Dune: The Machine Crusade (90 page)

Even after seeing the cymek marauders wiped out, Zufa felt little cause for rejoicing. She wrestled with the controls to squeeze more speed from the damaged propulsion system while evading the natural— but still deadly— asteroids that hurtled toward them from all directions.

“Ginaz is close,” she said through clenched teeth. “If we can get out of the debris field, I intend to make a break for the planet. Maybe we can survive a crash landing on one of the Ginaz islands.”

“Better than being captured by a cymek, I suppose… but neither alternative sounds particularly attractive to me.” He looked down at the activated self-destruct system, which awaited his final command.

Back in the heart of the rubble belt, with all the cymeks obliterated, the artificial asteroid altered its trajectory yet again and accelerated toward them. The giant rock closed in swiftly, seemingly intent on its new target.

“It destroyed those cymeks,” Venport said. “But that asteroid wants to capture us instead.”

“It could have easily blasted us out of space before,” she said, sitting straight and ominous. “I think it has something worse in mind for us.”

Venport felt cold to his marrow. “Somebody betrayed us. The enemies of humanity want to get their metal claws on the space-folding technology.”

Limping away, Zufa could barely maneuver. Their attempt to escape from the asteroid was pathetically feeble. The huge rock closed in, looming up out of the glittering backdrop of space. A large crater appeared in the front like a gaping mouth, the open maw of a hungry shark ready to swallow them.

Venport looked down at the self-destruct sequence again and swallowed hard. Almost time…

Disabling energy bursts lanced out from implanted projectors, strange weapons that Venport had never seen before. They struck the ship like disruptive lightning, crackling along the barely functioning engines and burning out the remainder of their gasping systems. The cockpit was smothered in darkness.

Zufa looked ashen with fear in the faint starlight that seeped through the viewports. She couldn’t maneuver, couldn’t power up the emergency illumination. “Everything’s dead, even life support. We’re completely helpless.”

Venport looked at the blank screens, knowing that the self-destruct routines had also been wiped. “I should have acted sooner.”

The giant asteroid narrowed the gap, filling their front viewport and finally engulfing them. As tractor beams drew them into the yawning gullet and along a deep shaft to an inner chamber, Venport saw firefly lines of lights, mechanical systems… and several motionless mechanical walkers with empty sockets waiting for a brain canister to be installed.

“It’s another cymek ship.” Zufa’s voice sounded bleak. “It’s no surprise they have factions in their rebellion. Remember… remember what Xerxes did to Norma.”

Venport said, “Damn, even if we can’t give any technical details about the space-folding engines, you and I would make valuable hostages to the cymeks.”

He saw a stony determination on Zufa’s face that rivaled the furious dedication she had had when she was younger, training her first Sorceress commandos to become telepathic weapons against the loathsome machines with human minds.

“We can still be heroes.” Refusing to look at him, she stared fixedly forward as they were drawn deeper into the asteroid chamber.

“The self-destruct is disabled,” he said.

“Mine isn’t,” she answered, then said nothing more.

When metal doorplates sealed behind them, garish lights filled the room. The uneven curved walls were linked with mirrored crystals that refracted the light as if through a diamond lens. He and Zufa sat side by side, shielding their eyes and only opening them narrowly.

Finally, they made out movement emerging from one of the tunnels, an ornate jewel-armored walker that was more magnificent and gaudy than any cymek monstrosity they had ever seen. Zufa’s upper lip curled back as she thought of the traitorous human mind installed in this extravagant, dragonlike machine form.

Then her face calmed, her expression cleared, and she looked at Venport. “It won’t be long now.” She closed her eyes to concentrate.

“Shouldn’t we wait and see what it wants?”

“It’s a
cymek,
” she said, her voice filled with a lifetime of hatred. “We know what it wants.”

The dragon-walker approached their ship and attempted to work the hatch from the outside. Slowed by the locks and the shorted electronic systems, the cymek began to use powerful tools to cut through the door hatch.

With their systems obliterated, Venport could transmit no distress call, nor could he communicate with the thinking machine. “We’re trapped,” he said.

“But not helpless.” Zufa drew deep breaths, and her skin became translucent, shimmering from within. She clutched Venport’s hand. He could feel that her fingers were hot. Her hair began to crackle and writhe above her head with static electricity.

“Norma learned how to control this,” she said. “Of all my Sorceresses, only my own daughter knew how to survive such a blast. Unfortunately, I never acquired the skill.”

Psychic energy welled within her, building to a critical point. She had taught so many others how to do this, how to let loose a mental blast against the hated cymeks. Considering its power, this dragon-creature must be an important enemy, perhaps even one of the surviving Titans.

Someone worth sacrificing myself for
.

The cymek captor pried their ship open, and worked to squeeze part of its body inside. A mechanical arm and claw thrust through the gap. Venport clenched his teeth… and waited.

“I’m sorry I can’t control it, Aurelius…. I’m sorry for many things.”

“I just hope you’re right.”

The dragon-walker finally inserted a bulky head turret into their ship and announced through its speaker patch, “I am the Titan Hecate—”

It was all she needed to hear. Zufa unleashed her unstable psychic strength. As so many other Sorceresses had done before her, she broke down the barriers and emptied her reservoirs of mental energy.

The shockwave from Zufa’s psychic blast erupted like a supernova. Her last thought was a calm pride that she would obliterate one of the terrible enemies of mankind. Her purifying energy shot outward and boiled away every organic brain within range— Venport’s, Hecate’s, and her own.

AFTER ACCELERATING TO intercept the fleeing ship, Hecate’s asteroid drifted out of the Ginaz rubble belt. When Zufa’s blast obliterated the Titan’s mind, it severed all thoughtrode connections to the sophisticated navigation and guidance systems.

Out of control and captainless, the massive asteroid careened out of the rocky belt before falling down the gravity well and plunging like a cannonball into the atmosphere of Ginaz.

L
ate at night, the master mercenary Jool Noret stood exhausted and sweating, but feeling intensely alive after hours of strenuous training He was only thirty-two years old, but he felt like an ancient man. He had seen more combat and destroyed more machines than the most battle-scarred member of the Council of Veterans. And still he felt he had so much to do, many more enemies to destroy… a lifelong debt to repay.

Barefoot in the sand, Noret had fought for hours with the
sensei
mek Chirox, who continued to help him modify his fighting technique. Year after year, the combat robot had learned more from his best student, increasing his own skills.

In the ten years since its founding, the island school had grown, producing many successful mercenaries who modeled their own techniques after Jool Noret’s style of “fighting with utter abandon.” With a jaded eye, he watched some of the best trainees the
sensei
mek had produced. Many of them were expert at fighting the most fearsome enemy machines and had even developed specialized skills for defeating human opponents who wore personal Holtzman shields.

Chirox had excelled in his role as a teacher, and Noret was pleased to leave it at that. He had done what he could. Hundreds, even thousands, of exuberant converts had by now been scattered among the Jihad battle-fields, bringing terrible destruction to countless enemy machines.

In the final summation, he supposed, he had far more than made up for the loss of Zon Noret. But he didn’t know how to release himself from the prison of his own expectations.

Now under clear night skies and bright stars, Noret stood on the beach, wiping perspiration from his brow after a difficult workout. With complete abandon, he had fought to the zenith of his skill, every movement a symphony of perfection. He held his pulse sword, its smooth hilt slick in his palm. He would need to recharge the weapon soon, for he had used the disruptor bursts many times during his recent session.

Hearing loud shuddering booms in the distance, Noret looked up into the deep blackness. He watched a trail of fire across the starry sky, a meteor so bright it traced a glittering path over the serene cosmic ocean. It was the largest bolide he’d ever seen, and it kept growing brighter, more intense. He raised a hand to shield his eyes. Sonic booms followed it like a chain of percussions through the air.

Noret blinked, then staggered as a streak of intense purple branded his retinas. The falling object grew hotter, searing white.

Far out across the endless water, a blinding flash of impact swelled to the heavens as the space rock slammed into the deep sea. Less than a minute later, Noret heard the attenuated rumble of the explosion, sound waves skipping like stones across the water.

Chirox strode with heavy footsteps across the beach. The
sensei
mek stood beside Noret, focusing his optic sensors toward the horizon. “What has happened?”

“A meteor hit the ocean,” he said, still blinking his dazzled eyes. “It looked huge.”

In the darkness the
sensei
mek stared far out across the water. To the southwest, the lights from a far-off island glittered like jewels. As the two stared in anticipatory silence, one line of lights suddenly vanished, as if snuffed out. Then another set of lights— closer, this time— also went dark.

“What do you think that was?” Noret asked.

A moment later, they could discern the stampeding wall of water, an oncoming tidal wave set off by the asteroid impact. It rolled inexorably across the sea, oblivious to anything in its path. The roar grew louder.

Noret shook his head as realization swept over him faster than the oncoming wave could approach. “Oh, no.”

There would be no chance to evacuate the island, to get the students to safety. Already he heard shouts of dismay from the huts as the trainees emerged.

Noret gripped his pulse sword, as if wishing that he could do something heroic with the weapon. For the first time in years, Noret felt completely helpless. He could only stand next to Chirox while the rumbling wave hurtled over the reefs toward them.

“I knew I would find this eventually,” he said in a hoarse voice. “An enemy I cannot defeat.”

HOURS LATER, AS the foaming brown water receded from the flattened Ginaz archipelago, the currents faded and settled, leaving islands scoured clean of people and trees.

Plodding slowly up the slope to the wrecked island where he had trained so many students, the sturdy metallic mek lumbered out of the waves that still splashed around him. He had been bent, scraped, and scoured, but Chirox remained functional. He plodded onto the beach, each step heavy and labored.

In two of his six arms the combat robot carried the battered body of Jool Noret, his greatest student of all, crushed by the hammer of the tidal wave.

The only moving thing left on the desolate island, Chirox walked along the now barren strand. Gently, almost lovingly, he deposited Noret’s body on the damp ground. As near as the
sensei
mek could determine, this was approximately the spot where Zon Noret had also fallen. He swiveled his head and focused his optic sensors down on the body of his teacher and trainee.

During generations of service, the robot had spent much time interacting with humans, and had learned that organic life was resilient. Before long, the islands would become lush again, and mercenaries would return from their missions and repopulate the archipelago with eager new students.

As he had done for the past ten years, Chirox would teach mercenaries. They would continue to come to Ginaz in search of the elusive techniques of the great swordsman, Jool Noret. Chirox would teach them everything he knew, everything he had learned from the master.

T
hough her body remained statuesque and beautiful, Norma Cenva had reverted to her old habits of working obsessively, and alone.

Inside the guidance chamber of one of the converted spacefolders nearing completion, she saw her own reflection on the shiny black walls. In the frenzy of her work she had not bathed or changed her clothes for days. Her worksuit and green laboratory smock, dirty and wrinkled, hung loosely around her body.

Other things were far more important to her. So far she and her construction teams had converted eighteen of the immense spacefolders into battleships, and they were about to be put into service— to benefit the Army of the Jihad, if she could only make them navigate more safely, without so many disastrous mistakes. More than forty new space-folding javelins were also under construction.

No one could help her, not even the most brilliant League engineers. Only she had any grasp of the immensely complex mathematics.

With her mother and Aurelius gone to Salusa, and with the other Sorceress guardians instructed to watch Norma’s young son, she had immersed herself in the necessities of solving the Holtzman navigation difficulties, of improving safety. Now that the Jihad troops had come here to the shipyards, the problem had reached a cruxpoint. She had to make everything work. It was all up to her.