Trapped within a bubble of air at the center of the four linked Titan ships, Vergyl Tantor floated in zero-G. Even nightmares had never been as awful as this, and now the young man was helpless. His dark skin was slick with perspiration, his brown eyes round in an attempt at defiance. He disguised his terror with a flimsy veneer of bravado.

As bad as it looked for him, he still held on to a desperate hope that Xavier would come to rescue him. But in his heart Vergyl knew it was impossible. He would never see Sheel again, his sons, or his little girl….

Outside the bubble, the disembodied brains of four cymeks glowed as thoughtrode sensors scanned visuals and transmitted the processed data between them. Agamemnon, Juno, and Dante, as well as their newly accepted companion Beowulf, scanned the current amusing victim through all portions of the spectrum. The rest of the prisoners had already been murdered.

The cymeks had been interrogating their captive, and enjoying themselves immensely. Recently, Juno had developed interesting and highly effective pain amplifiers, which she had thoroughly tested on human slaves. The cymek general had made sure to bring the pain amplifiers to IV Anbus, where they could be put to proper use. Agamemnon had hoped to capture his son Vorian, who deserved the highest level of punishment possible for any human to endure… and beyond.

But he would have to make do with these captives.

By virtue of Vergyl Tantor’s status as an officer serving under Agamemnon’s turncoat son, the young man could provide information about the Army of the Jihad. So far, he had refused to talk, but it was only a matter of time… and pain.

Agamemnon was pleased to see rivulets of anxious perspiration running down Vergyl’s dark skin. Scanners showed the victim’s body temperature rising, his heart rate increasing. Good.

During his long-ago glory days as a Titan, he and Juno had perfected the nuances of successful interrogation. He understood the fanatical motivation of the hrethgir, knew their covert activities on some of the weaker Synchronized Worlds such as Ix… where Xerxes should be leading an acceptable slaughter at this very moment. He also recognized, even before Omnius did, that the fundamental nature of the galactic conflict had shifted to a new level. No longer were the feral humans content with the defensive posture of self-protection. They had moved to outright aggression.

Even if the prisoner knew nothing of consequences, he still deserved to be tortured… an excellent, instructive test of Juno’s new pain-amplifying devices.

If only it could have been Vorian…

“Now, Vergyl Tantor— what should we do with you?” Agamemnon’s words filled the survival bubble with such a thunderous noise that the young man tried to cover his ears. “Should we let you go?”

The captive scowled, did not respond.

“Maybe we should just let him drift without life support and see if he can find his way back to Salusa Secundus,” Beowulf suggested, eager to contribute.

“We could loan him one of our spaceship bodies,” Dante said dryly. “Of course, we would need to remove his brain first. Did we bring along an extra preservation canister?”

“Interesting idea,” Juno said. “Yessss. We can create a neo-cymek out of one of the fanatical fighters.” From her linked ship, she looked around. “Who volunteers to cut out his brain?”

Almost simultaneously, the four cymeks sprouted razor-sharp blades from the artificial bodies that held their disembodied brains. Long claws scraped the outside of the clean plaz bubble enclosure.

“Would you like to answer our questions now, dear?” Juno importuned. For good measure she triggered a jolt of agony that made the captive writhe and spin in the weightless bubble until his joints made a loud cracking sound.

Vergyl’s eyes were glassy and unfocused from the pain, but he refused to speak.

Now Dante, usually not the most violent of the cymeks, surprised his companions. From his side of the conglomerated vessel he fired a precision dart at the human’s head. The sharp projectile struck him on one cheek, shattering teeth and penetrating his mouth.

Vergyl spat blood, but his screams fell on mechanical tympanic sensors. He called out the names of his wife and children: Sheel, Emilio, Jisp, Ulana. Apparently, he had no hope that they could help them, but locking images of their faces in his mind gave him strength.

Juno sent another spike of pain through the young man’s nervous system, and said in a clinical tone, “He feels as if his lower body is on fire. I can continue the sensation for as long as I wish. Yessss. Perhaps we should alternate pleasure and pain stimulations, intensifying the control we have over him.”

Fighting off the pain impulses, Vergyl reached up to jerk the sharp dart from his bloody cheek, tossed it aside, then made a defiant hand gesture. Agamemnon was exceedingly pleased at this, since this meant the captive was frustrated and afraid, with no other means of striking back. The dart floated around in the gravity-free enclosure.

Agamemnon said, “Tercero Tantor, how long can you hold your breath? Most frail humans can manage only a minute or so, but you look young and strong. Could you last three minutes, perhaps four?”

Abruptly the bubble slid open, leaving the bleeding captive in the vacuum of space as released cabin air roared out around him. Before Vergyl could drift into the emptiness, Agamemnon fired a small, tethered harpoon. The shaft sank into the young man’s thigh, catching him like a fish. “There, we wouldn’t want you to float away on us.”

Vergyl’s scream vanished in the vacuum. Intense, deep-space cold hit him like a hammer from all directions, attacking the cells of his body.

With a twitch of a segmented metal arm, Agamemnon jerked on the tether, and the barbed harpoon hooks dug into the victim’s leg muscles. The cymek general reeled him back in, sealed the bubble, and let air surge into the enclosure.

Vergyl curled into a shivering ball and struggled for breath, gasping from the lack of oxygen and the raw pain. With half-numb hands that could not grip well, he tried to tear the harpoon from his thigh. Blood particles floated in the low gravity and spattered inside the bubble enclosure.

“Such old-fashioned methods,” Dante said. “We have not made sufficient use of Juno’s new devices.”

“We are not finished with him yet,” Agamemnon said. “This could take a long time.”

Without warning, Agamemnon shot Vergyl back out into the subzero, pressureless void, while Juno simultaneously pulsed her pain amplifiers. The agonized officer seemed to be trying to turn himself inside out, as he writhed wildly. Blood vessels burst in his eyes and ears, but Vergyl remained defiant. Floating in the enclosure once more, he spat blood and choked and cursed. He couldn’t stop shivering,

Agamemnon thrust a manipulator arm through the bubble wall to grab the captive and pull him close. The Titan general cupped an artificial hand over the young man’s head and discharged needle probes through his skull, into the soft brain tissue beneath.

Vergyl screamed, whimpered Xavier’s name, and then went limp.

“He’s in an ecstasy of pain,” Juno said. “This is truly delightful.”

Murmurs of agreement passed among the cymeks.

“Those probes can help facilitate direct interrogation,” Beowulf said to Juno. “I helped invent them myself, and the robot Erasmus used up many of his slaves in order to test the systems. Unfortunately, the data is not in a format that thinking machines can assimilate directly.”

“But I can,” Agamemnon said, then made a deprecating noise. “This human’s brain is filled with exaggerations, lies, and preposterous propaganda spouted by the professional agitator, Iblis Ginjo. He actually believes it all.”

“Nothing but useless information,” Juno said with a mock sigh. “We should just kill him. Let me do it, my love. Please?”

“Vergyl Tantor,” Agamemnon said, “tell me about my son Vorian Atreides. He was your friend? Someone you respected?”

The prisoner’s eyes opened to narrow slits, and his lips moved. With his sharply tuned tympanic sensors, Agamemnon heard him whisper, “Primero Atreides is… a great hero… of the Jihad. He will bring you machine demons… to justice.”

Agamemnon thrust the brain probes deeper, eliciting a howl from Vergyl. A pair of wires penetrated his eyes from inside his skull, grabbing the orbs and jerking them deeper into the skull cavity.

The human flailed about and pleaded, “Let me die!”

“In due course,” the general promised. “But first you must help Juno test her device to its fullest capacity.”

Juno purred, “That could take a while longer.”

In fact, it took the better part of a day before Vergyl finally surrendered his life, much to the disappointment of the cymeks, who kept thinking of new and interesting tests….