Dune: The Butlerian Jihad (66 page)

Floating safely above any danger, they watched the mopping-up operations for a while longer. Then Bludd invited them all to his opulent residence to celebrate the liberation of Poritrin.

W
hen the human vermin initiated their rebellion on Earth, the Titan Ajax considered it open season. For him, the glory days were back, and this time he would not have to face his lover Hecate’s revulsion at the excessive violence.

He selected his best gladiator-form, a massive weapon-studded walker that he had designed in the hope of challenging Omnius in the arena. Ajax preferred a shape that radiated size and power, not sleek and efficient but awesome and terrifying. He liked to crush dozens of victims at a time.

It would be like the Hrethgir Rebellion on Walgis.

From a cymek body-fabrication pavilion atop one of the capital city’s seven hills, Ajax’s sensors picked up crowd noises, muffled at first and then louder. He had no time to lose.

Using delicate hydraulics to lift his preservation canister, he installed himself into the warrior-form. Angry thoughts pulsed through the electrafluid, crackling into neurelectric linkages, connecting thoughtrodes. Arming all weapons. He flexed his powerful tool-studded limbs.
Ready
.

The Titan strode on piston legs through a sliding window wall to a balcony circling the fabrication pavilion. From this vantage he looked out on the shadow-streaked city as fires rose into the evening sky. Smoke curled upward, and he saw mobs of slaves running like cockroaches. He heard breaking plaz and the hissing crashes of vehicles. The
hrethgir
had gone mad.

Off in the Forum Plaza, an explosion made a muffled boom, the sound flattened by distance. The rebels had stolen some heavy weapons, possibly extracting them from the hulks of damaged robots. Ajax powered up his hunting systems, then stepped into a cargo lift that dropped him down to street level. If the wild and foolish rebels had damaged his magnificent monument statue, he would be very upset indeed.

At the base of the hill, a group of neo-cymeks and sentinel robots set up a defensive circle. Using a molten-projectile launcher, they shot red-hot pellets at the howling mob that swept toward them like stampeding animals. Slave bodies glowed as they were hit, and fell in smoldering lumps of dead flesh. But more of the vermin kept coming, waves and waves of them, even though they saw their certain death.

“Don’t just stand there cowering!” Ajax bellowed. “Would you rather watch them charge toward you, or go after them yourselves?”

It was a rhetorical question. The line of neo-cymek defenders surged forward, their combat limbs studded with weapons shaped out of flowmetal. The cymeks broke the first charge of the frenzied rebels, while the sentinel robots moved back to a new position higher on the hill.

Ajax climbed onto a flying construction platform. Using command linkages to operate the vehicle, he cruised over the crowds, bypassing the explosions and fires. Heading toward the Forum Plaza, the Titan was so infuriated that he had difficulty controlling the sophisticated systems of his gladiator-form.

In facilities across the city grid, Ajax saw thinking machines erect additional defensive perimeters. He had expected the disorganized rebellion to break apart and falter by now. Thousands of humans had been slaughtered today alone. Perhaps the fun had just begun.

Trailing lines of sparkling fire, rockets launched out from the Victory of the Titans frieze. Combining and enhancing the resolution of his optic threads, Ajax recognized the human standing on top of the giant carved stone wall, firing the hidden weapons: the treacherous crew boss Iblis Ginjo! Ajax had suspected him all along!

With wrenching anger he saw swarms of the ungrateful creatures using cables and small explosives to tear down the mighty pillars that held the majestic statues of the Titans. As he pushed the cargo platform forward, Ajax saw his own colossal image topple to the broken flagstones. The vermin let out a loud, hooting cheer. Another crude rocket shot out of the crumbling frieze.

Ajax accelerated the hover platform and swung wide around the enormous stone mural, approaching from the rear, out of range of the sputtering rockets. The giant statue of his human likeness lay crumbled on the stone surface, like a fallen king.

Ajax would rip off Iblis Ginjo’s limbs, one at a time, and drink his screams.

Suddenly an entire section of the monument pivoted, and the sky blazed with multiple orange fires from a tremendous volley of rockets directed at Ajax. One blast shattered the undercarriage of the flying cargo platform, and the heavy craft spun toward the ground.

The Titan tumbled off, striking the plaza in a clatter of bent hydraulic limbs and armored shielding around his preservation canister. The hover platform crashed in a terrific explosion, knocking down the giant mural, damaging the rocket launchers.

The impact of Ajax’s gladiator-form pulverized flagstones. His integrated systems twitched and jerked; neurelectronics flickered. Inside the preservation canister, his disembodied brain churned with a crackle of faulty data and distorted impressions from damaged thoughtrodes. He was surrounded by broken monuments torn down by the ingrate humans.

He heard Iblis shouting to the mobs, calling upon them to swarm the wounded Titan. With a mental surge through the thoughtrode conductors, Ajax rebooted his combat body’s systems, bypassing the damaged control linkages. He could still fight, if he could just get back on his feet.

The furious mob swarmed around him, but he fought them off with flailing artificial limbs, and finally levered himself onto powerful but damaged legs that refused to support him reliably. Leaning to one side, he launched indiscriminate shots from his flamers, which should have driven back the rebels.

Instead, they crawled over the bodies of their fallen comrades and kept coming. . . .

Before Ajax could restore his equilibrium or complete the recalibration of his optic threads to see what was happening clearly, Iblis removed an intact rocket from the damaged frieze and launched it manually. With only half of his systems functional, Ajax tried to scuttle out of the way, but the hissing explosive ruined one of his six legs, knocking the cymek off balance and ripping a ragged hole in the broken flagstone beneath him.

The ancient warrior bellowed through his voice-synthesizer and shifted his armored body, turning to face Iblis at the damaged wall. Frenzied slaves swarmed around the debris in the Forum Plaza, throwing themselves upon the cymek like mice trying to bring down a maddened bull.

Ajax thrashed in his cumbersome body, knocking the vermin away, stomping on them, plowing through anyone who stood in his path. But more rebels stampeded toward him, pummeled his cymek body with primitive weapons, and fired stolen guns at him. In a frenzy, Ajax killed or maimed hundreds without suffering significant additional damage to himself, but the sheer press of bodies, along with his ruined leg, hampered him.

From the frieze wall, Iblis shouted, “He killed billions of people! Destroy him!”

Only billions? Surely it was more than that!

With a burst of mechanical energy, Ajax vaulted over the mass of angry humans and began to scale the high stone mural, extruding nimble grippers and support spikes from the ends of the limbs that still functioned. Iblis stood atop the damaged wall, directing his foolish rebels.

As Ajax climbed, dozens of slaves clung to his segmented body where he could not knock them free. He thrashed with one of his five intact limbs and used the other four to climb the monolithic frieze.

From above, a slave dropped a small explosive that detonated on the sculptured wall, fracturing the stone and making the cymek’s feet lose purchase. A dozen maddened slaves toppled off of his gladiator-form, knocked loose by the shockwave. But still more piled onto him.

The Titan’s mechanical body tilted awkwardly, and more of the humans crawled onto his back and damaged his components, hacking at him with cutters and heat sticks.

Seconds later the rioters severed the neurelectric conduits and snapped the control fibers leading from his protected brain canister, effectively paralyzing the Titan’s giant body. Ajax felt himself being pulled down from the wall, and toppling backward.

He could hear the screams as he slammed to the ground on top of the shouting
hrethgir
, crushing hundreds to death. He loved the sounds of their pain. But Ajax could not move, lying immobile in his warrior form like an immense poisoned insect.

“I am a Titan!” he bellowed.

Through his dispersed optic threads, Ajax saw the traitorous crew boss standing on the shoulders of slaves, pointing accusingly at the cymek’s head plate. “Peel off the armor casing, there!”

Ajax’s thoughtrodes detected the removal of the shield, exposing his brain canister.

Now, with a smile of triumph, Iblis climbed onto the Titan’s twitching warrior-form, holding high a makeshift cudgel. Grinning, the crew boss brought the metal club down and smashed through the curved plaz walls of the brain canister.

He hammered again and again, and his followers rushed in to help, pounding and beating and smashing, until they had ruptured the canister and battered the organic brain into nothing more than pulpy gray matter mixed with oozing bluish electrafluid.

Euphoric at what they had done, Iblis stood atop the dead Titan and howled in victory. His message rose higher than the flames consuming the machine city.

Witnessing the death of one of the greatest cymeks sent the mob into a greater furor. Word swept through the streets, and the outraged rebels turned against all manifestations and symbols of the machine masters. Neo-cymeks and sentinel robots on defensive lines scrambled away as the rioters pursued them.

The all-pervasive Omnius evermind had no choice but to launch powerful countermeasures.

I
n the afternoon heat of Arrakis, the Zensunni nomads blindfolded Aurelius Venport by tying a stained rag over his eyes.

The desert people did not trust Tuk Keedair either and treated the Tlulaxa flesh merchant with matching indignity. Venport chose to allow this as part of his investment. It had taken them nearly five months of tedious travel with fitful starts and stops at various backwater planets just to get here. He would see it through.

“We march now,” Naib Dhartha said. “You may talk with each other, but it would be best to keep your conversation to a minimum. Wasted words are wasted moisture.”

Venport felt people all around him, guiding them forward. It took some getting used to, and he stumbled often as he lifted his feet higher than normal, probing the sandy surface. The ground was uneven, but gradually he became more adept at walking.

“What about the sandworms?” Keedair asked. “Do we not have to worry about—?”

“We are beyond the wormline,” Dhartha answered gruffly.

“The mountain ranges separate us from the great bled, where the demons dwell.”

“I am not convinced this is completely necessary,” Venport said as he trudged on.

Dhartha was firm, not accustomed to having his orders questioned. “It is necessary because I have said so. Never before has an outsider— not even one from this planet— seen our hidden communities. We do not offer maps.”

“Of course. I will comply with your rules,” Venport muttered. “As long as you intend to offer spice.”

Though the jungles of Rossak were rich with undiscovered pharmaceuticals and exotic hallucinogens, none seemed to provide the remarkable effects of melange. Venport felt the substance was well worth investigating, despite the distance he’d had to travel and the discomforts he had endured.

In the past several months, Venport had easily sold Keedair’s speculative shipment to curiosity seekers willing to pay an exorbitant price. Even though Venport had kept half of the profits, Tuk Keedair had still made a substantial sum, more than he could have obtained from a cargo of the highest quality slaves. Since he had not lost money for the year, he had not been obligated to cut off his treasured braid.

Venport tripped over something hard. He cursed and almost fell to his knees, but someone grabbed his arm and supported him.

“When your people brought melange to me one load at a time, it took forever to fill my cargo ship,” Keedair said, his voice several footsteps ahead.

Venport said, “Naib Dhartha, I hope we can develop a more efficient system in the future.” If not, they would just have to charge higher prices, but he was sure the market would be there.

After they had plodded for hours at a blind-man’s pace, the Zensunnis stopped. From the rustling, clanking noises, Venport guessed they were uncovering a camouflaged groundcar. “Sit,” said Naib Dhartha, “but do not remove your blindfolds.”

Fumbling, he and Keedair climbed into the vehicle, which moved off with a jouncing pace and a quietly puttering engine. After many kilometers, Venport eventually guessed from slightly cooler shadows that they must be approaching a line of mountains, heading into afternoon. There were ways to pinpoint the location of this isolated village, provided he wanted to go to such lengths. He could have sewn a tracking pulser into the fabric of his vest or the sole of a boot.

But at the moment Venport had other priorities. He had a feeling there was no way to circumvent the wishes of these hardy people, that they completely controlled those who visited them, even deciding who departed from the desert alive.

When they began to ascend a steep path, the groundcar slowed, and finally the Zensunni hid the vehicle again and made their blindfolded guests walk again. The nomads guided their guests step by step around boulders and broken rocks. Finally, Dhartha yanked off the blindfolds, revealing a dim cave entrance. The group stood just inside a tunnel. Venport blinked to adjust his vision to the dim light generated by flaming lamps mounted on the walls.