Berserker Wars (Omnibus)

by Fred Saberhagen

  “What was your position on the crew, Malori?”

  “I’m a civilian.”

  “What sort?”

  “An historian.”

  “And why are you here?”

  Malori started to get to his feet, then decided there was nothing to be gained by the struggle and stayed sitting on the deck. If he ever let himself dwell on his situation for a moment he would be too hideously afraid to think coherently. “There was a project … you see, I brought with me from Yaty a number of what we call historical models—blocks of programmed responses we use in historical research.”

  “I remember hearing about some such things. What was the project you mentioned?”

  “Trying to use the personae of military men as randomizers for the combat computers on the one-man ships.”

  “Aha.” Greenleaf squatted, supple and poised for all his raunchy look. “How do they work in combat? Better than a live pilot’s subconscious mind? The machines know all about that.”

  “We never had a chance to try. Are the rest of the crew here all dead?”

  Greenleaf nodded casually. “It wasn’t a hard boarding. There must have been a failure in your automatic defenses. I’m glad to find one man alive and smart enough to cooperate. It’ll help me in my career.” He glanced at an expensive chronometer strapped to his dirty wrist. “Stand up, Ian Malori. There’s work to do.”

  Malori got up and followed the other toward the operations deck.

  “The machines and I have been looking around, Malori. These nine little fighting ships you still have on board are just too good to be wasted. The machines are sure of catching the Hopenow, but she’ll have automatic defenses, probably a lot tougher than this tub’s were. The machines have taken a lot of casualties on this chase so they mean to use these nine little ships as auxiliary troops—no doubt you have some knowledge of military history?”

  “Some.” The answer was perhaps an understatement, but it seemed to pass as truth. The lie detector, if it was one, had been put away. But Malori would still take no more chances than he must.

  “Then you probably know how some of the generals of old Earth used their auxiliaries. Drove them on ahead of the main force of trusted troops, where they could be killed if they tried to retreat, and were also the first to be used up against the enemy.”

  Arriving on the operations deck, Malori saw few signs of damage. Nine tough little ships waited in their launching cradles, re-armed and refueled for combat. All that would have been taken care of within minutes of their return from their last mission.

  “Malori, from looking at these ships’ controls while you were unconscious, I gather that there’s no fully automatic mode in which they can be operated.”

  “Right. There has to be some controlling mind, or randomizer, connected on board.”

  “You and I are going to get them out as berserker auxiliaries, Ian Malori.” Greenleaf glanced at his timepiece again. “We have less than an hour to think of a good way and only a few hours more to complete the job. The faster the better. If we delay we are going to be made to suffer for it.” He seemed almost to relish the thought. “What do you suggest we do?”

  Malori opened his mouth as if to speak, and then did not.

  Greenleaf said: “Installing any of your military personae is of course out of the question, as they might not submit well to being driven forward like mere cannon fodder. I assume they are leaders of some kind. But have you perhaps any of these personae from different fields, of a more docile nature?”

  Malori, sagging against the operations officer’s empty combat chair, forced himself to think very carefully before he spoke. “As it happens, there are some personae aboard in which I have a special personal interest. Come.”

  With the other following closely, Malori led the way to his small bachelor cabin. Somehow it was astonishing that nothing had been changed inside. There on the bunk was his violin, and on the table were his music tapes and a few books. And here, stacked neatly in their leather-like curved cases, were some of the personae that he liked best to study.

  Malori lifted the top case from the stack. “This man was a violinist, as I like to think I am. His name would probably mean nothing to you.”

  “Musicology was never my field. But tell me more.”

  “He was an Earthman, who lived in the twentieth century CE—quite a religious man, too, as I understand. We can plug the persona in and ask it what it thinks of fighting, if you are suspicious.”

  “We had better do that.” When Malori had shown him the proper receptacle beside the cabin’s small computer console, Greenleaf snapped the connections together himself. “How does one communicate with it?”

  “Just talk.”

  Greenleaf spoke sharply toward the leather-like case. “Your name?”

  “Albert Ball.” The voice that answered from the console speaker sounded more human by far than the berserker’s had.

  “How does the thought of getting into a fight strike you, Albert?”

  “A detestable idea.”

  “Will you play the violin for us?”

  “Gladly.” But no music followed.

  Malori put in: “More connections are necessary if you want actual music.”

  “I don’t think we’ll need that.” Greenleaf unplugged the Albert Ball unit and began to look through the sack of others, frowning at unfamiliar names. There were twelve or fifteen cases in all. “Who are these?”

  “Albert Ball’s contemporaries. Performers who shared his profession.” Malori let himself sink down on the bunk for a few moments’ rest. He was not far from fainting. Then he went to stand with Greenleaf beside the stack of personae. “This is a model of Edward Mannock, who was blind in one eye and could never have passed the physical examination necessary to serve in any military force of his time.” He pointed to another. “This man served briefly in the cavalry, as I recall, but he kept getting thrown from his horse and was soon relegated to gathering supplies. And this one was a frail, tubercular youth who died at twenty-three standard years of age.”

  Greenleaf gave up looking at the cases and turned to size up Malori once again. Malori could feel his battered stomach muscles trying to contract, anticipating another violent impact. It would be too much, it was going to kill him if it came like that again …

  “All right.” Greenleaf was frowning, checking his chronometer yet again. Then he looked up with a little smile. Oddly, the smile made him look like the hell of a good fellow. “All right! Musicians, I suppose, are the antithesis of the military. If the machines approve, we’ll install them and get the ships sent out. Ian Malori, I may just raise your pay.” His pleasant smile broadened. “We may just have bought ourselves another standard year of life if this works out as well as I think it might.”

  When the machine came aboard again a few minutes later, Greenleaf bowing before it explained the essence of the plan, while Malori in the background, in an agony of terror, found himself bowing too.

  “Proceed, then,” the machine approved. “If you are not swift, the ship infected with life may find concealment in the storms that rise ahead of us.” Then it went away again quickly. Probably it had repairs and refitting to accomplish on its own robotic ship.

  With two men working, installation went very fast. It was only a matter of opening a fighting ship’s cabin, inserting an uncased persona in the installed adapter, snapping together standard connectors and clamps, and closing the cabin hatch again. Since haste was vital to the berserkers’ plans, testing was restricted to listening for a live response from each persona as it was activated inside a ship. Most of the responses were utter banalities about nonexistent weather or ancient food or drink, or curious phrases that Malori knew were only phatic social remarks.

  All seemed to be going well, but Greenleaf was having some last minute misgivings. “I hope these sensitive gentlemen will stand up under the strain of finding out their true situation. They will be able to grasp that, won’t they? The machines
won’t expect them to fight well, but we don’t want them going catatonic, either.”

  Malori, close to exhaustion, was tugging at the hatch of Number Eight, and nearly fell off the curved hull when it came open suddenly. “They will apprehend their situation within a minute after launching, I should say. At least in a general way. I don’t suppose they’ll understand it’s interstellar space around them. You have been a military man, I suppose. If they should be reluctant to fight—I leave to you the question of how to deal with recalcitrant auxiliaries.”

  When they plugged the persona into ship Number Eight, its test response was: “I wish my craft to be painted red.”

  “At once, sir,” said Malori quickly, and slammed down the ship’s hatch and started to move on to Number Nine.

  “What was that all about?” Greenleaf frowned, but looked at his timepiece and moved along.

  “I suppose the maestro is already aware that he is about to embark in some kind of a vehicle. As to why he might like it painted red …” Malori grunted, trying to open up Number Nine, and let his answer trail away.

  At last all the ships were ready. With his finger on the launching switch, Greenleaf paused. For one last time his eyes probed Malori’s. “We’ve done very well, timewise. We’re in for a reward, as long as this idea works at least moderately well.” He was speaking now in a solemn near-whisper. “It had better work. Have you ever watched a man being skinned alive?”

  Malori was gripping a stanchion to keep erect. “I have done all I can.”

  Greenleaf operated the launching switch. There was a polyphonic whisper of airlocks. The nine ships were gone, and simultaneously a holographic display came alive above the operations officer’s console. In the center of the display the Judithshowed as a fat green symbol, with nine smaller green dots moving slowly and uncertainly nearby. Farther off, a steady formation of red dots represented what was left of the berserker pack that had so long and so relentlessly pursued the Hopeand her escort. There were at least fifteen red berserker dots, Malori noted gloomily.

  “This trick,” Greenleaf said as if to himself, “is to make them more afraid of their own leaders than they are of the enemy.” He keyed the panel switches that would send his voice out to the ships. “Attention, units One through Nine!” he barked. “You are under the guns of a vastly superior force, and any attempt at disobedience or escape will be severely punished …”

  He went on browbeating them for a minute, while Malori observed in the screen that the dirty weather the berserker had mentioned was coming on. A sleet of atomic particles was driving through this section of the nebula, across the path of the Judithand the odd hybrid fleet that moved with her. The Hope, not in view on this range scale, might be able to take advantage of the storm to get away entirely unless the berserker pursuit was swift.

  Visibility on the operations display was failing fast and Greenleaf cut off his speech as it became apparent that contact was being lost. Orders in the berserkers’ unnatural voices, directed at auxiliary ships One through Nine, came in fragmentarily before the curtain of noise became an opaque white-out. The pursuit of the Hopehad not yet been resumed.

  For a while all was silent on the operations deck, except for an occasional crackle of noise from the display. All around them the empty launching cradles waited.

  “That’s that,” Greenleaf said at length. “Nothing to do now but worry.” He gave his little transforming smile again, and seemed to be almost enjoying the situation.

  Malori was looking at him curiously. “How do you—manage to cope so well?”

  “Why not?” Greenleaf stretched and got up from the now-useless console. “You know, once a man gives up his old ways, badlife ways, admits he’s really dead to them, the new ways aren’t so bad. There are even women available from time to time, when the machines take prisoners.”

  “Goodlife,” said Malori. Now he had spoken the obscene, provoking epithet. But at the moment he was not afraid.

  “Goodlife yourself, little man.” Greenleaf was still smiling. “You know, I think you still look down on me. You’re in as deep as I am now, remember?”

  “I think I pity you.”

  Greenleaf let out a little snort of laughter, and shook his own head pityingly. “You know, I may have ahead of me a longer and more pain-free life than most of humanity has ever enjoyed—you said one of the models for the personae died at twenty-three. Was that a common age of death in those days?”

  Malori, still clinging to his stanchion, began to wear a strange, grim little smile. “Well, in his generation, in the continent of Europe, it was. The First World War was raging at the time.”

  “But he died of some disease, you said.”

  “No. I said he hada disease, tuberculosis. Doubtless it would have killed him eventually. But he died in battle, in 1917 CE, in a place called Belgium. His body was never found, as I recall, an artillery barrage having destroyed it and his aircraft entirely.”

  Greenleaf was standing very still. “Aircraft! What are you saying?”

  Malori pulled himself erect, somewhat painfully, and let go of his support. “I tell you now that Georges Guynemer—that was his name—shot down fifty-three enemy aircraft before he was killed. Wait!” Malori’s voice was suddenly loud and firm, and Greenleaf halted his menacing advance in sheer surprise. “Before you begin to do anything violent to me, you should perhaps consider whether your side or mine is likely to win the fight outside.”

  “The fight… .”

  “It will be nine ships against fifteen or more machines, but I don’t feel too pessimistic. The personae we have sent out are not going to be meekly slaughtered.”

  Greenleaf stared at him a moment longer, then spun around and lunged for the operations console. The display was still blank white with noise and there was nothing to be done. He slowly sank into the padded chair. “What have you done to me?” he whispered. “That collection of invalid musicians—you couldn’t have been lying about them all.”

  “Oh, every word I spoke was true. Not all World War One fighter pilots were invalids, of course. Some were in perfect health, indeed fanatical about staying that way. And I did not say they were all musicians, though I certainly meant you to think so. Ball had the most musical ability among the aces, but was still only an amateur. He always said he loathed his real profession.”

  Greenleaf, slumped in the chair now, seemed to be aging visibly. “But one was blind … it isn’t possible.”

  “So his enemies thought, when they released him from an internment camp early in the war. Edward Mannock, blind in one eye. He had to trick an examiner to get into the army. Of course the tragedy of these superb men is that they spent themselves killing one another. In those days they had no berserkers to fight, at least none that could be attacked dashingly, with an aircraft and a machine gun. I suppose men have always faced berserkers of some kind.”

  “Let me make sure I understand.” Greenleaf’s voice was almost pleading. “We have sent out the personae of nine fighter pilots?”

  “Nine of the best. I suppose their total of claimed aerial victories is more than five hundred. Such claims were usually exaggerated, but still …”

  There was silence again. Greenleaf slowly turned his chair back to face the operations display. After a time the storm of atomic noise began to abate. Malori, who had sat down on the deck to rest, got up again, this time more quickly. In the hologram a single glowing symbol was emerging from the noise, fast approaching the position of the Judith.

  The approaching symbol was bright red.

  “So there we are,” said Greenleaf, getting to his feet. From a pocket he produced a stubby little handgun. At first he pointed it toward the shrinking Malori, but then he smiled his nice smile and shook his head. “No, let the machines have you. That will be much worse.”

  When they heard the airlock begin to cycle, Greenleaf raised the weapon to point at his own skull. Malori could not tear his eyes away. The inner door clicked and Greenleaf fire
d.

  Malori bounded across the intervening space and pulled the gun from Greenleaf’s dead hand almost before the body had completed its fall. He turned to aim the weapon at the airlock as its inner door sighed open. The berserker standing there was the one he had seen earlier, or the same type at least. But it had just been through violent alterations. One metal arm was cut short in a bright bubbly scar, from which the ends of truncated cables flapped. The whole metal body was riddled with small holes, and around its top there played a halo of electrical discharge.

  Malori fired, but the machine ignored the impact of the forcepacket. They would not have let Greenleaf keep a gun with which they could be hurt. The battered machine ignored Malori too, for the moment, and lurched forward to bend over Greenleaf’s nearly decapitated body.

  “Tra-tra-tra-treason,” the berserker squeaked. “Ultimate unpleasant ultimate unpleasant stum-stum-stimuli. Badlife badlife bad—”

  By then Malori had moved up close behind it and thrust the muzzle of the gun into one of the still-hot holes where Albert Ball or perhaps Frank Luke or Werner Voss or one of the others had already used a laser to good effect. Two force-packets beneath its armor and the berserker went down, as still as the man who lay beneath it. The halo of electricity died.

  Malori backed off, looking at them both, then spun around to scan the operations display again. The red dot was drifting away from the Judith, the vessel it represented now evidently no more than inert machinery.

  Out of the receding atomic storm a single green dot was approaching. A minute later, Number Eight came in alone, bumping to a gentle stop against its cradle pads. The laser nozzle at once began smoking heavily in atmosphere. The craft was scarred in several places by enemy fire.

  “I claim four more victories,” the persona said as soon as Malori opened the hatch. “Today I was given fine support by my wingmen, who made great sacrifices for the Fatherland. Although the enemy outnumbered us by two to one, I think that not a single one of them escaped. But I must protest bitterly that my aircraft still has not been painted red.”