Some say it is better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven. That is a defeatist attitude. I intend to rule everywhere, not just in Hell.
— GENERAL AGAMEMNON,
New Memoirs
It was time for changes— they were long overdue, in fact. Perhaps they had all the patience in the universe, but nineteen years was surely long enough.
Agamemnon hauled his enormous walker to the top of the windswept glacier. Abrasive snow and breezes whipped across the uneven terrain, and starlight reflected under the bruised skies of Hessra. The light on the frozen planetoid was as dim as the cymeks’ prospects had been. Until the Purge.
Juno clambered up beside him, her immense shape exuding power and ambition. Articulated legs rose and fell, powered by durable engines. Because the Titans had lived for so long, they tended to lose track of their goals, letting each day slip away from them, and now it was growing too late.
He and his beloved companion stood together, immune to the inhospitable cold. Behind them, the half-buried towers of the Cogitors’ fortress looked like a crumbling monument to lost glory— reminding Agamemnon of gaudy shrines and memorials he had forced slaves to build for him on Earth.
“You are the lord of all you survey, my love,” Juno said.
He couldn’t tell if she was teasing him or admiring his minuscule victory. “It is pathetic. After all, we have nothing to fear. The League can barely wipe their own noses, and they eradicated Omnius on every Synchronized World except Corrin, where he hides behind all his weapons.”
“As we are hiding here?”
“Why? There is no longer any reason for it.” With a heavy metal limb, he smashed a crater into the ice in front of him. “What is to stop us now?”
Inside his mind, Agamemnon’s thoughts rumbled like distant thunder. He found it shameful that he had allowed his own dreams to fade— perhaps he should simply have died like so many of his coconspirators. After nearly nine decades of their new rebellion against Omnius, the general and his handful of surviving cymeks had accomplished little and were hiding like rats in holes.
“I grow weary of this,” Agamemnon said. “All of it.”
He and Juno understood each other well. It surprised him that the ambitious female Titan had remained with him for more than a millennium. Perhaps it was only because she had no other viable options… or perhaps she really cared for him.
“What precisely are you waiting for, my love? Such complacency has turned us into apathetic lotus-eaters, just like the population of the Old Empire we despised so much. We have been sitting around for all these years like…” Her voice grew full of self-derision. “Like Cogitors! The galaxy is an open field for us— especially now.”
With his optic threads, Agamemnon scanned the lifeless mountain-scape, the inexorable tides of ice. “There once was a time when thinking machines served us. Now Omnius has been destroyed and the hrethgir are weakened— we should take advantage of that. But there is still a significant chance we will fail.”
Juno’s voice was thick with scorn, prodding him as always. “When did you become a frightened child, Agamemnon?”
“You are right. My own attitude disgusts me. Being a ruler for the sake of bullying a few underlings is not sufficient. It is good to have slaves at one’s beck and call, but even that grows tiresome.”
“Yes, look at how Yorek Thurr behaved on Wallach IX. He commanded a whole planet, but that wasn’t enough for him.”
“Wallach IX is a radioactive scab,” Agamemnon said. “Like all the other Synchronized Worlds. It is irrelevant.”
“Any planet that was once a Synchronized World is never irrelevant, my love. You must think in a different paradigm.”
They stared together at the desolate landscape of Hessra, as lifeless as so many of the scorched Synchronized Worlds they had explored, and discarded, after the Great Purge. Presently, Agamemnon said, “We must instigate changes, instead of being the passive recipients of whatever history throws at us.”
The two Titans swiveled their head turrets and strode back across the rough ice toward the Cogitors’ towers. “It is time for a fresh start.”
* * *
BEOWULF SUSPECTED NOTHING, though his fate had been part of the Titan general’s burgeoning plans for some time. Dante suggested, “His damaged brain no longer has the capacity to sense nuances or draw conclusions.”
“The clod can barely walk down a corridor,” Agamemnon said. “I’ve put up with him long enough.”
“Perhaps we should just let him wander outside and fall headfirst into a crevasse,” Juno said. “That would save us all a lot of trouble.”
“He already fell into a crevasse when we first took over Hessra. We were foolish enough to rescue him,” Agamemnon said.
The three Titans summoned the wavering neo-cymek into the central chamber that had once held the Cogitors’ pedestals. The etched Muadru runes on the wall blocks had been defaced with obscene scribbles. Scuttling about in limited walker-forms, the enslaved secondary-neos went about their laboratory duties, monitoring electrafluid-processing equipment for the cymek rulers.
Agamemnon had everything he needed. Now what he needed was more.
Beowulf lumbered in, the thoughtrode control of his walker limbs unsteady. Signals tangled and overlapped so that he staggered like an intoxicated man trying to move from one point to another. “Y-ye-yes, Agamemnon. You c-ca-called me?”
The general’s voice was carefully neutral. “I have always been grateful for the service you performed in helping free the cymeks from Omnius. We are now at a watershed. Our circumstances are about to change dramatically for the better, Beowulf. But before we can do that, we need to perform a bit of housecleaning.”
Agamemnon lifted his walker-form, looming high in the stone-walled chamber. He withdrew one of the antique weapons he kept in display cases on his body. Beowulf seemed intrigued.
Dante darted forward and deactivated the engines and power source that drove the brain-damaged cymek’s robotic body.
“W-wha-what— “
Juno’s voice sounded sweet and reasonable. “We have to get rid of some old junk before we can move on, Beowulf.”
Agamemnon said, “Thank the gods in all their incarnations that Xerxes isn’t still here in his blundering attempts to assist us. But you, Beowulf… you are a disaster waiting to happen.”
The Titans clustered around the deactivated walker-form, extending their articulated arms, fashioning the necessary tools to begin the dismantling process. Agamemnon hoped to try out some of the antiques in his collection again.
“N-no-nooo— “
“Even I have been waiting for this a long time, General Agamemnon,” Dante said. “The Titans are ready for a great resurgence at long last.”
“What matters most is that we expand our power base, taking over more territory and holding it with an iron fist. I was distracted for a long time by desiring the planets inhabited by the hrethgir, but since the Great Purge, there are innumerable bastions for the cymeks to conquer. I will be happy to build our new domain from the graveyards of Omnius. Before, when I dismissed the possibility, I did not consider how ironic and satisfying it could be. A radioactive wasteland poses no threat to our protective shells and our shielded brain canisters. To reign in Hell will only be our first step. Thereafter, we can build our strength and strike out against the League Worlds.”
“There’s nothing wrong with beginning a new empire in the ruins, my love.” Like tearing a giant crab apart, Juno disengaged and removed the first set of bulky legs from Beowulf’s walker-body. “So long as it is only the beginning.”
The damaged neo-cymek continued to wail and plead with them, becoming less and less articulate as his urgency grew. Finally, in disgust, Agamemnon deactivated the speakerpatch connected to the preservation canister. “There. Now we can concentrate and finish this euthanasia.”
“Unfortunately,” Dante continued, “only we three Titans remain. Many of our neos are loyal enough in their own way, but they have always been passive. We drew them from subjugated populations.”
Agamemnon snapped one of the thoughtrode clusters from Beowulf’s walker-form. “We need to develop a new Titan hierarchy, but we can never obtain the stock we need from our dwindling resources. The neos are all sheep.”
“Then we shall simply have to look elsewhere,” Juno pointed out. “Though Omnius tried his best to exterminate them, a great many hrethgir remain. And the survivors are the strongest ones.”
“Including my son Vorian.” As he worked to dismantle all of the components that kept Beowulf alive, the Titan general was reminded of the days when his loyal trustee Vor would lovingly and meticulously clean, polish, and refurbish all of his father’s delicate cymek components, in a gesture that went back to the dawn of history, washing the feet of a beloved leader. Those had been their most intimate times between father and son.
Agamemnon missed those days, and he wished things had not gone wrong with Vorian. His son had been his best chance for a perfect successor, but the humans had corrupted him.
Juno did not notice his reverie. “We should recruit from them, take talented candidates and convert them to our cause. I’m certain we have the wiles and the techniques to accomplish something so simple. Once we have a person’s brain detached, there’s little we can’t do to manipulate him.”
The Titan general considered. “First, we will scout the radioactive planets and decide where best to establish our strongholds.”
“Wallach IX will be a good first step,” Dante said. “It is near Hessra.”
“I agree,” Agamemnon said, “and we’ll step on whatever remains of the throne of that maddening Yorek Thurr.”
Beowulf’s mechanical body was disassembled now, and the components lay strewn about for recycling and reconditioning. Silently, the secondary-neos came forward to take the pieces away.
As Agamemnon thought about all the wasted Synchronized Worlds, it occurred to him that Vorian had been the spearhead behind all that nuclear destruction. Perhaps in a way, he might be an appropriate successor to the Titans after all.