Wearing a new warrior-form designed to strike terror into the humans on Giedi Prime, Agamemnon strode on armored legs through the broken industries and flaming ruins of the city. The hrethgir hadn’t stood a chance.

Giedi Prime had been conquered easily.

The invading machine troops plodded forward, targeting habitation complexes and setting them aflame, blasting parks into blackened fields. In accordance with Agamemnon’s orders— citing the glory of Omnius— the neo-cymeks and robotic warriors left the Giedi City industries essentially intact.

Agamemnon had sworn that Giedi Prime would make up for the cymeks’ humiliation on Salusa. Even now, watcheyes flew overhead, recording the carnage, seeing how efficiently the two Titans guided the military operation.

Accompanied by his comrade Barbarossa, Agamemnon scanned the topography of the metropolis and located the Magnus’s magnificent residence. It was an appropriate place to establish the new center of Synchronized government, a symbolic gesture of domination as well as an affront to the defeated populace.

The cymek general’s warrior-form was the most monstrous multilegged system he had ever conceived. Electrical discharges fired through artificial muscles, pulling fiber cables taut and moving weapon-studded limbs. He flexed his flowmetal claws and crushed construction blocks in his grip, imagining them to be the skulls of enemies. Following in his own ferocious configuration, Barbarossa laughed at the showmanship.

Marching forward on many limbs, the cymeks thundered through the wreckage-strewn streets. Nothing stood in the way of these former warlords. The situation reminded both of them of a thousand years before, when twenty Titans had conquered the Old Empire by trampling the bodies of their foes.

This was the way it should be. It only whetted their appetite for more.

PRIOR TO THE attack, Agamemnon had studied Giedi Prime’s defenses, analyzing images taken by spy watcheyes that zoomed through the system like tiny meteoroids. From those readings, the cymek general had concocted a brilliant tactical move, exploiting a slight weakness in planetary defenses. Omnius had been willing to pay the necessary price to take over a League World, and it had not cost the life of a single Titan, not even one of the lesser neo-cymeks. Only a single robotic cruiser. Perfectly acceptable, as far as Agamemnon was concerned.

The humans had erected scrambler fields here like those on Salusa, centering their transmitting towers in Giedi City. The field-generator facility had been guarded by kindjal fighter craft, supposedly impregnable embankments, and massively armored ground vehicles. The feral humans had learned a lesson on Salusa Secundus. But it was not enough to protect them from obliteration.

Giedi Prime’s first-line orbital protective forces had been brushed aside by the unstoppable force of the giant machine fleet. All robot losses were acceptable. When Agamemnon led the cymek ships in, along with the sacrificial cruisers, the planetbound human defenders could not hope to drive them back.

To begin the assault, the huge robotic cruiser had positioned itself above Giedi Prime, its cargo holds filled with explosives. Dozens of other robot cruisers moved with machine grace, sleek and streamlined, lining up for the assault. Guided by a thinking machine intelligence, the enormous craft fired its engines and accelerated at full speed toward its target.

“Descent approach in progress,” the battleship’s robot mind had reported, transmitting images to the waiting fighters. Ahead, thirty decoy vessels shot downward, also hoping to strike the target but designed to be targets for the ground-based missile defenses. The plan relied on brute force and overwhelming numbers, not finesse. Nevertheless, it would be effective.

With its engines at full speed, the sacrificial vessel had accelerated white-hot into Giedi Prime’s atmosphere, faster than any ground-based human missile defenses could target and respond. The other cruisers approached the invisible scrambler shield. Already, gray-white blossoms of smoke and explosions marked where the ground-launched missiles had found targets. The numbers dwindled, as did the distance. The humans could never stop all the invaders.

The doomed robot ship sent final images back to the watcheyes so Omnius would have a complete record of the conquest of Giedi Prime. Every nanosecond— until it passed through the scrambler net, which effectively erased the AI guidance brain. The transmissions became static, then an empty carrier wave.

Still, the juggernaut had continued to descend. Even with its gelcircuitry brain neutralized, the plummeting cruiser fell like an asteroidsized hammer.

Kindjal fighter craft directly engaged the last explosive-laden vessel, but the inbound ship was too big and too hot to be swerved. The defenders’ shots amounted to little more than pellets.

The giant dead vessel slammed into the field transmitters on the outskirts of Giedi City. A crater half a kilometer wide flashed into steam; the transmitters, the overwhelmed defenses, and the surrounding inhabited areas all vanished.

Shockwaves had toppled buildings for kilometers around and shattered windows. Holtzman’s scrambler shields were neutralized in the blink of an eye, and the Giedi Home Guard was crippled.

After that, the cymeks and robots had come down in full force.

“BARBAROSSA, MY FRIEND, shall we make our grand entrance?” Agamemnon said, arriving at the residence of the Magnus.

“Just like when we followed Tlaloc into the halls of the Old Empire,” his fellow Titan agreed. “It has been a long time since I’ve enjoyed a victory so much.”

They led enthusiastic neo-cymeks easily through the reeling metropolis. The stunned human inhabitants could not even put up a fight. Behind the cymek conquerors marched robotic troops to help secure the territory.

Although part of Giedi Prime’s population might flee underground and hide, the citizenry would break, given time. It might take years to root out the last cells of feral resistance. No doubt the conquering machines would endure decades of guerrilla strikes by misguided vigilantes, survivors of the Giedi Home Guard who thought a few gnat-bites would make the invaders pack up and go away. Resistance groups would be a futile exercise, but he had no doubt the locals would try some such foolishness.

Agamemnon wondered if he should bring in Ajax to complete the cleanup. The brutal cymek warlord particularly enjoyed hunting humans, as he had proved so effectively during the Hrethgir Rebellions on Walgis. As soon as they installed a copy of the evermind in the ashes of Giedi City, Agamemnon would make appropriate recommendations to the new incarnation of Omnius.

Agamemnon and Barbarossa smashed open the front of the governor’s residence, clearing an area wide enough for their reinforced bodies. In their wake, soldier robots, much smaller than the cymeks’ warrior-forms, flooded into the building. Within moments, the robots brought blond-haired Magnus Sumi before the two Titans.

“We claim your planet in the name of Omnius,” Barbarossa declared. “Giedi Prime is now a Synchronized World. We require your cooperation to consolidate our victory.”

Magnus Sumi, trembling with fear, nevertheless spat on the broken floor where the weight of the cymek warrior-forms had crushed his carefully laid tiles.

“Bow to us,” Barbarossa said.

The Magnus laughed. “You’re mad. I would never—”

Agamemnon swung one of his sleek metal arms sideways. He had not fully tested this new body and was not aware of the magnitude of his strength. He had meant to strike the governor in the face, an instinctive angry slap. Instead, the arm delivered a blow so forceful that it ripped the man’s torso in half. The two parts of his body thudded against the far wall in a splatter of gore.

“Oh, well. My demand was a mere formality anyway.” Agamemnon turned optic threads toward his comrade. “Begin your work, Barbarossa. These robots will assist.”

The Titan programming genius began dismantling the household systems in the governor’s residence and setting up power conduits and machinery. He added linkages and installed a blank, resilient gelsphere mainframe into which he uploaded the newest version of Omnius’s mind.

The process took several hours, during which the thinking machine invasion force moved through the city, putting out fires and shoring up damaged industrial buildings that Agamemnon considered important for the planet’s continued utility.

The habitation complexes of the surviving humans, though, were left to burn. The suffering people could fend for themselves. Misery would help them understand the hopelessness of their position.

Floating overhead, the annoying watcheyes recorded everything. At least it was a victory this time. Agamemnon revealed no sign of his impatience or displeasure, knowing that resistance against the computer evermind would be fruitless. For now. Instead, he must select the proper place and time.

Once installed and activated, the new incarnation of Omnius would show no appreciation toward the two seemingly loyal Titans for their victory, nor would the evermind begrudge the loss of his machine juggernaut. It was a military operation well executed, and the Synchronized Worlds had now added one of humanity’s jewels to its empire. A psychological and strategic success.

When the immense download was finally complete, Agamemnon activated the new copy of the distributed evermind. Systems surged alive, and the omniscient computer began to survey its new domain.

“Welcome, Lord Omnius,” Agamemnon said to the wallspeakers. “I present to you the gift of another world.”