Sandworms of Dune - Brian Herbert [140]
Teg crumpled to the deck, arms and legs akimbo, as dead as a dried leaf, older even than the first old Bashar had been in the last moments of Rakis. Miles! All their years together, teaching, learning, relying on each other. Few people in all of Duncan’s many lives had ever mattered so much.
He drove away his thoughts of shocked grief, but Mentat memory kept every experience clear and sharp. Miles! Teg was no more than an ancient husk on the floorplates. Duncan had no time for anger or tears.
The no-ship began to accelerate. He still saw how to slip out of the cruel net, but now he also had to contend with the entire fleet of Enemy ships. They had cut loose with a second volley.
The blurred crackle ahead seemed to invite them. Duncan steered toward it, moving as fast as his human reflexes could go. The no-ship ripped the stubborn strands free. “Come on!” Duncan said, willing it to happen.
More blasts glanced across the Ithaca’s hull, grazing the ship as it yawed and rolled. Duncan steered with all of his skill.
The Holtzman engines were hot and the diagnostic boards showed numerous errors and system failures, but none were immediately fatal faults. Duncan pushed the vessel closer and closer to the loophole. The Enemy ships couldn’t head them off, couldn’t move fast enough to stop them.
More of the net broke away. Duncan could see it happening.
He forced his attention back to the engines, applying acceleration far beyond what the systems normally allowed. In his frantic repairs, Teg had not bothered with the niceties of fail-safes and protective limitations. With increased velocity, they pulled free of the enclosing cordon.
“We’re going to make it!” Duncan said to the fallen Bashar, as if his friend could still hear him.
A giant torpedo-shaped Enemy vessel leapt forward. No human could possibly pilot a ship so swiftly, changing directions with g-forces that would snap bones like a handful of straw in a clenched fist. Burning its engines, the attacker exhausted all of its fuel in one burst of forward motion—throwing the craft directly into their path.
With his maneuvering already hampered, Duncan could not dodge in time. The no-ship was too huge, with too much inertia. Impossibly, the suicidal Enemy vessel scraped the lower hull of the Ithaca, knocking it off course, damaging the engines yet again. The unexpected impact sent the no-ship spinning. The Enemy rammer tumbled and exploded, and the shock wave knocked them farther off course, out of control . . . back into the remaining strands of the net.
Duncan uttered a curse in dismay and rage.
Unable to fold space, the no-ship dropped back, its engines whining. The bridge control panels blazed red, then went dim. A small internal explosion further damaged the Holtzman engines. The Ithaca hung motionless in space. Again.
“I’m sorry, Bashar,” Duncan said, heartbroken. With nothing else to do, he knelt beside the husk of his friend.
A message formed on the primary screen on the bridge, a powerful transmission from the surrounding battleships. Even in his stunned sorrow, Duncan was surprised to see the true face of the Enemy at last.
The smooth flowmetal face of a sentient machine appeared on the screen. “You are our prisoners. Your vessel is no longer capable of independent flight. We will deliver you to the evermind Omnius.”
Thinking machines!
Duncan struggled to understand what he was seeing and hearing. Omnius? The evermind? The Enemy, posing as a kindly old couple, were really thinking machines? Impossible! Thinking machines had been outlawed for thousands of years, and the last evermind had been destroyed in the Battle of Corrin at the end of the Butlerian Jihad.
Machines? Somehow allied with the new Face Dancers?
The Enemy ships pounced like hyenas on a fresh carcass.
Some people complain of being haunted by their past. Utter nonsense! I revel in it.