Understanding the importance of this meal, Octa used her best culinary skills to cook a luscious farewell feast before Xavier departed with the Grand Patriarch and his Jipol entourage. The servants and the manor chef insisted on helping, but Octa did most of the work herself; her way of showing devotion to her husband. She knew exactly what Xavier liked to eat, which dishes and desserts most delighted him.

But it pleased Xavier more than anything to just spend an evening with her and their three daughters. His youngest, Wandra, was only ten and still lived at home, but the older two had already delivered fine grandchildren. Xavier’s life seemed full and content, all he could ever have asked for.

But he had lost Serena Butler— again. And this time she could never return.

With mesmerized, helpless horror, Xavier had watched the unthinkably violent images as the demonic executioner robot tortured and killed Serena. Her ghastly, pain-wracked death had sent everyone in the League Worlds into howling anger, screaming for revenge.

Even before she left Salusa Secundus, Xavier had feared the worst, suspecting Serena had her mind made up. She’d been aware of what was likely to happen to her, and had likely even provoked it. He had trouble believing the evermind had been so foolish as to deliver the images and the body back to the League, where it was sure to incite a vengeful uproar.

Then again, thinking machines had never understood humans. Omnius clearly intended to send a brutal warning to the League of Nobles, but Serena’s martyrdom had brought a completely unforeseen resolve to the population of free humanity.

Serena must have considered it her Jihad’s only chance. Without any doubt, the manipulative Iblis Ginjo had goaded her into the decision, convincing her to sacrifice herself. Xavier knew how she would have seen the opportunity. She had counted on it, as a way of serving the people she loved so deeply.

Her followers had been weary, willing to agree to unacceptable terms to end the constant fighting. But witnessing the utter in humanity of thinking machines against their revered Priestess had unified them into an enraged fighting force far stronger and more determined than the thinking machines had ever faced before. Tens of millions were demanding the right to become jihadis. At least Serena had not died in vain.

At the head of the dinner table, Xavier smiled grimly to himself as he thought of his upcoming mission that could elevate the war to new heights of success. Prior to her capture at Giedi Prime, Serena had wanted to bring the Unallied Planets into the League, but had achieved little success.

Now, he was taking Iblis Ginjo to encourage the Tlulaxa to join the greater alliance of humanity. This had been a priority with Serena, since she believed that more extensive organ farms were essential to help Jihad fighters injured in battle. In her name, the fight would continue.

Octa, still willowy and graceful at the age of fifty-five, entered the dining room bearing a platter of smoked bristle back loin chops from one of the hunting parties on the estate grounds. She smiled at her husband, knowing what had happened during that bristle back hunt long ago, when Xavier and Serena had made love for the first time. Octa did this as a gesture to him and her dead sister, serving the tasty meat glazed with a tart currant sauce. Her three daughters expressed their delight at the presentation, and Xavier could barely control the tears in his eyes.

“What’s wrong, Father?” Wandra asked with a child’s naïveté.

Octa stroked his shoulder, leaned over to kiss Xavier’s gray head. He slipped an arm around her waist. “Nothing, Wandra. I love you all so much, I’m just overwhelmed.” He looked up at Octa, his brown eyes glistening.

“I know,” she said. “You show me in so many ways.”

He listened as his older daughters spoke of their own homes and families, of their husbands’ work and their personal ambitions. Roella, the eldest daughter at thirty-seven, seemed to be following in Serena’s footsteps, already selected as a representative in the League Parliament on Salusa Secundus, riding on the fame of the Butler and Harkonnen names. Omilia continued to play baliset concerts to large crowds, while also working double duty to learn the ropes of her husband’s merchant business.

With the finesse of a politician, Roella said, “Father, we’re proud of you for accompanying the Grand Patriarch on this mission. There are important political repercussions, and you’ll be a powerful stabilizing influence.”

Xavier nodded noncommittally, not wishing to express the real reason he was willing to go along to a place he did not want to go, with a man he did not trust. Serena asked me to help her Jihad in any way possible. And someone must keep an eye on Iblis Ginjo.

Xavier realized that he hadn’t paid enough attention to the food, so he fell to his serving with enthusiasm, complimenting his wife repeatedly. “This is absolutely delicious. You have outdone yourself, My dear.”

Octa was the opposite of her older sister, content with quiet personal activities rather than grandiose aspirations to save the entire human race. Octa didn’t need such activities in order to have fulfillment in her life. She was just as strong as Serena in her own way, trying to hold their lives together and providing an anchor for Xavier when the Galaxy was tossed on stormy seas.

“We hear that there have been other thinking machine attacks on League Worlds,” said Roella. “Another colony completely wiped out. Terrible. Was it called… Balut?”

His face dark, Xavier took a sip of chiantini, but hardly noticed the fullbodied taste of the wine. “Yes, a small settlement on Balut, obliterated. Everything annihilated, leaving only a few charred bodies in the streets. Most of the humans were taken away, undoubtedly into forced labor camps. Just like on Chusuk nine years ago. And Rhisso.”

Roella shook her head. “Omnius didn’t stay to establish his computer network on those worlds? The thinking machines simply came in to destroy and to take slaves?”

“It appears that way,” her father said. “And to think we were ready to accept their overtures of peace.”

Omilia shuddered. “Peace at any cost!” She said it like a curse. Wandra looked on with her huge dark eyes.

Xavier continued. “The thinking machines will find our every weakness and keep attacking. We must do the same. All victims of machine aggression demand it.”

Octa pushed her plate away, clearly upset by such talk during what she had hoped would be a pleasant banquet. But Xavier knew she understood the necessity. “No one can understand Omnius,” she said. “Serena was right. We’ve got to destroy the thinking machines, no matter what.” She swallowed hard and looked over at Xavier. “Even if it continues to tear my family apart.”

Xavier looked down at his plate, and his eyes stung. He loathed Omnius, but had grown more and more convinced that the manipulative Iblis Ginjo was the one truly responsible for Serena’s final folly. Without the Grand Patriarch’s forceful personality, she would never have been pressured into such a foolhardy suicide mission.

“Our crusade has to continue even if it risks our family and a trillion others. We seek more than Victory in battle. Our goal is to secure the future of the human race, for our grandchildren, and our grandchildren’s grandchildren.”

“Then I hope your mission to Tlulax achieves what you wish.” She seemed doubtful, but Xavier patted her hand. He looked at Octa tenderly, and then at his daughters, one by one, his eyes misting over.

“I’ll do whatever needs to be done,” he vowed, “for the Jihad and the memory of Serena.”