Faith and determination are a warrior’s greatest weapons. But beliefs can be corrupted. Beware that these weapons are not turned against you.
— SWORDMASTER ISTIAN GOSS
For their first mission after being dispatched from Ginaz, Nar Trig and Istian Goss had hoped to be pitted in direct combat against the forces of Omnius. Instead, the new swordmasters found themselves in a tangled police and recovery action on recaptured Honru.
“You’d think they would have put the man carrying the spirit of Jool Noret on the front lines,” Trig grumbled. “Now that this place has been freed from Omnius, why can’t these people maintain their own order?”
“Remember what you were taught: Any battle that defends humanity is important.” Istian bit back a sigh. “If this job is as easy as you say, we can finish our work here swiftly enough— then we’ll be off to other battles.”
After Quentin Butler’s battalion had left Honru, the downtrodden survivors had gone into a vengeful frenzy incited in part by Martyrist propaganda. Sentinel robots, floating watcheyes, and all the subsystems that served the evermind had been dismantled, circuitry uprooted, machinery torn apart. Nar Trig looked at the zealots with a hungry curiosity, as if detecting a fervor similar to his own against the thinking machines.
Unfortunately, Istian thought, the survivors had been so intent on their vendetta that they caused far more damage than necessary to establish their foothold. If they had turned their energy and enthusiasm to rebuilding Honru instead of crushing an already defeated enemy, the two swordmasters might have been able to fight the real battles instead of wasting their time here.
The Honru slave pens had been torn down, and the people set up dwellings inside former machine strongholds, erecting tents and lean-tos, purloining comforts from factories in the once-gleaming city. Extravagant and colorful shrines to the Three Martyrs sprang up like weeds throughout the city and in the strip-mined countryside. Long banners depicting Serena, Manion the Innocent, and Grand Patriarch Iblis Ginjo unfurled from tall buildings. Instead of growing food, Martyrist farmers planted fields of the orange marigolds that had become the symbolic flower of Serena Butler’s murdered baby boy.
Istian and Trig marched down the streets, alert. The ranks of Martyrists had grown substantially, and their thankful followers held frequent vigils, celebrations, and prayer meetings. They seized any remnants of intact Omnius machinery they found among the ruins, then pulverized them in symbolic destruction parties.
The survivors were settling down, though, and each day they turned toward more productive work. Istian hoped that he and Trig would be able to leave when the next League ship arrived.
Many people rushed in from other League Worlds, some to stake their claim on new territory, others genuinely wanting to help. The philanthropic Lord Porce Bludd, grandnephew of Niko Bludd, who had been killed during the great slave uprising on Poritrin, contributed vast amounts of funding. The rebuilding and restoration of Honru did not lack for money, resources, or manpower. The only failing, Istian thought, was in focus and initiative….
They heard a shout. Istian turned to see a man sprinting toward them wearing an officer’s uniform— it was the military administrator of the reclaimed colony. Despite his relatively high rank, the man had noble blood and was more of a bureaucrat than a warrior. Trig placed his hand on the power button of his pulse-sword and stood ready.
“Mercenaries! We require your assistance.” Red-faced from the effort of running, the military administrator stopped in front of the two swordmasters. “While breaking open one of the sealed storage depots, workers encountered three combat robots, and they were still active! The meks killed two of our people before we could seal the machines inside. You have to go fight them.”
“Yes.” Trig grinned wolfishly and turned to his sparring partner. “We do.”
Istian looked determined and pleased. “Let’s go, then.”
In a part of the city filled with identical cube-shaped warehouses and storage chambers, the two swordmasters raced after the military administrator and a dozen well-armed jihadi soldiers. They could have used explosives and heavy projectile weapons to destroy the combat robots, but the rebuilders needed the supplies, equipment, and resources that were stored intact within the warehouse. Istian and Trig, on the other hand, could dispatch the enemies with finesse— and without collateral damage. Also, the jihadi soldiers wanted to watch the Ginaz mercenaries and their much-vaunted skill in hand-to-hand combat against the enemy machines.
A crowd followed them as they rushed off to their destination. People shouted. Some of them carried banners of the Three Martyrs. Trig raised his pulse-sword in a defiant gesture, and the Martyrists cheered. Istian focused his attention forward, mentally preparing himself for his opponent. He recalled ancient legends of brave armored knights who set forth to fight dragons in their lairs while terrorized peasants watched, and he supposed that he and Trig filled a similar role now.
When they stood before the sealed metal door to the cube-shaped warehouse, Istian saw that its smooth, polished surface was rippled with convex dents as if someone had launched cannon shells from the inside. Obviously, the trapped combat robots had tried to hammer themselves free.
As soon as the barricade ratcheted aside, the tall and burly killing machines strode forward, extruding spiny appendages, deadly weapons, flamethrower arms, projectile cannons. The three battle machines were the stuff of nightmares— precisely the targets for which a Ginaz swordmaster was trained. Chirox had given them both the necessary instruction.
Istian and Trig shouted in unison and charged ahead, raising their pulse-swords. The combat robots seemed startled by these small opponents. A gout of flame spurted from one of the incinerator arms, but Trig dove to the left, rolled, and sprang back to his feet. Istian leaped forward, swinging his pulse-sword against the same enemy. With a single blow, he sent a surge of energy through an appendage of the combat robot. Its flamethrower arm drooped, powerless.
The other two combat robots swiveled and converged as Trig charged toward them. His eyes were ablaze, and he didn’t even bother to dodge. He gripped the pulse-sword in his left hand and a small energy dagger in his right.
Incensed at the first battle mek for launching fire at him, Trig collided with that one, thrusting and slashing. He tapped the hilt button to increase the sword’s discharge power and, in a blur of well-aimed blows, shorted out the mek’s primary memory core, erasing the combat programming and shutting it down completely.
Istian focused on the second intact battle machine. It raised two artillery arms, but he ran forward faster than it could reset its aimpoint. The two arms launched their explosives after he had passed into its blind spot. The shells exploded, leaving a smoking crater a meter behind Istian. Then he was inside its vulnerable zone.
The combat machine retracted its artillery arms and extruded bladed weapons instead, stabbing appendages that flailed about like sharp pincers. Istian parried them, letting his thoughts flow, trying to feel the guidance of Jool Noret’s spirit within him. When Istian could not detect the presence, he thought, Why are you silent?
For the first time, Istian fought without thinking, without fear of injury or pain. Before he even realized what he was doing, three of the machine’s sharp-bladed arms fell to the side, drooping like withered willows.
For good measure, Istian struck the pulse-sword against the lowered artillery arms to prevent the robot from firing projectiles at the fanatical spectators who surged forward as if they wanted to help fight the enemy with their bare hands. If the Martyrists got too close, Istian knew they would be massacred.
Yowling like a wild man, Trig was already battering the last combat robot. The machine flailed its arms, attempting to use a different set of weapons. Clearly it was on the defensive, unprepared for the unfettered fury of this berserk fighter. Watching him, Istian thought with a sadness in his heart that Nar Trig should have been the one in whom the spirit of Jool Noret was reborn.
Gritting his teeth, he fought harder.
One of the mek’s cutting arms slashed him in the shoulder, and a second blade sliced across his chest. But Istian bent backward, flexing at an amazing angle so that the serrated edge traced only a thin line of blood across his sternum as the weapons arm swept past.
Istian bounced back like a released spring. His pulse-sword, also at its highest setting, slammed into the armored torso of the combat machine. He released a pulse that drained the rest of his battery, a full-fledged surge that paralyzed the fighting robot’s mobile systems, leaving its arms and legs dead, its artillery deactivated, and only its head swiveling back and forth, helpless.
Trig struck his own opponent’s neck column, hammering down in a shower of sparks that made the mek jitter and thrash. He slammed the weapon home again with enough force to break the tubing and support pipes, and finally snapped off the encased armored head. The heavy body drooped, dead.
Feeling the wash of adrenaline leave him like a tangible presence— could it have been the spirit of Jool Noret?— Istian slumped, letting his drained pulse-sword clatter to the floor. His exhausted muscles trembled. Beside him, Trig paced like a caged Salusan tiger looking for another enemy.
Before they could turn back to the first paralyzed combat robot, whose head still swiveled back and forth on its deactivated body, the angry Martyrists surged forward. They carried their own weapons, cudgels, sledgehammers, prybars. As a mob, they vented their fury against the three defeated fighting machines, swinging and crushing, shouting as they battered the murderous meks into collapsed hulks.
Sparks flew; components were torn loose. Processing units were smashed, gelcircuitry modules pried free and splattered on the warehouse’s hard floor. The mob did not stop until, after a long and great clamor, they had pounded the shrapnel into unrecognizable wreckage.
“We can use those metals,” the military administrator said brightly. “The Martyrists have already begun a program of using scrap from destroyed thinking machines to make our building materials, agricultural tools, and carpentry supplies. The ancient scriptures tell us that swords must be beaten into plowshares.”
“It is not enough just to defeat the minions of the evermind,” Nar Trig agreed, his voice deep. “Victory will be sweeter if we can turn them to our own advantage.”
“Like Chirox,” Istian pointed out. His partner did not respond.