Part 25 (2/2)
More than she had for the past quarter century, the Mother Commander wished Duncan Idaho could be at her side again, facing this final conflict with her. Feeling the loneliness of command, tempted to bow to primitive human superst.i.tion and offer up a prayer to some invisible guardian angel, she hardened herself.
This has to work!
Her great s.h.i.+ps prowled the edge of planetary orbit, not knowing from which direction the Enemy fleet would come. Down below, the refugees who had filled temporary camps on the plague-emptied continents were anxious to evacuate from Chapterhouse, but even if there were vessels to transport them away, they had nowhere to go. Every functional craft in the sector had been commandeered to face the thinking-machine s.h.i.+ps. It was everything the human race could rally.
”Enemy s.h.i.+ps approaching, Mother Commander,” said Administrator Gorus, receiving a message from the sensor deck. His pale braid looked somewhat frayed, his skin whiter than usual. He had been convinced to stay aboard the main s.h.i.+p at the central battlefield, to stand by the new s.h.i.+ps his factories had produced; he didn't look at all happy about it.
”Exactly on time. Exactly as expected,” Murbella said. ”Disperse our vessels into the widest possible firing spread, so we can hit the Enemy all at once, before they can react to us. Machines are adaptable, but they rarely take the unexpected into account.”
Gorus looked at her sourly. ”Are you making a.s.sumptions based on old records, Mother Commander? Extrapolating from the way Omnius reacted fifteen thousand years ago?”
”To some extent, but I trust my instincts.”
As the heavily armed machine s.h.i.+ps approached, they looked like a meteor shower that grew larger and larger. The monstrous vessels loomed huge-thousands of them against the Sisterhood's desperate hundred. All along the line, at a hundred other systems, she knew her defenders were facing similar odds.
”Prepare to launch Obliterators. Stop them before they get any closer to Chapterhouse.” Murbella crossed her arms over her chest. Across the commlines, each captain announced his or her readiness.
The oncoming machine s.h.i.+ps slowed, as if curious to see what this small obstacle might be. They will underestimate us, They will underestimate us, Murbella thought. ”Maximize targets. Fire into close groupings of Enemy s.h.i.+ps. Consolidate explosions.” Murbella thought. ”Maximize targets. Fire into close groupings of Enemy s.h.i.+ps. Consolidate explosions.”
”Targets locked, Mother Commander,” Gorus said, his message transmitted immediately by his sensor technicians.
Murbella had to preempt the thinking machines before they could open fire. ”Launch Obliterators.” She held herself steady.
Silver sparks spat out of the launch tubes, Obliterators twirling toward the line of Enemy s.h.i.+ps, but the glints faded. Nothing happened, though some of the heavy weapons must have struck their targets. The machine vessels seemed to be waiting for something.
She looked around. ”Confirm that the Obliterators are armed. Where are the explosions? Launch the second volley!”
Alarms began to ring. In a frenzy, Gorus ran from one station to another, shouting at the Guildsmen on the upper decks. A harried-looking Reverend Mother charged into the command center, skidding to a stop in front of Murbella. ”Our Obliterators are doing nothing. They are all useless.”
”But they were tested! Our Sisters watched the manufacturing lines. How could they be faulty?”
Then, all at once, the one hundred Chapterhouse defender s.h.i.+ps went dead in s.p.a.ce, their engines shutting down, lights flickering. The thrum of station-keeping thrusters faded.
”What is happening?” Gorus demanded. ”Sabotage? Were we betrayed?”
As if they had expected this all along, the machine s.h.i.+ps closed in.
A Guildsman transmitted in a hollow voice over the speaking screen, ”The artificial navigation systems no longer respond, Administrator. We are shut out of our own controls. Our s.h.i.+ps are. . .nonfunctional.” Emergency lights lit the decks with an eerie glow.
”Did the machines figure out how to neutralize our systems?”
Gorus turned to Murbella. ”No jamming, Mother Commander. They. . .they just don't work. None of them.”
Suddenly the machine forces were upon them, a thousand vessels that would easily overwhelm the defenders. Murbella prepared to die. Her fighters could not protect themselves, or Chapterhouse, which she had sworn to guard.
But instead of attacking, the Enemy fleet cruised slowly past the defenders, taunting them in their impotence. The machines did not bother to open fire, as if the Sisterhood's defenses weren't even worth noticing!
Far behind them, just arriving at the distant edge of the solar system, came another wave of thinking machines, closing in on Chapterhouse. The same thing must be happening everywhere, at all of her carefully staged last stands across a hundred star systems.
”They knew! The d.a.m.ned machines knew our Obliterators wouldn't work!” As if Murbella's vessels were no more than a pebble on the path, the Omnius s.h.i.+ps flowed around them on their way to the Sisterhood's now-unprotected homeworld.
Not one of her new Guild war vessels had a living Navigator aboard; most of the Navigators and their Heighliners had disappeared. Every s.h.i.+p in her battle groups used Ixian mathematical compilers for guidance. Mathematical compilers! Computers. . .thinking machines.
The Ixians! Now her silent curse was directed at herself for overconfidence in the new Obliterators and her own ability to predict the Enemy's tactics. Now her silent curse was directed at herself for overconfidence in the new Obliterators and her own ability to predict the Enemy's tactics.
”Follow me, Administrator. I want to see these Obliterators for myself.” She grabbed Gorus's arm hard enough to leave bruises.
Guided by emergency illumination, they rushed to the weapons deck where the armaments had been installed. Inside, rack upon rack held the burnished silver eggs of the planet-melters that Ix had manufactured. A distraught Guildsman intercepted them. ”We tested the weapons, Administrator, and they were installed correctly. The firing controls are operational. We just launched dozens of Obliterators, but none of them detonated.”
”Why didn't they function?”
”Because. . .because the Obliterators themselves. . .”
Murbella marched over to where the man had opened one casing at random. Beneath a complicated labyrinth of circuitry and delicate components, the Obliterator charge was fused into the sh.e.l.l of the mechanism, making the whole thing inoperable. The weapon had been neutralized.
”It is useless, Mother Commander,” said Gorus. ”Sabotaged.”
”But I saw the tests myself. How can this be?”
”A timing mechanism may have shut everything down at a prearranged time, or the Enemy fleet might have sent out a deactivating signal. Some devious trick that we could not have antic.i.p.ated.”
Murbella stood appalled, guilty of the same error she had been so certain the machines would fall victim to: She had failed to plan for the unexpected. Together, they opened another Obliterator to find it similarly fused and nonfunctional. A coldness froze her heart and spread into her bloodstream. These weapons had been built over the course of years by the Ixians, at a cost in melange that nearly bankrupted the Sisterhood. She had been duped, and her fleet had been castrated by the Ixians before the battle could even begin.
”And what about our engines?”
”They can be made to function, if we operate them without the mathematical compilers.”
”I don't give a d.a.m.n about the compilers! Find a way to salvage some of the Obliterators. Are they all inactive? Every single one?”
”The only way to know, Mother Commander, is to open and inspect each of them.”
”We could just launch them all and hope a few still function.” Murbella nodded slowly. It was indeed an option. At this point, it cost them nothing. She had to find some way to fight, and she hoped her other battle groups were faring better than this. . .but she doubted it. Without functional Obliterators, every one of the planets on the front line was essentially unprotected in the face of certain destruction.
And it was all her responsibility.Some say that survival itself can be the best revenge. For myself, I prefer something a bit more extravagant.-BARON VLADIMIR HARKONNEN, the ghola
On a whim, the Baron told the ten Face Dancers accompanying him to pose as Sardaukar from the old Imperium. He didn't know if anyone would even recognize the joke-fas.h.i.+ons changed and history forgot such details-but it helped him present an air of command. During his original lifetime he had achieved a great victory over House Atreides with illicit Sardaukar at his side.
Leaving the restless Paolo with Erasmus, supposedly ”for his own protection,” the Baron dressed himself in a n.o.bleman's uniform frosted with gold braids and ornate chains of office. A ceremonial poison-tipped dagger hung at his side, and a wide-beam stunner was concealed in his sleeve for easy access. Though the imitation Sardaukar were his guards and escort, he didn't particularly trust them, either. One could never be too careful.
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