While the survivors of Giedi Prime counted their dead, documented the damage, and made plans for the future, Xavier felt hope fading. It seemed that no one on the whole world had seen Serena Butler since she’d departed from the island compound in the northern sea.

He took twice his normal shifts aboard scout kindjals, flying regular patterns over the settled continents, where thinking machines had caused the most destruction. If Serena was alive, Xavier knew she would never be hiding. Rather, the determined young woman would be in the midst of the hardest work, taking charge as always.

Flying eastward on the next scheduled search pattern, he watched the yellow sun set behind him, leaving splashes of gold and orange in its wake. A powerful gust buffeted his craft, and he fought to control it. Xavier rose to a less-turbulent altitude above the jet-stream, while his squadron followed him.

Someday, after he and Serena were married, he could tell this story to their children. His chest tightened at the thought, but he continued his search, not daring to consider what he would do if something had happened to her.

From this altitude, Xavier could make out the major geographical outlines of continents and seas as they soaked up the approaching night. Through a powerful scope, he saw the center of a city and made out clusters of lights marking human encampments. During their brief and brutal rule, the machine conquerors had slaughtered countless people and sent millions fleeing into the countryside.

Now survivors began to filter back to their homes. Construction crews had moved into the industrial complexes, where they ripped out machine modifications and reestablished the production capacities that were necessary to repair dwelling units and distribute food and supplies. Back in Giedi City, Armada experts pored over the ruined Omnius citadel, analyzing the debris from the high-thermal attack. Only scraps of twisted, burned-out hardware and an electronic signaling mechanism remained.

But full recovery would take a great deal of time.

Xavier hated machines more than anything, but he also believed in honor among men. He could not understand the turncoat Vorian Atreides, who willingly flew beside a robot captain in a thinking-machine spy ship. Brainwashed, obviously, but something in the young man’s arrogant demeanor suggested deep convictions . . . a fanatical, single-minded passion. Atreides had claimed to be the “son” of Agamemnon, the worst of the cymek Titans.

Below, one of the squadron ships veered toward the water in the vast, open sea. “Tercero Harkonnen, I’m detecting debris in the water below. Metallic wreckage of some sort.”

With sudden dread, Xavier said, “Check it out.”

Two kindjals swooped down to the open sea. One pilot transmitted, “The mass and configuration suggests that it’s the remains of a League ship with military-grade armor. Maybe a blockade runner.”

“Did we lose any ships of that type in our engagement?”

“No, sir.”

“Retrieve the wreckage,” Xavier commanded, surprised at how steady his voice sounded. “We’ll run an analysis.” He didn’t want to say it, but knew that Serena and her team had taken such a craft out onto the open sea, when departing from the transmitter facility.

He thought of the shimmering image of Serena projected from the black diamond necklace that Octa had given him. The memory was so sharp that the achingly beautiful woman seemed to be standing in front of him again, proud and determined with her misguided idea of helping the people of Giedi Prime.

As the crews gathered the scattered debris, Xavier saw that the hull had been painted an unobtrusive gray with a film of stealth coating, now blistered and peeled.

He felt numb. “We have to make certain, one way or the other.”

LATER, WHEN THE debris had been delivered to a temporary military encampment in Giedi City, Xavier Harkonnen ordered a full examination on any traces found in the interior of the destroyed craft. Other parts of the wreckage seemed to have come from robotic aerofoils, but he didn’t care about that. His mind and body were numb with dread; the conclusions seemed inescapable.

Inside a battered lifepod not far from the downed blockade runner, the recovery team also found the mangled remains of an old man, identified as Ort Wibsen. All doubt dissipated. This had been Serena’s vessel.

They found more blood inside the waterlogged ship. Obviously they had put up an extraordinary fight at the end. Xavier ran full DNA scans, hoping for any result other than the one he feared most.

But the results proved that the other victims had been the Home Guard messenger Pinquer Jibb . . . and Serena Butler herself.

Serena. My love . . .

Hanging his head, Xavier tried to hold on to the unraveling strands of hope. Perhaps the machines had only taken Serena prisoner. But that was a ridiculously unrealistic possibility . . . and given cymek and robot brutality, would that be a fate he could wish for?

No, he would have to return to Salusa Secundus and deliver the news to a distraught Manion Butler.

There could be no doubt about it: Serena must be dead.