Part II
88 B.G.
Nineteen Years Later
Machines have something humans will always lack: infinite patience and the longevity to support it.
— SUPREME COMMANDER VORIAN ATREIDES,
Early Assessments of the Jihad (Fifth Revision)
Almost two decades of relative quiet finally allowed the remnants of humanity to pick up the pieces, rebuild their worlds and their societies… and forget the magnitude of the threat.
Except for Corrin, all of the Synchronized Worlds were uninhabitable wastelands. Humans themselves had proved to be as ruthless as any thinking machine. The survivors regularly assured themselves that the result had been worth the effort. Though some planets had remained clean, the Omnius Scourge alone had killed fully a third of the human population. In its wake, many children were born, new cities and agricultural settlements built, trade networks reestablished. The League went through a succession of leaders, and people turned their attentions toward the parochial concerns of survival.
Corrin remained a festering sore in space, an impenetrable barricade of robotic warships held at bay by the network of scrambler satellites and an ever-watchful force of human sentry ships. The thinking machines tried repeatedly to break free, and the vigilant humans countered them every time. It was a whirlpool of resources, soldiers, weapons, ships.
The last incarnation of Omnius hid behind his armored wall of secrecy, waiting….
* * *
ABULURD HARKONNEN, WITH his redefined service rank of bator, was stationed with the watchdog fleet above Corrin. There, he could still perform a vital service for the League, though he suspected that his brother Faykan had suggested the assignment simply to get the Harkonnen embarrassment out of sight, far from the League capital.
Since the end of the Jihad, Faykan had left military service and built a fine political career for himself, eventually being elected as Interim Viceroy after a succession of six others, each as bland and uninspired as Brevin O’Kukovich had been. Faykan, at least, seemed to be the strong leader the resurrected League had been waiting for.
Abulurd had commanded the guardian fleet for the better part of a year already, making sure Omnius did not break through the defensive barricade. He hoped the citizens slept better at night knowing that dedicated soldiers stood against further assaults from the thinking machines.
The evermind continued to design and build new ships, augmented weapons, heavily shielded rammers to batter against its electronic prison walls. Like clockwork, the machines tried to breach the human defenses— attempting to disrupt the scrambler net, to launch fleeing update ships, anything to scatter copies of the evermind to new worlds. So far, Omnius used brute force more often than innovation, but each attempt was methodical, shifting parameters slightly, trying to determine a technique that would work. The evermind’s tactics changed occasionally, but not significantly— except for a few wild sorties that had taken everyone by surprise.
None of the enemy attempts had succeeded, but Abulurd remained on edge. The Army of Humanity did not dare lower its guard.
For nineteen years, while history and politics and social change trickled across the League Worlds, the human battleships at Corrin drove back furious suicidal plunges. The evermind tried old technologies and new ones, throwing vessel after vessel against the scrambler net, launching guided projectiles against the patrol fleet, scattering decoy targets in all directions. And when those robot ships crashed and failed, the machines simply built more.
On the surface of the planet, the robotic war industries never rested, manufacturing weapons and ships to be turned against the League warships. Corrin’s orbit was strewn with the wreckage of dead vessels in a dense obstacle course as thick as any intentional defenses. Meanwhile, on all the League Worlds, factories and shipyards constructed and launched replacement vessels to plug chinks in the defenses around Corrin as swiftly as the enemy could hammer away at them.
For the most part, though, the people in the League paid little attention to the far-off battlefield.
Many in the League Parliament were frustrated at the constant expenditures, now that the Jihad had been declared “over.” The priorities of reconstruction and repopulation required vast amounts of funding and resources, yet the watchdog fleet was a constant drain. The century of fighting and massacres had left the League of Nobles weak, frayed, and depleted with billions dead and primary industries devoted to the production of war materials at the expense of other needs.
People were anxious for change.
When, two years after the Great Purge, Vorian Atreides had proposed an ambitious new mission to eradicate the last known stronghold of the cymeks on Hessra, he was labeled a warmonger and actually shouted out of the assembly chamber. So much for appreciating the greatest war hero in history, Abulurd had thought. In the years since, he had been distressed to watch how his mentor was being sidelined and cut out, a symbol of the bloody past and an obstacle to a naively bright future.
If only Corrin wasn’t such an inconvenient reminder.
With the end of the Jihad, the tattered military had been reorganized and renamed the Army of Humanity. As a symbolic change, even the old ranks and command structure had been modified. Instead of the efficient numerical promotions leading up to primero, now the rank designations were taken from an ancient military in the golden age of mankind, dating from the Old Empire or even beyond— levenbrech, bator, burseg, bashar….
Though adopting the Harkonnen name all those years ago had probably stalled his career, Abulurd’s service record and the frequent quiet assistance of Supreme Bashar Atreides had earned him a rank equivalent to that of colonel or segundo. Over the past fifteen years he had served on six different worlds, performing mainly civil engineering work, reconstruction, and local security while maintaining a military presence. At least here, commanding the watchdog fleet at Corrin, he was in the thick of things again.
Even after months of facing off against the imposing robotic war fleet that maintained its bristling defensive posture, Abulurd did not feel the tedium in the way that some of the younger soldiers did. Most of the fighters assigned to guardian duty were too young to remember when the Synchronized Worlds had controlled much of the galaxy. They had never fought in the Jihad itself. It was history for them, not the stuff of nightmares.
These were the first generation of children born after the Scourge, bred from healthy genetic stock and more resistant to diseases. They were familiar with stories of the Jihad and its lingering, untreatable scars; they had heard of the brave battles led by Vorian Atreides— now Supreme Bashar— and Quentin Butler; they knew of the Three Martyrs and still talked about the “cowardly betrayal” of Xavier Harkonnen, believing the propaganda.
During the relative peace, Abulurd had filed several formal requests to reopen the investigation into his grandfather’s supposed treachery, but such business fell on deaf ears. Nearly eighty years had gone by, and the League had far more pressing concerns….
Sometimes, in the mess halls or exercise chambers, the young soldiers in his watchdog crew pressed their commander for war stories, but he could sense their underlying scorn for his lack of accomplishments. Abulurd had been sheltered from most of the major battles, protected by Vorian Atreides. Some, demonstrating prejudices they had learned from their parents, commented quietly that they expected little else from a Harkonnen. Other soldiers in the watchdog fleet seemed more impressed by the fact that he had rescued Rayna Butler, the famous leader of the wild Cult of Serena, from Parmentier.
Looking down at the last Omnius stronghold from the bridge of his observation ship, Abulurd endured. He knew what was important.
He had four hundred ballistas and over a thousand javelins, an imposing and heavily armed force to keep the machines utterly confined, though the Holtzman scrambler satellites and mines formed the primary line of resistance. Conversely, the main machine defenses covering Corrin— and Omnius— were impregnable. No League offensives had been able to open a gap large enough to dump their pulse-atomics. Not even suicidal Cult of Serena bombers could break through. They were at an impasse.
Running his watchdog fleet with diligence and discipline, Abulurd initiated drill after drill to keep the soldiers sharp and alert. The intimidating robotic ships were positioned like a spiked collar around the planet, just out of reach. How Abulurd wanted to push forward and obliterate them once and for all, to prove his worth on a real battlefield! But for that, he would need another thousand of the League’s most powerful ships— and weary, scarred humanity was simply not willing to commit to such an effort.
Could the thinking machines be lulling us into complacency? Making us think they have no effective innovations?
* * *
UNFORTUNATELY, HE WAS proved right sooner than he expected.
The human soldiers, sick with boredom and counting down the days until they were rotated home, suddenly sounded alarms. Abulurd rushed to the bridge of his command ballista.
“Three more robotic ships have broken from the defensive ring, Bator Harkonnen,” announced the subordinate scan operator. “Heading in random trajectories, racing toward the scrambler net.”
“They’ve tried that one before— it won’t work.”
“This is something new, sir. Doesn’t follow the usual pattern.”
“Look at those engines they’ve got!”
“Sound the alarms. Full defensive formations. Prepare to intercept, if anything should happen to get through.” Abulurd crossed his arms. “No matter how fast they fly, the scrambler satellites will wipe their gelcircuitry. Omnius knows that.”
The new thinking-machine craft were sleek missiles, metal daggers that stabbed the satellite net, plunging through Holtzman barriers that should have erased their programming. But the craft tore through and continued to accelerate.
“Power up weapons and open fire!” Abulurd called over the open comline. “Stop them— it could be an update sphere.”
“How did they get through? New shielding?”
“Or maybe whatever’s aboard those missiles is just standard-issue automation, no gelcircuitry.” He leaned forward, studying the readings from the scanners. “But then there can’t be any thinking machine aboard. What is piloting those things? Did Omnius dust off an old-model nonsentient computer?”
The watchdog ships opened fire, but the new missiles were accelerating so fast that even high-velocity projectiles couldn’t intercept them. Other League ships converged, firing in a frantic barrage, realizing that one of the fleeing craft just might get away. But it couldn’t be carrying a copy of the evermind, not after passing through the scrambler web.
“Keep watching Corrin as well!” Abulurd called. “I don’t trust Omnius not to try something else while we’re on a wild goose chase.”
“We’ll never catch up to those projectiles, Bator— “
“The hell we won’t.” Quickly Abulurd identified the trio of fast-cruising vessels on the outer fringe of the defense network. “Full dispersal of perimeter ships to intercept. Stop them at all costs. You have never had a higher priority in your military careers. Even if their gelcircuitry’s wiped, they may be carrying more plagues.”
The suggestion struck a cold panic into the soldiers, and they scrambled to follow his orders.
“Bator! The machines have launched one of their surprise sorties against the scrambler satellites! Now they’re all trying to break through!”
Abulurd slammed a fist into the palm of his other hand. “I suspected it was some kind of decoy. Move in closer to Corrin! Drive back those robot warships!” He studied both sets of readings, suddenly worried that he had chosen the wrong decoy. Which one was the real plot? Or was Omnius fully invested in both schemes?
A flurry of League intercept ships came in firing weapons, while howling challenges and insults at the robots. Ring after ring of the human defenders grouped high above the planet in an attempt to block the ever-accelerating machine vessels.
The three robotic ships each took a different route, flying in wild trajectories, as if in hope that at least one of them would escape. The human ships easily destroyed the first one before it built up sufficient speed to escape from Corrin.
Meantime, near the scrambler net, the major battle was engaged. Some robot ships plowed into the deadly pulse web, careening through; though their gelcircuitry brains were obliterated, the momentum of the giant machine vessels turned them into huge projectiles. The watchdog fleet used their most powerful weapons to cut the hulks to pieces. Hundreds of small new scrambler satellites were deployed as replacements, stitching together the energy holes in the web before it was too late.
The second superfast projectile came under heavy fire as it raced toward the red-giant star. Before the machine ship could find sanctuary in the roaring solar environment that would have been deadly to any biological organism, the sheer firepower of the human defenders broke the vessel into glowing shrapnel. Two of them destroyed.
The third superfast projectile poured all energy into its engines, picking up more and more velocity, gaining distance from Corrin and from the fleet. The outermost human scout vessels, which Abulurd had placed in concentric orbits farther and farther from the infested planet, came in at last, cutting off the robotic ship’s escape and opening fire.
Impact after impact struck true, but could not penetrate the enemy vessel’s armor. As the flurry of defensive battle— the diversion, or the real plan?— continued closer to Corrin itself, seven more human ships converged on the lone remaining projectile at the outskirts of the solar system.
At the last moment before its hull failed, the front of the superfast projectile split open like a flower and vomited a swarm of smaller pods, self-propelled canisters not much larger than coffins. They streaked away in all directions like sparks from a stirred campfire, startling the defensive fleet.
“Omnius has a new trick!” one of the pilots transmitted.
Abulurd saw what was happening and made up his mind that these pods were the true reason for the fleeing ships. He made a command decision. “Stop them! They are either some terrible weapon, or new copies of Omnius to be spread elsewhere. If we fail here, the human race could pay for centuries!”
The soldiers pursued and took every available shot. They destroyed most of the independently guided canisters. But not all of them.
Remembering the plague-dispersal torpedoes that had rained down upon Parmentier and other League Worlds, Abulurd felt deep dread in his heart.
“Track them before they get out of sensor range. Follow the trajectories and estimate their targets.” He waited tensely as his soldiers scrambled to project the paths of the escaping machine ships. “Damn! We’ll have to tighten our defenses so that this doesn’t happen again!” He ground his teeth. Vorian Atreides would be disappointed in him for letting such a potential disaster slip through his fingers.
“One cluster is heading for Salusa Secundus, Bator Harkonnen,” said a tactician. “The other appears to be targeted on… Rossak.”
Abulurd nodded, not particularly surprised. Despite the risk, he knew what he had to do, the only way that he could beat the fast-burning machine missiles to their targets.
“I’m taking a spacefolder scout and returning to Zimia to sound the alarm. I pray that they can prepare in time.”