Dune: The Battle of Corrin

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  Working hurriedly but carefully before the thoughtrodes could reassemble themselves and give Juno back her control, Quentin detached the preservation canister from the walker-form. He lifted it with his own strong metal arms and placed the container on the table where Vorian Atreides was scheduled to be converted into a cymek.

  * * *

  AGAMEMNON LUMBERED OVER to the banks of grooming equipment, anxious to proceed with the fondly remembered activity. “Ah, Vorian, you are indeed the prodigal son. You scorned your destiny for more than a century, but now you’ve finally come to your senses. Everything will soon be perfect, just as I’ve always hoped.”

  “If we are to be immortal, what is the significance of a mere century? It’s just a tiny blip on the time line of our lives.” Vor stepped forward, remembering the intricate steps of the grooming process. “Even so, it seems like a very long time since I did this for you.” He thought of the extravagant cities on Earth, the towering monuments to the glorious Time of Titans. He had almost forgotten that he’d been happy then….

  “Too long, my son.” Like a large, obedient pet, the Titan removed his extraneous chain-mail adornment from the heavy walker-form and then settled into the maintenance bay. He almost purred while his son climbed carefully on top of the walker, cleaning and polishing the exterior, using metalsilk cloths and buffing compounds.

  “A Titan should inspire awe and majesty,” Vor said. “Just because you cymeks are all alone here on Hessra is no excuse to get sloppy.”

  As he cleaned the mechanical parts and performed external maintenance on the walker, the life-support systems, and connectors to the preservation canister, Vor felt a twinge of nostalgia. Then he reminded himself why he was here.

  One death to avenge all the murders this cruel tyrant had committed.

  * * *

  THE SECONDARY-NEOS STOOD watching everything Quentin was doing. They did not comment, did not flee. Nor did they attempt to stop him.

  Now that he had full access to the heavy surgical machinery, Quentin used the diamond saw to cut through Juno’s thick-walled preservation canister, spilling blue electrafluid. At last, he exposed the female Titan’s soft, vulnerable brain that had been so hateful for centuries.

  “Considering all the fear you caused, Juno,” Quentin spoke aloud, knowing that with her sensor network disconnected she would not be able to hear his words, “you don’t look all that frightening— not now, my pet.”

  Next he brought in the heavy surgical lasers, and powered them to their highest levels. “This may tend to get messy,” he said, paraphrasing what she had told him. Then he fired dazzling incineration beams to slice Juno’s brain into small hunks of smoking gray matter. Trickles of fluid and oozing biological matter drained into the troughs, just as Juno had said would happen.

  He stepped back to look at the blackened mass, shapeless and unimpressive.

  With one of the three remaining Titans now dead, Quentin swiveled his head turret and saw the secondary-neos still watching him. “Well? Do you intend to oppose me, or will you assist me?”

  “We hate the Titans who murdered our masters, the Cogitors,” said one of the strange hybrids.

  “We applaud what you have done, Quentin Butler. We will not hinder you from continuing your interesting work,” added another.

  Finally, after a pause, the third one said, “And you would make an interesting cymek in a superior walker-form.”

  The mechanical secondaries worked to detach Quentin’s own brain canister from the small and impotent mechanical body, then reinstalled him in the powerful Titan walker that had recently belonged to Juno.

  With all his thoughtrodes reconnected and his new systems activated, Quentin felt terrific. Better than terrific, in fact. Juno’s body had full weaponry and complete access to all of Hessra’s defensive systems. The potential for utter destruction was exhilarating.

  Agamemnon, Dante, and every neo-cymek could die, as far as Quentin was concerned. The galaxy would be better for it.

  * * *

  IN ORDER TO perform the most effective job on his father, Vor opened storage compartments on the walker, where the general kept interesting objects from his travels and exploits. Gruesome trophies, shiny baubles, ancient weapons. “Move a little, please, so I can clean inside this compartment.”

  The cymek obliged, shifting his body core. “I really should have kept one or two of the secondaries alive in their human bodies so they could perform this service. I had forgotten how… gratifying it can be.”

  Inside the opening, Vor found what he was looking for, an antique dagger, an ineffective piece that should never have been able to harm a Titan’s warrior form.

  “In our heyday centuries ago,” said Agamemnon in a reverie, “we used human slaves to perform the task you’re doing, but as renegade cymeks we no longer have this option.”

  “I understand, Father. I’ll do my best job ever.”

  He disconnected the preservation canister from the walker-form. Just as he had always done.

  Knowing that the cold citadel had a small army of neo-cymeks who would never let Vorian live if he tried anything, Agamemnon began to talk about his glory days as the ruler of all humanity, and his dreams of how he and his son could establish a similar leadership in a new empire, now that Omnius was defeated.

  While his father waxed nostalgic, Vor worked. Already disconnected, the walker was useless; Vor had not yet unhooked the optic threads or the external sensors from the thoughtrodes. Even so, Agamemnon was now completely vulnerable.

  Polishing the brain canister, Vor said, “I’ll just move this ventilation panel a bit and clean around it.”

  As the general continued to ramble about his glory days, Vor slid open a narrow panel on the canister, revealing the fleshy mass inside. He gripped the antique dagger. One swift movement would drive the tip down into the spongy contours of Agamemnon’s brain. Then it would all be over.

  Just then, the door to the chamber burst open, and a monstrous Titan lumbered through. Startled, Vor dropped the knife, which clattered to the floor. Juno? Or Dante? Neither of those Titans had believed in his supposed conversion to the cymek cause.

  The mechanical warrior was ominous, bristling with weapons and spined armor. “I thought I might find Agamemnon here,” a synthesized voice said. “And Vorian.”

  The Titan strode forward and seized Vorian, lifting him away from the vulnerable brain in the preservation canister. Only inches away. He had come so close….

  Regardless of his rank, the foremost concern of a warrior is how he will behave at the moment of his own impending death.

  — SWORDMASTER ISTIAN GOSS,

  opening remarks to his class

  Scanning with his thoughtrodes, General Agamemnon paused in his reminiscing. “You are not Juno! Why are you in her walker-form? Who— “

  The other Titan gently set Vor aside. “What you have in mind would be too quick, Vorian Atreides. Not nearly enough pain. I have a better idea.”

  “Vorian, reconnect my walker!” Agamemnon demanded through the speakerpatch.

  Confused, Vor looked up at the walker-form towering over him. He recognized the configuration as Juno’s, but didn’t know what was different.

  “Don’t you recognize me, Supreme Bashar?” the Titan asked. Something rang familiar in the cadence of the words.

  Vor blinked in disbelief. “Quentin? Is that you?”

  Helpless in his brain canister, the general grew more strident in his demands, but Vor ignored him. So did the other cymek as he explained, “Yes. I have killed Juno. I destroyed her brain, cut it to smoking pieces.”

  “Juno?” Agamemnon let out a ragged wail through the speakerpatch. “Dead?”

  Quentin reached out in Juno’s powerful mechanical body and lifted the Titan general’s preservation canister. He held the cylinder in front of his glittering optic threads, and the pink and gray membranes throbbed and writhed, as if trying to escape their confinement. “Yes, Juno is dead! And the
same fate awaits you.”

  Vor stood without moving, feeling a storm of conflicting emotions, but wanting to complete his mission. Agamemnon moaned, but the speakerpatch could not convey the grief that bubbled through his brain for the woman who had been his lover for more than a thousand years.

  Quentin continued talking, knowing Agamemnon could hear him. “For what you did to me, General, for killing my body, for transforming me into a cymek, for tricking me into revealing the secret vulnerability of our shields— I intend to make this last a nice long time.”

  Two of the secondary-neos came scuttling in, having followed Quentin up into the high tower. Vor glanced over at them, but realized that the cymeks, who had once been the Cogitors’ monks, were not going to attack.

  Still, the citadel was crawling with other loyal neos. “Let’s get this over with, Quentin. No one can doubt that Agamemnon deserves to die for his crimes. I didn’t intend to torture him— “

  “That isn’t good enough, Supreme Bashar.” The secondary-neos came into the cleaning and maintenance chamber. Quentin placed the helpless Titan on the pedestal where Vor would have continued cleaning him. “I intend to hook Agamemnon’s brain canister up to the pain amplifiers he installed in these poor monks’ walker systems. If he endures only one second of agony for each life he has taken over the centuries, he will still boil in pain for decades and decades. Only a fraction of the suffering he deserves.”

  As a former Jihad commander, Vor could not argue against the justice Quentin had in mind. But, despite all Agamemnon’s known crimes, he was still Vor’s father.

  The general screamed out through this speakerpatch. “My son! How can you do this to me?”

  “How can I not?” Vor forced out the words. “Weren’t you proud of all the atrocities you committed— all the oppression and domination? You tried to make me admire you for it.”

  “I tried to make you my worthy successor. An exalted Titan. I raised you to greatness, taught you to appreciate your potential, to revere history and to make your own place in it!” The general’s voice was angry and defiant, not at all panicky. “I made you what you are, whether you’re proud of it or not.”

  Vor struggled to maintain his stony determination. He didn’t want to hear the truth in his father’s words, didn’t want to understand that his own choices had caused ripples through the lives of Abulurd, Raquella, Estes, and Kagin. He hadn’t been the best of fathers himself.

  “Quentin, no matter what you do, or how much torture you inflict, it can never be enough… and can never change history back.”

  The commandeered Titan walker shifted angrily. “Look what he has done to me, Supreme Bashar! I demand vengeance— “

  “He took your body, Quentin. Don’t let him take your humanity, too.” He felt cold inside, not because of the chill tower room. “Too many times during the Jihad we let ourselves become monsters in order to accomplish our aims. We should stop it here, with this one small gesture.”

  “I refuse!”

  Vor rounded on Juno’s purloined walker-form. “Quentin Butler, I am still your superior officer! Your entire life was dedicated to the Army of the Jihad and then the Army of Humanity. You are a hero many times over— don’t throw it all away. I am giving you a direct order, as your Supreme Bashar.”

  Quentin froze for a long moment, and the mechanical body seemed to tremble with his turmoil and indecision.

  Vor explained what he wanted to do. Finally, Quentin angrily strode in his augmented walker over to the high tower window. With a mighty sweep of his articulated armored forelimb, Quentin smashed out the thick, reinforced pane. Chunks of glass and ice tinkled away, and frigid winds howled into the room.

  Feeling the biting cold crackle over his exposed skin, Vor picked up Agamemnon’s preservation canister and looked into the optic threads, knowing his father could still see and hear him. “I understand now that I am what you made me. From you, I learned to make the difficult decisions that no one else dared to make, and then accept the consequences. That is why I was able to lead the Great Purge, though it cost so many human lives. And that is why I must take this action I’ve chosen.

  “I have read your extensive memoirs, Father. I know that you pictured a grand heroic end for yourself, that you expected to face off against great armies and die in a huge pitched battle.”

  He carried the cylinder over to the shattered observation window, blinking as the breezes cut like frozen razors across his eyes, his cheeks.

  “Instead,” Vor continued, “you, the powerful Titan Agamemnon, will meet the most ignominious death possible.”

  Agamemnon bellowed. “No, Vorian. You must not do this! We can create a new Time of Titans! We— “

  Vor paid no attention to the general’s continued protests. “I give you what you deserve— an end that is unremarkable and utterly insignificant.”

  He pushed the preservation canister over the ledge, knocking it out the high window. Spilling electrafluid, the cylinder tumbled through the air until it shattered on the iron-hard ice of the glacier far below and sprayed shards, gray matter, and viscous liquid in all directions.

  * * *

  WHEN IT WAS finished, Quentin and Vor went into the corridor. “The neos will be clamoring for your blood,” the cymek said, “and mine, too… if I had any blood.”

  For a time, the neo-cymeks on the recently conquered worlds would continue without realizing their command structure had been eliminated. Vor knew, however, that the rest of the cymek rebels suffered from a softness in their leadership, a weakness in their decision-making ranks. That was why the Titans had kidnapped Quentin in the first place and attempted to make him one of their commanders. Without Agamemnon’s driving vision, the new-generation cymeks were not capable of holding the fledgling empire together. Their influence would dwindle and fade.

  Vor ran, leading the way through the tunnels. Quentin followed as rapidly as he could move, still getting used to the machine form he had commandeered from Juno.

  Alarms sounded. “They’ll figure out the details soon enough, once they find our handiwork,” Vor said, breathless. “We’ve got to get to the ships. Is there a cymek spacecraft you can operate for yourself? I have the Dream Voyager.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Supreme Bashar. There are numerous options.”

  Three neo-cymeks, armed with projectile launchers built into their walker-forms, strode down the corridors. As soon as they saw Vorian Atreides, the lone human being in the frozen fortress, they clicked their systems into standby mode, but Quentin was there, looming larger than the neos. They recognized the robotic body as belonging to a Titan.

  “Juno, are you in control of the prisoner?” asked one of the neos.

  In response, Quentin raised his far superior weapons arms and launched powerful torpedoes at the three smaller cymeks. The precisely targeted detonations shattered their brain canisters, and the neo-cymek bodies slumped into wreckage on the floor.

  “This disguise may just be sufficient,” Quentin said.

  “Don’t count on it. Come on.”

  Taking larger strides in the mechanical body, Quentin began to out-pace him, moving with confidence. “There is a way for this all to end. In his own paranoia, General Agamemnon planted the seeds for the cymeks’ downfall.”

  Before Vor could ask what he meant, they encountered several other smashed cymek walker-forms that littered a tunnel near the landing bay where the Dream Voyager was stored. “It looks like someone else is at war with the cymeks.”

  Three neos clattered into the landing bay from adjoining passages. Quentin swiveled, preparing to blast them, but soon it became apparent that the neo-cymeks were fleeing from something.

  Behind them came four rampaging secondary-neos that had been unwillingly converted from the caretakers of the slaughtered Cogitors. The former secondaries had appropriated parts from other cymek walkers, incorporating the additional appendages and armaments into bizarre new configurations. Pieces of combat bodies, such
as the remnants of the dismantled cymek Beowulf, had been stored for repair and reuse on other walker-forms. The involuntary servants of Agamemnon had launched their own rebellion.

  Blasting after the scuttling cymek-loyal neos, the secondaries raced into the landing bay. When the trapped and cornered neos saw the immense Titan walker waiting for them, they seemed to take heart. The neos rallied, thinking they had an ally in Juno.

  Even as the secondary-neos continued to shoot their confiscated weapons, Quentin raised his cannon arms and blasted the other neos from behind. Shrapnel and blue electrafluid scattered everywhere. The cymek secondaries hesitated only a moment before charging forward, firing weapons.

  “They saw me destroy Juno’s brain,” Quentin explained to Vor. “It must be what finally pushed them over the edge to violence.”

  The secondaries raced in among the wreckage like scavengers on a battlefield. Making certain the brain canisters of the neos were thoroughly destroyed, they stripped out the weaponry and added it to their own systems.

  Quentin swiveled his head turret and marched toward the secondary-neos, who waited patiently. “What is your progress so far?”

  “Ten of us have died. Only four remain, but we have already killed many of the neos. Their walker-forms litter the tunnels. We have destroyed the electrafluid production laboratories, drained the stockpiles, and ruined the machinery necessary to create more. Any cymeks who survive this battle will be sorely in need of their life-support fluid before long.”

  Vor felt as if a weight had been lifted off his chest. “Excellent!”

  “A large problem remains.” Quentin turned to the secondaries. “Do you know where Dante is? He is the last Titan.”

  “Somewhere in the complex, but we are not certain of his location.”

  Quentin said to Vor, “We have to find him. Destroying Dante is more necessary than you can imagine.”

  The Dream Voyager was stored and ready for takeoff. It would be so easy to escape and return to Salusa Secundus with his news, but Vor resisted taking the simple way out. “Quentin, the Army of the Jihad made a mistake two decades ago when we left one machine world intact. We didn’t finish the job then, and we’ve paid for it ever since. I don’t intend to leave our work incomplete here.”