Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (27 page)

“We have to go component by component and harden the circuits. By their very nature, these transmitting towers generate a field that obliterates complex gelcircuitry. We need to make sure the system will last more than five minutes once we activate it.”

Serena bit her lip and nodded. “Yes, that would be a good thing.”

“And if we’re too obvious with our testing,” Brigit continued, “some of the damned machines might figure out what we’re doing. It’s a touchy process.”

“How much time?” Ort Wibsen asked, chewing on his own impatience.

“A week, if we’re lucky.” Brigit frowned. “Ten days if anything goes wrong and we need to fix pieces.”

“Eight days is the absolute soonest the Armada could arrive,” Serena said. “That assumes Xavier organized the attack force and launched within two days of receiving my message.”

Wibsen grumbled, “That’ll never happen with the League. They’ll call meeting after meeting, then break for long lunches, then hold more meetings.”

Serena sighed. “I’m hoping Xavier can cut through all that.”

“Yeah,” Wibsen said, “and I’m hoping the robots will all just leave Giedi Prime voluntarily . . . but it’s not bloody likely to happen.”

“Keep your engineers busy,” Serena said to Brigit Paterson, paying no heed to the veteran’s pessimism. “Commander Wibsen and I will take the blockade runner. We’ll slip back through the sensor net and try to intercept the incoming Armada. Xavier needs to know the plan so he can take advantage of what we’ve done. We can give them a timetable and coordinate the assault.”

Wibsen coughed, and scowled ferociously. “Better take Pinquer Jibb, too, in case I need backup in flying the blockade runner.”

Curly-haired Jibb looked uncertain, glancing from Serena to the old veteran and then to the lead engineer. “Maybe the Commander should just stay here?”

The veteran spat onto the frozen ground. “Not on your life. It’s a
remote
chance that I’ll need any help.”

“If you say so,” Serena answered, covering a knowing smile. “Brigit, you’ll be able to detect the Armada when they come into the system?”

“We’re monitoring the thinking-machine communications net. I’m assuming once the Armada battleships approach, the robots will be all atwitter with excitement.” Brigit looked to her team and then gave a grim smile. “Yeah, we’ll know.”

MOVING UNDERWATER AGAIN, the blockade runner cruised through the cold depths away from the ice-choked northern sea. Looking over his shoulder in the cockpit, Wibsen said philosophically, “When we started this mission, I thought you were crazy, Serena Butler.”

“Crazy to try and help these people?” She raised her eyebrows.

“No— I thought you were crazy to give me another chance.”

According to his original mapping while guiding the ship through the atmosphere, Ort Wibsen had identified weak spots in the robotic sensor net girdling the planet. By emerging in the open sea at about forty degrees north latitude, they could fly the stealth-coated vessel up through the tenuous blanket with a reasonable chance of remaining undetected by machine sentries in orbit and on the ground. The patterns of observation flickered irregularly like invisible spotlights across the open skies.

“We’ll sit quietly here,” he said, coughing again and slapping the medical injector on his chest as if it were an annoying insect. “We’ll bide our time until I’m damned sure I know their routine.”

“That’s one thing you can say about thinking machines,” said Pinquer Jibb, looking uneasy. “They’re certainly predictable.”

Cymeks, however, were not.

Less than an hour later, fast-moving mechanical airfoils raced in, converging on the half-submerged blockade runner. Wibsen cursed a proverbial blue streak, then coughed up a mouthful of scarlet blood.

“Eleven of them!” Pinquer Jibb cried, looking at the scanners. “How did they find us?”

“How did you not see them?” Wibsen snapped.

“They emerged from underwater just like we did!”

Serena looked at the screen, seeing the numerous robot-driven interceptor ships closing in on them. Activating the blockade runner’s starboard weaponry, she shot at the oncoming airfoils, hitting one and missing the others. She had not been trained as a weapons officer. If they’d expected to fight their way through, they never would have taken on the challenge of infiltrating Giedi Prime.

“Jibb, take the controls and prepare for liftoff.” Wibsen lurched out of the cockpit. “By hell, they’ll not take us so easily.” He jabbed a big-knuckled finger at the copilot. “Watch for your chance after I leave— and don’t hesitate.”

“What’re you going to do?” Serena asked. The old veteran didn’t answer, but raced across the deck and dove inside the single lifepod.

“What’s he doing?” Jibb said.

“No time to court-martial him now.” Serena couldn’t believe the veteran would just leave them to the thinking machines.

Wibsen sealed the hatch of the lifepod and green lights shone around the rim, indicating he was preparing for launch.

Serena shot another blast from the starboard weapons, the only ones aimed toward the oncoming thinking machines. She crippled another vessel, but in a united effort, the cymeks and robots fired at the blockade runner, ripping open the weapons ports. Serena looked with dismay at her control systems. They flickered, sparked, went dead.

With a lurch and an explosive thump, Wibsen’s lifepod shot out like a cannonball. It roared away, a fast-moving, heavily armored projectile, barely skimming over the surface. Over the SOS frequency, the old veteran said, “Don’t be asleep at the switch, now. Be ready!”

Pinquer Jibb powered up their engines, preparing to fly. The ship began to cut a line through the water.

Wibsen did his best to aim the lifepod toward the robotic targets. Designed simply to carry a survivor to safety from a catastrophic explosion, the escape vessel had thick shielding and hull plating— and when it hammered into the closest enemy, it annihilated the cymek ship, blasting all the way through and slamming into a second. Battered and smoking amid the sinking wreckage, the lifepod came to a halt.

Serena shouted to Jibb. “Go! Take off!”

He increased thrust, and the blockade runner lifted off from the water, heaving itself into the sky. As they climbed, Serena looked at the imager that showed the water below.

In the wreckage of the two thinking-machine aerofoils, she saw the lifepod hatch open. Wibsen emerged, battered but still defiant. Around him, smoke and steam roiled into the air, and three angry cymeks churned toward him.

The old veteran reached into his pocket and hurled a dull gray sphere at the nearest cymek vessel. The explosion knocked the enemy back and also sent Wibsen toppling into the lifepod’s hatch. He waved a pulse cartridge rifle unsteadily with one hand, shooting again and again, but three armored cymeks pounced upon him from their own aerofoil vessels. Serena watched in horror as their articulated mechanical claws ripped the old veteran to pieces.

“Hold on!” Pinquer Jibb shouted, too late. Serena saw robotic vessels aiming their heavy weaponry along the trajectory of the fleeing blockade runner.

“I can’t—”

The impact smashed Serena against the far wall. Explosions ripped out their ship’s engines. The craft began to plunge, Jibb unable to reverse their fall back toward the ocean. The blockade runner careened into the waves like a huge out-of-control sled, spraying up a high tail of white foam. Water began to gush through cracks in the hull.

Serena ran to the weapons locker, grabbed a pulse cartridge rifle of her own. Slinging the weapon over her shoulder, though she had never fired one before, she made ready to defend herself. Pinquer Jibb grabbed another weapon from the open armory closet.

With clanging sounds like impacting torpedoes, cymeks slammed into the crippled ship. Without even attempting to use the normal access hatches, they cut their way through the hull, ripping into the central compartment like birds trying to get at the tasty meat inside a seashell.

Jibb opened fire as the first silvery arms protruded through the split wall. A pulse-bolt damaged the cymek’s arm but also ricocheted around the ship’s interior, inadvertently blasting the breach even wider.

Another cymek came in from the top hatch, prying open the armor and dropping its limber body into the chamber. Serena launched a pulse-bolt, scorching its core. With a lucky second shot, she fried the brain canister. A larger cymek worked its way in from above, grabbing the fallen mechanical body and using it as a shield as she poured more pulse projectiles into it.

Next to Pinquer Jibb, a cymek shaped like a black beetle continued to work its way through the hole torn in the hull. The copilot turned and attempted to fire again, but the cymek thrust a long pointed arm forward. Jibb dropped his gun as the robotic arm plunged through his chest like a spear. Blood blossomed from the center of his uniform.

The morphing end of the sharp leg shaft suddenly sprouted clawlike fingers, and as the cymek yanked his hand back out of his victim’s chest, he tore out the dripping heart and held it up like a trophy.

Above, the largest cymek threw the nonfunctional body of his dead mechanical companion at Serena. The heavy hulk crashed down, cutting and bruising her. Trapped, she couldn’t move, pinned to the deck.

The beetle cymek, blood still dripping from its spearlike limb, wrenched its way through the gaping hull and clattered forward, leaving Jibb’s body behind. It raised two more pointed forearms above Serena, but the largest cymek bellowed for him to stop.

“Don’t kill them both or we’ll have nothing to give Erasmus. He asked for one of the feisty resistance fighters from Giedi Prime. This one will do nicely.”

Hearing his words, Serena was terrified. Something ominous in the tone made her think she would be better off if she simply died here. Gashes in her arm, her ribs, and her left leg were bleeding onto the deck.

Jibb’s killer snatched the pulse projectile rifle out of her hands, while the larger cymek lifted away the fallen body. He stretched out a grappling arm and snagged her with a flexible metal fist. The Titan lifted her off the deck, then held her face close to his glittering optic threads.

“Oh, so lovely. Even after a thousand years, I can still appreciate beauty. If only I were human again, I could demonstrate my full admiration.” His sensors glinted cruelly. “I am Barbarossa. It’s a shame I’ll have to send you to Erasmus on Earth. For your sake, I hope he will find you interesting.”

Sharp silver limbs pinioned her in a huge grasp, like a gigantic cage. Serena struggled, but could not get away. She knew of Barbarossa, one of the original tyrants who had taken over the Old Empire. More than anything, she wished she could have killed him, even if it meant sacrificing her own life.

“One of Omnius’s ships leaves for Earth tomorrow. I will see that you are transported aboard,” Barbarossa said. “Did I forget to mention? Erasmus has laboratories where he does . . . interesting . . . things.”

W
ithin his wide-range operating program, the newly installed Giedi Prime– Omnius studied a three-dimensional map of the known universe. An accurate model based upon extensive compilations of archival surveys and sensor data, coupled with probability-based projections and analyses.

Endless possibilities.

With insatiable curiosity, the new Omnius copy scanned swirling nebulas, giant suns, and planet after planet. Given time and sustained effort, all of them would become part of the network of Synchronized Worlds.

Soon, the next update ship would arrive, bringing him to near-parity with other planetary everminds. He had not been able to synchronize himself since his activation here on Giedi Prime. The Giedi Prime– Omnius could copy his exciting new thoughts and share them among the evermind clones. Expansion, efficiency . . . so much to be done! The conquest of Giedi Prime was a building block in the cosmic empire of machines. The process had begun, and soon would accelerate.

Nestled inside his cybernetic core within the former Magnus’s citadel, Omnius uploaded images taken by his watcheyes: flaming ruins, human children on torture racks, immense bonfires made of surplus members of the population. He objectively studied each image, absorbing information, processing it. Long ago, Barbarossa’s modified programming had taught the thinking machines how to savor victory.

Many of the multitiered factories on Giedi Prime were now being put to good use, as well as mining hoverships and other facilities. Barbarossa had made a bold effort to adapt the humans’manufacturing centers to the uses of the thinking machines. And in those factories, the new evermind had discovered something that created interesting connections, extraordinary possibilities.

The humans had designed and begun to assemble a new model of long-distance space probe, an explorer of far-off planets. Such probes could be adapted as emissaries for the thinking machines, new substations for the computer evermind.

On the galactic map Omnius noted the travel times required by even a high-acceleration machine probe. He scanned territory designated as “Unallied Planets,” not yet claimed by machines or human vermin. So many star systems for him to explore, conquer, and develop, and these prototype Giedi Prime probes would make that possible. The new evermind saw this as an opportunity— and so would his allied computers on all Synchronized Worlds.

If he could propagate seeds from his evermind, self-supporting factories capable of using local resources to construct automated infrastructures, he could establish thinking-machine beachheads on innumerable inhabited worlds. It would be like a shower of sparks cast upon tinder, and the
hrethgir
would never be able to stop the spread of Omnius. That was part of his basic nature.

A team of support robots stood just outside his shielded core, prepared to give technical assistance. Acting on his innovative idea, the new evermind sent a signal pulse to one of them. Its systems activated; it powered up, ready to serve.