Flames curled up from the glorious, empty buildings— an affront to the golden age of the Titans. Human riffraff, delirious with their mad liberation, ran screaming through the streets, throwing broken rocks and makeshift explosives.

Agamemnon seethed at the horrendous damage the rebels had already inflicted upon the monuments and magnificent plazas. The rebels had even killed Ajax, though the callous Titan had probably invited retribution upon himself. Yet another serious loss, like Barbarossa.

Vermin! The barbarians didn’t understand freedom or free will; they had no sense of civilization or restraint, and deserved to be nothing more than slaves. Even that might be too much of a kindness.

The cymek general strode through the streets in his hulking warrior-form. He scattered humans, flung them into the air, splattered them against walls. Some of the bravest hurled sharp objects at him, which bounced off of his armored body. Unfortunately, he couldn’t spare the time to squash them all.

Instead, Agamemnon made his way toward the nearby spaceport, hoping to find his son among all this chaos. If the violent rebels had harmed Vorian— the best of the general’s thirteen sons so far— then he would cause some real mayhem. He had checked records, learned that the Dream Voyager had docked at the spaceport and that Vor’s access codes had been used, but the reports were confusing.

The Titan still couldn’t comprehend the scale of the conflagration around him. For centuries, the rule of thinking machines had gone unchallenged. How could the docile humans have become so explosive? No matter. He would let Omnius and his robot guards take care of the unpleasantness.

For now, Agamemnon would find his own son. He had his priorities. He hoped Vor hadn’t made a mess of things.

When the cymek rushed across the spaceport, he saw three cargo ships ablaze, their fuel cells and drive compartments blown up by saboteurs. Fire-suppressant machinery attempted to extinguish the flames before more damage could be done.

The furious Titan stalked across the fused pavement, searching for the drydock that had held the repaired Dream Voyager. He was dismayed to find the update ship gone, the landing grid still glowing in the infrared from exhaust flames. Using thermal thoughtrode sensors, he saw the dissipating contrail where the vessel had torn a path through the atmosphere.

With mounting frustration and surprise, he found the deactivated Seurat on a dock outside the cordoned-off danger radius around the blast jets. The robot lay immobile, a supine statue of metallic polymers and neurelectric circuitry. The rebels had attacked Seurat, shut him down . . . but had not destroyed him.

Impatient, concerned about Vorian, Agamemnon rebooted the robotic systems with a flurry of his manipulator arms. When Seurat snapped back to consciousness, he scanned the spaceport with his array of optic threads, orienting himself.

“Where is the Dream Voyager?” Agamemnon demanded. “Where is my son? Is he alive?”

“In his typical impetuous fashion, your son surprised me. He deactivated me.” Seurat scanned the launch zone and instantly drew conclusions. “Vorian must have taken the ship. He knows how to fly it.”

“Is he a coward?My son?”

“No, Agamemnon. I believe he has joined the rebels and is escaping with other humans.” He saw the cymek shuddering with angry betrayal. “It is a very poor joke,” Seurat added.

Infuriated, Agamemnon swiveled the axis of his body core and marched away. An empty warship lay docked nearby, loaded with weaponry and perfect for pursuit. Already, wild humans were racing toward the craft, eager to commandeer it for themselves— as if any of the ignorant hrethgir could fly such a sophisticated vessel.

Raising his cannon arms, the cymek let loose with integral flamers, igniting the human criminals into flailing candles of burning flesh. Moments later he trod past the blackened corpses and linked up to the automated ship. At Agamemnon’s transmitted command, the warship’s grappling arms extended forward, swiveling outward to disengage his preservation canister and jettison the warrior-form. The ship’s systems raised the cymek’s canister and installed Agamemnon’s brain within the control nest.

The sleek craft was fast, its weapons loaded and ready for battle. Vorian might have a headstart, but the Dream Voyager was a slower vessel, designed for long hauls. Agamemnon should be able to close the distance.

Inside his warm electrafluid, his brain adjusted to the ship’s sensors, linking the thoughtrodes until he felt the spacecraft become his new body. Springing into the air on imaginary legs, Agamemnon launched away from the spaceport.

Hyperaccelerating, he gained on his quarry.

VOR ATREIDES KNEW the tactics of space combat and evasive maneuvers, for Seurat had allowed him to take the update ship’s controls many times. But as he left the boiling rebellion on Earth, he flew the Dream Voyager all alone for the first time, leaving Seurat, his long-time companion, behind.

He departed from Earth on a straight-line vector that would take them out of the solar system. He hoped that the update ship’s supplies and life-support systems would be sufficient to keep him and his passengers alive for the month it would take to reach Salusa Secundus. During the frantic escape, he had never thought to consider how many humans the Dream Voyager could sustain, but now he had no choice.

Nervously, Iblis Ginjo peered through the ports, studying the vastness of space. He had never seen such sights before. He gaped at the pockmarked immensity of the Moon as they shot past it and continued outward.

“When we get close enough to Salusa,” Serena said confidently, strapped into her own seat, “the League of Nobles will protect us. Xavier will come for me. He . . . he always has before.”

The Dream Voyager crossed the orbit of Mars, then threaded a gap in the asteroid belt. Vor continued to build speed as they headed directly toward Jupiter’s huge gravity well. He would use the gas giant’s gravity to adjust their course, picking up angular momentum in an outbound slingshot.

In the rear sensors, Vor saw a lone warship hurtling toward them at a velocity so high that the readings were blueshifted, giving an altered indication of its position. No human could survive such acceleration.

“This is not going to be easy,” Vor said.

Serena looked at him in astonishment. “No part of this has been easy so far.”

Vor kept an eye on the approaching warship. He knew the capabilities of the Dream Voyager. Months ago, when he’d used extreme tactical maneuvers to elude the League Armada at Giedi Prime, Vor had never dreamed he might need his skills to flee the thinking machines who had raised him, trained him . . . and deceived him.

In a direct firefight the update ship could not outgun even a small interceptor. The Dream Voyager‘s hull armor might hold for a while, but Vor could not dodge and outmaneuver the oncoming warcraft for long.

Jupiter loomed ahead of them, a diffuse sphere of pastel colors, with swirling clouds and storms large enough to swallow Earth whole. After analyzing the sensor summary, Vor knew the capabilities of the pursuing warship. Even with no significant weapons, the Dream Voyager had far more fuel, engines, and thicker armor— along with Vor’s wits. He might be able to use the advantages he possessed.

The oncoming interceptor loosed four projectile volleys, only one of which struck the update ship’s hull, exploding underneath the ship. Shockwaves reverberated through the Dream Voyager as if it were an immense gong. Still, the instruments reported no significant damage.

“We have to get away.” Iblis was panicked. “He’s trying to cripple us.”

“That’s optimistic,” Vorian said. “I thought he wanted to destroy us.”

“Just let him fly,” Serena said to the nervous rebel leader.

A communication burst arrived, and speakers inside the Dream Voyager resonated with a familiar synthesized voice that made Vor turn cold inside. “Vorian Atreides, you have broken your vow of loyalty. You are a traitor, not only to Omnius, but to me. I no longer consider you my son.”

Vor swallowed hard before responding. “You taught me to use my mind, Father, to make my own decisions and exercise my talents. I learned the truth, you know. I discovered what really happened during the Time of Titans, and it bears little resemblance to the fairy-tales in your memoirs! You lied to me all along.”

In response, Agamemnon launched more projectiles, but they went wild. Vor fired his own scattering defensive rounds. They exploded in a disruptive barrier that forced the machine interceptor to swerve in its oncoming course. Vor did not waste time or engine power attempting to outmaneuver the sleek warship.

Instead, he adjusted his course so the Dream Voyager skirted closer to Jupiter’s gravitational pull. He pushed the engines to their maximums, not worrying about stress or damage. If he couldn’t escape now, excessive caution would make no difference.

The gas giant reached out to them, beckoning with a siren song of physics. Agamemnon launched another volley of explosive shells, one of which detonated very close to the Dream Voyager‘s engines.

Vor felt calm and confident, his mind attuned to what he was doing. Seated near him, Iblis was grayish and drenched with sweat. The rebellious work leader was probably wondering whether he might have had a better chance of survival if he had remained on Earth.

“He needs only to damage us,” Vor said, assessing the situation coolly. “If he manages to knock our engines offline for even a few minutes, we’ll be unable to escape this hyperbolic orbit. Agamemnon can then drop back and watch us plunge slowly into Jupiter’s atmosphere and burn up. He’d enjoy that.”

Serena clenched the arms of her seat. As if the answer was obvious, she said to Vor, “Then don’t let him damage our engines.”

While the cymek general continued to fire harassing shots at them, Vor ran through a new set of calculations. Using the Dream Voyager‘s workhorse computer subsystems, he quickly reprogrammed the navigational plotters. The update ship roared ahead, an ungraceful projectile that accelerated even as it grazed Jupiter’s tenuous atmosphere, a hostage to orbital mechanics.

“Aren’t you going to do anything?” Iblis demanded.

“The laws of physics are doing it for us. If Agamemnon bothers to perform the calculations, he’ll see for himself what he must do. The Dream Voyager has enough fuel and velocity to slingshot around Jupiter and escape the gravitational pull. In that smaller interceptor, however, unless my father breaks off his pursuit in”— he glanced down at the panel—”fifty-four seconds, he will be unable to escape the pull. He’ll spiral down and burn up inside Jupiter.”

The interceptor kept coming, firing its weapons and not doing the damage its pilot wanted.

“Does he know that?” Serena asked.

“My father will know.” Vor double-checked the navigational plotter. “As it is now . . . he barely has enough fuel to return to Earth. If he waits even ten seconds more, I doubt he’ll survive the landing back home.”

Iblis flared his nostrils. “That would be even more pointless than letting himself get swallowed up in Jupiter’s clouds.”

Behind them, the pursuing craft suddenly broke off, burning its engines to pull away from the gas giant in a sharp curve. The Dream Voyager plunged onward, scraping the upswelling clouds until its lower hull burned red with friction. Moments later, Vor hauled them out on the far side of the planet and accelerated away, breaking free of the elastic threads of gravity and vaulting into interstellar space.

Tuning his long-distance sensors, Vor verified that the interceptor had succeeded in pulling away from Jupiter’s hold. He watched their pursuer turn back toward Earth on a course that salvaged momentum and conserved fuel.

Then Vor struck off toward the precarious sanctuary of the League Worlds.

NOW THAT HE had lost the contest, and knowing that Vorian would certainly assist the feral humans in their continued resistance, the furious Agamemnon brooded. With little fuel for acceleration, it would be a long and frustratingly tedious journey back to Earth.

Upon arriving, though, he would salve his humiliation by taking it out on the rest of the unruly slaves. They would regret the day they had ever listened to foolish words of rebellion.