Timing was everything. For months, Iblis had primed his work crews and awaited the promised signal that would launch a violent, coordinated revolt. But something else had intervened, an event of staggering proportions. The slaughter of a human child by a machine, and the incredible sight of his mother fighting back— and destroying a robot!
Using this horrific crime as a springboard, Iblis hardly needed his innate abilities of persuasion. Around him he heard shouts, breaking glass, running feet. The angry slave workers required no manipulation— they wanted to do this.
The rebellion on Earth blossomed and gained violent strength in the precinct of Erasmus’s villa. Three men toppled an eagle statue from the nearest alcove; others tipped over the crown of a stone fountain in the plaza. The mob tore down vines from the sides of the main building, smashed windows. They broke through the foyer, swarming over two confused sentinel robots who had never seen such a response from the supposedly cowed prisoners. Ripping the heavy weapon arms off the destroyed robots, the people lugged them along, indiscriminately opening fire.
The rebellion must spread.
Iblis feared that if the disturbance remained too localized, Omnius’s sentries would come and exterminate everyone. But if he could contact his other groups and send out the signal, the revolt would continue to build, spreading from settlement to settlement. Hopefully the Cogitor and his secondary had managed to assist the secret plans.
Now that the mob had been launched here at Erasmus’s villa, the real work of the insurrection must occur elsewhere. Watching the frenzy increase around him, hearing the shouts grow louder, seeing the wild destruction, Iblis decided that these people no longer needed him.
With the capital city grid illuminated by a ghostly yellow moon, Iblis issued the much-anticipated command to his core groups at other major sites. He notified the unit leaders, who in turn sent men and women surging into the streets, carrying clubs, heavy tools, cutters, any weapon that might be effective against the thinking machines.
After a thousand years of domination, Omnius was not prepared for this.
Like an avalanche, the frenzied rebels swept up others, even those who had hesitated to join the fledgling underground movement. Seeing a glimmer of hope, the slaves smashed everything technological they could find.
In the firelit darkness, Iblis climbed to a vantage point atop the Victory of the Titans frieze. From there he activated his crude transmitter. Hidden systems implanted in the chiseled wall burst forth. Every megalithic cymek statue in the mural cracked open, revealing the deadly arsenal inside.
Below in the museum square, he saw several neo-cymeks scrambling about in walker-forms. Guided by traitorous disembodied brains, the neo-cymeks rallied to attack a crowd of human rebels. Before long, other hybrid machines would arrive, undoubtedly wearing weapon-studded warrior bodies. Iblis could not let that happen.
He directed weapons fire. Rockets assembled from construction explosives launched out of embedded tubes in the frieze, exploding into the enemy. The crude blasts sheared off the fiber-metallic legs of two neo-cymeks. While they writhed on the ground and struggled to continue, Iblis shot two more rockets into their preservation canisters, spilling the electrafluids and crisping the organic brain tissue to cinders.
Even if Iblis’s followers overthrew the cymeks and the sentinel robots, the revolution would still need to deal with the all-powerful Omnius evermind. Standing high above the city grid and gazing at the spreading glow of rising fires, he felt a surge of confidence and optimism.
Bathed in surreal moonlight, the humans cheered. Flames crackled and spread in the gaudy, empty buildings of the machine capital. Near the spaceport, an armory blew up in a tremendous explosion, sending flames hundreds of meters into the air.
Iblis watched the numbers of his followers grow before his very eyes, and his heart swelled. He still could not believe the scale of what he saw occurring. Had scattered rebel cells responded to the call— or had he started this conflagration alone?
Like a chain reaction that could not be stopped, mobs ran through the streets, increasing their vengeance moment by moment.