The Grand Patriarch of the Jihad was not a man to go begging. He demanded respect from everyone, and received it. People pleaded for favors from him as if he were a prince or a king. He made things happen.

But much had changed in the year since Serena Butler had seized the reins of the Jihad, when she should have remained no more than a figurehead. Iblis had created her, coached her until she became a powerful symbol. Now, ungratefully, she had rebuffed him, distributing his power and control among other Jihad officers. She had even turned down his perfectly reasonable suggestion of a political marriage. It wasn’t just a passing phase.

Serena’s recent forthright leadership had only served to shift the focus of the Jihad. Worse, she had gained her own followers, separate from his. The schism was widening, and Serena did not realize that she was contributing more to confusion than to clarity of vision. Despite Iblis’s best efforts to convince her, Serena generally ignored him. Often she didn’t answer his messages at all, or her responses were short and terse.

Can’t she see that my suggestions are for her own good and for the good of the Jihad?

Apparently, she could not.

In a recent appearance before the Jihad Council, Serena had publicly— publicly!— called for Iblis to disclose information about the financial operations of his Jihad Police, implying that he was not being open with the League of Nobles. Such distractions only served to fracture the human effort, diverting attention from the real enemy. This was a time when leadership should be unified, not split.

Iblis finally decided to do something about it, with whatever allies he could find. Now, more than ever, he needed to demonstrate his capabilities and accomplish things that even the self-important Priestess could not. With any luck, it would help pave his way back to a position of supreme power.

On the forward observation decks his private space yacht, he stood watching the stars drift across the empty gulf. He took only his Jipol commandant Yorek Thurr to serve both as the yacht’s pilot and as Iblis’s personal bodyguard. Thurr was the only other man alive who knew about the cymek Hecate and her offer to assist the Jihad.

The Titan, in her asteroid body, had caused so much mayhem at Ix that Primero Harkonnen had managed to conquer and hold the important Synchronized World. Without Hecate, the battle for Ix would have been at best another “moral victory” instead of a real one. Now, he needed her to pull off another miracle.

Thurr’s voice came over the yacht’s intercom. “I have detected the asteroid, sir, exactly as predicted.”

“At least she’s reliable,” Iblis said.

“We are on approach.”

The Grand Patriarch stared out the window, trying to discern which of the billions of glittering pinpoints might be the artificial hunk of space rock. At last, as the yacht approached, he distinguished the shape of the gigantic uneven lump of cratered rock, growing larger with each passing moment. This time, though, Iblis felt no trepidation. He knew exactly what the female Titan could do for him.

In the initial blush of Jihad fervor, everyone had called on the name of little Manion Butler and revered the valiant mother who had first raised her hand against the thinking machines. But after decades of war, most people were growing tired of the never-ending strife, and longed to go about their personal lives and careers. They wanted to work, raise children, and forget about the ebb and flow of military conflict. What fools they were.

Despite occasional victories such as Ix, IV Anbus, and Tyndall, he felt the revolt losing its pulse, like an organism dying all around him. The decline came in small and large stages, on small and large planets. Wherever Iblis traveled to deliver inspirational speeches, he saw and felt it. The crowds were losing enthusiasm, slipping from his grasp because they saw no end in sight. People had such woefully short attention spans!

The Grand Patriarch was desperate to make others see what he himself saw so clearly. Machines wanted to destroy every human— not only on the Synchronized Worlds, but on League Worlds and Unallied Planets as well. Human beings were a nuisance to Omnius and his metal brethren, a threat. Thinking machines and humans could never coexist on any basis, whether on individual planets or in the entire universe….

Hecate’s asteroid loomed closer, craters yawning open. “Our scanners have located the entry passage, sir,” Thurr reported. “Hecate is making contact, welcoming you.”

“Don’t waste time with small talk. Take us inside.”

The space yacht slipped easily through a crater opening, and the Titan’s tractor beams assisted the pilot in bringing the craft deep into the mirror-walled interior grotto where Iblis had first spoken with Hecate in her dragon-cymek body.

Iblis emerged from the yacht and marched boldly into the chamber. This time, instead of wearing her ornate and intricate, human-sized walker-body, Hecate met him as a shielded preservation canister that held her brain swimming in electrafluid, on a rolling walker form. The protected cylinder adjusted itself to his eye level.

“I have important business to discuss with you,” Iblis said, getting right to the point.

“Important business? I would not wish to discuss any other kind,” Hecate’s vibrant mechanical voice said. “After all, am I not your secret weapon?” She seemed particularly pleased with the title.

Iblis paced nervously as he explained. “The Jihad faces a crisis. In the past year, Serena Butler has taken power away from me. In her wildest dreams, she cannot possibly handle all of the political, military, religious, and social demands of leadership— yet she fails to see this.”

“Ah, so you want her killed? Would that accomplish your purpose?” Hecate sounded miffed. “That seems a waste of my extravagant abilities.”

“No!” he answered quickly, surprising himself. Then he considered the question more carefully. “No. That would not be beneficial in the long run. Serena is beloved by the masses, too important to them.”

“Then how can I help you, dear Iblis?” Hecate’s voice sounded musical and intriguingly seductive. “Give me a big enough job to make it worth my while.”

“I need more clear victories against the machines. Genuine showpieces.” He stepped closer. “Thanks to you, we successfully reclaimed Ix. Now I need to incorporate more Synchronized Worlds into the League by freeing their human populations. It doesn’t matter how strategically important the planets are, I just need something to show. And I need to claim credit for it.”

Hecate made a sound like laughter, with a derisive edge. “In all the centuries I have spent as a cymek, I had forgotten how impatient biological humans can be. And how scheming.”

“For twenty-six years, my impatience, as you so mockingly call it, has constituted the driving force of the Jihad. Serena and her child have only been images, while I have been the working…”

“Were you about to say machinery?”

“Only as a figure of speech.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way. Long-term plans always take so… long.” The shimmering brain canister raised itself higher, above his head. “So now you want me to create a little chaos on the Synchronized Worlds, leaving openings so that your Jihad can claim more conquests?”

“Absolutely!”

“How interesting.” Hecate sounded amused at the challenge. “All right, I’ll see what I can do.”