Regardless of his rank, the foremost concern of a warrior is how he will behave at the moment of his own impending death.
— SWORDMASTER ISTIAN GOSS,
opening remarks to his class
Scanning with his thoughtrodes, General Agamemnon paused in his reminiscing. “You are not Juno! Why are you in her walker-form? Who— “
The other Titan gently set Vor aside. “What you have in mind would be too quick, Vorian Atreides. Not nearly enough pain. I have a better idea.”
“Vorian, reconnect my walker!” Agamemnon demanded through the speakerpatch.
Confused, Vor looked up at the walker-form towering over him. He recognized the configuration as Juno’s, but didn’t know what was different.
“Don’t you recognize me, Supreme Bashar?” the Titan asked. Something rang familiar in the cadence of the words.
Vor blinked in disbelief. “Quentin? Is that you?”
Helpless in his brain canister, the general grew more strident in his demands, but Vor ignored him. So did the other cymek as he explained, “Yes. I have killed Juno. I destroyed her brain, cut it to smoking pieces.”
“Juno?” Agamemnon let out a ragged wail through the speakerpatch. “Dead?”
Quentin reached out in Juno’s powerful mechanical body and lifted the Titan general’s preservation canister. He held the cylinder in front of his glittering optic threads, and the pink and gray membranes throbbed and writhed, as if trying to escape their confinement. “Yes, Juno is dead! And the same fate awaits you.”
Vor stood without moving, feeling a storm of conflicting emotions, but wanting to complete his mission. Agamemnon moaned, but the speakerpatch could not convey the grief that bubbled through his brain for the woman who had been his lover for more than a thousand years.
Quentin continued talking, knowing Agamemnon could hear him. “For what you did to me, General, for killing my body, for transforming me into a cymek, for tricking me into revealing the secret vulnerability of our shields— I intend to make this last a nice long time.”
Two of the secondary-neos came scuttling in, having followed Quentin up into the high tower. Vor glanced over at them, but realized that the cymeks, who had once been the Cogitors’ monks, were not going to attack.
Still, the citadel was crawling with other loyal neos. “Let’s get this over with, Quentin. No one can doubt that Agamemnon deserves to die for his crimes. I didn’t intend to torture him— “
“That isn’t good enough, Supreme Bashar.” The secondary-neos came into the cleaning and maintenance chamber. Quentin placed the helpless Titan on the pedestal where Vor would have continued cleaning him. “I intend to hook Agamemnon’s brain canister up to the pain amplifiers he installed in these poor monks’ walker systems. If he endures only one second of agony for each life he has taken over the centuries, he will still boil in pain for decades and decades. Only a fraction of the suffering he deserves.”
As a former Jihad commander, Vor could not argue against the justice Quentin had in mind. But, despite all Agamemnon’s known crimes, he was still Vor’s father.
The general screamed out through this speakerpatch. “My son! How can you do this to me?”
“How can I not?” Vor forced out the words. “Weren’t you proud of all the atrocities you committed— all the oppression and domination? You tried to make me admire you for it.”
“I tried to make you my worthy successor. An exalted Titan. I raised you to greatness, taught you to appreciate your potential, to revere history and to make your own place in it!” The general’s voice was angry and defiant, not at all panicky. “I made you what you are, whether you’re proud of it or not.”
Vor struggled to maintain his stony determination. He didn’t want to hear the truth in his father’s words, didn’t want to understand that his own choices had caused ripples through the lives of Abulurd, Raquella, Estes, and Kagin. He hadn’t been the best of fathers himself.
“Quentin, no matter what you do, or how much torture you inflict, it can never be enough… and can never change history back.”
The commandeered Titan walker shifted angrily. “Look what he has done to me, Supreme Bashar! I demand vengeance— “
“He took your body, Quentin. Don’t let him take your humanity, too.” He felt cold inside, not because of the chill tower room. “Too many times during the Jihad we let ourselves become monsters in order to accomplish our aims. We should stop it here, with this one small gesture.”
“I refuse!”
Vor rounded on Juno’s purloined walker-form. “Quentin Butler, I am still your superior officer! Your entire life was dedicated to the Army of the Jihad and then the Army of Humanity. You are a hero many times over— don’t throw it all away. I am giving you a direct order, as your Supreme Bashar.”
Quentin froze for a long moment, and the mechanical body seemed to tremble with his turmoil and indecision.
Vor explained what he wanted to do. Finally, Quentin angrily strode in his augmented walker over to the high tower window. With a mighty sweep of his articulated armored forelimb, Quentin smashed out the thick, reinforced pane. Chunks of glass and ice tinkled away, and frigid winds howled into the room.
Feeling the biting cold crackle over his exposed skin, Vor picked up Agamemnon’s preservation canister and looked into the optic threads, knowing his father could still see and hear him. “I understand now that I am what you made me. From you, I learned to make the difficult decisions that no one else dared to make, and then accept the consequences. That is why I was able to lead the Great Purge, though it cost so many human lives. And that is why I must take this action I’ve chosen.
“I have read your extensive memoirs, Father. I know that you pictured a grand heroic end for yourself, that you expected to face off against great armies and die in a huge pitched battle.”
He carried the cylinder over to the shattered observation window, blinking as the breezes cut like frozen razors across his eyes, his cheeks.
“Instead,” Vor continued, “you, the powerful Titan Agamemnon, will meet the most ignominious death possible.”
Agamemnon bellowed. “No, Vorian. You must not do this! We can create a new Time of Titans! We— “
Vor paid no attention to the general’s continued protests. “I give you what you deserve— an end that is unremarkable and utterly insignificant.”
He pushed the preservation canister over the ledge, knocking it out the high window. Spilling electrafluid, the cylinder tumbled through the air until it shattered on the iron-hard ice of the glacier far below and sprayed shards, gray matter, and viscous liquid in all directions.
* * *
WHEN IT WAS finished, Quentin and Vor went into the corridor. “The neos will be clamoring for your blood,” the cymek said, “and mine, too… if I had any blood.”
For a time, the neo-cymeks on the recently conquered worlds would continue without realizing their command structure had been eliminated. Vor knew, however, that the rest of the cymek rebels suffered from a softness in their leadership, a weakness in their decision-making ranks. That was why the Titans had kidnapped Quentin in the first place and attempted to make him one of their commanders. Without Agamemnon’s driving vision, the new-generation cymeks were not capable of holding the fledgling empire together. Their influence would dwindle and fade.
Vor ran, leading the way through the tunnels. Quentin followed as rapidly as he could move, still getting used to the machine form he had commandeered from Juno.
Alarms sounded. “They’ll figure out the details soon enough, once they find our handiwork,” Vor said, breathless. “We’ve got to get to the ships. Is there a cymek spacecraft you can operate for yourself? I have the Dream Voyager.”
“Don’t worry about me, Supreme Bashar. There are numerous options.”
Three neo-cymeks, armed with projectile launchers built into their walker-forms, strode down the corridors. As soon as they saw Vorian Atreides, the lone human being in the frozen fortress, they clicked their systems into standby mode, but Quentin was there, looming larger than the neos. They recognized the robotic body as belonging to a Titan.
“Juno, are you in control of the prisoner?” asked one of the neos.
In response, Quentin raised his far superior weapons arms and launched powerful torpedoes at the three smaller cymeks. The precisely targeted detonations shattered their brain canisters, and the neo-cymek bodies slumped into wreckage on the floor.
“This disguise may just be sufficient,” Quentin said.
“Don’t count on it. Come on.”
Taking larger strides in the mechanical body, Quentin began to out-pace him, moving with confidence. “There is a way for this all to end. In his own paranoia, General Agamemnon planted the seeds for the cymeks’ downfall.”
Before Vor could ask what he meant, they encountered several other smashed cymek walker-forms that littered a tunnel near the landing bay where the Dream Voyager was stored. “It looks like someone else is at war with the cymeks.”
Three neos clattered into the landing bay from adjoining passages. Quentin swiveled, preparing to blast them, but soon it became apparent that the neo-cymeks were fleeing from something.
Behind them came four rampaging secondary-neos that had been unwillingly converted from the caretakers of the slaughtered Cogitors. The former secondaries had appropriated parts from other cymek walkers, incorporating the additional appendages and armaments into bizarre new configurations. Pieces of combat bodies, such as the remnants of the dismantled cymek Beowulf, had been stored for repair and reuse on other walker-forms. The involuntary servants of Agamemnon had launched their own rebellion.
Blasting after the scuttling cymek-loyal neos, the secondaries raced into the landing bay. When the trapped and cornered neos saw the immense Titan walker waiting for them, they seemed to take heart. The neos rallied, thinking they had an ally in Juno.
Even as the secondary-neos continued to shoot their confiscated weapons, Quentin raised his cannon arms and blasted the other neos from behind. Shrapnel and blue electrafluid scattered everywhere. The cymek secondaries hesitated only a moment before charging forward, firing weapons.
“They saw me destroy Juno’s brain,” Quentin explained to Vor. “It must be what finally pushed them over the edge to violence.”
The secondaries raced in among the wreckage like scavengers on a battlefield. Making certain the brain canisters of the neos were thoroughly destroyed, they stripped out the weaponry and added it to their own systems.
Quentin swiveled his head turret and marched toward the secondary-neos, who waited patiently. “What is your progress so far?”
“Ten of us have died. Only four remain, but we have already killed many of the neos. Their walker-forms litter the tunnels. We have destroyed the electrafluid production laboratories, drained the stockpiles, and ruined the machinery necessary to create more. Any cymeks who survive this battle will be sorely in need of their life-support fluid before long.”
Vor felt as if a weight had been lifted off his chest. “Excellent!”
“A large problem remains.” Quentin turned to the secondaries. “Do you know where Dante is? He is the last Titan.”
“Somewhere in the complex, but we are not certain of his location.”
Quentin said to Vor, “We have to find him. Destroying Dante is more necessary than you can imagine.”
The Dream Voyager was stored and ready for takeoff. It would be so easy to escape and return to Salusa Secundus with his news, but Vor resisted taking the simple way out. “Quentin, the Army of the Jihad made a mistake two decades ago when we left one machine world intact. We didn’t finish the job then, and we’ve paid for it ever since. I don’t intend to leave our work incomplete here.”
“Thank you,” Quentin answered in a quiet voice through the speakerpatch. “Thank you.”
* * *
DANTE HAD ALWAYS been little more than an administrator; he had run the business of overthrowing the Old Empire. Both Agamemnon and Juno were far more militarily inclined than he was. As soon as he discovered the murders of his fellow Titans, he understood he was in terrible trouble. He did not know exactly how Juno and Agamemnon had been killed, but he did not wish to stay behind and fight such an effective enemy.
Hessra was not the strongest base in the new Titan empire. Many more neos and their enslaved populations had been taken from the occupied worlds of Richese, Bela Tegeuse, and others; the defenses were more extensive on those planets. Agamemnon had never worried much about losing control of Hessra.
Now, while the loyal neos continued to battle the suicidal secondary-neos, Dante emerged from the tall, arched doors of the citadel and scuttled across the icy landscape to the Titans’ waiting battleships. Dante had used these same vessels on his test run that had demonstrated the fatal interaction between lasers and Holtzman shields. He hurried across the windswept ground and, reaching one of the robotic craft, aligned sockets and adjusted the mechanical systems so that his preservation canister detached from its walker-form and was installed in the vessel to act as the brain of the ship. He had to get away.
Of the original Twenty Titans, Dante was now the sole survivor. After his thoughtrodes were automatically connected to the command systems, he powered up the engines. Now he could fly away from this frozen planetoid, saving himself.
Dante was not a coward, but a pragmatist. The rebellion here was causing too much damage, and he intended to return with an overwhelming force from Richese or one of the other newly conquered cymek worlds. He and his reinforcements would easily destroy the remaining rabble, and they could move on.
His ship rose into the empty sky, and Dante felt free and safe.
* * *
COMFORTABLE BEHIND THE controls, Vor activated the Dream Voyager‘s systems, preparing to launch. His scanners were operational, ready to lock on to their target, as soon as he discovered Dante’s whereabouts. The secondary-neos reported that they had seen the Titan’s walker-form out on the glacier, mounting itself into one of the waiting cymek battleships.
Quentin scuttled forward in his massive mechanical body. His speakerpatch was amplified, and his words boomed. “It is paramount that he not get away! Supreme Bashar, can you depart soon? Can you head him off?”
“The Dream Voyager is fast, but doesn’t have much in the way of weaponry. It could be enough to keep him busy, though. Do you have something else— “
“Yes.” Quentin scuttled backward on multiple legs. “Just slow him down. I will come after you as soon as I can. And then Dante won’t be able to run. It is imperative that we not allow him to escape.”
Vor understood the primero’s need for vengeance. He worked the familiar controls that Seurat had long ago taught him to use, and the DreamVoyager shot out of the landing bay, following the trail of the Titan ship.
* * *
QUENTIN MARCHED THROUGH the underground chambers to where another enormous vessel was stored. He had seen the Titan general fly the craft more than once, and Juno had been delighted to show it off to him as a demonstration of the formidable cymek advantages over a weak human being. Now Quentin could use it to a much more satisfying purpose.
Agamemnon’s personal battleship.
* * *
THE DREAM VOYAGER raced up into the starry, ever-twilit sky. Ahead of him, Dante’s warship accelerated out of the system.
When the last surviving Titan saw that only one small vessel pursued him, a mere update ship, he turned his battle vessel and came back. He had warned Agamemnon not to trust his human son, and his suspicions had been accurate. “Vorian Atreides.” The name was spoken flatly, as if the Titan was not surprised at all. “You are responsible for this mayhem?”
“I can’t take all the credit. I am only one man. The Titans’ history built up a debt that one man can’t possibly make up for.”
“You know that I can easily destroy your ship,” Dante said, as if a threat was all he needed. “The Dream Voyager was never designed to withstand an attack by a cymek warship.”
“Maybe, but I’m a lot more maneuverable.” He peppered Dante’s hull with a volley of small projectiles, then changed course in a radical backward loop to bypass the giant Titan’s cumbersome retaliatory shots.
Vor swept in from behind and harried the cymek warship by launching four explosives that damaged one of Dante’s maneuvering engines. The Titan turned and opened fire again, and this time his blasts grazed the Dream Voyager‘s armored belly.
Vor tumbled in a wild spin, accelerating blindly until he regained control and could fly straight again. He turned around, intentionally taunting the remaining Titan over the comline, hoping to delay him as Quentin had asked. Dante launched another shot that exploded across his bow.
Just then a massive, nightmarish vessel— like a demonic pterodactyl— hurtled directly toward Dante’s ship. The angular flying colossus swooped down out of nowhere, opening fire with explosives that sent the Titan’s craft reeling.
Quentin’s voice came over Vor’s communications systems, speaking in the special coded battle language developed by the Army of the Jihad. “I must tell you why it is essential to take Dante out. When General Agamemnon created his armies of neo-cymeks, he was afraid they might show disloyalty, so he installed a kill switch in their preservation canisters. If at any moment he suspected treachery, he could trigger an individual death.
“As a final insurance Agamemnon, Juno, and Dante established a dead-man network. As a fail-safe, there is a signal encoded in each of the three Titans’ brain canisters. At least one of the three Titans must return regularly within transmitting range of the neo-cymeks, or else those neos shut down permanently. Life-support mechanisms gradually fail, and they all die.”
Vor couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You mean if we destroy Dante, we’ll wipe out the entire enemy force, in a single blow?”
“Essentially, though there may be some delay factor. The local neos will collapse from the immediate signal cutoff when the last Titan dies. Agamemnon was quite paranoid.”
“I know.”
“The other cymeks on distant outposts will break down and die in a year or so, when they do not receive a verification signal at the appointed time. That’s why Dante is so important.”
Vor grinned, but only for a moment, until he followed the thought to its only possible conclusion. “If we destroy Dante here, then you’ll die, too, Quentin. It’s an immediate consequence.”
“You have seen me, Supreme Bashar. You know what I am. I have no intention of letting anyone in the League see me like this. Not Faykan, not… Abulurd. I don’t want to go back.”
“But what shall I tell Abulurd for you? He has to understand— “
“You’ll know what to say to him, Supreme Bashar. You’ve always been better at it than I. Let me do this last thing.”
Vor raised his voice. “No. We can find another way. We’ll capture Dante. We’ll— “
“Remember me, Supreme Bashar. I never chose to be a cymek, and every moment I looked for ways to kill them. At last I know what to do.”
The huge nightmarish craft designed for Agamemnon arced around and headed toward Dante. The last Titan accelerated, trying to pick up speed and escape the powerful cymek ship.
But one of Dante’s engines was damaged, and Agamemnon’s craft was far superior. As he closed the distance, Quentin launched projectile after projectile, pummeling the fleeing Titan ship.
Even as he approached his target, Quentin did not slow. His engines went beyond full power, hurling the enormous cymek vessel like a hot hammer— until finally, just as Dante’s hull buckled from the last round of explosives, Agamemnon’s battleship slammed into it, still accelerating.
The light was blinding. Both vessels erupted in an expanding cloud of flames.
Helplessly, Vor watched the final moments. He felt a weight of great sadness in his chest for the loss of brave Quentin Butler… and a growing warmth of triumph to know that the last of the cruel Titans, and indeed all of the cymeks, had finally been vanquished.