Road to Dune (51 page)

Sheel swallowed hard. “How terrible.”

“Terrible?”
Xavier mused, rolling the sound of the word on his tongue. “I cannot begin to describe what I saw. Not much was left of the colony we went to rescue. Over a quarter of my jihadis lost their lives, and half of the mercenaries.”

Shaking his head sadly, he continued. “We scraped together the pathetic remnants of settlers who had fled far enough from the primary machine forces. I do not know—nor do I want to know—the actual number of survivors we rescued. Peridot Colony did not fall to the machines, but that world is no longer of any use to humans, either.” He heaved a deep breath. “It seems to be the way of this Jihad.”

“That is why we need to keep fighting.” Vergyl lifted his chin. His bravery sounded tinny in his own ears. “Let me fight at your side against Omnius! Our army is in constant need of soldiers. It’s time for me to get into the real battles in this war!”

Now Xavier Harkonnen seemed to awaken. Dismay flashed across his face. “You don’t want that, Vergyl.
Not ever.
”

VERGYL SECURED AN assignment working aboard the Jihad warship as it underwent repairs for the better part of two weeks. If he couldn’t fly off and fight on alien battlefields, at least he could be here recharging weapons, replacing damaged Holtzman shield systems, and strengthening armor plating.

While Vergyl diligently performed every task the team supervisors assigned to him, his eyes drank in details about how the ship’s systems functioned. Someday, if Xavier ever relented and allowed him to participate in the Holy Jihad, Vergyl wanted to command one of these vessels. He was an adult—twenty-three years old—but his influential brother had the power to interfere with anything Vergyl tried to do … and had already done so.

That afternoon, as he checked off the progress of repairs on his display pad, Vergyl came upon one of the battleship’s training chambers. The dull metal door stood half open, and he heard a clattering and clanging of metal, and the grunting sounds of someone straining with great effort.

Rushing into the chamber, Vergyl stopped and stared in astonishment. A battle-scarred man—a mercenary, judging from his long-haired, disheveled appearance—threw himself in violent combat against a fighting robot. The machine had three sets of articulated arms, each one holding a deadly-looking weapon. Moving in a graceful blur, the mechanical unit struck blow after blow against the man, who defended himself perfectly each time.

Vergyl’s heart leaped. How had one of the enemy machines gotten on board Xavier’s battleship? Had Omnius sent it as a spy or saboteur? Were there others spread out around the ship? The beleaguered mercenary landed a blow with his vibrating pulse sword, causing one of the mek’s six arms to drop limply to its side.

Letting out a war cry, knowing he had to help, Vergyl snatched the only weapon he could find—a training staff from a rack by the wall—and charged forward recklessly.

The mercenary reacted quickly upon hearing Vergyl’s approach. He raised a hand. “Hold, Chirox!”

The combat mek froze. The mercenary, panting, dropped his fighting stance. Vergyl skidded to a halt, looking in confusion from the enemy robot to the well-muscled fighter.

“Don’t alarm yourself,” the mercenary said. “I was simply practicing.”

“With a
machine
?”

The long-haired man smiled. A spiderweb of pale scars covered his cheeks, neck, bare shoulders, and chest. “Thinking machines are our enemies in this Jihad, young officer. If we must develop our skills against them, who better to fight?”

Awkwardly, Vergyl set his hastily grabbed staff on the deck. His face flushed hot with embarassment. “That makes sense.”

“Chirox is just a surrogate enemy, a target to fight. He represents all thinking machines in my mind.”

“Like a whipping boy.”

“A whipping mek.” The mercenary smiled. “We can set it to various fighting levels for training purposes.” He stepped closer to the ominous-looking combat robot. “Stand down.”

The robot lowered its weapons-studded limbs, then retracted them into its core, even the impaired arm, and stood waiting for further commands. With a sneer, the man slammed the hilt of his pulse sword against the mek’s chest, knocking the machine backward a step. The optic-sensor eyes flickered orange. The rest of the machine’s face, with its crudely shaped mouth and nose, did not move.

Confidently, the man tapped the metallic torso. “This limited robot—I dislike the term
thinking machine
—is totally under our control. It has served the mercenaries of Ginaz for nearly three generations now.” He deactivated his pulse sword, which was designed to scramble sophisticated gelcircuitry. “I am Zon Noret, one of the fighters assigned to this ship.”

Intrigued, Vergyl ventured closer. “Where did you find this machine?”

“A century ago, a Ginaz salvage scout came upon a damaged thinking machine ship, from which he retrieved this broken combat robot. Since then, we’ve wiped its memories and reinstalled combat programming. It allows us to test ourselves against machine capabilities.”

Noret patted the robot on one of its ribbed metal shoulders. “Many robots in the Synchronized Worlds have been destroyed because of what we learned from this unit. Chirox is an invaluable teacher. On the archipelago of Ginaz, students pit their skills against him. He has proved to be such a repository of information to utilize against our enemy that we mercenaries no longer think of him as a thinking machine, but as an ally.”

“A robot as an ally? Serena Butler wouldn’t like to hear that,” Vergyl said guardedly.

Zon Noret tossed his thick hair behind his head like the mane of a comet. “Many things are done in this Jihad without Serena Butler knowing. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn of other meks like this one under our control.” He made a dismissive gesture. “But since we all have the same goal, the details become insignificant.”

To Vergyl, some of Noret’s wounds looked only freshly healed. “Shouldn’t you be recuperating from the battle, instead of fighting even more?”

“A true mercenary never stops fighting.” His eyes narrowed. “I see you’re an officer yourself.”

Vergyl let out a frustrated sigh. “In the Construction Brigade. It’s not what I wanted. I’d rather be fighting, but … it’s a long story.”

Noret wiped sweat from his brow. “Your name?”

“Second Decero Tantor.”

With no flicker of recognition at the name, Noret looked at the combat mek and then at the young officer. “Perhaps we can arrange a little taste of battle for you anyway.”

“You would let me … ?” Vergyl felt his pulse quicken.

Zon Noret nodded. “If a man wants to fight, he should be allowed to do so.”

Vergyl lifted his chin. “I couldn’t agree more.”

“I warn you, this may be a training mek, but it is lethal. I often disconnect its safety protocol during my rigorous practices. That is why Ginaz mercenaries are so good.”

“Still, there must be fail-safes, or it wouldn’t be much good as an instructor.”

“Training that entails no risk is not realistic. It makes the student soft, knowing he is in no danger. Chirox is not like that, by design. He could kill you.”

Vergyl felt a rush of bravado, hoped he wasn’t being foolish. “I can handle myself. I’ve gone through Jihad training of my own.” But he wanted a chance to prove himself, and this combat robot might be as close to the fight as he ever got. Vergyl focused his hatred on Chirox, for all the horrors the fighting machines had inflicted upon humanity, and wanted to smash the mek into scrap metal. “Let me fight it, just as you were doing.”

The mercenary raised his eyebrows, as if amused and interested. “Your choice of weapons, young warrior?”

Vergyl fumbled, looked at the clumsy training staff he had grabbed. “I didn’t bring anything but this.”

Noret held his pulse sword up for the younger man to examine. “Do you know how to operate one of these?”

“That looks like one we used in basic training, but a newer model.”

“Correct.” Noret activated the weapon and handed it to the young man.

Vergyl hefted the sword to check its balance. Shimmering arcs of disruptive energy ran along the surface of its blade.

He took a deep breath and studied the combat mek, who stared back at him dispassionately, its eyelike optic threads glowing orange … waiting. The sensors shifted direction, watched Noret approach, and prepared for another opponent.

When the mercenary activated the mek, only two of the six mechanical arms emerged from the torso. One metal hand clasped a dagger, while the other was empty.

“It’s going to fight me at a low difficulty setting,” Vergyl complained.

“Perhaps Chirox just wants to test you. In actual combat, your adversary will never provide a resumé of his skills beforehand.”

Vergyl moved carefully toward the mek, then shifted to his left and circled, holding the pulse sword. He felt moisture on his palm, loosened his grip a bit. The mek kept turning to face him. Its dagger hand twitched, and Vergyl jabbed at the robot’s weapon with the electronic sword, hitting it with a purple pulse that caused the robot to shudder.

“Looks like a dumb machine to me.” He had imagined combat like this. Vergyl darted toward his opponent and struck the torso with the pulse sword, leaving a purple discoloration on the metal body. He tapped a blue button on the weapon’s handle until it reached the highest pulse setting.

“Go for the head,” Noret counseled. “Scramble the robot’s circuits to slow him. If you strike Chirox just right, he will need a minute or two to reconfigure.”

Again Vergyl struck, but missed the head, sliding down to the armored shoulder. Multicolored sparks covered the mek’s outer surface, and the dagger dropped from its mechanical grip to clatter on the floor of the training chamber. A wisp of smoke rose from the robot’s hand.

Excited, Vergyl moved in for the kill. He didn’t care if anyone needed this fighting unit for training. He wanted to destroy it, to burn it into molten remains. He thought of Serena, of little Manion, of all the slaughtered humans … and of his own inability to fight for the Jihad. This scapegoat mek would have to do for now.

But as he stepped forward, suddenly the flowmetal of the robot’s free hand shifted, reshaping itself and extruding a short sword with barbs on the blade. The other hand stopped sparking, and a matching weapon also formed there.

“Careful, young warrior. We wouldn’t want the Army to lose your construction skills.”

Feeling a surge of anger at the remark, Vergyl snapped, “I’m not afraid of this machine.”

“Fear is not always unwise.”

“Even against a stupid opponent? Chirox doesn’t even know I’m ridiculing him, does he?”

“I am just a machine,” the mek recited, its synthesized voice coming from a speaker patch. Vergyl was taken aback, thinking he had caught just a hint of sarcasm in the robot’s voice. Like a theatrical mask, its face did not change its expression.

“Chirox doesn’t usually say much,” Noret said, smiling. “Go ahead, pound him some more. But even I don’t know all the surprises he might have in store.”

Vergyl moved back to reassess his opponent. He studied the robot’s bright optic threads as they focused on the pulse weapon.

Abruptly, Chirox lunged with the barbed short sword, exhibiting unexpected speed and agility. Vergyl tried to dodge the blow, but did not move quickly enough, and a shallow gash opened on one of his arms. He went into a floor roll to escape, then glanced at the wound as he leaped back to his feet.

“Not a bad move,” Noret said, his tone casual, as if he didn’t care whether the robot killed Vergyl. Killing was both sport and profession to him. Maybe it took a harsh mindset to be a mercenary for Ginaz, but Vergyl—endowed with no such harshness—worried that he had gotten into this situation on impulse and might be facing a challenge more difficult than he was ready for. The combat mek kept advancing with jerking, unpredictable speeds, sometimes lunging with an astonishing fluidity of motion.

Vergyl darted from side to side, striking repeated blows with the pulse sword. He executed proficient rolls and considered attempting a showy backflip, but didn’t know if he could pull it off. Failure to properly execute a move could prove fatal.

One of his pulse blows struck the panel box on Chirox’s side, making it glow red. The robot paused. A thin, agile arm emerged from the robot’s torso and adjusted something inside.

“It can repair itself?”

“Most combat meks can. You wanted a fair shot at a real machine opponent, didn’t you? I warned you about this robot.”

Suddenly Chirox came at Vergyl harder and faster than before. Two more arms extruded from the body core. One held a long dagger with a jagged tip for snagging and ripping flesh. The other held a shimmering branding iron.

Zon Noret said something in an anxious tone, but the words blurred. The entire universe that Vergyl had known up to this point faded, along with all unnecessary sensory perception. He focused only on survival.

“I am a jihadi,” Vergyl whispered. He resigned himself to fate and at the same time decided to inflict as much damage as he could. He recalled a pledge that even the Construction Brigade had to memorize: “If I die in battle against the machines, I will join those who have gone to Paradise before me, and those who follow.” He felt a near-trancelike state consume him and remove all fear of death.

He plunged into battle, flailing away, striking the pulse sword against the mek, discharging the weapon repeatedly. In the background, someone shouted words he couldn’t make out. Then Vergyl heard a loud click, saw a flash of color, and bright yellow light immersed him. It felt like a blast from a polar wind and froze him in place.

Immobilized, helpless, Vergyl shuddered, then toppled. He fell for what seemed like a great distance. His teeth chattered, and he shivered. He didn’t seem to land anywhere.

Finally he found himself looking up into the robot’s gleaming optic sensors. Totally vulnerable.

“I can kill you now.” The machine pressed the jagged tip of the long dagger against Vergyl’s neck.

The combat mek could thrust the blade through his throat in a microsecond. Vergyl heard shouts, but could not squirm away. He stared up into the implacable optical sensors of the robot, the face of the hated machine enemy. The thinking machine was going to kill him—and this wasn’t even a real battle. What a fool he had been.