Rebellion on Earth



The Rebellion on Earth was a planet-wide rebellion instigated by human slaves against their robotic oppressors on Earth. It was considered the spark that exploded into the Butlerian Jihad soon after.

Prelude
On Earth, the robot Erasmus had put a sort of bet-experiment with Omnius concerning the predictability of humans: Erasmus proposed to randomly select some loyal trustees, and demonstrate that he could turn them against the thinking machines; this would prove whether reliable humans could be trusted.

Erasmus thenceforth, always with the consent of Omnius who watched the procedures of the experiment, started to spread rumors among the trustees on Earth about an instigation. Iblis Ginjo was a receiver of such messages and consulted Cogitor Eklo about its origins. Eklo told him that if someone would proceed to such a movement, the best way would be to unite the people under the concept of a "holy war".

Charismatic Ginjo reconsidered his role in the enslavement and embraced the concept, ignorant of the messages' origins. He started to spread seeds of rebellion and secretly igniting boiling restlessness across the planet. He also had prepared core groups at major sites with their respective leaders. Ginjo was in charge of the Victory of the Titans frieze construction, and had secretly implanted explosive devices constructed from construction explosives.

Serena Butler became one of Erasmus' slaves, much loved by them. When her child was killed by Erasmus one night, this one outrageous event, seemed inconceivable by the slaves; heedless of her danger, Serena hurled herself against a sentinel robot, shoving it out of the balcony and slammed on the ground; she even pounded Erasmus with her fists and claws.

The simmering resentment of the human slaves boiled over; the slaves called out her name, as a woman who destroyed a robot with her own hands. Primed by Ginjo's instructions and subtle manipulations over the past months, the slaves exploded and began a revolt.

Beginning
In the precinct of Erasmus' villa of the capital city grid, the future planet-wide rebellion blossomed and gained violent strength; slaves started to vandalize the villa taking in surprise the sentinel robots who never expected such response. Some slaves even ripped their weapon arms off, using them to open fire.

Ginjo on a vantage point, issued the much-anticipated command to his core groups and unit leaders by sending rebels carrying clubs, heavy tools, cutters, any weapon that might be effective against the thinking machines; and the revolt spread like an avalanche, taking along slaves who were reluctant to join the original underground movement. Ginjo meanwhile activated his explosive mechanism which destroyed the Titans' frieze revealing his hidden deadly arsenal. Embedded tubes in the frieze were used against neo-cymeks and hybrid machines rallying to attack a crowd.

Like a chain reaction that could not be stopped, mobs ran through the streets, increasing their vengeance moment by moment. Flames spread in empty buildings. Near the spaceport, an armory blew up in a tremendous explosion.

Death of Ajax
Titan Ajax from a cymek body-fabrication pavilion atop one of the capital city's seven hills, remembered the First Hrethgir Rebellion. With his best gladiator-form with flamethrowers and six legs, he descended and joined by a group of neos and sentinel robots in a defensive circle against a howling mob.

The humans swept toward them like waves after waves, even though they saw their certain death. While the line of neo-cymek defenders surged forward breaking the first charge of the frenzied rebels, and the sentinel robots moved back to a new position higher on the hill, Ajax climbed onto a flying construction platform and cruised toward the Forum Plaza where he saw the Titans' frieze controlled as a weapon by the trustee Ginjo; swarms of rebels with cables and small explosives tore down the pillars that held the majestic statues of the Titans.

Suddenly Ajax's platform was shattered by a rocket. Ginjo called the mobs to swarm the wounded Titan who fought them off with flailing artificial limbs, and finally levered himself onto his damaged legs. Mobsters crawled over the bodies of their fallen comrades and kept coming; before he could recalibrate his optic threads Ginjo removed a rocket from the damaged frieze and launched it manually damaging Ajax's leg who shifted and thrashed knocking the oncoming mobsters; he stomped on and plowed through anyone who stood in his path, hundreds of them who pummeled his cymek body with primitive weapons without harming him; he climbed the mural to reach Ginjo with his four limbs, while he thrashed with the remaining one.

Then a slave dropped an explosive that detonated on the sculptured wall, making the Titan tilt while more crawled onto his back and damaged his components with cutters and heat sticks. Then his neurelectric conduits were severed. The humans who mounted him snapped the control fibers leading from his protected brain canister, effectively paralyzing him.

He slammed to the ground crushing shouting slaves; Ginjo ordered where to peel the armor casing where his brain canister was removed; with a cudgel, Ginjo smashed the canister down, his followers rushing in to help, pounding and beating and smashing, until the canister and brain became a pulpy gray matter mixed with electrafluid. Witnessing the death of one of the Titans, word swept through the streets.

By three days later, the slaves in the main pens had been freed by the mobsters, flooding the ranks of the rebellion. the revolt had spread through the capital city and to other urban complexes across Earth. Ships and facilities had been overrun by slaves and many sectors had power shortages. Omnius core remained defended and he ordered all thinking machines divert to defensive perimeters and battle stations.

Vorian's change of allegiance
The Dream Voyager arrived bearing an Omnius gelsphere. The spaceport was overrun and Seurat and Vorian Atreides had to land on an older spaceport south of the capital still controlled by Omnius. There they witnessed mobs who tried to overrun that too. Vorian decided to separate from Seurat so that he would not interfere with him while Seurat would ferry the thinking machines to assist the defenses.

Hiding first behind a groundtruck, Vorian felt his allegiances shifting, already having learned the true history of mankind and the Titans, urged by Serena. He tossed his trustee suit and wore that of a dead slave and joined the crowd who set off incendiary devices in the old spaceport's control building. They also killed a skittering neo who tried to escape, splitting open his brain canister with a cellgun blast.

Erasmus' villa was barricaded by rebels who waited for Ginjo driving thinking machines off while holding Erasmus inside; Vor went there to look for Serena. Defensive installations on the crenellations fired scattered shots, trying to disperse the crowd. A group of rebels took up strategic positions and launched two crude projectiles, smashing the gun emplacements.

Then Ginjo returned and he commanded the rebels to break the heavy gate and enter the villa to punish Erasmus; however he escaped into a concealed cave high above the swirling whitecaps and boarded a hover capsule (accompanied by a watcheye) lifting off into the early evening. He flew to a subsidiary spaceport that was still controlled by the thinking machines in order to travel to Corrin.

Eventually Ginjo's mobsters broke in and started to destroy the villa. Vorian separated from the crowd looking for Serena; passing through Erasmus's greenhouses, he released the captives in his laboratories. He found her slumped on the dirty plazcrete floor at the back of the compound, in a sterile area that contained ominous surgical equipment. Then, Vorian persuaded Ginjo that while he wished Serena to stay with him and inspire the revolt, the rebellion here was doomed: it should be commanded from a different place from where they could send assistance to the rebels on Earth and then spread it from planet to planet.

Escape
Ginjo ordered Aquim to lead the rebellion and then took the body of little Manion who had kept in a sealant bag. Commandeering a passenger shuttle found at a landing port on the estate, Vor guided them towards a spaceport where he expected to find the Dream Voyager. With the familiar access codes he had always used, the robot sentries allowed the passage of the vessel into a drydock hangar.

As hoped, Vor found the Dream Voyager and feigning that he returned to aid Seurat, he disabled him and threw his body outside, joined by Ginjo and Serena. However not long after they left, Agamemnon seeking for his son, found the Dream Voyager missing. Reactivating Seurat, he understood that his son betrayed him. He burned a group of humans who attempted to board an interceptor, and boarded his brain canister on it to pursue Vorian.

The Dream Voyager had just passed Mars's orbit and closed towards Jupiter when hit by Agamemnon. Deciding that he could not outmaneuver him, but having more fuel, Vorian closed towards Jupiter, so that to slingshot around the planet by escaping the gravitational pull. Agamemnon's smaller interceptor, however, would be unable to escape. Behind them, the pursuing craft suddenly broke off, burning its engines to pull away from the gas giant in a sharp curve and turn back. Agamemnon enraged with his last son, returned to a long and frustratingly tedious journey back to Earth that salvaged momentum and conserved fuel; the Voyager accelerated for the League Worlds.

The Titans strike back
Juno, Dante and Xerxes were in a desert on another continent in a demonstration of torture-interrogation techniques on live human subjects by Juno. When they received an order of Omnius, they flew right into the heat of the rebellion, in a wide square strewn with debris and crowded with shouting rebels. The primitive weapons nor the mass of the bodies of the rebels could do any harm to the three Titans. The streets ran red of blood and Aquim ordered the crowd to stand back. Before the evening the three Titans were joined by Agamemnon.

Aquim tried to keep the resistance alive and organize them in the face of Omnius's increasingly violent retaliation. Fires raged across the city grids while saboteurs brought down the manufacturing and support capabilities of the machines; factories and maintenance buildings exploded, arson and vandalism spread across the continents from industrial centers to human settlements.

Omnius decreed the complete annihilation of all human life on Earth and activated his ranks of warrior robots. Cymeks marched into habitation camps and razed them to the ground spraying poison gas, acid plumes, and ribbons of molten fire; extermination squads moved from buildings to pens. Crops and food-distribution depots were burned and leveled down. 10000 slaves paid for every robot or cymek damaged. During that time, Juno paid her revenge against Eklo, destroying his monastery. Ajax's bloodbath on Walgis had been merely a brief prelude.

Omnius determined that had no further use for the humans or all of the other Synchronized Worlds at last he agreeing with Agamemnon, who had been urging such a final solution for centuries. The Titans and Cymeks assisted by modified robotic soldiers, spent months hunting down the planetary population in an unspeakable bloodshed until no single person on Earth survived.

Legacy
"A child was murdered, and his mother fought against the monster Erasmus. Serena, who helped us, changed our lives, made things better for us. By standing up to the thinking machines, Serena showed us what is possible."

As soon as the Dream Voyager arrived to Salusa, the League Armada dispatched its fastest scout. After several weeks, the pilot returned with his terrible report, that only thinking machines remained on Earth. Every single rebel, slave or trustee was dead. At that time, Ginjo was in the interrogation room, and spoke about the concept of the jihad. Since the rebels were motivated by the name and the pain of Serena Butler and would achieve all this, then a coordinated military assault would accomplish much more.

Serena made her plea in the League Parliament that victory over the Thinking Machines was the only way to ensure humanity's survival. The senators questioned the effectiveness of that move, but Xavier Harkonnen proposed to use atomics, a last resort doomsday weapon that had never been used until then. There was no dissent and the proposal formally passed. This led to the Battle of Earth which eradicated all thinking machines on the planet as well as Earth-Omnius. Earth became an inhabitable lump in space, perhaps never to be inhabited again.

During that battle, Vorian had another meeting with Seurat; he boarded his update ship from which he stole the Omnius gelsphere to be delivered to other Synchronized Worlds; this action prevented the Evermind to learn the last thoughts, orders and calculations of Omnius Prime, as well as the tactics and new shield technology used by the League and most importantly, the orders to eradicate all hrethgir.

While the rebellion was ended before spreading to other planets, it inspired the League of Nobles to begin the Butlerian Jihad.

Appearances

 * Dune: The Butlerian Jihad