If Agamemnon had still possessed a physical body, his face would have displayed a triumphant grin as he watched the machine fleet converging on Bela Tegeuse. With his organic brain bathed in the electrafluid of his preservation canister, the cymek general felt a tingle of anticipation and victory.

Omnius would never suspect a thing.

The two Titans with Agamemnon felt the same, along with the neocymek Beowulf and the one hundred seventeen ambitious neos they had recruited into their revolt against the Synchronized Worlds.

“Once again, it will be the Time of Titans!” Agamemnon’s secret transmission was distributed throughout the swarm of cymek ships that traveled like unobtrusive remoras amid a school of deadly sharks. “We will restore our original rule, granting rewards and power to those visionaries who wish to destroy the computer evermind.”

The Corrin-Omnius had dispatched this large fleet along with numerous “loyal” cymek assistants to impose machine control before the feral jihadi humans could take over. The evermind had given his cymek general clear orders not to allow the wounded Synchronized World to fall to the hrethgir.

Agamemnon intended to follow those orders… in his own fashion.

Beowulf, the most talented programming genius since the Titan Barbarossa, had designed customized instructions and programming loops for all thinking machine warships, supposedly to prepare them for the chaos and disruption they would find on Bela Tegeuse. The machine warships would protect against any foolish incursions by human marauders.

The robot fleet carried a new and complete update of Omnius, with all of the instructions and information necessary to restore Bela Tegeuse to its synchronized status.

All of those massive, technologically beautiful ships would be a good start for Agamemnon’s own imperial cymek fleet.

Surrounding the cloud-blanketed planet, the machine warships transmitted identification signals and requests for response from the Omnius nexus in Comati, but received mostly static in response. The city itself had been leveled in Hecate’s atomic blast. Moments later, the machines received a few fragmented messages from trustee humans who had gotten some of the technology functional again.

Pleased to see no sign of a hrethgir occupation force, Agamemnon was relieved that he would not have to fight the jihadis while simultaneously overthrowing the forces of Omnius. Easier to deal with one foe at a time.

“Attention, thinking machine fleet,” he transmitted. “The cymek Beowulf has prepared an upload for you.”

Beowulf took his cue. “Before we departed from Corrin, Omnius gave me a confidential package that was not to be installed until now, for security reasons. Prepare to receive my transmission.”

The neo-cymek genius entered the appropriate high-level access codes, and the unsuspecting thinking machines accepted the burst. The entire fleet of machine warships and robots swallowed the programming rewrite like a deadly poison pill.

In a chain reaction, one by one, the robot vessels shut down over Bela Tegeuse, like lights blinking off in a large city. A bloodless coup.

Transmissions of triumphant glee and cold surprise echoed across the private cymek channel and open frequencies. Small cymek ships flitted like wasps around the silent robot fleet. One of the rebel neos asked, “Why didn’t you do this centuries ago?”

“The programming was not simple,” Beowulf said. “But it was Agamemnon’s own son who pointed me in the right direction. According to our inside information in the League, Vorian Atreides was behind the sensor deception at Poritrin, as well as the similar virus that fooled the machine fleet at IV Anbus.”

The Titan general agreed. “Since Vorian flew with the robot Seurat on his update runs— the same robot that has delivered corrupted updates on Synchronized Worlds— I have no doubt he was behind that tactic as well. There’s no reason we cymeks couldn’t have attempted a similar scheme long ago, but this will work only once, and we had to be ready. All of us. And now is our time at last.”

Agamemnon scanned the forces he had pulled together, and the powerful but unsuspecting robotic fleet. “I have waited a thousand years for this moment! Titans, join me aboard the frontline machine ship. We shall call a meeting with Omnius.”

The cymek ships converged upon the central machine vessel like pirates gathering around a treasure chest. Agamemnon linked his ship to the airlock, and the other cymeks followed suit. The Titan general installed his preservation canister inside a sleek walker body, which he wore like a triumphal cape that might have suited the original Agamemnon when he strode into the fallen city of Troy.

“Long ago, we conquered the Old Empire, and then lost it to Omnius,” he said to Juno and Dante, as well as to the proud Beowulf, whose genius had made all of this possible. “Now, the Synchronized Worlds are weakened from decades of war against the free humans. The Army of the Jihad has worn down the thinking machines for us— an opportunity we must seize.”

The thinking machine update ship was dark and silent, its robot pilot paralyzed by Beowulf’s clever programming. The cymeks would never be able to try such a trick again, but perhaps they would not have to do so.

In his mechanical walker, Agamemnon tore open the sealed alcove that held the Omnius update. The silvery gelsphere rested on wrinkled padding. Agamemnon reached in with one metal-clawed extremity and picked up the shimmering globe that held so many decillions of thoughts.

Bela Tegeuse was the first giant step.

“Omnius, you seem so weak and fragile,” he said. “With this single gesture, I launch the beginning of a new era… and the end of yours.”

Agamemnon clenched his articulated, clawed fist and crushed the silvery gelsphere. Now Omnius and his thinking machines were facing a three-way war.