Dune: The Machine Crusade (5 page)

Livia glanced over her shoulder at the trio of statuesque Seraphim who hovered too close on the stone platform fronting the shrine. Serena gestured for the robed women to step away; they did so, but only as far as the shrine, where they remained at attention, still within earshot. She knew two of the three well; the other Seraph was new, having just graduated from a rigorous training program.

She answered with the so-familiar words. “Sacrifices are necessary to achieve our ultimate victory, Mother. My Jihad has blazed for two decades, but not brightly enough. We cannot accept an endless impasse. We must redouble our efforts.”

Livia’s mouth flattened into a thin line, not quite a frown. “I have heard the Grand Patriarch give those same reasons, in practically the same words.”

“And why not?” Serena’s lavender eyes flared. “Iblis’s goals are the same as mine. As Priestess of the Jihad I cannot concern myself with politics and power plays. Do you question my judgment or my devotion to free humanity?”

Livia said in a calm voice, “No one questions your motives, Serena. Your heart is pure, though hard.”

“The machines themselves deadened my capacity for love. The robot Erasmus took that from me forever.”

Sadly, Livia stepped close to her daughter and slipped an arm around her shoulders. The Seraphim attendants tensed, hands sliding toward their concealed weapons. Serena and Livia both ignored them.

“My child, human love is an infinite resource. No matter how many times it is expended, whether stolen or given away, love can grow again— like a flower from a bulb— and fill your heart.”

Serena bowed her head, and listened as her mother’s comforting words continued. “Tomorrow is Octa’s birthday. Hers and… Fredo’s. I lost
my
son too, Serena, so I know how you feel.” She hastened to add, “Your brother died differently, of course.”

“Yes, Mother— and you withdrew to the City of Introspection afterward. You of all people must understand.”

“Oh I do, but I have not let my heart turn to stone, for all love to die within me. I am devoted to your father, to Octa, and to you. Come with me and see how much her daughters have grown. You have two nieces now.”

“Xavier will not be there?”

Livia frowned. “He fights the machines at IV Anbus. You dispatched him there yourself. Don’t you remember?”

Serena nodded distractedly. “He’s been gone so long. I’m sure he longs to come back for Octa’s party.” Then she lifted her head. “But the Jihad must take precedence over all personal matters. We make our choices, and we survive by holding to them.”

Looking sad, Livia said, “Do not resent him for marrying your sister. You cannot keep wishing that things could have been different.”

“Of course I wish things could have been different, but perhaps my suffering was what the human race finally needed to galvanize it to action. Otherwise we would never have had the impetus to turn around and throw off the shackles of the thinking machines.” She shook her head. “I am no longer jealous of Octa, and I don’t resent Xavier. Yes, I loved him once— he was Manion’s father— but I was just a girl then. Silly and starry-eyed. In the light of subsequent events, such concerns seem so… trivial.”

Livia chided, “Love is never trivial, Serena, even when you don’t want it.”

Serena’s voice became small, not at all the powerful, passionate instrument she employed when rallying the huge crowds that came to hear her. “I fear, Mother, that the damage to my soul will take more than a lifetime to heal.”

Livia slipped her arm through Serena’s and turned to lead her along the gem-gravel path. “Nevertheless, daughter, that is all the time you have.”

Abruptly, Serena saw a blur of white motion from the direction of her guards. One of the Seraphim cried out and threw herself upon another— the newest one— who moved with blinding speed, drawing a long dagger that glinted silver.

Her mother slammed into Serena and knocked her away. As she fell, Serena heard a nearby slash of cloth and a gurgling gasp, saw a grisly spurt of blood, and, almost simultaneously, felt a heavy impact. Livia dropped on top of her, covering Serena’s body.

The third Seraph drove into the rushing white-robed guard, grabbed the gold-mesh hood that covered the traitor’s hair, and yanked her head back with a hollow snap to break her neck.

Although her mother’s body still covered hers, Serena could see a Rorschach splash of scarlet on one of the guards’ robes, not at all like the precise crimson trimming on the white uniform. A gasping, heroic Seraph— the only survivor of the three— choked out, “The threat has been neutralized, Priestess.” She caught her breath and quickly composed herself.

Shaking, Livia helped her daughter to her feet. Serena was astonished to see two of her chosen guards lying dead: her bloody defender, fallen with a slashed throat, and the other broken. The traitor.

“An assassin?” Serena looked down at the woman whose head lay cocked at an awkward angle.

Livia demanded, “How did she penetrate our training?”

The remaining Seraph said, “Priestess, we must get you to safety inside one of the buildings. There may be another attempt on your life.”

Alarms had already sounded, and more white-robed Seraphim rushed to the scene, scanning in all directions for additional threats. Serena felt her knees growing weak as she and her mother were hustled to the shelter of the nearest large building.

She looked at the white-robed young woman who had saved her life. With her gold-mesh hood askew from the struggle, the guard’s short blond hair could be seen. “Niriem? That is your name, correct?”

“Yes, Priestess.” She straightened her hood.

“From this moment on, I appoint you my chief Seraph. Make certain the Grand Patriarch summons his best Jipol officers to investigate this matter,” Serena said, breathless as she ran.

“Yes, Priestess.”

Because of the severity of the incident, Iblis would have to get involved personally, and might replace all of the Seraphim… except for Niriem. Serena would leave it to him to unravel what had happened. She could still hardly believe it herself.

Livia urged her daughter into the safety of the main sanctuary building, a converted manor house with cupolas and turrets. “You have always known the threat, my daughter. The machines are everywhere.”

Serena’s eyes were dry, her expression cold. “And they will never stop plotting against us.”

T
he greatest enemies of humanity gathered on the primary Synchronized World of Corrin: cymeks, robots, and Omnius, the computer evermind itself.

Only four of the original Twenty Titans remained alive. A thousand years ago, fearful of their mortality, these human tyrants had installed their brains in armored cylinders so that their thoughts, minds, and souls could live forever. But over the long and violent centuries, they had fallen to mishaps or assassinations, one at a time. In the recent uprisings, both Barbarossa and Ajax had been assassinated.

General Agamemnon, the leader of the Titans, had repaid that debt a thousand times over, slaughtering countless humans. Crushing them and letting them rot where they lay or piling them in heaps on the ground for bonfires. His lover Juno had helped him plan horrific, vengeful strategies.

So many ways to kill humans.

Dante, the unambitious but talented bureaucrat cymek, still served in quiet but necessary ways. The coward Xerxes, who had originally allowed Omnius to take over from the Titans, clung to his foolish belief that he could regain respect.

Now the Titans arrived in four specially configured ships. Manipulator arms from Agamemnon’s spacecraft installed the general’s preservation canister into a serviceable walker form. Thoughtrodes connected his mind to mobile systems, and he stretched arachnidlike mechanical limbs before walking out under the blood-red skies. Juno, Dante, and Xerxes emerged from their own ships and followed their leader toward Erasmus’s opulent villa, which bore a strong similarity to an estate that had been leveled by the League Armada in their attack on Earth.

Erasmus fancied himself a cultured individual, an admirer of past human glories. He had modeled this grand estate on ornate historical palaces, though the Corrin landscape necessitated certain modifications, including diffusion devices to keep the human slaves from being poisoned by concentrated emissions of groundgas.

Corrin was a rocky world, originally frozen and dead; when the sun had swelled to its red-giant phase, incinerating the system’s inner planets, the once-uninhabitable lump had thawed. Back when the Old Empire of the humans still retained a few sparks of genius and ambition, hardy pioneers had terraformed Corrin, planting grasses and trees, bringing in animals, insects, and colonists.

But the settlement had not even lasted as long as the short lifespan of the red giant, and now machines ruled here under ruddy skies, with the baleful eye of the bloated sun peering down on dirty pens of slave workers.

The cymeks marched through villa gates made of treated metals twisted and looped into curlicues. Lavish vines bursting with scarlet flowers draped the walls and open ceiling grid. The air must be stiflingly heavy with perfume; Agamemnon was glad he had not taken a walker form with olfactory sensors. Smelling flowers was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

With an artificial grin on his flowmetal face, Erasmus glided up to the visiting dignitaries as they entered his courtyard. The independent robot wore a foppish robe trimmed with a spray of plush fur in imitation of an ancient human king. “Welcome, my colleagues. I would offer you refreshments, but I suspect the gesture would be wasted on machines with human minds.”

“We aren’t here for a party,” Agamemnon said. Xerxes, though, had always seemed disappointed that he could no longer indulge in fine foods; he had been a soft hedonist in his human days. Now he just gave a mechanical sigh and admired his surroundings.

Omnius screens were mounted on the walls, and floating watcheyes drifted about like fat mechanical bumblebees. While the actual nexus of the Corrin evermind was housed in the Central Spire elsewhere in the city, Omnius could watch from myriad viewers and hear every whispered conversation. Agamemnon had long ago grown accustomed to, and annoyed with, the constant surveillance, but there was nothing he could do— until he got rid of Omnius altogether.

“We must discuss this war against the irrational humans.” The evermind’s voice boomed across speakers like an all-powerful, omnipresent god.

Agamemnon dampened his listening receptors, reducing the evermind’s thunderous commands to small squeaks. “Lord Omnius, I am ready for any further aggression against the
hrethgir
. You need only authorize it.”

“General Agamemnon has been advocating such action for years,” Xerxes said, too eagerly. “He’s always said that free humanity is like a ticking bomb. He warned that unless we dealt with the
hrethgir,
they would eventually reach a boiling point and cause great harm— exactly as they have done on Earth, Bela Tegeuse, Peridot Colony, and, more recently, on Tyndall.”

The cymek general controlled his annoyance. “Omnius is fully aware of our previous conversations, Xerxes. And our battles with the humans.”

Erasmus’s voice was erudite. “Since we have never seen an update of the final thoughts and decisions made by the Earth-Omnius, we do not know exactly what occurred in the last days on Earth. That information is forever lost to us.”

“We have no need of the exact details,” Agamemnon growled. “I’ve been a military officer for over a thousand years. I led human armies and robot armies. I orchestrated the original overthrow of the Old Empire.”

“And you have been a loyal warrior and servant to Omnius in the centuries since,” Erasmus added. The Titan thought he detected a trace of sarcasm.

“Correct,” Juno said before Agamemnon could make a retort. “The Titans have always been valuable allies and resources to Omnius.”

“Our primary concern is to ensure that no similar rebellion takes place on any other Synchronized World,” said Omnius.

“That is not statistically likely,” Dante pointed out. “Your watcheyes constantly monitor the populations. No slave will ever again have the opportunity to rally underlings, as the trustee Iblis Ginjo did.”

“I have personally led neo-cymeks in raids to obliterate rebel cells,” Xerxes said, stepping forward. “The unruly humans will never gain a foothold.”

Erasmus paced the courtyard, swirling his fur-lined robes. “Unfortunately, such repressive measures only increase discontent. The Army of the Jihad has sent agent-provocateurs to our worlds. They smuggle propaganda to enslaved workers, artisans, even our reliable trustees. They carry recordings of impassioned speeches by Serena Butler, whom they call their Priestess of the Jihad.” The robot’s flowmetal face formed a wistful expression. “To them, she is beautiful and persuasive, a veritable goddess. When they hear Serena’s words, how can they resist doing as she asks? They will follow her, even to death.”

Agamemnon grumbled, “Our trustees have everything they could possibly want, and still they listen to her.”
Like my own son Vorian. The fool
. “The best solution is to excise the cancer, obliterating each flare-up as it occurs. Eventually, we will root out all discontent… or be forced to exterminate the bothersome humans once and for all. Either solution is acceptable.”

“Where would you like us to begin, Lord Omnius?” Xerxes said.

“Incidents of sabotage and blatant unrest occur most frequently on Ix,” Erasmus interjected. “Most of the landscape has been converted to useful industries, but the rebels have located a honeycomb of natural caverns in the planet’s crust. They hide there like termites, then strike our weak points.”

“We should have no weak points,” Agamemnon said.

“There should be no rebels either, considering that I have improved efficiency across the planetary network,” Omnius said. “This turmoil has caused numerous problems, and I wish to examine all options. Perhaps these humans are more trouble to eradicate than the effort warrants. It may be more effective for us to simply stop fighting them.”