In an arena under the harsh sunlight of Earth’s equatorial zone, Agamemnon prepared to battle Omnius’s gladiator machine. The evermind treated these mock combats as challenges for the subservient Titans, a way for them to vent their anger and keep them preoccupied. But Agamemnon saw it as an opportunity to strike hard against his real enemy.

Two hundred and thirty years ago, human slaves and contractor robots had completed this semicircular, open-roofed coliseum for Omnius’s flashy battles. The evermind enjoyed testing the destructive capabilities of different robotic designs. Here, armored vehicles and self-aware artillery systems could clash under controlled circumstances.

Long ago, the genius Barbarossa had programmed an appreciation for combat and a thirst for conquest into the artificial intelligence that had evolved into Omnius. Even a thousand years later the computer evermind had never forgotten his taste for victory.

Sometimes these staged competitions pitted humans against machines. Randomly selected slaves from work gangs were given clubs, explosives, or cutting beams and thrown into the arena to face combat robots. The irrational violence of desperate humans never ceased to challenge the calculating mind of Omnius. At other times, the omnipresent computer preferred to demonstrate his own superiority against his cymeks.

In anticipation of the next gladiatorial challenge, Agamemnon had spent considerable effort in designing his new combat body. Omnius sometimes pitted his sleekest, most sophisticated models against the Titans; on other occasions, he responded with absurdly massive monstrosities that would never have been viable in any real struggle. It was all for show.

Months ago, when Barbarossa had achieved a particularly fine victory against Omnius, the cymek had demanded permission to attack the feral humans as a reward. While the strike on Salusa Secundus had not gone well, the Titans’ second effort had conquered Giedi Prime. Barbarossa was even now overseeing dozens of neo-cymeks in the subjugation of the people there, a Titan once more in charge of a world. At last, it was a step in the right direction . . .

If he succeeded in winning in the arena today, Agamemnon had plans of his own.

With sirens blaring to announce the new event, Agamemnon rolled forward on resilient walker pads and passed between the Corinthian columns of Challenger’s Gate. He could feel the thrumming strength of his stepped-up mobility systems, the pulse of increased power surging through his neurelectric pathways.

Inside this gladiator-form, his low-slung body core consisted of a pair of reinforced spheres— one surrounded by opaque armor, the other made of transparent alloyglas. Within the clear globe hung the grayish white hemispheres of his human brain, drifting in a pale-blue electrafluid and connected to thoughtrodes. Faint photon discharges crackled along the cerebral lobes as the cymek body moved forward, ready to fight.

Around the double-sphere core, bulky drive motors hummed inside protective cowlings. Engines worked the smooth hydraulics of four grappling legs. Each articulated limb ended with a shifting mass of adaptable metal polymer that could shape itself into a variety of hardened weapons.

Agamemnon had constructed this ferocious gladiator-form under the buzzing gaze of watcheyes that monitored his every move. Omnius supposedly filed all such information in a segregated portion of his evermind, so as not to gain an unfair combat advantage. Or so Omnius claimed.

While Agamemnon waited, poised for battle, his opponent strode forward, controlled directly by the evermind. Omnius had selected a walking suit of exaggerated medieval armor: two massive legs with feet like the foundations of a building and arms that ended in gauntleted fists as large as the body core itself. The proportions were grossly exaggerated, like a child’s nightmare of a bully. Spikes extruded from the massive knuckles on Omnius’s goliath robot, and apocalyptic discharges arced from point to point on the thorny fist.

Agamemnon pushed forward on armored walker pads while raising his crablike forelimbs, the adaptable-polymer ends of each morphing into claws. Even if he won the contest today, the evermind would suffer nothing, would not even have the grace to be humiliated in defeat.

On the other hand, Omnius could accidentally destroy the Titan’s brain canister. Unforseen things happened in battle situations, and maybe Omnius— despite his programming that prevented him from intentionally killing a Titan— was counting on that. For Agamemnon, this fight was for real.

A few designated robotic observers watched from the stands through enhanced optic threads, but they remained silent. Agamemnon did not require applause anyway. The other polished stone seats in the coliseum remained empty, reflecting daylight from the open sky. The large stadium, like an echoing tomb, had all the room necessary for two gigantic foes to clash.

No announcement preceded the fight, no information piped over loudspeakers. Agamemnon launched his attack first.

The Titan raised his whiplike grappling arms, hardened them with a shifting diamond film, and drove forward on heavy walker pads. With surprising agility, Omnius’s goliath robot lifted an enormous leg and sidestepped the attack.

Agamemnon lunged with another of his forelimbs, this one capped with a spherical wrecking ball that fired disruptive, paralyzing energy. The pulse thrummed through vulnerable systems, and Omnius’s warrior shuddered.

Suddenly the goliath swiveled, raising a gauntleted fist to smash the cymek’s segmented arm. Even the diamond film could not endure the blow, which bent Agamemnon’s forelimb until it ripped from the flexible socket. The cymek dismissed the damage and reversed his walker pads, ejecting the unsalvageable limb. He swung up a cutting arm that metamorphosed into a flurry of shimmering diamond blades.

Agamemnon sawed through his opponent’s armored torso, severing a set of neurelectric control threads. Greenish fluid sprayed out from chopped lubricant channels. The combat goliath swung his other spiked fist, but Agamemnon danced his walker pads sideways and shifted his vulnerable body core, keeping the brain canister safe.

When his swing missed completely, the heavy blow overbalanced the gladiator robot. Agamemnon brought up two slicing arms, hacking at the goliath’s arm joints with white-hot cutting irons. He found vulnerable spots with surprising ease, and the goliath’s right arm dangled useless, a tangle of neurelectric fibers and conductive fluids.

To assess the damage, Omnius dragged his unwieldy fighter two thundering steps backward. Agamemnon pressed his advantage, closing to grappling distance. Then he unleashed his first major surprise.

From a concealed compartment within the old-fashioned engine housing, a trapdoor irised open, and eight reinforced conductor-fiber cables sprang out, each tipped with a magnetic connector claw. The cables flew like a nest of startled vipers and slammed into the reeling goliath. As soon as the tips struck home, Agamemnon released a huge energy discharge. Lightning flared up and down the massive body of Omnius’s fighter.

The cymek general expected this insidious blow to knock the combat robot completely offline, but Omnius must have shielded his fighting unit well. Agamemnon sent another paralytic pulse like a scorpion’s sting, but still the Omnius gladiator did not fall. Instead, as if in anger, the machine swung its mammoth gauntlet with the force of a colliding train, putting all of his energy and momentum behind a single blow.

The spiked fist struck true, slamming into the transparent preservation sphere that held the disembodied brain. A major jamming surge pulsed out of the knuckle spikes, and a shaped fracture wave shattered the curved glass walls of the protected brain canister. Through the breached container walls, electrafluid spilled like blue gushing blood. Thoughtrodes tore, and the brain fell from its suspender wires, dangling naked in the open, hot air.

It might have been the death of Agamemnon.

But the cymek general had devised his own trick. The brain inside the transparent container was only a decoy, a synthetic reproduction of his cerebral contours. Agamemnon’s actual brain was inside the opaque metal-walled sphere, from which he controlled the gladiator-form. Safe and intact.

He was, however, astonished and infuriated. Omnius had proven his willingness to inflict severe damage on the most powerful and talented Titan of all. Omnius’s strong urge to avoid losing seemed capable of overriding his programming restrictions. Or had the evermind known about the ruse all along? Agamemnon launched his vindictive response.

Even as he spun backward on his walker pads, roaring away as fast as possible, he ejected the now-cracked sphere that contained the false brain. He launched it into the body core of the goliath robot.

In his specially constructed body, Agamemnon then ducked down, raising his armored limbs and lowering his shielded brain canister between the rows of thick walker pads to protect himself, like a turtle withdrawing into a shell.

The brain sphere struck the damaged gladiator and detonated. The simulated brain had been sculpted from high-energy solid foam. Flames roared past Agamemnon, charring the ground. The resulting explosion bowled over the goliath robot, decapitating it, ripping open its torso. The shockwave was sufficient to knock down part of the nearest coliseum wall.

Agamemnon had survived— and the Omnius gladiator had fallen.

“Excellent, General!” The computer voice echoed from loudspeakers in the intact portion of the arena, sounding genuinely pleased. “A most refreshing and enjoyable maneuver.”

Agamemnon still wondered if Omnius had been aware that the visible brain was false. Or perhaps the evermind had found a way to circumvent the protective restrictions Barbarossa had installed so many years ago. Now he would never be sure if the evermind was indeed willing to let him die in combat. Maybe Omnius had to keep the ambitious Titans from feeling too triumphant or overvalued, especially Agamemnon.

Only Omnius knew for certain, one way or the other.

Amid the smoke and flames rising from the ruin of the goliath machine, Agamemnon raised his gladiator-form, the uncontested victor. “I have defeated you, Omnius. I wish to claim my reward.”

“Naturally, General,” he answered, sounding good-natured. “You need not even speak your wish. Yes, I shall allow you and your cymeks to lead further strikes against the hrethgir. Go forth and enjoy yourselves.”