Brian Herbert - Navigators of Dune

He felt glad that Haditha wasn’t here.

As if expecting him, Robér Cecilio stepped into the corridor, closing the door behind him. “Sire, you instructed me that speed was more important than subtlety. I was pleased to operate without any restraints this time.”

The Emperor assessed the black-robed man, then stared at the closed door. He could hear no noises on the other side now, wondered if any of the VenHold prisoners were still alive. “Yes, and the results? Do you know where he is hiding?”

“I am confident that the first five captives had no information to reveal, but several others finally provided a star-system name and astronomical coordinates. A planet called Denali. They say it is the site of a top-secret VenHold research facility.”

This confirmed the information from the half-damaged navigation database in one of the stranded VenHold ships.

He stepped around the Scalpel interrogator, entered the sealed chamber. The room smelled of blood, urine, and terror but he was even more sickened to see the VenHold employee: he was horrifically broken, most of his skin flayed, his arm and leg joints in all the wrong places. Cecilio proudly went to the unconscious victim and prodded him, as if he considered this wreck of humanity to be a trophy. The eyelids flickered, didn’t open.

“Sire, I’m convinced that the subject’s information is accurate—and consistent with the revelations from three other prisoners.”

Though Roderick was disturbed to see such mangled remnants of a human being, he had to reassess what actions he considered necessary and acceptable. It was a matter of priorities. “Thank you, Cecilio.” He turned to Admiral Harte. “Denali?”

“Sire, I had an aide look it up in archives from the League of Nobles. Denali appeared in the old records as a small planet with a poisonous atmosphere … possibly an old cymek base, but not confirmed. Never settled, never even noticed as far as the records showed.”

The Emperor nodded. “A poisonous planet for a poisonous man.” That was where Roderick would go.

RODERICK RUSHED AN Imperial communiqué back to Salusa, summoning the bulk of his armed forces on two foldspace carriers so he could bring an overwhelming fleet to Denali. He intended to snuff out his last major enemy.

When the Imperial battleships arrived at Lampadas, Roderick studied a screen in the main salon of his barge, with Admiral Harte standing beside him. “A handful of ships will be enough to keep the remaining Butlerian fanatics under control here, Sire,” Harte said. “They have nothing. Better to devote our main force to fighting Venport, who is still a threat.”

Harte’s forces had already commandeered any damaged but functional Butlerian ships and pressed them into Imperial service as well. Without Manford Torondo, the fanatics were disorganized; Anari Idaho was a Swordmaster, not a true leader. The Butlerians were fewer in number now, and too weak to pose much of a concern. The problem was mostly solved.

Ironically, Josef Venport had done exactly as he’d promised: He had taken care of the fanatics and killed their commander. And the Butlerians, in turn—with the timely and unexpected assistance of Admiral Harte—had caused significant damage to the VenHold threat. A crackdown on Denali would wrap it all up, and Venport would not know what was coming.

“The Directeur is not yet sufficiently defeated,” Roderick announced. “We will leave some of your FTL ships here to monitor the Butlerians on the ground, but I am taking the rest of our fleet to finish the job at Denali.”

Harte followed Roderick out of the barge’s luxurious main salon. “The Butlerians will wish to join us so they can continue their fight against the Directeur. Since his cymeks killed Leader Torondo, they loathe him more than ever.”

“I forbid their further involvement,” Roderick said. “The Butlerians no longer dictate my actions. We will achieve our own victory, Admiral—an Imperial victory. And then we can end this terrible mess, once and for all.”

Inside the laboratory domes, Anna followed Erasmus wherever he went. She drew strength from being in his orbit, but her constant presence bothered him more and more, especially now that he had to concentrate on urgent preparations for the defense of Denali. Not surprisingly, she seemed not to understand the magnitude of the crisis, and he did not have time to explain it to her now.

During his initial observations of Anna at the Mentat School, he had catalogued her mood swings and biological obsessions. Now that he was with her physically as well as conversationally, his comprehension of the young woman’s needs had grown. She had given him a great deal to ponder, ideas for subtle follow-up research, but none of that was important now. He actually found her irritating, even though she could not be blamed.

Under normal circumstances, the independent robot would have enjoyed the opportunity to conduct even more experiments on Anna’s emotions, but in light of the current crisis facing them, such esoteric studies were a lower priority. In all probability, with the persistent prying of the Emperor’s operatives, a vengeful Imperial fleet would soon discover Denali. Then they would be in deep trouble.

Since Erasmus’s own survival was on the line, he did not like the uncertainty.

Anna trailed after him from one laboratory to another as he watched the scientists working with greater desperation than before. She touched him often, smiling and chattering, and it was all he could do to concentrate. Fortunately, she had already recorded the necessary video message for Venport to use as a bargaining chip, if he ever needed to hold her up as a human shield.

During the Jihad, Erasmus and Omnius had used many thousands of human shields at the Battle of Corrin, but it had not proved a sufficient deterrent. Anna was only one person, and a damaged one at that. Knowing this, the independent robot had to find another way to save them.

Many of the discarded combat meks taken from the thinking-machine fleet had been left on the surface of Denali, just like the original cymek walkers, and Erasmus had sorted out the most viable ones, to wipe their basic programming, and to recharge some of their weapons systems. In times past, such fighting meks could wreak terrible damage upon undefended human populations. Here at Denali, though, there was little chance of a ground battle, so he did not expend a great deal of effort on the possibility. He had many of the still-functional robots sent to equipment hangars on standby, however, just in case.

The machines were not hardened against the corrosive atmosphere, but he readied as many as he could, then devoted his attentions to larger-scale possibilities. He had a planet to defend, and all the resources of Venport Holdings. It reminded him of when Omnius had allowed him to dabble in any research that interested him. It was good to have a body again.

He also oversaw the frantic development of small, self-targeted missiles that could soar into orbit and hover beside an enemy ship, then pass slowly through its shields unhindered; once through the barrier, they would accelerate to explode into the hull. That seemed a promising approach, but developing a useful arsenal of such weapons would require extensive testing and prototype iterations. And Denali had no time.

Nevertheless, Erasmus reviewed the plans and suggested modifications. One of the researchers was clearly suspicious of him because he was a former thinking machine, but Erasmus frowned with his human face, forming an expression that was becoming more and more natural to him. “You distrust me, but I challenge you to use your logic. Even if I were as evil as you think I am, it behooves me to help save us all—myself included. I have as much at stake here as anyone does.”