Berserker Wars (Omnibus)

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Thank you. I’d like to sit in.”

  With Gennadius she entered the next conference room, where the atmosphere was vastly different from that in the one they had just left, though about the same number of people were present. The men and women assembled here looked different from the psychically battered colonists in the other room. These newcomers were obviously nervous but still healthy, without the indefinable appearance of victims.

  By now the newcomers had heard the full official announcement of the multiple disasters, which was a recital of bare facts, accurate as far as Polly could tell. And in the short time they had been on the base they had almost certainly heard more than that, from survivors and at second hand. They were, naturally enough, worried and uncertain.

  As Polly followed the commander into the conference room, one of the group was standing in front of the others, talking to them about berserkers. The speaker was one of the older people present—none were more than middle-aged—and her voice carried sincerity if not necessarily authority.

  “When berserkers move in, people move out. It’s that simple. Trying to live in a sector where they’re active is like sticking your hand into a shredder. It’s just about as sensible as that, and as brave.”

  The speaker glanced over her shoulder, saw Gennadius looking at her, and finished defiantly: “I’ve been through this before. I know what I’m talking about!”

  Polly could see the base commander pausing, deciding silently that this called for a more serious speech than he had first intended.

  Gennadius made no attempt to hush the woman, but let her finish. Only when she had returned to a seat did he himself take over her position at the front of the room.

  He looked out over his small audience calmly and gravely, letting a little silence grow. Then when he judged he had the timing right, he said: “All right. We’ve had a very severe problem in the nebula the past few days. A series of disasters, in fact. But as you can see, this is a very strong base, secure against attack. Starting from here, and with the support of Sector, we’re prepared to take back what we’ve lost—in terms of territory, at least. So there’s great opportunity in the Milkpail right now, the opportunity that I assume you’ve all come here to find.”

  Gennadius went on, delivering an encouraging message without in the least fudging on the catastrophic facts of recent history.

  “Sure, we’ve had severe problems, on the scope of some great natural disaster. But I—” The commander appeared to grope for words. “How can I put it? We are not facing some kind of demonic monsters here. I don’t know how many of you hold beliefs of any kind in the supernatural, or what those beliefs are. But never mind that, it doesn’t matter. What we are confronted with here are machines, just like—like this video recorder.”

  While he was talking, the door to the corridor had opened quietly, and Iskander had come in, with the captain right at his shoulder. Their arrival was in time for them to hear the base commander’s philosophy regarding berserkers.

  Domingo spoke one word, in a soft voice: “Leviathan.” He said it as if it were the answer to some question that everyone in the room had been groping for.

  “Welcome, Captain Domingo.” Gennadius nodded toward the new arrivals. “A man who has had a very recent and very tragic experience with berserkers. He has—”

  The captain smiled. It looked to Polly like a madman’s smile. “Not just with berserkers, Commander. With one particular … machine. That word’s inadequate, though, isn’t it? Machine.And the experience, as you call it, was not simply tragic. No. Tell them the truth.”

  Gennadius was exasperated now. “Your world was attacked by one machine that people have given a name to, as if it were some great damned artificial pet. Or god, or idol. Well, it’s none of those things. Why is the word machineinadequate? That’s what a berserker is.”

  “Oh, is it? Tell me more.” Domingo’s voice was still quiet.

  “There’s not much more to tell. Essentially. If you want to know the truth, it and the others are no more than overgrown, out-of-adjustment machines.”

  Domingo had no comment on that for the moment. He listened in silence as the base commander continued his efforts to encourage the potential new colonists. With all the news of berserkers in the air, Gennadius said, he wanted to dissuade them from the idea that the obstacles were just too overwhelming. “Some people get the notion that the berserker problem can never be managed. That’s wrong. They’re machines, that from our point of view happen to be malfunctioning. That’s all they are. And if we can keep a sun from going nova, as we sometimes can, then we can ultimately manage a few machines.”

  Domingo broke in at that point. “You think Leviathan’s only a machine? That it just happens to be out of adjustment?” He paused. “I’d like to show you what it is. I’d like you to be there when I pull out its heart.”

  Gennadius coldly returned the captain’s burning stare. “You’ve had a hard time, Domingo, but you’re not the only one who has. I respect what you’ve done, and what you’ve been through, but getting revenge on a piece of metal is a crazy enterprise, in my opinion.”

  Polly sucked in her breath audibly. She sensed that the commander’s words were a deliberate shock tactic, but she didn’t think that it would work.

  The would-be colonists were watching and listening very, very intently. Their heads turned back and forth like those of spectators at a match.

  “Only a piece of metal. You think that?”

  “That’s what they are. You have some kind of evidence to the contrary to present? I’d like to see it.”

  “Is my body a machine? Or yours? Or was my daughter’s? What was her body, Commander? What was it?”

  There was a pause that seemed long. At last Gennadius said: “In a manner of speaking, I suppose we’re all machines. I don’t see the point of looking at it that way, though.”

  “I can see that you’re a machine,” said Domingo, looking at the commander speculatively.

  Polly could feel her scalp creep. Not from the words; something in the tone.

  The potential colonists were still watching and listening with great attention.

  The commander, she could see, was working hard at being almost casual and even harder at being tolerant. Polly supposed he did not want to freight this madman’s behavior with importance in the eyes of the others watching. “If you have tactical suggestions to make, Captain, I’ll be glad to listen to them up in the operations room. Meanwhile there’s something else I wish you’d work on. You’re still mayor of Shubra. Some of these people might be interested in going there. I think it’s your place, your duty, to talk to them and—”

  “If I’m still mayor of any place, it’s hell. As for your rebuilding, I want none of it.”

  “As mayor, you—”

  “You want my resignation?”

  “It’s not my place to accept it. Talk to your citizens.” Then the commander softened. “We’ve all lost, Niles. Not like you, maybe, but … we’ve got to start thinking of where we go from here. There are decisions that won’t wait.”

  “I know what won’t wait.” Domingo looked at the commander, and at Polly. She could get no clue from his eyes as to what he expected her to do. A moment later he had left the room. When she followed him into the corridor, a few moments later, he and Iskander were already out of sight.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Sirian Pearl , along with the other ships of the Shubran civilian relief squadron, had seen no actual fighting and had sustained no damage while shuttling from one disaster to another. Such minor refitting as was required to get her perfectly ready for action had already been taken care of at the base. The Space Force had been eager to help with the maintenance. Gennadius wanted every human ship in the nebula to be as fully armed and equipped and ready for combat as possible.

  More combat was expected soon, though with berserkers you never knew. Anyway, it was certain to come eventually.

  The Pearlwas almost alone in the doc
ks, except for a few Space Force ships, a couple of them undergoing routine maintenance, a couple of others being held in reserve as transport and for defense in the unlikely event of a berserker attack on the base itself. Four Twenty-five had truly awesome ground defenses. From the enemy’s point of calculation, there had to be more tempting targets out there in the nebula, colonies only lightly defended now after the years of relative peace and quiet.

  Domingo’s ship was solidly down in dock, with Gujar Sidoruk and Iskander Baza walking and climbing over and around her, giving everything on the outside a looking over, probing with tools and fingers into missile-launching ports and tubes, field projectors, the snouts and nozzles of beam weapons. The checkout was really unnecessary, but Gujar at least was nervous enough to need something to do. Iskander had come along, and they talked while they conducted an extra inspection.

  Iskander, hands on hips, stood tall on the uppermost curve of hull. He said: “You know, Sid?”

  “What?”

  “I’m really looking forward to taking this ship into action.” He sounded more serious than usual.

  Gujar straightened up from a beam nozzle and looked about restlessly, swinging his electronic probe in one huge hand. He responded that he himself was not looking forward to anything. Going after Leviathan was just something he had to do, and he wanted to get it over with.

  Sidoruk was not as familiar with this ship as the other crew members were. He had a few questions to ask about the new weapons and systems Domingo had insisted on having built into his ship.

  Gujar had been taking it for granted that the Pearl‘s armaments were adequate for the formidable task Domingo was planning. But now it seemed to him that, in answer to a couple of his questions, Iskander was slyly trying to raise some doubt in his mind, as if just for fun.

  Gujar was still frowning in vague puzzlement when the two men heard footsteps approaching, clomping up a flexible ladder that curved around the curve of hull. Presently Polly Suslova’s head and shoulders came into sight. She greeted the two men and asked, “Where’s the captain?”

  Baza smiled at her. “He’s aboard. I looked in half an hour ago and he was sleeping.”

  Despite the smile, she had the feeling that this man was hostile to her, that somehow he felt possessive about the captain. Baza, as far as she was aware, had had no family anywhere, even before the Shubran massacre.

  “Good,” she said. “I’ll let him sleep. He needs the rest.” She looked at Gujar, who was leaning against the railing of the curving stair, gazing glumly into space. He didn’t appear to be listening to the conversation, but it was hard to tell.

  Polly faced back to Iskander, as the second-in-command asked her: “You think the captain’s unhealthy? I don’t.”

  “Have you seen him like this before?”

  “Like what?” Polly could read no feeling in Iskander’s smooth voice. “He’s ready to hunt berserkers. If that makes him crazy, there’re a lot of lunatics around.”

  “I’m sure there are. The point is that until a few days ago he wasn’t one of them.”

  “He’ll be all right, when he gets Leviathan.” The broad-shouldered man sounded very confident.

  That woke up Gujar. “If he can get it.”

  “He can.”

  Sidoruk turned around, frowning. “I thought you were just telling me our weapons might not be good enough.”

  Polly asked Iskander: “Do you think that’s what Domingo needs?”

  “He thinks so.” Baza started to move past her to the ladder. “Excuse me, ma’am. It’s time I went to operations and took a look at things.”

  Polly moved out of Iskander’s way, but she had another question for him before he left. “You’ve known the captain a long time. Were you with him when that crash almost wiped out his family ten years ago?”

  “I was. But you’d better ask him about that.” And with a lightly mocking little salute, Iskander was gone.

  Gujar Sidoruk had roused from his unhappy reverie enough to pay attention to Polly’s latest question. “What do you want to know about the crash?”

  “I was wondering if berserkers were involved in that, too.” Ships disappeared, sometimes, in every part of space, even without berserkers’ help.

  “Yes, I remember it well. It wasn’t just berserkers. It was the same damned one.”

  Thinking of Domingo, Polly let out a little wordless moan of empathic pain. She sat down on the curve of hull—carefully; the metal tended to be slippery and there was a considerable drop. “Tell me.”

  “Well. His wife—her name was Isabel—and two of their three kids were on a ship coming back from somewhere, I forget where, to Shubra. The ship managed to send off a courier before she crashed. Her captain thought Leviathan was chasing them, and the courier message said he was just about to take some risky evasive action. That was all that anyone ever heard from that ship. Either the berserker got them, or he wrecked his ship trying to get away from it. Tried to go too fast in a cloud, or whatever. No lifeboats ever showed up anywhere. No survivors.”

  “I see,” Polly murmured again.

  Again someone’s feet were clanging solidly up the ladder. In a few moments Simeon’s head came into view. “There you are—some of you, anyway. There’s news. One of Gennadius’s squadrons is supposed to be straggling back in here to the base, all shot up. They tightbeamed a message ahead, saying they’ve just fought a battle.”

  “And?”

  “Mixed results, apparently.”

  Polly grabbed for the ladder. “Coming, Gujar?”

  He shook his head slowly. “You go ahead. I want to look over a few more things here. Whatever the news is, I expect we’ll be launching before long.”

  Polly descended the ladder quickly. There was someone else who would certainly want to hear the latest combat news the instant it became available. Iskander had said that Domingo was asleep. She debated briefly with herself, then opened the nearest convenient hatch and entered the ship.

  The captain was not in his berth. Well, she supposed it had been foolish to look for him there, no matter what Iskander had said. She found Domingo in the common room again, sitting slumped over and motionless at the console beside his computer model, almost on top of it. His face, with the reflected colors of the glowing model playing over it, was turned toward Polly as she entered and she was worried for a moment; he looked absolutely dead.

  A closer look reassured her. Domingo was breathing deeply and comfortably, getting what was probably one of his first real sleeps since the disaster. But Polly, sure that he would want to know the news, decided to wake him anyway. She shook him by the shoulder.

  The captain’s eyes opened at once, and he saw her without apparent surprise. He was glad to be awakened for the news, grim as it was, and was on his feet at once. Pausing only to shut down some of his equipment, he moved toward Operations with purposeful strides, Polly tagging along.

  They were in time to be present when Base Commander Gennadius greeted the arriving crews.

  The newly arrived military ships had brought with them another item of related news: yet another berserker attack upon a colony, the third in recent days. This time the target had been Malaspina, a planetoid of a sun that was relatively distant within the nebula. Malaspina was known for the foul “weather”—nebular turbulence and activity—that usually afflicted both its atmosphere and its surrounding space.

  Before the returning fleet had fought its recent battle, its ships had picked up some peculiar radio messages from the direction of the colonized planetoid Malaspina, messages reporting the sighting of strange ships or objects in the nebula near Malaspina. Very shortly after picking up the radio transmissions, the fleet had been found by a robot courier from the attacked colony. The courier brought an urgent and now horribly familiar message: Colony under berserker attack.

  Gennadius, as he listened to this story, appeared to be trying to remember something. “Malaspina. Wasn’t there another report of some really peculiar
nebular life forms around there just a standard month ago?”

  Some of his aides standing nearby were able to confirm this.

  “That’s not all,” said one of the exhausted ship captains who had just arrived. According to later messages received by the rescue fleet, some of the people at the third colony were reported to have behaved bizarrely during the attack.

  “Hysteria,” said someone on the base commander’s staff.

  “I suppose. Anyway, one of the radio messages we got said they were acting crazy—tearing off their clothes, singing. Running around wild, I guess. Those were about all the details we heard.”

  “You have recordings?”

  “Of the action we just fought? They’ll be along in a minute, Commander.”

  Others among the people at Base Four Twenty-five, who were now trying to evaluate events, at first attributed the reported bizarre behavior of the people at the colony, during the attack and immediately following it, to the effects of some virus.

  The task force, responding with all possible speed to the courier-borne report of that attack, had arrived at the battered colony in time to save it from destruction.

  The combat recordings were now being brought into the operations room. Polly retreated into the background, but no one cared if she and the other colonists present stayed to watch.

  The light in the large room dimmed slightly, and a stage brightened. The ranking officer of the task force that had just arrived introduced the combat recordings, which told the story.

  When the powerful Space Force battle group had appeared on the scene, the berserker raiding fleet had broken off its assault on Malaspina and retreated. The Space Force had arrived none too soon; the battle had been going badly for the human side until then. Three or possibly four berserkers had been engaged in this latest attack.