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Tlaloc, Agamemnon, and the other rebels had simply picked up the pieces. This time the Titans would have to fight for themselves.
    “Maybe we should try to find Hecate,” Xerxes said. “She’s the only one of us who has never been under Omnius’s control. Our wild card.”
    Hecate, the former mate of Ajax, was the sole Titan who had relinquished her rule. Before the thinking machine takeover, she had departed into deep space, never to be heard from again. But Agamemnon could never trust her— even if she could be located— any more than he trusted Xerxes. Hecate had abandoned them long ago; she was not the ally they needed.
    “We should look elsewhere for assistance, take any help we can find,” Agamemnon said. “My son Vorian is one of the few humans allowed access to the central complex of the Earth-Omnius, and he delivers regular updates to the everminds on other Synchronized Worlds. Perhaps we can use him.”
    Juno simulated a laugh. “You want to trust a human, my love? One of the weak vermin you despise? Moments ago you wanted to exterminate every member of the race.”
    “Vorian is my genetic son, and the best of my offspring so far. I have been watching him, training him. He has read my memoirs a dozen times already. I have high hopes that one day he will be a worthy successor.”
    Juno understood Agamemnon better than the other Titans did. “You’ve said similar things about your twelve previous sons, if I recall. Even so, you found excuses to kill all of them.”
    “I preserved plenty of my sperm before converting myself into a cymek, and I have the time to do it right,” Agamemnon said. “But Vorian . . . ah, Vorian, I think he might be the one. One day I’ll let him become a cymek.”
    Ajax interrupted, his voice pitched low, “We cannot fight two major enemies at once. Since Omnius has finally allowed us to attack the hrethgir, thanks to Barbarossa’s victory in the gladiator ring, I say we prosecute that war to the best of our abilities. Afterward, we deal with Omnius.”
    Immersed in the crater shadows, the cymeks muttered, half-agreeing. The League humans had escaped Titan rule centuries ago, and the old cymeks had always harbored a hatred toward them. Dante’s optic threads tracked back and forth, calculating. “Yes, the humans should be easier to defeat.”
    “Meanwhile, we continue to seek a means to eliminate Omnius,” Barbarossa added. “Everything in its time.”
    “Perhaps you are correct,” Agamemnon admitted. The cymek general did not want to extend this clandestine gathering much longer.
    He led the march back to their individual ships. “We destroy the League humans first. Using that as a springboard, we then turn our attention to the more difficult foe.”

Logic is blind and often knows only its own past.

    — archives from Genetics to Philosophy,

    compiled by the Sorceresses of Rossak
    T hinking machines cared little for aesthetics, but the Omnius update ship was— by accident of design— a beautifully sleek silver-and-black vessel, dwarfed by the immensity of the cosmos as it journeyed from one Synchronized World to another. Finished with its current round of updates, the Dream Voyager was on its way back to Earth.
    Vorian Atreides considered himself fortunate to be entrusted with such a vital assignment. Born from a female slave impregnated with Agamemnon’s preserved sperm, dark-haired Vorian could trace his lineage back past the Time of Titans, thousands of years to the House of Atreus in ancient Greece and another famous Agamemnon. Because of his father’s status, twenty-year-old Vor had been raised and indoctrinated on Earth under the thinking machines. He was one of the privileged “trustee” humans permitted to move about freely, serving Omnius.
    He had read all the stories of his illustrious bloodline in the extensive memoirs his father had written to document his triumphs. Vor considered the Titan general’s great work to be more than a literary