The Butlerian Jihad Read online

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  To our agents,

  ROBERT GOTTLIEB and MATT BIALER

  of Trident Media Group,

  who saw the potential in this project from the very beginning

  and whose enthusiasm helped us to make it a success

  Contents

  Begin Reading

  Glossary of the Butlerian Jihad

  Major Planets

  Acknowledgments

  Princess Irulan writes:

  Any true student must realize that History has no beginning. Regardless of where a story starts, there are always earlier heroes and earlier tragedies.

  Before one can understand Muad’Dib or the current jihad that followed the overthrow of my father, Emperor Shaddam IV, one must understand what we fight against. Therefore, look more than ten thousand years into our past, ten millennia before the birth of Paul Atreides.

  It is there that we see the founding of the Imperium, how an emperor rose from the ashes of the Battle of Corrin to unify the bruised remnants of humanity. We will delve into the most ancient records, into the very myths of Dune, into the time of the Great Revolt, more commonly known as the Butlerian Jihad.

  The terrible war against thinking machines was the genesis of our political-commercial universe. Hear now, as I tell the story of free humans rebelling against the domination of robots, computers, and cymeks. Observe the basis of the great betrayal that made mortal enemies of House Atreides and House Harkonnen, a violent feud that continues to this day. Learn the roots of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, the Spacing Guild and their Navigators, the Swordmasters of Ginaz, the Suk Medical School, the Mentats. Witness the lives of oppressed Zensunni Wanderers who fled to the desert world of Arrakis, where they became our greatest soldiers, the Fremen.

  Such events led to the birth and life of Muad’Dib.

  LONG BEFORE MUAD’DIB, in the last days of the Old Empire, humanity lost its drive. Terran civilization had spread across the stars, but grew stagnant. With few ambitions, most people allowed efficient machines to perform everyday tasks for them. Gradually, humans ceased to think, or dream…or truly live.

  Then came a man from the distant Thalim system, a visionary who took the name of Tlaloc after an ancient god of rain. He spoke to languid crowds, attempting to revive their human spirit, to no apparent effect. But a few misfits heard Tlaloc’s message.

  These new thinkers met in secret and discussed how they would change the Empire, if only they could overthrow the foolish rulers. Discarding their birth names, they assumed appellations associated with great gods and heroes. Foremost among them were General Agamemnon and his lover Juno, a tactical genius. These two recruited the programming expert Barbarossa, who devised a scheme to convert the Empire’s ubiquitous servile machines into fearless aggressors by giving their AI brains certain human characteristics, including the ambition to conquer. Then several more humans joined the ambitious rebels. In all, twenty masterminds formed the core of a revolutionary movement that took over the Old Empire.

  Victorious, they called themselves Titans, after the most ancient of Greek gods. Led by the visionary Tlaloc, the twenty allocated the administration of planets and peoples among themselves, enforcing their edicts through Barbarossa’s aggressive thinking machines. They conquered most of the known galaxy.

  Some resistance groups rallied their defenses on the fringes of the Old Empire. Forming their own confederation—the League of Nobles—they fought the Twenty Titans and, after many bloody battles, retained their freedom. They stopped the tide of the Titans and drove them back.

  Tlaloc vowed to dominate these outsiders one day, but after less than a decade in power, the visionary leader was killed in a tragic accident. General Agamemnon took Tlaloc’s place as leader, but the death of his friend and mentor was a grim reminder of the Titans’ own mortality.

  Wishing to rule for centuries, Agamemnon and his lover Juno undertook a risky course of action. They had their brains surgically removed and implanted in preservation canisters that could be installed into a variety of mechanical bodies. One by one—as the remaining Titans felt the specter of age and vulnerability—all of the others also converted themselves into “cymeks,” machines with human minds.

  The Time of Titans lasted for a century. The cymek usurpers ruled their various planets, using increasingly sophisticated computers and robots to maintain order. But one fateful day the hedonistic Titan Xerxes, anxious to have more time for his pleasures, surrendered too much access to his pervasive AI network.

  The sentient computer network seized control of an entire planet, followed quickly by others. The breakdown spread like a virulent infestation from world to world, and the computer “evermind” grew in power and scope. Naming itself Omnius, the intelligent and adaptable network conquered all the Titan-controlled planets before the cymeks had time to warn each other of the danger.

  Omnius then set out to establish and maintain order in its own highly structured fashion, keeping the humiliated cymeks under its thumb. Once masters of an empire, Agamemnon and his companions became reluctant servants to the widespread evermind.

  At the time of the Butlerian Jihad, Omnius and his thinking machines had held all of the “Synchronized Worlds” in an iron grip for a thousand years.

  Even so, clusters of free humans remained on the outskirts, bound together for mutual protection, thorns in the sides of the thinking machines. Whenever attacks came, the League of Nobles defended themselves effectively.

  But new machine plans were always being developed.

  When humans created a computer with the ability to collect information and learn from it, they signed the death warrant of mankind.

  —SISTER BECCA THE FINITE

  Salusa Secundus hung like a jeweled pendant in the desert of space, an oasis of resources and fertile fields, peaceful and pleasing to the optic sensors. Unfortunately, it was infested with feral humans.

  The robotic fleet approached the capital world of the League of Nobles. Armored warships bristled with weapons, weirdly beautiful with their reflective alloy coatings, their adornments of antennae and sensors. Aft engines blazed pure fire, pushing the vessels to accelerations that would have crushed mere biological passengers. Thinking machines required no life-support or physical comfort. Currently, they were focused on destroying the remnants of age-old human resistance on the wild outer fringes of the Synchronized Worlds.

  Inside his pyramid-shaped vessel, the cymek general Agamemnon led the attack. Logical thinking machines did not care about glory or revenge. But Agamemnon certainly did. Fully alert inside his preservation canister, his human brain watched the plans unfold.

  Ahead of him, the main fleet of robot warships swept into the human-infested system, overwhelming the crews of surprised sentry vessels like an avalanche out of space. Human picket ships opened fire, defenders swept in to meet the oncoming machine force. Five League sentry vessels fired off heavy salvos, but most of their projectiles were too slow to hit the streaking inbound fleet. A handful of robotic vessels were damaged or destroyed by lucky shots, and just as many human ships exploded in flashes of incandescent vapor—not because they posed a particular threat, but because they were
in the way.

  Only a few distant scouts managed to transmit a warning toward vulnerable Salusa Secundus. Robot battleships vaporized the diffuse inner perimeter of human defenses, without even slowing on their way to their real goal. Shuddering under extreme deceleration, the thinking-machine fleet would arrive not long after the warning signal reached the capital world.

  The humans would never have time enough to prepare.

  The robot fleet was ten times the size and power of any force Omnius had ever before sent against the League of Nobles. The humans had grown complacent, having faced no concentrated robotic aggression during the last century of uneasy cold war. But machines could wait a long time, and now Agamemnon and his surviving Titans would finally have their chance.

  Revealed by a flurry of tiny machine spy probes, the League had recently installed supposedly invincible defenses against gelcircuitry-based thinking machines. The massive robot fleet would wait at a safe distance while Agamemnon and his small vanguard of cymeks pressed forward on a mission, perhaps a suicidal one, to open the door.

  Agamemnon reveled in the anticipation. Already the hapless biologicals would be sounding alarms, preparing defenses…cowering in fear. Through flowing electrafluid that kept his disembodied brain alive, he transmitted an order to his cymek shock troops. “Let us destroy the heart of the human resistance. Forward!”

  For a thousand hellish years, Agamemnon and his Titans had been forced to serve the computer evermind, Omnius. Chafing under their bondage, the ambitious but defeated cymeks now turned their frustration against the League of Nobles. One day the once-defeated general hoped to turn against Omnius himself, but thus far had seen no opportunity.

  The League had erected new scrambler shields around Salusa Secundus. Such fields would destroy the sophisticated gelcircuitry of all AI computers—but human minds could survive the passage. And though they had mechanical systems and interchangeable robotic bodies, cymeks still had human brains.

  Thus, they could pass through the defensive shields unscathed.

  Like a target behind crosshairs, Salusa Secundus filled Agamemnon’s field of view. With great attention to detail the general had studied tactical projections, applying the military skills he’d developed over the centuries, along with an intuitive understanding of the art of conquest. His abilities had once allowed a mere twenty rebels to take over an empire…until they’d lost it all to Omnius.

  Prior to launching this important attack, the computer evermind had insisted on running simulation after simulation, trying to develop plans for every contingency. Agamemnon, though, knew it was futile to plan too precisely when it came to unruly humans.

  Now, while the immense robot war fleet engaged the expected League orbital defenses and perimeter ships, Agamemnon’s mind probed outward from his sensor-connected container, and he felt his guideship as an extension of his long-lost human body. The integral weapons were part of himself. He saw with a thousand eyes, and the powerful engines made him feel as if he had muscular legs again and could run like the wind.

  “Prepare for ground assault. Once our dropcarriages penetrate the Salusan defenses, we must strike fast and hard.” Recalling that watcheyes would record every moment of the battle for the evermind’s later scrutiny once the fleet returned, he added, “We will sterilize this filthy planet for the glory of Omnius.” Agamemnon slowed his descent, and the others followed suit. “Xerxes, take the lead. Send in your neo-cymeks to draw their fire and flush them out.”

  Hesitant as usual, Xerxes complained. “Will I have your full support as I go in? This is the most dangerous part of—”

  Agamemnon silenced him. “Be grateful for this opportunity to prove yourself. Now go! Every second you delay gives more time to the hrethgir.” This was the derogatory term that intelligent machines and their cymek lackeys used for human vermin.

  Another voice crackled across the comlink: the robot operator of the machine fleet battling the human protective force orbiting Salusa. “We await your signal, General Agamemnon. Human resistance is intensifying.”

  “We’re on our way,” Agamemnon said. “Xerxes, do as I instructed!”

  Xerxes, who always fell short of complete defiance, stifled further comment and summoned three neo-cymeks, later-generation machines with human minds. The quartet of pyramidal ships shut down their subsidiary systems, and their armored dropcarriages fell unguided into the atmosphere. For a few dangerous moments they would be easy targets, and the League’s missile-and-aerial defenses might hit a few of the cluster. But the dropcarriages’ dense material shielding would protect them against the brunt of the bombardment, keeping them intact even through a wild crash-landing on the outskirts of the prime city of Zimia, where the main shield-generating towers were located.

  Thus far the League of Nobles had preserved unruly humanity against the organized efficiency of Omnius, but the feral biologicals governed themselves ineffectively and often disagreed over major decisions. As soon as Salusa Secundus was crushed, the unstable alliance would disintegrate in a panic; resistance would crumble.

  But first Agamemnon’s cymeks had to shut down the scrambler shields. Then Salusa would be defenseless and quivering, ready for the main robot fleet to deal the lethal blow, like a huge mechanical boot squashing an insect.

  The cymek leader jockeyed his dropcarriage into position, ready to lead the second wave with the rest of the extermination fleet. Agamemnon switched off all computerized systems and followed Xerxes down. His brain floated in limbo inside its preservation canister. Blind and deaf, the general did not feel the heat or violent vibrations as his armored craft roared toward the unsuspecting target.

  The intelligent machine is an evil genie, escaped from its bottle.

  —BARBAROSSA,

  Anatomy of a Rebellion

  When Salusa’s sensor network detected the arrival of the robotic war fleet, Xavier Harkonnen took action immediately. Once again, the thinking machines meant to test the defenses of free humanity.

  Though he bore the rank of tercero in the Salusan Militia—the local, autonomous branch of the overall League Armada—Xavier had not yet been born during the last real skirmishes against League worlds. The most recent major battle had been nearly a hundred years ago. After all these years, the aggressive machines might be counting on soft human defenses, but Xavier swore they would fail.

  “Primero Meach, we’ve received an urgent warning and a vidstream clip from one of our peripheral scouts,” he said to his commander. “But the transmission cut off.”

  “Look at them all!” squawked Quinto Wilby as he scanned images from the outlying sensor network. The low-ranking officer stood with other soldiers at banks of instrument panels inside a domed building. “Omnius never sent anything like this before.”

  Vannibal Meach, the short but loud-voiced primero of the Salusan Militia, stood in the control center of the planet’s defenses, coolly absorbing the flow of information. “Our last report from the perimeter is hours old due to signal lag. By now they’ve engaged our pickets, and they’ll try to get closer. They’ll fail, of course.” Though this was his first warning of the impending invasion, he reacted as if he had expected the machines to arrive any day.

  In the control room’s illumination, Xavier’s dark brown hair glinted with reddish cinnamon highlights. He was a serious young man, prone to honesty and with a tendency to see things in black and white. As a member of the third military ranking tier, Tercero Harkonnen was Meach’s backup commander of the local defense outposts. Much admired by his superiors, Xavier had been promoted quickly; equally respected by his soldiers, he was the sort of trusted man they would follow into battle.

  Despite the sheer size and firepower of the robotic force, he willed himself to calmness, then signaled for reports from the nearest picket ships and put the spaceguard defense fleet on highest alert in close orbit. The warship commanders had already called their crews to battle-ready status as soon as they’d heard the urgent transmission from the
now-destroyed scout ships.

  Around Xavier, automated systems hummed with activity. Listening to the oscillating sirens, the chatter of orders and status reports in the control room, he drew a slow breath, prioritizing tasks. “We can stop them,” he said. “We will stop them.” His voice carried a tone of firm command, as if he were much older than his years and accustomed to battling Omnius every day. In reality, this would be his first engagement with the thinking machines.

  Years ago, his parents and older brother had been killed in a marrauding cymek attack while en route from an inspection of family holdings on Hagal. The soulless machine forces had always been a threat to the League Worlds, but the humans and Omnius had maintained an uneasy peace for decades.

  On a wall grid, a map of the Gamma Waiping system showed the orbital locations of Salusa Secundus and six other planets, along with the deployment of sixteen patrol battle groups and the vigilant picket ships that were scattered at random. Cuarto Steff Young hurried to update the tactical projection, plotting her best guess of the location of the approaching robot battle group.

  “Contact Segundo Lauderdale, and call in all perimeter warships. Tell them to engage and destroy any enemy they encounter,” said Primero Meach, then he sighed. “It’ll take half a day at maximum acceleration to retrieve our heavy battle groups from the fringe, but the machines might still be trying to get through by then. Could be a field day for our guys.” Cuarto Young followed the order with easy efficiency, his patching a message that would take hours to reach the outskirts of the system.

  Meach nodded to himself, going through the much-drilled sequence. Always living under the specter of the machines, the Salusan Militia trained regularly for every scenario, as did Armada detachments for every major League system. “Activate the Holtzman scrambler shields around the planet and issue warnings to all commercial air and space traffic. I want the city’s shield transmitter output up to full within ten minutes.”