The final analysis may show that I killed as many humans as Omnius did… perhaps more. Even so, that would not make me as bad as the thinking machines. My motives were entirely different.
— SUPREME BASHAR VORIAN ATREIDES,
The Unholy Jihad
After several failed reconnaissance missions, the Supreme Bashar finally had a complete, disappointing update: All nine of the automated factory pods remained intact, unaffected by any measure the humans threw against them. The manufacturing pits continued to spew out hungry piranha devices by the tens of thousands.
Since the piranha mites destroyed and dismantled almost all observation devices, seizing their components as raw materials for assembling more copies of themselves, Abulurd and Vor had access to only brief snapshots that showed the extent of the expanding robotic factories that burrowed in their craters.
Vor paced the floor, furious for inspiration. “What if we sent in projectiles filled with highly caustic liquids? Once the piranha mites strip away the shells, the acid will spill down and eat them.”
“It might work, Supreme Bashar, but it would be extremely hard to hit the targets,” Abulurd said, still staring at the images. “We could not get close enough to use hoses and pumps to spray acid into the factory pits.”
“If we could get that close, we might as well use plasma howitzers,” Vor said. “But it’s a start. Unless you have a better idea?”
“Working on it, sir.”
Abulurd stared at the images around the nearest pit, struck by the dichotomy of what he saw. Any fast-flying attack vessels were shredded, their metals stolen, and entire crews massacred. Buildings and machinery were torn apart; tall mounds of waste debris lay scattered around the gaping mouth of the fabrication cylinder. Human bodies sprawled about, splashed with red, mangled and chewed as if dozens of small projectiles had exploded inside their bodies.
“Those mites are too small to have sophisticated discrimination programming, but they are picking the targets somehow. Disassembling threats? Seizing concentrated resources? Maybe they’re programmed to attack any organic material they detect.”
Abulurd sifted through the sketchy available information. Oddly enough, in the lush surrounding parklands, the shrubs and tall trees were intact, entirely undisturbed. Birds flew away from the buzzing swarms of piranha mites, but the tiny ravenous spheres paid no attention to them.
“No, Supreme Bashar. Look, they’ve left the trees and other animals alone. They know to go after humans. Could they be homing in on… brain activity? Tracking our minds?”
“Much too sophisticated— and we know they don’t have gelcircuitry AI technology. That would have been destroyed when they passed through the scrambler web at Corrin. No, it’s got to be something simple and obvious.”
Abulurd continued to shuffle through the recon images. The mites attacked humans, and they sought out usable metals and minerals to build more copies of themselves. Cellulose, fabric awnings, wooden structures, and living trees and animals were unaffected.
He stared at the incongruity of an image taken from an infested park in Zimia. It was adorned with the usual fountains, statues, and memorials, but one statue of a fallen Jihad commander had been completely stripped down to its stone foundation. Even more bizarre, in another statue of a hero riding on a Salusan stallion, the piranha mites had destroyed only the human figure of the sculpture, leaving the horse part intact. But both parts of the statue had been made of the same stone.
“Wait, Supreme Bashar! I think— ” He caught his breath, remembering the unexpected, but clearly noticeable, delay in mite attacks against women and priests in flowing robes or dresses, or men with strange hats, people with unusual coverings. Disguising their humanoid outlines.
Vor looked at him, waiting. In all his military training, Abulurd had learned not to blurt out the first thing that came to mind— although in this crisis the Supreme Bashar wanted to hear any suggestion, no matter how preposterous.
“It’s simple shape discrimination, sir. They have a pattern model burned into their main circuitry. The piranha mites attack anything that fits a particular standard shape: two arms, two legs, a head. Look at these statues!”
Vor nodded quickly. “Simple, straightforward, not terribly elegant— exactly the way Omnius would do it. And it opens a door to a weakness we can exploit. All we have to do is mask our human shape, and we can walk right past them unnoticed.”
“But the mites still strip any useful elements. There can’t be any exposed metal.”
Vor raised his eyebrows. “You mean we should make wooden flyers to deliver bombs?”
“Something far simpler. What if we cover ourselves with a blanket or tarpaulin, something made of organic materials the mites won’t find usable. We could get close enough to those factories to cause some true harm. It won’t provide us with any physical protection, though. If the ruse fails, then we’ll have exposed ourselves— fatally.”
“We’ll have to take the risk, Abulurd. I like the sound of this deception,” Vor said with a hard grin. “Should we call for volunteers, or are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Supreme Bashar, you are far too valuable for— “
Vor cut him off. “Remember how I was just scorned by the League Parliament and declared a useless old war fossil? You’ve seen how ineptly the younger soldiers are reacting in this crisis. How many of them would you trust on a dangerous mission?”
“I trust myself, Supreme Bashar.”
Vor clapped him on the shoulder. “I trust you, too— and me. Beyond that, I am not willing to say. Let’s put this plan into action, you and I.”
* * *
VOR DELEGATED HIS command to a group of local officers, each in charge of defending against an individual piranha mite factory. He left an explicit explanation of what he and Abulurd intended to do, so that if it worked, the others could immediately put the same plan into practice. And if Vor and Abulurd failed, there would at least be some record of what they had attempted; those who followed might be able to come up with something more effective.
Vor was delighted with Abulurd’s idea. “You’ve been studying my military strategies, haven’t you?”
“What do you mean, Supreme Bashar?”
“This plan rivals some of my own schemes,” Vor said as he pulled out the thick draping cloth. “Fooling the machines, tricking their sensors— like I did with the hollow fleet at Poritrin.”
“This is not at all comparable to your triumphs, Supreme Bashar,” Abulurd said. “The piranha mites are stupid opponents.”
“Tell that to the people we’re going to save. Let’s move out.”
Their time was short and options scarce, but Vor and Abulurd did their best under the circumstances. Other soldiers helped them to cover the two mobile suspensor pallets with layers of tent fabric and sheets, all made of natural fibers that the mites could not possibly see as valuable resources for the factory cylinders. Then Vor and Abulurd draped themselves and the floating pallets with the tentlike covering; so that as each man moved along with his equipment, he appeared as a wide, shapeless mass.
Abulurd’s pallet contained a large plaz tank of intensely corrosive liquid connected to a dispersal nozzle. Vorian held a plasma howitzer that should incinerate the factory— if they could get close enough to it.
The two officers plodded forward, barely able to see. Though suspensors kept their pallets off the ground, the men still had to step through the rubble and spattered gore from shredded human corpses.
The stench made Abulurd ill, but he gritted his teeth and kept going. He had arranged a thin, gauzy section of fabric so that he could see ahead. To his left, the shapeless lump of the Supreme Bashar accompanied him. Abulurd knew they must look ridiculous moving forward, large and lumpy under the tented cloth. The piranha mites could easily have torn the fabric to shreds— if they knew to attack. But the thin layer of fabric kept them safe from the unsophisticated discrimination programming.
They worked their way forward slowly and deliberately. The humming, roaring sound pounded like electrical nails into Abulurd’s spine. At the moment, he could imagine no death more horrible than having tiny chewing machines tunneling in and out of a human body— though worse by far, he thought, would be to let Vorian Atreides down. That, Abulurd would not do.
Finally, they reached the edge of the expanding pit. The mobile factory had opened its maw wider and wider, like a carnivorous flower. Robotic gatherers dumped metals and scrap into the opening like priests sacrificing to a hungry god. Exhaust chutes, like ventilation shafts, dumped waste materials and noxious gases. From other openings in the ever-expanding automated complex, streams of silver toothy spheres flew out, seeking new targets.
“If we don’t stop this soon,” Vorian shouted over the background noise, “it’ll grow larger than we could ever destroy with hand-carried equipment.”
Abulurd stood at the edge of the pit, holding his dispersal tube beneath the folds of opaque fabric, and powered up the pump. He slid the nozzle through the access slit that had been cut in the cloth. “Ready, Supreme Bashar.”
Vor, even more impatient than the young bator, activated his plasma howitzer and unleashed a hellish gout of plasma fire down into the automated factory. Following his lead, Abulurd flushed caustic liquid through the tube, spraying a stream of corrosive chemicals.
It was like throwing gasoline on a mound of stinging ants. The whipping flames and oozing acid caused immediate, horrendous damage to the manufacturing devices: metals melted, circuitry and fabrication components corroded and broke. Noxious smoke whirled upward. The silvery piranha mites buzzed around in confusion.
Abulurd gripped the bucking hose that continued to gush smelly corrosives, careful not to splash himself. He directed the stream into the yawning gullet of the fabrication chute. Within moments, the mobile factory groaned and collapsed in on itself, a fuming cauldron of oozing, melting materials.
Vor’s plasma flame struck down the gatherer robots, destroying everything else. The corrosive fluid caught fire, and flames spread across the already devastated pit.
Abulurd transmitted triumphantly to a nearby substation, where officers monitored their progress. “It worked! We’ve destroyed this fabrication plant. All subcommanders follow our lead. Now we go after the other eight of them.”
“And when you’re finished with that,” Vorian added to the transmission, “we’ve still got a hundred thousand piranha mites to mop up.”
* * *
THE FLYING DEVOURERS continued to wreak havoc, buzzing through the streets and striking down anyone who dared to come out and investigate the massacre. But once the fabrication pods had been eliminated, no more of the ravenous devices were produced.
Fortunately, like short-lived insects, the individual power sources died, but several long and terrifying hours passed before the last of the mites burned out and fell to the ground like silvery marbles littering the streets.
Exhausted, Vor and Abulurd sat on the steps of the Hall of Parliament. Along with the thousands of victims in the city, more than thirty political representatives had been slain. Their bodies had been removed from the premises, although messy stains and horrific splatters still covered the walls and staircases.
“Every time I convince myself that I can’t hate the machines any more than I already do,” Vor said, “something like this inspires new depths of revulsion.”
“If Omnius sees a chance, he’ll try to move against us again. He may even have found a way to break free of Corrin.”
“Or maybe this was simply launched out of spite,” Vor said. “Despite all the damage and pain those tiny metal monsters caused, I don’t think Omnius really believed he could destroy Salusa Secundus with them.”
The bator nodded, still badly shaken. “The Holtzman satellite net remains in place around Corrin. Omnius can’t escape… unless he has some other plan.”
Vor gripped the younger man’s shoulder firmly. “We cannot let foolish politicians suggest that we lower our guard.”
He reached down and scooped one of the small spheres from a cranny in the stone steps. It lay inert in his hand, its teeth razor-sharp. “Their small power supplies are exhausted, Abulurd, but I want you to retrieve hundreds of specimens. We’ll need to dismantle and analyze them so the League can develop suitable defenses, in case Omnius decides to use them again.”
“I’ll put our best men on it, Supreme Bashar.”
“Put yourself on it, Abulurd. I want you in charge of the project, personally. I’ve always been proud of you, and today has shown that my faith was never misplaced. I want you close to me. A long time ago I took you under my wing because I felt you needed the support. Today, of all the soldiers here in Zimia, you excelled. You would have made your grandfather proud.”
Abulurd felt warm inside upon hearing the praise. “I have never regretted reclaiming my Harkonnen name, Supreme Bashar, even though others heaped dung upon me because of it.”
“Then maybe it’s about time for us to fix that.” Vor narrowed his gray eyes. “It has been decades since I told you the truth about Xavier. I thought that would be enough, but I should have known better. There is an old saying that one should not stir up unwarranted trouble. All along, I had decided that Xavier chose his course and was content with how he knew history would paint him.
“I can’t even get the League to invest enough firepower to destroy the Corrin-Omnius and the remaining cymeks. I figured I had no chance at all of convincing the Assembly to rewrite history, pardon Xavier, and reveal Iblis Ginjo as the real villain.” His eyes blazed. “But it’s not fair to let my old friend pay such a price. You have been braver than I, Abulurd.”
Abulurd looked as if he would choke with the effort of containing his tears. “I— I only did what seemed right to me, Supreme Bashar.”
“When I see the right chance, I will raise the matter, at least get my objections on the record.” He looked around the bloodstained streets of Zimia. “Maybe they will finally listen.”
He clapped a hand on Abulurd’s shoulder. “But first, it’s time for you to get your due. Since the Great Purge, your rank has not risen in proportion to your performance. Although other officers will deny it, I’m convinced you have been punished because of your Harkonnen name. From this day forward, that changes.” Vor stood now, looking grim and determined. “I give you my solemn promise that you will receive the full rank of bashar, fourth grade— “
“Bashar!” Abulurd cried. “That’s a jump of two ranks. You can’t just— “
Vor cut him off. “After today, I’d like to see them try to argue with me.”