The God of Science can be an unkind deity.
— TLALOC,
A Time for Titans
Agamemnon felt that the conversion of his cymek candidate was going well. Along with Juno and Dante, he had developed an intricate scheme to break down the mind and loyalties of Quentin Butler, then build him back up again into the form required by the Titans.
It proved to be quite a challenge, but one the general found intriguing.
Of late, Agamemnon realized to his embarrassment that he had grown lax in his ambitions— just like the fools in the Old Empire, whom he and the visionary Tlaloc had overthrown. Even though neo-cymeks had at last begun to sweep across the dead Synchronized Worlds, their glory had become a petty, self-congratulatory delusion. Newly converted neos were drawn from the most acceptable captives they found on abandoned planets, and they were almost always volunteers, willing candidates thrilled to receive powerful mechanical bodies and extended life spans.
Quentin Butler, though, was quite a different story. Through spies in the League of Nobles, Agamemnon had heard of this primero’s exploits. The military officer would be a great asset to the Titans’ burgeoning plans— if only he could be convinced to cooperate. The general knew that if Quentin converted too easily, then the results would not be as valuable. It might take a little time.
Through careful manipulation of his sensory input as well as direct stimulus through his pain centers and visual cortex, Quentin’s time sense and equilibrium were completely turned around. Agamemnon preyed upon his doubts, while Dante fed him false data, and Juno cajoled him, playing the part of seductress and sympathetic ear whenever he felt lost or alone.
As a disembodied brain in the preservation canister, he was completely at the Titans’ mercy. The secondary-neos that ran the electrafluid laboratories salted chemical additives into the solution that bathed Quentin’s mind, increasing his disorientation and accelerating his thought processes. Each night for him seemed to last years. He barely remembered who he was, had only a vague separation between the reality of his memories and the false information poured into him. Sophisticated brainwashing in its purest and most literal sense.
“But why do you want me?” he had shouted at Agamemnon the last time his voice synthesizer was attached. “If your new empire is so glorious and you have tens of thousands of neo-cymek volunteers, why waste time on an unwilling subject like myself? I will never be devoted to your cause.”
“You are a Butler, a much greater prize,” Agamemnon replied. “The other volunteers were raised in captivity, ground under the heels of the thinking machines or tamed by League politics. You, on the other hand, are a military commander and a tactical expert. You could prove most useful.”
“I will give you nothing.”
“Time will tell. And time is one resource we have in abundance.”
With both of them installed in rugged new mobile forms, the Titan general took Quentin on an expedition out onto the frozen plains, then up the glacier line to higher ground from which they could look back at the half-buried towers of the former Cogitor stronghold.
“There is no need for us to be mortal enemies, humans and cymeks,” Agamemnon said. “With Omnius trapped on Corrin, we have more territory than we could possibly need, and plenty of volunteers to replenish our ranks.”
“I didn’t volunteer,” Quentin said.
“You are… an exception in many ways.”
Agamemnon wore a colossal biped form, walking as he had done in his ancient and nearly forgotten human body. It required balance and finesse, and he felt like a giant robotic gladiator. Quentin, not nearly so adept, wore a vehicle body that roared along on wide treads, requiring little coordination. Snow crystals blew around them in Hessra’s constant twilight, but they could adjust their optic threads to increase sensitivity to the ambient illumination.
“I used to go out for walks,” Quentin said. “I enjoyed stretching my legs. Now I’ll never feel that pleasure again.”
“We can simulate it in your brain. Or you can choose a mechanical body that covers great distances with every step, one that propels you through the sea, or one that flies. There is no comparison to your former prison of flesh.”
“If you don’t understand the difference, General, then you have forgotten much over the past millennium.”
“One must accept and adapt. Since there is no way you can go back, think instead of the opportunities you have now. You held an important position in the League, but the end was in sight. You had only taken a leave of absence from the Army of the Jihad, but you knew you would never go back to fighting. Now you no longer have to think about retirement, because we’re giving you a second chance. By helping us strengthen our new cymek empire, you can ensure peace and stability throughout the galaxy. Omnius is irrelevant, and now cymeks and humans must live together compatibly. You can be a vital go-between. Is there a better person for the job? With us, you could accomplish a greater measure of peace than you ever had at the head of the Jihad battle fleet.”
“I question your motives.”
“Question them all you wish, so long as you are objective and willing to hear the truth when it is spoken.”
Brooding, Quentin remained silent.
“At our restored laboratories on Bela Tegeuse and Richese, we cymeks are designing new combat walkers— strictly for our own protection, of course. Though we could never send our cymek forces against the formidable Army of Humanity, we must be prepared to protect ourselves.”
“If you hadn’t caused so much pain and suffering, no one in the League would want to attack you.”
“For the sake of civilization we must forget the past and erase ancient, perpetual grudges. We must begin anew. I foresee a day when cymeks and the League will cooperate in a mutually beneficial relationship.”
Quentin attempted to make a laughing sound, but didn’t have the knack yet. “The stars will likely burn out first. Your own son Vorian Atreides would never make peace with you.”
Angered, Agamemnon fell into a brief silence. “I still hold out hope for him. Perhaps one day Vorian and I can make mutual concessions and forgive one another, and then there may be peace with the rest of humanity. But for the moment my cymeks are still forced to develop new defenses. Since the League’s Holtzman shields prevent us from launching projectiles against human battleships, we have built many laser guns. We hope the high-power energy beams will be more effective.”
Quentin hesitated in his heavy, tractorlike walker-form. “No one has used lasers in many centuries. It is not wise.”
“Nevertheless, why not try?” Agamemnon said. “At least it will be unexpected.”
“No. You should not use them.”
Sensing an unusual alarm and reticence from his captive, the Titan general pressed, “Is there something I don’t know about lasers, after all these millennia? No one is afraid of them.”
“They have… they have been proven inefficient. It is a waste of your time.”
Intrigued, Agamemnon did not press the matter further. But he knew he would have to learn the answer from Quentin, no matter what form of torture or manipulation it might require.
* * *
WHEN QUENTIN’S BRAIN canister was detached from the walker-form and again placed in its preservation machinery, Juno set to work deactivating his time sensors, disorienting him even more, pumping him with chemicals, and pulsing his pain and pleasure centers. It required five days, but Quentin eventually let slip everything he knew, without ever being aware of what he had done.
According to the primero, only a handful of the highest-ranking officers in the Army of Humanity knew that any interaction between a Holtzman shield and a laser produced an appallingly huge feedback explosion that closely resembled an atomic detonation. Since laser weaponry had not been used in active combat for many centuries, the chances of such a coincidental encounter were vanishingly slim.
The Titans were astounded by the unexpected weakness the League had kept so carefully secret for the length of the Jihad, and Agamemnon was eager to exploit it. “This will make significant strides toward our dreams of expansion and renewed conquest.”
Because Dante was the most efficient and methodical of the remaining Titans, the general dispatched him on a mission to verify the startling information. Dante launched a fighting force of neo-cymek vessels from the reconquered Synchronized Worlds in a series of provocative attacks against hrethgir colonies that still struggled for full recovery following the Omnius Scourge.
Since the time of the Great Purge, Agamemnon had brooded and planned and sent out eager neo scouts to study the nearest planets, note their weaknesses, and determine which ones could easily be subjugated by a few dominating cymeks. The League itself remained in a shambles, commerce and enforcement still frayed from system to system.
Many of the worlds were ripe for the picking.
“Your goal is twofold, Dante,” the general said. “We need you to provoke a direct confrontation with shielded hrethgir warships. A single blast from a laser will show immediately whether we have learned a very valuable secret.”
“If you must conquer a dozen or so new worlds before they notice what we’re doing, then all the better!” Juno said with a delighted simulated laugh.
Dante set out with his cymek ships and zealous neos who were anxious to grind lesser humans under their mechanical feet. Surveys and starmaps had already pinpointed their best targets. The mechanized vessels struck the small settlements like hammers from the sky— Relicon, al-Dhifar, Juzzubal. The people had no effective defenses, pleaded with the cymeks for mercy. Dante, though, had received no specific instructions about mercy. Each time, he made certain to let a ship or two escape, so that someone might warn the Army of Humanity and send a few warships running to the rescue.
On the worlds that were easily crushed, Dante left behind a neo-cymek force to cement their domination and expand their empire. Neos were given free rein as planetary dictators, gathering desperate volunteers from the broken population and converting them into more new cymeks, thus expanding their ranks. Dante knew that General Agamemnon would be pleased with the easy acquisition of so much new territory.
Most importantly, he kept waiting for human ballistas and javelins to appear, so the cymeks could conduct their lasgun-shield experiment. But Agamemnon had given him a strict caution: “If my son Vorian is in command of whichever hrethgir battleships you encounter, you must not destroy him— everyone else, but not him.”
“Yes, General. He has much to atone for. I understand why you want to deal with him personally.”
“That… and I have not entirely given up hope. Would he not be an ally superior even to Quentin Butler?”
“I fear we will not convert either one of them, General.”
“We Titans have already succeeded in many impossible tasks, Dante. What is one more?”
Finally, after ravaging two more small hrethgir colonies and moving on to a third, Dante and his neo-cymek warships stumbled upon two new-model ballistas and five javelins rushing to protect the recently fallen human colonies.
After sending a challenge to the commanders, and verifying that Vorian Atreides was not at the helm, Dante ordered his fanatically loyal neos to build up a defensive line. From the outset, it was clear that the Army of Humanity outnumbered the handful of cymek ships, but Dante gave orders for his followers to launch volleys of explosive projectiles that pummeled the heavy armor of the human fleet.
Predictably, the League commanders ordered their vessels to activate full Holtzman shields. As soon as his sensors indicated that the jihadis had graciously, though unwittingly, fulfilled the conditions of the experiment, Dante gave the order for his neo-cymeks to ready their laser weapons. He sent them forward while keeping his own distance, the better to observe.
The lasers were not particularly powerful, barely weapons caliber. The blasts could not possibly be effective under ordinary circumstances.
Still staying well clear of the combat zone, Dante was not disappointed. Not at all.
The lasers struck the shields, triggering a cascade of pseudo-atomic detonations. Within seconds the entire human fleet was vaporized, one after another, in blinding flashes of light.
However, the feedback of the laser-shield interaction was so intense that most of the neo-cymek gunners were also obliterated. Their ships disintegrated in an instant, resulting in the simultaneous annihilation of both sides.
It looked as if a new sun had suddenly dawned over the planet the hrethgir had tried to defend. The glow faded as the dissipating vapor and energy spread out, dwindling into the cold of space. For Dante and the few surviving neos, the show was well worth the cost….
* * *
AGAMEMNON WAS EXCEEDINGLY pleased. Since none of the humans in the battle had escaped, the hrethgir high command could not possibly know that the cymeks had discovered their fundamental weakness. “This is a watershed for us! Even with our lesser numbers, we can cut a swath of death and destruction through the hrethgir. Our goal is in our grasp.”
All the terms of this conflict had changed, and the Titan general suspected that he and his son would face each other before it was all over.