Dune: The Battle of Corrin

by Brian Herbert; Kevin J. Anderson

  “You taught me how to think, Father,” Gilbertus said. “I will honor you by explaining that these techniques come from you.”

  The robot shook his head. “No machine will escape Corrin today. Not even me. The battle is lost. I could show you the ongoing projections if we could activate one of the Omnius wallscreens. Our robot lines are crumbling. The League fleet has just driven another entire battle group through the scrambler network. We have very few active ships remaining in orbit. Already, the hrethgir have breached our tightest defenses. I can only hope that they choose to act with precision and spare some of the beauty of this world… and save you.” He looked off in the distance, where the booming sounds of battle added a harsh counterpoint to the gentle peace of his garden.

  “This is truly the twilight of the thinking machines. But not for you, Gilbertus. You must travel in human circles from now on, and never admit any connection with me. I killed Serena Butler’s baby and sparked the mass mania that followed. Never mention my name or your association with me. The treasured moments we spent together can only be retained in your marvelous mind. You must pretend you have been a simple human slave here on Corrin. Change your clothes. With luck, the hrethgir will rescue you and take you back to the League of Nobles.”

  “But I do not wish to go.” Though alarmed, Gibertus raised his chin. “If I do survive, then there is something I must do for you in return.” He placed his hands on the robot’s metal shouders. “Will you trust me?”

  “Of course. It is illogical even to ask me such a question.”

  * * *

  DEEP BELOW THE plaza of the besieged city, underneath the flames, the rubble, and the thronging human conquerors, the recovering Omnius Prime began to move the flowmetal that encased him, material that had formerly been his Central Spire.

  Fully functional now, the primary evermind intended to regain control of the planet.

  Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor. People are decisive.

  — MAO TSE-TUNG,

  a philosopher of Old Earth

  Unable to believe his triumph had finally come after more than a century of pain and bloodshed, Supreme Bashar Vorian Atreides guided his command shuttle toward the center of the main square of Corrin’s primary city. The impending victory tasted like metal in his mouth, the pleasure dulled by his continuing anger against Abulurd. At the moment of greatest crisis, he almost cost us everything. And Seurat had betrayed him as well.

  There would be time to deal with his emotions later, after he had witnessed the end of the computer evermind.

  As Vor brought his command shuttle in from above, the robotic soldiers looked like children’s toys spread across a stylized, smoking battlefield. The remnants of the mechanical army massed in a protective formation around a central shielded dome. Though defeated, they fired at the League’s small kindjals and transport craft that buzzed overhead.

  Shouting into his command link, Vor sent a wave of kindjal attack flyers against the last stronghold of Omnius, softening it up and removing any ground robot defenses, so that the mercenaries could approach and complete their surgical strike. In an ingenious technical innovation, the evermind seemed to heal the dome with each blast that struck, sealing a flowmetal layer over the destruction like a creature regrowing injured skin.

  Wary, Vor called in a heavier bombardment from some of the surviving ballistas, and they descended through the flaming wreckage to pound the final stronghold of the evermind. With the larger armaments, the blasts went deeper, killing entrenched thinking machines. Finally, the protective dome crumbled under the massive detonations, and could not use flowmetal technology to restore itself.

  As he landed his shuttle, Vor summoned the surviving Ginaz mercenaries and sent them forward with demolitions equipment and weaponry to finish obliterating any vestiges of the evermind.

  I must watch for a final trap. In the endgame of this long Jihad, when things looked so bleak, the thinking machines could still come up with a clever last effort, something surprising and devastating.

  As Vor strode into the machine city, he was reminded of the design and grid of Earth’s huge Omnius metropolis where he had spent his youth. Viceroy Faykan Butler had also landed and was strutting around the battlefield, surrounded by other nobles who wanted history to record that they had been there personally.

  Wild members of the Cult of Serena raced through the city in an orgy of destruction, and Vor let them indulge their penchant for chaos. He realized cynically that a single, well-placed atomic-pulse would get rid of Rayna and her furious Cult, the politically ambitious Viceroy, and the evermind all at once. He needed only the disloyal Abulurd Harkonnen to round out all the enemies of humanity in a single place….

  But Vor shook away his dark thoughts. Iblis Ginjo might have approved of such a scheme, but not Vorian Atreides. He vowed to leave a legacy of honor after this momentous day.

  Seeing Vor, one of Faykan Butler’s noble companions rushed up. “Champion Atreides! Rayna and some of her people were near the citadel before the bombardment! We’re afraid they’ve been buried under the rubble. You have to dispatch crews to dig them out! The Viceroy is there now.”

  Vor couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Why would she be there? Doesn’t she know we’re bombarding the structure? This is no place for civilians. Corrin is a battle zone!”

  “Maybe the poor girl expected to be protected by Saint Serena,” the noble said with just a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Please send workers and medical personnel— it’s a direct request from the Viceroy.”

  Vor scowled, resenting that he had to take valuable personnel away from important missions to aid Rayna. Finally, suppressing his frustration, he summoned a group of engineers, soldiers, and battlefield surgeons.

  While swordmasters stormed into the rubble of the citadel, battling combat robots that remained intact even after the bombardment, Vor made his way toward the center of the destruction. As he watched, Ginaz mercenaries threw scrambler grenades, sending pulses of disruptive Holtzman energy that wiped out gelcircuitry brains.

  Near the embattled citadel, he saw the Viceroy standing at the excavation site, looking concerned. His troops had already removed dozens of human bodies from the rubble. Sighing, Vor stepped up to Faykan. “Have they found your niece yet?”

  “Not yet. But I hold on to hope.”

  Vor nodded. “Yes, I suppose this is a place for hope.”

  On this very spot, the Central Spire of an earlier Omnius had once stood. Here also, Serena Butler had given up her life for the cause of humanity. So it was with a tremendous feeling of awe and a sense of history that Vor watched his troops use heavy machinery to search the rubble, while some of the Cultists used their bare hands to help.

  On the plaza perimeter, combat engineers searched for hidden openings that might lead down. Sophisticated detection beams played over the rubble and patches of exposed pavement. The mercenaries were ready with special warheads.

  One of the sensor operators sent Vor a comsignal. “We found something beneath what’s left of a plazcrete monument that was inside the dome,” the man said. “It’s all recent construction, and I’m picking up hollow spots down there. Some side passageways, too, and a large void in the middle.”

  “Spectral analysis indicates unusual metals,” another soldier said.

  “Dig it out,” Vor ordered.

  Suddenly the plaza cracked open, scattering Vor and his engineers. Like a snake bursting out of its hole, the silvery, tentacular growth of the Central Spire lunged out of the rubble and shot skyward.

  Soldiers shouted, and the Cultists made warding signs, screaming to vanquish the unexpected demon. The liquid-silver flowmetal spire twisted and reshaped, billowing out at the end like an inverted umbrella, a parabolic dish of some sort. A transmitter!

  With a groan like a dying sea beast, the Central Spire convulsed and then vomited a flash of light, shooting a signal upward through the atmosphere like a scream
out into space, where it would dissipate across the parsecs. Then the Central Spire collapsed, lost its integrity, and splattered into puddles across the broad, rubble-strewn plaza.

  “What in the name of Serena was that?” Faykan cried.

  “Nothing good,” Vor said. “You can be sure of it.”

  He heard a cheer, and a short distance away saw soldiers and ragged Cultists pulling a battered Rayna Butler out of the debris. The young woman was covered with dirt and abrasions, but alive. Within moments she stood on her own, wavering, and brushed herself off. A bright stain of blood marked her robe, but she said it was not her own. Shakily, she climbed on top of a broken slab of plazcrete, gathered her breath, and shouted, “Saint Serena has protected me!”

  “Saint Serena has done enough protecting for one day,” Vor muttered to Faykan. “Get your niece and all of your people out of here— because I’m blowing up what’s left.”

  He received an acknowledgment from the mercenaries, as they arrived at their target with three surgical pulse-warheads. Thanks to the aerial bombardment of the Central Spire, the robot ground defenses had crumbled. The rest was just an exercise. Vor and the Viceroy retreated with all of the other personnel, standing at a safe distance.

  The flash was no more dazzling than all the previous ones, but the cheers from raw and ragged throats were louder. Omnius was gone. Forever.

  * * *

  GILBERTUS ALBANS DISENGAGED the independent robot’s memory core, the same small sphere he had saved when Omnius demanded the erasure of Erasmus. He wrapped it in a cloth and tied it with loving care. The little bundle fit neatly into his pocket, where no one would think to look for it. It was a priceless record of Erasmus’s remarkable life, his mind… his soul.

  The robot’s metal body, now empty and deactivated, remained in the middle of his beloved contemplation garden, surrounded by soothing classical music and the serenity of whispering fountains. His plush robe hung in heavy folds. Erasmus looked like a statue.

  Now Gilbertus decided he had to find the Serena Butler clone. His next challenge would be to rescue her, if she was still alive. There was too much he did not know.

  With a last glance over his shoulder at his mentor, Gilbertus ran from the villa and melted into a mob of uniformed human soldiers, mercenaries from Ginaz, and antimachine Cultists who were destroying everything in sight. One of them fired a rocket at the ornate villa, where Erasmus’s beautiful platinum body stood. Gilbertus winced, then turned away as the villa erupted in flames. The crowd of zealots cheered, then ran on to the next target.

  For hours, Gilbertus pretended to help the humans destroy thinking machines and the structure of the only society he had ever known. He ran with them, stumbling and sickened, but promising himself that he would reach safety.

  It was what Erasmus would have wanted.

  Sometimes memories are safer than reality.

  — SUPREME BASHAR VORIAN ATREIDES

  After the destruction of the last Omnius, as he divided his battle groups to complete the remaining planetside operations, Vor sent all available ships up to the Bridge of Hrethgir. The captain of each vessel had to do triage, set immediate priorities, and salvage the people from the worst-off cargo pods first.

  And find Serena. How to locate one woman in particular, among so many hostages?

  Vor’s technicians sifted through the recordings Erasmus had transmitted that showed the familiar woman and her child, and analyzing details from every image they attempted to compare and backtrack the location so they could identify which of the numerous rigged cargo vessels might contain her.

  Secondary squadrons of the Army of Humanity swarmed through the packed containers lined up in orbit. Ballistas filled with rescued hostages shuttled back and forth to Corrin in an endless succession. It had taken less than two days for the thinking machines to place all of the human shields in harm’s way— a massive effort, but Vor received estimates from his staff that the remaining Vengeance Fleet ships would take at least a week to rescue the prisoners and return them to safety. He didn’t believe they could all survive that long.

  The makeshift holding vessels had been designed for robots, who needed no life-support systems; atmosphere pumps had been installed swiftly, and not necessarily perfectly. Aboard many of the hostage containers, the stench was horrendous, and the air had already begun to give out. Over mobile comlines, his officers reported problems. Some captives had already died, and others were weak. None of them had any food or water left.

  “Time is running out,” he muttered. “We have to speed up these operations.”

  When Vor’s technicians narrowed the search to the cargo containers most likely to hold Serena, he gave orders for his battered flagship to pull alongside. “I will see for myself. If it really is her, I’ll know her immediately.”

  When the command shuttle docked, Vor took a small squad of armed soldiers and combat engineers. Opening the hatch, they were mobbed by desperate people, but he and his troops pushed their way inside the death trap and again sealed the hatch. After quelling the frenzy of the hostages by firing sedative darts into the crowd, the League soldiers began an orderly evacuation. Six other personnel transport shuttles linked to hatches of the joined containers. Two engineers hurriedly studied the engines and the unreliable life-support systems, assessing how long the craft would remain intact.

  Vor had another priority. He switched on his personal shield and left the professionals to do their work. After scanning the crowd being herded toward the rescue shuttles, he and four soldiers ran through a connecting tube into the next container and shoved open an airtight hatch. More prisoners pushed up against them, raising their hands, hailing their rescuers, begging for help. But the lead group hurried along, intent on their search. The sounds of boots on metal echoed as they ran.

  The cargo containers were segregated into several large holds, crowded with noisy and stinking people. Finally, as Vor strained to see, one of his combat engineers called over the short-range comline. “Supreme Bashar, this container isn’t going to last long. It’s rigged with too many explosives, sir. We won’t be able to disconnect them all in time.”

  Vor didn’t pause. “If they put extra explosives on this cargo container, it must be the one we’re looking for.”

  The first engineer’s voice had a ragged edge. He was working with three of his team members. “We can’t keep up with the cascading failures. Commander, you have to get back aboard the flagship!”

  “Not until I find Serena Butler. Keep working on the problem.” He broadened the transmission range. “Everybody report. Has anyone seen Serena and the child?”

  Another soldier answered Vor’s plea. “I think they’re in here, Supreme Bashar— but something’s… not right about them. I didn’t even see her at first, and then they all changed. Right before my eyes. And… and there’s more than one Serena!”

  Vor received confirmation of the location and pushed his way past slaves and troops, not thinking about the deadly explosives. His experts knew what they were doing.

  In a far corner of the dim and noisome chamber, he finally saw Serena sitting on the deck next to the small boy, a toddler in gray trousers and a white shirt. The woman wore a white robe, trimmed in purple, just as in the images that had been projected. She looked at him with her strikingly familiar lavender eyes… but when their gazes locked, she showed no sign of recognition.

  Then he saw another Serena, one that looked younger but otherwise identical. And two more, all of them clearly Serena Butler. Copies, impostors.

  One of the women stood and moved closer to him. She reached out a hand, and Vor touched her fingers; they had a rubbery texture that seemed far from human. “I am Serena Butler. Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill my baby.” The simulated voice was almost right.

  Then her face began flickering and contorting— and it changed, lost its integrity, and began to sag, showing flowmetal and a rigid structure beneath. A robot, with some sort of fleshlike disgui
se.

  As Vor lurched backward, he heard laughter from the other side of the container. He turned from the disguised robot, then saw a face he recognized from many years ago. Rekur Van, the Tlulaxa flesh merchant. But Van had no arms or legs. His limbless torso was propped up in a harness, connected to life-support machinery. The other hostages shrank from him, glad to get away as the League soldiers evacuated them toward the rescue shuttles.

  Rekur Van glowered with his dark rodent eyes. “Had you fooled for a while, didn’t I? I created that simulacrum, a biological flowmetal that looks like skin. Looks like Serena.”

  Sick with disappointment, Vor glared at the Tlulaxa man. Only now did he realize how much hope he had actually hung on the impossible chance that she might still be alive. Beside him, the four soldiers moved into position to guard the Supreme Bashar, their weapons ready.

  The Tlulaxa’s pinched face formed a wide grin. “Unfortunately, though a robot can mimic specific human features for a while, they always lose integrity in the end. The child-sized one was easier. Who recognizes the features of a baby anyway?”

  “We’re wasting our time here,” Vor called to his guards. “Get the rest of these people out of here. I should have known machines could never come up with such lies all by themselves. They needed human assistance.”

  “I’m perfectly real, though.” Rekur Van laughed. “Who would copy a body like this one?”

  Vor looked around at the multiple Serenas. “Are they all shape-shifter robots?”

  “Ah, no— much better. That one is a clone, from Serena Butler’s actual cells, grown with a special process. A… flawed process. While her body might be identical, the mind has none of her experiences, none of her memories or personality. In fact, I doubt if it even has a soul— the process did not work as well as I had hoped, since all the right sort of tanks are still on my homeworld.” He chortled at his joke, wavering like a toy. “I should have stayed on Tlulax. The everminds are insane. Three of them, then only two. Or have you destroyed them all already? Why would they send me up here with the useless humans?”