Except the Butlerians.
One fanatic ship fired a lasbeam directly at a heavily shielded VenHold vessel—intentionally—and the lasgun-shield interaction triggered a vaporization shock wave that disintegrated both the VenHold ship and its Butlerian attacker.
Appalled, Josef let out a wordless shout, rising to his feet. “This is insane!”
In the uproar on his bridge, even Draigo could barely keep his calm. “Lasguns, Directeur! If all the Butlerian ships are outfitted with them, they won’t even need atomics against us.”
Josef choked out the words. “They are completely mad!”
A second enemy ship fired a lasgun beam, triggering another blinding detonation that wiped out a VenHold warship while simultaneously eliminating itself. It was total mutual destruction, one Butlerian vessel for each VenHold vessel … and the fanatics were willing to accept the losses.
The Mentat was coldly analytical. “We outnumber them, Directeur. If they continue the attrition until nothing remains of their forces, part of our fleet will still remain.”
“But that’s not acceptable to me. We would lose half of our fleet before we obliterated the enemy.” He shook his head. “It’s insanity. We can’t defend against such attacks. I won’t accept that way of winning!”
Another lasgun burst, two more ships annihilated.
The Mentat made a swift projection. “Then the only way for us to survive is to cease using our shields, Directeur.”
“That would leave us entirely vulnerable!”
“Vulnerable to damage, Directeur. But a lasgun-shield interaction guarantees annihilation. If we drop our shields, we eliminate their greatest advantage.”
The VenHold fleet dispersed in an urgent partial retreat, spreading their ships farther apart to mitigate collateral damage caused by the pseudo-atomic explosions. Josef clenched his fists. “Damn it, drop our shields—but go on the offensive. Use all the weapons we have, full force. I want to make the barbarians wither.”
* * *
WITH THE THRUM of pistons and hydraulics, and the sound of weapons locking into firing positions, Ptolemy rose on his segmented walker legs. He felt the crackle of the electrafluid that kept his brain functioning. He was strong and alert as he strode into battle. He felt invincible.
Manipulating his multiple legs, he charged into Empok, where he saw throngs of people like ants from a stirred-up nest. Every member of that crowd was his enemy, every deluded fool who had flocked to Manford Torondo’s call. Their spreading ignorance was a weapon of mass destruction.
Ptolemy could not forget the vicious fanatics who had surrounded his laboratory on Zenith, smashing his experiments and destroying his research; and with a simple nod from Manford Torondo, they had burned Dr. Elchan alive. The legless leader had sounded sickeningly paternal when he spoke to Ptolemy afterward: “It was necessary for you to learn your lesson.”
Now, Ptolemy intended to teach a lesson of his own.
Throughout the city he saw columns of smoke rising as other cymeks attacked. Explosions leveled buildings, leaving only tumbled walls, fire, and rising dust. Flame-cannons ignited entire neighborhoods. His auditory sensors picked up screams of pain, angry shouts, and the delirious panic of the fanatics. Ptolemy had the option to silence the distraction, but he found it strangely stimulating.
Marching forward, he launched a volley of explosive projectiles toward individual homes. He stalked after the milling crowds and sprayed them with acid hoses, leaving hundreds of people writhing and smoking in the streets, their skin melting. One man staggered away, clawing at the jelly that ran out of his oozing eye sockets; he dropped to his knees, vomiting acid, as his whole body collapsed into a wreckage of smoking meat.
Ptolemy’s flame-cannons incinerated the savages, and some of them continued to run for surprising distances before they collapsed into a horrific smoking tangle. His blasts of heat were so targeted and intense that skulls exploded as the brains inside boiled into steam. Then he widened the nozzle and mowed down crowds of hundreds at a time.
Swiveling his head-turret, Ptolemy saw dozens of cymeks wreaking similar havoc. Not far away, Noffe’s walker smashed a clock tower with a thundering noise, then plowed through the rubble to crush a warehouse and a school before scampering over the ruins.
To Ptolemy’s astonishment, though, he saw more than a thousand Butlerians rush toward one of the cymeks, not caring how many were massacred on the way. Only a small percentage of the mob made it to the walker body, where they used hooks and ropes to attach themselves, climbing onto the giant cymek like parasites.
Ptolemy realized that swarms of the people were also racing toward him. He blasted them with explosives, incinerated them with fire, burned their flesh with acid. A round orifice on his torso belched poisonous smoke and nerve toxins. In his immense form, he thundered forward, killing everything in his path.
It was exhilarating.
Still, the fanatics raced toward the cymeks, throwing away their lives for no purpose. The foolish Butlerians kept coming, and Ptolemy slew thousands of them.
Yet, tens of thousands filled the losses, and kept coming.
Death does not diminish the power of the truly faithful. The strength of a martyr is a thousand times the strength of a mere follower.
—MANFORD TORONDO, Lampadas rallies
The cymek walkers marched forward like monsters from the greatest nightmares of mankind, smashing buildings into rubble, slaughtering crowds as if they were massed insects.
Even so, Manford went out to face them. Bravely, he rode high on the shoulders of his Swordmaster. He showed no fear, because fear was a weakness—and thousands of his followers thronged around him. They did not flee from the deadly machines, but instead rushed defiantly toward them. With so much faith and strength all around him, Manford did not feel weak. Not at all.
Wearing a powerful voice amplifier, he shouted the familiar mantra to rally them: “‘The mind of man is holy!’” They took up the call and turned it into a battle cry.
More than a hundred cymeks unleashed an array of appalling weapons against his valiant followers: fire, acid, poisonous smoke, explosive projectiles. Thousands of victims lay strewn across the city, smoking, melting bodies, writhing unrecognizable forms, nameless. The faithful. The martyrs. The blessed ones. The only shield the Butlerians had was their numbers and their powerful faith—something even demonic thinking machines could not defeat.
From Anari’s shoulders, Manford waved his arms and shouted for his Butlerians to press forward. The mob flooded ahead without hesitation, knowing that the lives they expended before the mechanical monsters were not a wasted effort, but more sparks in a rising conflagration. Even surrounded by explosions, horrific screams, smoke and blood and terror, Manford felt fully alive and energized. “Tear down those machine demons!”
Anari raised her sword in front of her and strode forward. During her training on Ginaz, she and her fellow Swordmasters had practiced against combat meks, but those had been much smaller programmed robots, with computer minds. The fact that the cymeks were driven by traitorous human brains made these enemies much worse, far more dangerous.
The terrible battle machines destroyed everything in their path and kept going, but Manford had over a million followers here. Any number of sacrifices was acceptable, so long as the cymeks were destroyed and Venport was defeated.
Additional Swordmasters in the throngs now joined the fight, trained fighters who led countless believers in the biggest surge against the cymeks, a tidal wave of simple weapons and flesh slamming against the machine walkers. Wild and desperate people clung like bugs to the nearby warrior forms; they climbed up the segmented legs to reach the main turrets.
Deacon Harian accompanied a pair of Swordmasters, shouting as they led a mob of thousands down a side street and up onto the rooftops. They intercepted and attacked a cymek walker that rumbled close. Its flame-cannons and artillery projectiles destroyed the nearby buildings, but did not kill all of t
he people—at least not yet.
The two Swordmasters led the close-in attack, throwing ropes and grappling hooks so they could swarm the war machine. The mob members carried makeshift weapons: crowbars, clubs, and metal pikes; some even had small explosives. Those who managed to get close enough could sweep in under the flame-cannons and artillery projectiles. First, only a few made it, but then dozens of fanatics reached the core of the cymek walker, climbing its metal sides. As their numbers increased, they detonated explosives at the articulated joints of the walker, exploiting weak points.
One of its legs broke off at the joint, and the enormous apparatus groaned and collapsed. On the ground, the crippled walker flailed in a semicircle as it tried to stabilize itself. Seizing their chance, Deacon Harian and the two Swordmasters dismantled a second leg with explosives at the joints, and that kept the machine on the ground. Although it still fired detonating projectiles in desperate random directions, enough of the attackers survived to rip open its turret and expose the disembodied brain in its protective canister. They pulled the thoughtrodes free and tore the brain canister loose. Unguided, the walker body simply froze in place.
Deacon Harian lifted the brain canister and gleefully threw it to the ground below, where the infuriated mob smashed the naked Navigator brain into a pulp of biological residue.
As Manford guided Anari into the thick of the attack, he saw another group of ingenious Butlerians using heavy ground vehicles to pull steel cables. Dozens of them swooped under another walker form and used the cables like webs to entangle and trip the machine. When the cymek was slowed sufficiently, the Butlerians swarmed forward and overwhelmed it, despite heavy losses.
As a last defense, the entangled cymek belched defensive clouds of poisonous gas that settled over the oncoming horde, killing the faithful. But when breezes dissipated the smoke, a new crowd swept forward, and enough of them scrambled aboard the cymek to destroy its guiding brain.
Seeing the destruction of two cymeks, Anari brandished her sword, letting out a wordless battle cry, as Manford shouted orders from her shoulders. A wave of Butlerians howled alongside. She charged ahead, carrying Manford in search of another enemy. His throat was raw, his voice hoarse from shouting.
Riding on her sturdy shoulders, Manford could feel the spirit of Rayna Butler within him, and he touched the icon painting of her that he kept inside his shirt. He knew they would win here today. Even if victory cost the lives of thousands of Butlerians for every single cymek they destroyed, he would pay that price without hesitation.
Yes, he had that many followers to spend.
Anari must be feeling the energy within her as well. She jogged ahead, leading throngs of enraged Butlerians down a wide street and around a corner, where they came face-to-face with another looming cymek. The demon machine rose up on segmented metal legs.
With a smile, Manford faced his nemesis.
* * *
IN SPACE OVERHEAD, the battle continued, with suicidal Butlerians using lasguns against the Holtzman shields before Josef could spread the word among his fleet to drop those defenses. The lasgun-shield interactions triggered a succession of pseudo-atomic blasts, which wiped out seven more VenHold vessels, and an equal number of their own, before Draigo’s frantic message circulated. “VenHold ships, drop shields! Drop your Holtzman shields!”
Josef reviled the barbarian tactics, but was not surprised by them. As soon as all shields were down, he observed, “We are no longer vulnerable to instant annihilation, but we’ll still be battered by the barrage from their conventional weapons.”
“Mathematically, Directeur, our numbers of ships and weaponry are far better than theirs, and our hulls are strong enough to withstand a fair amount of damage,” the Mentat said. “We should still succeed.”
“I don’t care what it takes to finish the task,” Josef growled. “Destroy those warships before the enemy imagines he has achieved some kind of victory.”
“I am happy to do so, Directeur.” The Mentat guided their flagship forward, while transmitting to the rest of the spacefolders as they closed in on the Butlerians. Despite their limited technology, the enemy ships caused an inordinate amount of damage to the VenHold attackers, proving tougher to destroy than expected.
Draigo frowned, staring at the screens. “I’m afraid they have an advantage, Directeur. Since the Butlerians know we will not employ suicidal tactics or fire lasguns at them, they have maintained their own shields, while we are vulnerable.”
“Then increase our bombardment,” Josef said. “Overwhelm their shields. We have the power.”
“The task is more difficult, Directeur, but not by an impossible amount.”
Using their superior weaponry, the VenHold ships were relentless, pummeling and pummeling the fanatics. On one Butlerian ship after another, the defenses collapsed under the barrage—and waves of weapons fire destroyed them. Their fleet dwindled.
Even so, knowing that Josef’s attacking ships lacked shields, the Butlerians pushed forward in an increased opportunistic frenzy. Their old-model warships could withstand several minutes of constant hammering before their shields failed. The barbarians grouped their ships and hurtled forward at full speed, like a salvo of gigantic artillery shells. They rammed into the unprotected VenHold hulls and destroyed three more of Josef’s ships.
His throat went dry, and his pulse pounded in his temples. “They are all mad!”
“Directeur,” the helmsman yelled. “Incoming ships!”
Josef looked up to see three suicidal vessels hurtling toward his flagship. “Evasive action—get us out of their way. But keep firing. Take out their shields.”
The oncoming enemy ships glowed like comets as their shields deflected the play of weapons fire, and they blindly accelerated toward Josef’s flagship. He braced himself, realizing that his vessel could not lumber out of the way in time.
“Grandmother!” he shouted at her tank. He knew she was watching the shifting battlefield. “Now!”
Suddenly, thanks to Norma, his spacefolder was in a different place, jerked sideways to the other side of the space battlefield. “Too many Navigators lost, too many of our ships damaged,” she said. “We must destroy this enemy.”
He exhaled a long cold sigh of relief. “Yes, Grandmother. They certainly deserve to be destroyed. I’m trying to do just that.”
Even if the Butlerians proved to be more difficult to kill than expected, he would not retreat until the job was done.
* * *
ON THE GROUND, no matter how many of the savages Ptolemy gassed, burned, or shot down, they kept coming. He drew little satisfaction from his rampage, but he continued forward nevertheless, tearing a wide swath of destruction through Empok.
The Butlerian fanatics were like a plague, and their numbers seemed infinite. Where did they all come from? Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe a million or more. They surged forward like cockroaches, crowding the cymeks with utter disregard for the appalling casualties they suffered. The streets were piled with bodies.
In disbelief, Ptolemy had watched them scramble over their own dead and take down one of the Navigator cymeks, dismantling its body, smashing the brain canister. In even greater horror, he’d watched them bring down other walkers with wrecking bars, wedges, cutting tools to dismantle a single joint or protected cable. Some attackers used primitive explosives at key vulnerable spots, while other rabid swarms simply used astonishing numbers and unchecked fanatical energy. They fell upon the cymeks, including Administrator Noffe!
In alarm, Ptolemy crashed his way toward his besieged friend, intending to roast these vermin by the thousands, but he was too far away to reach him in time. Noffe’s walker form stalled under the weight of tens of thousands of Butlerians, many wielding crude weapons, and then they got to the administrator’s brain canister.
Noffe had sacrificed so much already, and now in this pivotal fight for the future of humanity, the mob took him down. Through the communications link, Ptolemy
heard Noffe’s panicked mental screams until the ruthless barbarians cut off the thoughtrode contact and crushed his preservation canister.
Those screams had sounded much like Elchan’s.…
Now, as Ptolemy thundered forward, infuriated and unwilling to stop, he came upon an even larger, swelling crowd. The mob was like a mindless organism with a single deadly goal. The people swarmed out of side streets and thoroughfares, climbed the remnants of burning buildings, and threw themselves from rooftops onto the cymeks.
Confronted by this new throng, Ptolemy’s enhanced optical sensors spotted a familiar man riding on the shoulders of a female Swordmaster. The Butlerian leader looked confident and arrogant, as if he had the situation under control. The roar of the mob was deafening, but Ptolemy focused all of his hatred on Manford Torondo.
The Butlerian leader was shouting in a ragged voice that sounded like a thin and insignificant squeak, but he had a voice amplifier. “We will destroy you, demon—and all of your mechanical brethren! Our faith is a shield that you cannot comprehend.”
The response of his people was deafening, primal.
Years ago, as a diligent scientist in his original laboratory, Ptolemy had felt insignificant and helpless, unable to defend himself. He now felt stronger than ever. His cymek body was nearly invincible, his weapons powerful, and his anger unquenchable.
Ptolemy amplified his voice, even though he doubted the Butlerian leader would remember him. “Manford Torondo, you and your followers must pay for your crimes against humanity—and I am the one to call in that debt!”
Manford had time to yell in a scornful voice. “You talk about humanity? You, a monster?”
A single blast from Ptolemy’s flame-cannon or a drenching spray of caustic acid would have leveled the entire mob and incinerated the legless fanatic. But instead, he wanted to make Manford feel as helpless as the man had made him feel on that terrible night years ago. This was too personal a vendetta for Ptolemy to use a weapon of mass destruction.
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