The path to victory is not always direct.
— TLALOC,
A Time for Titans
When yet another Omnius battle fleet arrived at the cymek stronghold on Richese, Agamemnon groaned at the evermind’s persistent foolishness. “If his gelcircuitry brain is supposed to be so sophisticated, why is it that Omnius never learns?” Through the speakerpatches of his intimidating walker-form, the general’s synthesized voice carried a clear undertone of annoyance.
He did not expect the hostage robot to answer him, but Seurat said, “Relentlessness is often an advantage of thinking machines. It has brought us many victories over the centuries— as you well know, General Agamemnon.”
Despite Seurat’s apparent lack of resistance— he was a damned robot after all, even if an autonomous one— his answers and advice had been singularly unhelpful. He seemed to be toying with his cymek captors, refusing to provide answers, withholding necessary information. After more than five decades, it was very frustrating. But Agamemnon couldn’t kill him yet.
The Titan general strode around the vast open room, angry at the robot fleet approaching the planet. His crablike walker was much larger than the bodies he’d worn as a lapdog of Omnius, before he and the surviving Titans had rebelled and broken free of the Synchronized Worlds. After the thinking machines were crippled on Bela Tegeuse by a computer virus— unwittingly delivered by Seurat himself— Agamemnon and his cymeks had conquered that world, and then they had seized Richese, which they now used as a base of operations.
The general grumbled. “This is the seventh time Omnius has sent a fleet either here or to Bela Tegeuse. Each time we’ve succeeded in driving him back, and he knows we have scrambler technology. He’s caught in a feedback loop, unable to move on and leave us alone.” He did not point out, though, that this group was noticeably larger than the previous cluster Omnius had sent against Richese. Perhaps he is learning after all….
Seurat’s smooth coppery face was always placid, expressionless. “Your cymeks have destroyed many of Omnius’s update spheres, thereby causing significant damage to the Synchronized Worlds. The evermind must respond until he achieves the desired result.”
“I wish he’d spend his time fighting the hrethgir instead. Maybe the human vermin and the Omnius forces will wipe each other out— and do us all a favor.”
“I would not consider that a favor,” Seurat said.
In disgust, Agamemnon clattered away on heavily reinforced piston legs. Automatic defensive alarms had begun to sound. “I don’t know why I shouldn’t just dismantle you.”
“Nor do I. Perhaps we should think of an answer together.”
The Titan general had never let Seurat know his true thoughts. He’d captured the independent robot because Seurat had spent a great deal of time with Agamemnon’s treacherous son, Vorian Atreides. Vorian had been a trustee, given advantages and a great deal of power. But for the love of a woman, Serena Butler, he had thrown everything away, turning against the thinking machines and defecting to the free humans.
For many years, the Titan general had been unable to explain why Vorian had betrayed his own father. Agamemnon had placed so much hope in him, had made so many plans. He had intended to convert Vor into a cymek himself, as a worthy successor to the Titans. Now the general had no options for continuing his own bloodline. There would be no more offspring….
Seurat, in theory, could provide insights into how Vorian thought and behaved. “Would you like to hear a joke, General Agamemnon? Your son told it to me, long ago. How many hrethgir are required to fill one brain canister?”
The Titan paused as he strode through the exit arch. Was that why he kept this robot around, just to hear stories about bygone times with Vorian as his copilot aboard the Dream Voyager? That nonsense was a softness Agamemnon could not afford to show.
“I’m in no mood for it, Seurat. I have a battle to attend.” The cymeks would be rallying their forces, launching attack ships. He made up his mind that once he drove off this annoying Omnius fleet, he would destroy the independent robot and start fresh.
Inside the control center, Dante, one of the three remaining Titans, operated the inventory and communications systems for the Richese installation. “They have repeated their decree five times now, verbatim. It is the same one they issued during their previous attempt. They await our surrender.”
“Let me hear it,” Agamemnon said.
A flat voice poured from the speakers. “To the Titans Agamemnon, Juno, and Dante, your cymek rebellion has caused harm to the Synchronized Worlds, so your threat must be eradicated. Omnius has issued instructions for your immediate capture and the destruction of your followers.”
“Do they expect us to feel guilty about it?” Agamemnon said. “Juno isn’t even here.” His beloved mate had spent the past several years as a queen on Bela Tegeuse.
Dante moved his walker-body in a strangely human gesture as if he meant to shrug his shoulders. “For a thousand years Omnius allowed us to serve the thinking machines. According to his calculations, we should be grateful.”
“I think you’re learning humor from Seurat. Is Beowulf ready? I want him to take the brunt of it, if anything goes wrong.”
“His fleet is prepared.”
“All of them expendable and armed with scrambler mines?”
“Yes, all neos, with clear instructions.”
Neo-cymeks had been created from the enslaved populace on Richese and Bela Tegeuse. Precise surgery detached volunteer brains from frail human forms and installed them in mechanical walkers. Ever wary and vigilant, the Titans ensured their converts’ loyalty by installing “dead man” switches into all their life-support systems that would cause them to break down if the Titans died. Even the neos on other cymek planets, far from here, had to receive a “reset” signal at least once every two years, or else they would perish. If the general and his two companions were assassinated, all of the neo-cymeks would eventually succumb. It not only prevented betrayal, but also fostered in them a fanatical desire to protect Agamemnon, Juno, and Dante.
The general grumbled. “I don’t know whether to hope for Beowulf’s survival or his destruction. I simply don’t know what to do with him.” He paced with metal legs, waiting for events to unfold as he thumped along.
Beowulf had been the first neo-cymek to join the Titans’ rebellion against Omnius. When he had attacked the Rossak Sorceress Zufa Cenva and the businessman Aurelius Venport, based on information delivered by a human spy for the thinking machines, Beowulf had suffered severe damage. Though a mechanical body could easily be replaced or rebuilt, the neo-cymek’s brain had been injured. The Titans kept him around, but the clumsy and erratic Beowulf was now more of a liability than an asset.
“I think I’ll go up there myself. Is there a military ship available for my preservation canister?”
“Always, General Agamemnon. Shall I reply to the machines?”
“We’ll give them a clear enough answer when we hit them with scrambler mines.”
Agamemnon stalked out to the launching pad. Machine arms detached his protected canister and moved his brain from the walker-body and into a nest of control systems that connected thoughtrodes to his brain-output sensors. When the general launched his razor-edged combat ship to orbit, it felt like an athletic, soaring body streaming raw power behind it.
The clustered thinking-machine fleet followed predictable tactics, and Agamemnon was tired of hearing the combat robots’ dire pronouncements. True, the evermind was prevented from killing the Titans, but his robot fleets could cause significant damage and destroy everything else. Did Omnius expect the cymeks to simply surrender and metaphorically cut their own throats?
But the general was not as confident as he let on. This attack group was significantly larger than the previous ones, and defeating it would deplete many of the cymeks’ defenses.
If the hrethgir hadn’t occupied Omnius with so many constant aggressive strikes, Agamemnon’s handful of rebels wouldn’t be able to defend against the military strength of Omnius, or even the human vermin. Either enemy could have sent an utterly overwhelming force, had they chosen to do so. The general realized that his situation was rapidly growing untenable on Richese.
Once he reached the other cymek ships in space, scout probes flitted from the shelter of the planet’s dark side to spy upon the robotic fleet.
“They— they— they are preparing to— to— to attack,” Beowulf said in a maddeningly slow, stuttering transmission. The damaged neo’s thoughts were so muddled that he could not send a clear signal through his thoughtrodes. When on the ground, Beowulf could barely make his walker-form stride forward without staggering or stumbling into things.
“I’m taking command,” Agamemnon said. No sense wasting time.
“Ack— ack— acknowledged.” At least Beowulf did not try to pretend he was still talented or capable.
“Spread in a random pattern. Open fire with pulse projectiles.”
The neo-cymek ships rushed out like eager wolf pups baring their fangs. The robotic fleet quickly pulled together into an attack formation, but the cymek ships were much smaller, harder to hit, and more spread out. Agamemnon’s defenders dodged projectile fire so they could dump their scrambler mines.
The small magnetic capsules were designed using Holtzman field technology copied from hrethgir weapons, some seized on battlefields, others provided by the human spy. Cymeks were immune to scrambling pulses, but the League of Nobles had used the technology against thinking machines for a century.
During the deployment of the mines, robotic firepower vaporized dozens of neo-cymek ships, but many scramblers flew free and clung to the metal hulls of enemy battleships, sending out waves of disruptive energy. With gelcircuitry minds erased, the robot ships drifted out of control, colliding with each other.
Seeing no need to risk himself, Agamemnon hung back but enjoyed his proximity to the battle. The thinking machines were being crushed even more resoundingly than he had anticipated.
Another ship streaked up from the city below. As it roared toward the enemy fleet, Agamemnon wondered if Dante had also decided to join the battle, but that was unlikely. The bureaucratic Titan did not like to be in the thick of things. No, this one was someone else.
He knew that many of his neo-cymeks longed to fight against Omnius— and that was no surprise. The evermind had oppressed Richese for so long, back when the neos had been mere humans; it was only natural that they wanted their revenge. The neos did not complain that the Titans ruled with just as tight a grip: Since Agamemnon had given them the opportunity to become machines with human minds, the volunteers forgave him his occasional brutalities.
The mysterious new ship rose into the thick of the Omnius forces, but did not open fire. It dodged projectiles as it threaded through the fray, passing beyond the front lines of damaged machine vessels. Signals rattled like ricochets across the communication frequencies, some coded and incomprehensible in machine language, others jeering and defiant catcalls from the neos.
“Make inroads and destroy as many Omnius ships as you can,” Agamemnon said. “They’ll go home stinging.”
The neos started forward, while the mysterious ship threaded its way deeper into the group of surviving robot ships. Agamemnon expanded the range of his sensors and watched the single unidentified ship lose its gamble. As it approached a robotic battleship, it was captured and drawn inside, like an insect snagged by the long tongue of a lizard.
Neos launched more scrambler mines. Apparently, the machines recalculated the odds and finally concluded that they had no chance for a victory here. By now the Omnius fleet was reeling from the damage and pulled back, retreating from Richese, leaving a host of their ships dead in orbit, like so much garbage.
“We have determined that other battles have higher priority,” one of the robot ship commanders announced; it sounded like a weak excuse. “We will return with a far superior force, which will maintain our losses at an acceptable level. Be aware, General Agamemnon, that Omnius’s sentence against you and your cymeks still stands.”
“Oh, of course it does. And you be aware,” Agamemnon transmitted, knowing the thinking machines would not interpret his taunting tone, “that if you come back and remind us, we’ll send you packing again.”
Leaving more than a hundred damaged or deactivated ships drifting in cold space above Richese, the Omnius fleet departed. The wreckage would be a navigational hazard, but perhaps Agamemnon and his cymeks could use them as part of a defensive barricade. Their base could not be too secure.
The cymek understood, though, that the robotic commander had issued no idle threat. The thinking machines would surely return, and next time Omnius would provide sufficient firepower to insure a victory. Agamemnon understood that he and his Titans needed to leave Richese and find other worlds to conquer, more isolated planets where they could build up impregnable strongholds and expand their territory. That would be enough to elude Omnius, for now.
He would discuss the matter with Juno and Dante, but they needed to move quickly. The evermind might be clumsy and predictable, but he was also absolutely relentless.
* * *
MUCH LATER, AFTER returning to the city and assessing the damage wrought by the robotic attack, Agamemnon discovered to his chagrin that the pilot of the lone ship had not been an ambitious neo-cymek after all.
Somehow, after fifty-six years of captivity, the independent robot Seurat had escaped and flown off to rejoin the thinking-machine fleet.