched his fists as he issued firm orders, maintaining a cool voice for the sake of his troops. His fingers felt sticky with the imagined blood of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers he had already sacrificed on this terrible day.
With sick anger, he watched Vorian Atreides flee the battlefield. At least the damnable spawn of Agamemnon had taken only a single kindjal, and the segundo could not waste time or energy pursuing him. Back on Salusa, Xavier would bring the deserter up on charges. If anyone made it back. Damn his treachery! Xavier had been right about him all along.
The thinking machines eliminated one League vessel after another, but Xavier kept sending his fleet forward. After so much effort and loss, he could not withdraw. Failure would bankrupt the human soul and lead to the end of freedom in the Galaxy.
It appeared to be a rout, in the machines’ favor. Only a fraction of the attacking human force had managed to reach their target points and drop cargo loads of nuclear bombs across the continents of Earth.
Then the first atomic detonations went off.
VOR RACED UPWARD and away with the update ship always in his sights. Acceleration pressed him against the pilot’s seat and forced his lips against his teeth. His eyes watered, his muscles stretched taut. But he did not relent. The lone Omnius vessel had already left the atmosphere and was streaking away from the unified Armada forces.
Below, multiple atomics began to detonate in a succession of dazzling nuclear flowers that illuminated the sky, sterilized the continents, and washed over every gelcircuit….
The Butlerian Jihad Page 60
