Then Seurat said in a maddeningly calm voice, Vorian, a fleet of hrethgir ships is coming around from behind the planet. They appear to have been waiting for us in ambush.
 
Outside, streaks of orange and blue tracer fire came close to hitting the update craft, and the Dream Voyager's automatic systems jolted into evasive maneuvers. League kindjals streaked in like wolves. They're barbarians, Vor said. Eager to destroy anything they don't like.
 
Seurat said, We are under attack. And the Dream Voyager is not a combat-programmed vessel. He continued to sound artificially jovial, facetiously this time. Someday I will think of a joke about why it takes so many humans to short-circuit an Omnius.
 
* * *
 
ALERTED TO THE approach of a single thinking-machine vessel, Tercero Xavier Harkonnen had moved his orbital battle group to the far side of the planet. Some wreckage of robot warships still tumbled in a dispersing swath; Omnius's forces had been completely destroyed. His mouth was not masked, though.