Berserker Wars (Omnibus)

by Fred Saberhagen

  The captain spoke to no one for almost an hour following his collapse. For the first few minutes he was deeply stunned, almost paralyzed. His crew gave him what modest medical care they could. After that he showed signs of awareness but remained for a considerable time in his state of silent shock. He sat on the ground speechless and essentially alone except for Polly, while around him his few surviving fellow citizens, in the intervals between their futile efforts to find other survivors, acted out their own grief and outrage in various ways.

  The next stage of Domingo’s recovery, when it came, was rapid. And as it progressed, it became—to Polly at least—frightening.

  It began when he broke his hour-long silence. He at last said something. A short statement; none of those near him could quite make out what it was.

  Two or three minutes after speaking those incoherent words, Domingo was on his feet again, brushing aside Polly’s attentions and other people’s questions and issuing harsh orders. He came out of shock, seemingly without transition, into grim, purposeful rage, driving her and the others of his crew to get the Pearlback into space. If there were any survivors here on the planetoid, he told his people brutally, they would have been found by now. Already they had checked out all of the defensive posts, the deep refuges that would have offered the only real chance of survival.

  Another ship’s captain, tears running down his own cheeks, approached Domingo on the ground, stressing the hopelessness, the pointlessness, of any immediate effort to lift their ships. It was too late to retaliate. Amid the shrieking wind, the driving, poisoned snow, the other captain’s voice came over the personal communication channel. “Don’t you understand, Domingo? It’s all over … the berserkers have got away. They’re gone.”

  Domingo glared like a madman at him. “Leviathan hasn’t got away yet. We’ll get it. Get those ships up!” His voice was hoarse, almost unrecognizable.

  And Domingo’s own crew, who a moment ago had been trying to nurse him back to some first stage of recovery, now felt the lash of his words and had to get themselves aboard the Pearland get ready to lift off.

  Polly at first had the feeling that what he was doing to his crew and the others was wrong and useless, but she did not dare to try to stop him.

  Demanding data, Domingo bullied everyone. He got them moving back to their duty stations, their shipboard instruments. He made them provide him with fresh observations, reports of ionization trails and other recent disturbances in the nebula nearby. These reports indicated that the destroyer machine—the readings confirmed that there had probably been only one berserker—was not long gone, probably no more than a very few hours.

  Domingo raged at them all. The burden of his ranting seemed to be that so much time had been wasted on the ground.

  Someone protested the injustice. “You were in shock, Captain. You were—”

  “You weren’t in shock.” He glared at the questioner. “Were you?”

  They gaped at him.

  “If you could move and I couldn’t, you should have dragged me back on board.”

  They were all back on board now, and working. It was almost as if the still-smoldering pyres and gutted caverns of their homes below had already been forgotten. There was a quotation in Polly’s mind from somewhere, something about letting the dead bury the dead. That was all right, a healthy attitude, but to carry it to this extreme … she continued to observe Niles Domingo worriedly. When he first got to his feet again, she felt relieved that he was recovering from the shock, rebounding from the initial blow more completely if not faster than the others who had suffered tragic losses. But Domingo’s energy had returned to him too suddenly, his grief had been transformed too rapidly and efficiently to rage.

  Polly Suslova was sure that it was a false recovery.

  But so far it was sustained. And it was pulling the others along with him. They were all bereaved to one degree or another, and almost as shocked as Domingo was. They actually benefitted from being dragooned aboard ship again, shouted at about their duty, hooked by the alpha rhythms of their brains into their crew stations and coerced into giving him reports. The necessity of routine, of following orders, formed a kind of support for them in their own shock; at some level they all understood this, and so far they had submitted to it willingly.

  Such was the compulsion he exerted on the other people of his squadron that all six ships, with all their crew members aboard, had launched obediently within a few minutes of his order.

  The six ships rendezvoused in orbit. From this altitude, their homeworld looked not much different than it had before life was expunged from it. There was a radio silence. This time silence had not been imposed by order; it was just that no one at the moment could find anything to say.

  Then Polly had an exchange of intercom dialogue with the captain.

  She asked him: “Where are we going?”

  The features of Domingo’s face, viewed individually, looked the same as they had before fate in the form of a berserker had struck him down. Yet his face had altered, she thought, all the same. It was as if someone had got in under the flesh with a chisel and had done some carving on the bones.

  He answered her: “Where do you thinkwe’re going? We’re going after that damned thing.” Like his face, his voice had altered. The chisel had worked angles in it, too.

  Someone else broke in: “We can’t …”

  The protest was never finished. Nor was it answered. The captain left it hanging in the air, and told them to get busy. And no one else had yet dared to take up the banner of rebellion.

  Polly wished intensely that she could get a direct, in-person look at the captain’s countenance. She could call up his intercom image before her whenever she liked, but it was not the same.

  The radio silence was broken again. Some voices of dissension, mingled with pure lamentations, were calling in from other ships, questioning this hopeless pursuit.

  Domingo paid little heed to the dissenting voices or to the lamentations, either. He was again busy driving his ship. The few words he spoke to the captains of the other ships conveyed essentially the message: Follow me or not, just as you like. Where else are you going to go?

  He drove the Pearlout into nebular space again, looking for the berserker’s trail. The five other ships came along. None of their captains—so far—was persuaded that it would be better to give up and turn away.

  Covertly Polly continued to watch his face on intercom whenever she was not fully occupied with her own job. She had given up hope, for the time being, of being able to guess just what was going on inside his head. Continued shock, of course, and grief. But—what form was it taking? What were his thoughts?

  In fact, at the moment the captain’s only conscious thought was simply that his ship ran well. Better than that, it ran superbly. For the time being, for the moment, he was able to lose himself in the beautiful running of his new ship. He was momentarily content, even cheerful. There was no need for him to consider—to consider anything else at all.

  Outside, whitespace flowed by, smooth and at the same time intricate, like ruffling wedding lace.

  I have been so proud of this ship,Domingo thought, serenely watching instruments. Ever since I got it—not long ago, I admit—it’s been everything I ever hoped for in a ship.

  For ten years I’ve wanted a new ship, because—

  “Did you say something, Captain?” That was Polly’s voice on intercom. Had he spoken aloud? He hadn’t meant to.

  “Nothing,” Domingo said. Then he ceased for a time to think at all. He only calculated how to get more speed.

  When he had the problem of speed settled, for the time being, he could think again. He was going to catch up with the berserker, the one that ten years ago … and now again … he was going to catch up with Old Blue.

  Yes. And then …

  But soon it was obvious that the ionization trail was becoming painfully difficult to follow. He was as experienced at trailing as anyone—it was a valuable p
eacetime skill in the nebula, one ship trailing another just to keep from getting lost, or simply as a game—and he knew that the trails in the nebula sometimes faded, suddenly and inexplicably.

  He heard again from some of his own crew. They were watching the trail too, and his increasingly labored efforts to follow it. Henric and Simeon were now wondering pointedly if it was still possible to go on with any hope of success.

  The captain pointedly ignored their wondering.

  Some of the people on the other ships were less impressed with him than his own crew was. More of those other people were speaking up now, talking reasonably to him and to each other, forming the nucleus for a gentle and sad revolt. The berserker was gone, was the gist of what they said. This wasn’t really a trail any longer. Perhaps some day the damned thing could be hunted successfully and destroyed. But right now they, the survivors, had to take time to come to terms with themselves, with their own grief and loss.

  The reasonable, nonviolent view nearly prevailed. The other ships of Domingo’s squadron were all turning away now, the people aboard them voting that it was time to go to the Space Force for help.

  The Pearlmoved on, along the fading trail—some of her crew arguing that the trail had already been lost—with Domingo still piloting.

  “Captain. Where are we going?” This time it was Iskander Baza who said it. The same question had already been asked aboard the Pearl, but now it had a new context and was posed in a practical tone that deserved an answer, if anything practical was going to get done.

  Domingo’s reply was only slightly delayed, as if he were being thoughtful about it. And when it came it sounded perfectly rational. “All right. Set a course for the base, then. For Four Twenty-five. Iskander, you take the helm for a while.”

  Polly breathed a faint sigh of relief. That made sense. Base Four Twenty-five would have help to offer. As much of any kind of help as anyone in the Pearl‘s squadron was going to get anywhere right now, as much as the universe could possibly have available for people who had lost all that they had lost. And if the hunt was still to be pursued, the base undoubtedly offered the best chance of obtaining information about where the berserker—Leviathan—had gone now.

  She had not even had a good chance yet to offer the captain her condolences on his daughter’s death. Right now she was afraid to try.

  Domingo’s crew, still suffering from shock, were largely silent as their journey to Base Four Twenty-five began. But as the flight proceeded they began slowly to talk among themselves again. They had all been friends and neighbors once, just yesterday when they had lived in a community together. And they were certainly more than neighbors now. They were survivors together.

  Polly wasn’t sure that Niles Domingo was still a friend and neighbor of the others. All those others were perhaps too involved right now with their own grief and shock to notice the transformation. But Polly doubted that he was even listening to them any longer, that he was even living in the same world with the other people aboard his ship or in his squadron. Some of those people had certainly lost children too, some had lost whole families. But none of them had collapsed the way Domingo had—not yet anyway—or recovered in his way either.

  In what kind of hideous, private world he was living—existing—now, she couldn’t guess, much less try to share the experience with him. But she swore to herself that she would be ready when the chance came to help.

  Base Four Twenty-five was fairly near though in a different system from Shubra, on a planetoid that had remained otherwise uncolonized, and had no commonly used name of its own apart from the base. It was a barren rock, considerably smaller than Shubra, that supported a Space Force installation of modest size and virtually nothing else.

  Base Four Twenty-five was about a day away. It was going to be a long day for them all.

  The Pearlglided slowly into one of the row of berths built into the section of the shielded underground docks that was reserved for civilian visitors to the base. Other ships of the ill-fated orphan squadron were coming in behind the Pearl.None of the other ships had been quite as fast as Domingo’s Pearlin getting here, but he had not been deliberately trying to outrace them, and they were already catching up. As the other craft arrived, they entered nearby berths. The crews of all six vessels disembarked, almost together. All of them were moving slowly, a reluctant step at a time; it was as if the act of leaving their ships now might take them yet farther from everything that they had lost.

  The people of the Pearl, first to arrive, were also first to step out. Several Space Force people known to Domingo and to most of his crew had already come into view, standing on the dock, waiting to greet the arrivals sympathetically. The squadron had radioed its grim news ahead.

  At the head of the welcoming committee was the base commander, a man named Gennadius, tall and hollow-cheeked, looking chronically worn down as if by his job. Polly had seen him only once before, at some function a couple of years ago, and she knew that in the past he had fought at Domingo’s side against berserkers. It was obvious now from the commander’s behavior that the two men were old friends.

  Gennadius said “Niles” as the other approached, and followed with a one-word question: “Maymyo?”

  Domingo looked at the tall man in front of him as if he had trouble comprehending the question. “She’s dead,” the captain said at last. It was as if he were talking about someone he had barely known.

  The base commander winced, with a more than social reaction. Polly made a mental note to herself that as soon as she had the chance she would ask this man for advice and assistance in helping the captain.

  Gennadius asked him: “How about you? Come and rest. I want to have the medics look you over.”

  With a gesture Domingo brushed the notion aside. “They can look over some of my people if they want to be looked over. I’m all right. What I want is to get to your operations room and see your current plot.”

  When one of the base medical people tried to be firm with him, Domingo pulled his arm away with a flourish that seemed to threaten violence. “Let me see the plot!”

  Gennadius, with a much more modest gesture, called the doctor off. Then he led his old friend Domingo toward the operations room. Polly and a few others followed. Others of the bereaved crews sat down exhausted where they were, milled around lamenting afresh or accepted medical examination.

  The operations room, on the next level above the docks, was a large ovoid chamber, perfectly lighted, big enough for forty or fifty people to gather inside it at one time. In the approximate center of this chamber there was a computer model, itself the size of a small room, illustrating the explored portions of the Milkpail.

  A color key for the model was displayed nearby. After Polly had studied it for a few moments, she understood the essentials of the presentation. This was evidently what Domingo had called the current plot, indicating where within the Milkpail Nebula berserker attacks had recently been reported, and which additional colonies and installations were now considered to be at high risk. The model also showed the locations to which the battlecraft at Gennadius’s disposal, about twenty of them in all, had been dispatched, in an effort, Polly supposed, to try to intercept the enemy’s next attack. She couldn’t interpret all the symbols on the plot; for one thing, she was unable to tell just how many ships of which kind were supposed to be where.

  One wall screen in the operations room showed the scene down in the visitors’ dock, where it appeared that three or four additional ships were now arriving, more or less together. Polly did not recognize them. Someone standing near her in operations said that they came from Liaoning. Having arrived home to find that their world had been destroyed, they had turned here to the base as the Shubrans had.

  Domingo handed over to Gennadius the recording on which Old Blue could be identified as the attacker. Then he demanded that the base commander tell him his plans for hunting down the berserker that had destroyed the Shubra colony.

  “I’ll have
to take a good look at this first,” Gennadius said wearily, juggling the recording in his hand. “There might be some useful information, even if it doesn’t help us immediately. We’ll do an analysis.”

  “Piss on your analysis.” That expression was, by local custom, a much uglier way of swearing than to profane the names of half-forgotten deities and demigods. Polly had never before, in the months she had known the captain, heard him use this kind of language. It disturbed her to hear it now, more than she could logically explain.

  Again he demanded of the commander: “I want to know what you’re going to do about Leviathan.”

  Gennadius stood solidly, with folded arms. “I’m going to run my command. To give as much protection as I can to the people in this district. I appreciate how you feel, Domingo—”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. But my prime function is not to hunt Leviathan. It’s not the only berserker around, you know.”

  Domingo was silent. The base commander (Polly got the definite impression that he was making allowances for his bereaved friend) went on in a tired, methodical, soothing voice, explaining his current plans. From what Polly, who was no military expert, could understand of it, his basic strategy seemed to be more defensive than offensive. He wanted to detail the Pearl, with other ships from Shubra and Liaoning, as soon as they and their crews were ready to go out again, to guard duty over other colonies. There were perhaps twenty more Milkpail colonies still out there, potential targets for the berserker enemy. Gennadius intended to get as many armed ships as possible, including those of the bereaved colonists, out there to protect them.

  Domingo said, in his new hoarse voice: “At least you think those other colonies are still there. Still in existence. You don’t really know.”

  “That’s right.” Gennadius, under strain himself, no longer sounded like an old friend. But he was still trying. “As far as I know, they’re still alive. Will you help them stay that way?”

  Domingo spoke in the same voice as before, with no more or less expression. “Say there are twenty places to be guarded. If I take the Pearlto do patrol duty at one of them, I have one chance in twenty of encountering Leviathan at the next attack. That’s not good enough.”