The local authorities on the planetoid, without waiting for their colleagues and superiors from the full-sized planets of the system, hurriedly convened on holostage. All present were naturally aghast at the disaster they had just survived, and at the same time relieved that somehow—miraculously, it seemed—the destruction and loss of life had not been worse.
The planetoid Imatra had for years been home to a fair amount of scientific research. Also it was well known throughout nearby worlds and systems as a conference site, a meeting place with the pleasant ambiance of a formal garden, where administrators at several levels in Premier Dirac’s power structure—and others—often repaired to escape routine, to meet informally. A number of important people were usually to be found visiting here. So the local authorities’ relief that human casualties were light was even stronger than it might otherwise have been. But still …
At this point an hour and a half had passed since the last weapon had been fired. The berserker and its helpless catch were still within easy telescopic range, but were receding with ever-increasing speed, accelerating back along what looked like the exact same course on which this enemy had made its approach. The foe was retreating toward the approximate middle of the Mavronari Nebula.
By now, naturally, one of the swiftest couriers available had been dispatched to carry the unhappy news to Premier Dirac himself, who was days away in another system. The Premier’s schedule already called for him to arrive at Imatra within a standard month at most; the local authorities feared that on his arrival, whenever that might be, he was going to hold them personally responsible, not only for the loss of his bride and his inchoate child but also for the general disaster. They feared, at the least, being charged with gross incompetence.
Of course, they all agreed, such charges would be utterly unjust. “How could we possibly have foreseen a berserker attack herein the Imatran system, of all places? There hasn’t been even a berserker sightingfor …”
No one could immediately say for just how many years. Certainly for a long, long time.
Quickly the worried, frightened local leaders began to review the various recordings of the attack, some of which had been made from the Imatran surface, others from certain artificial satellites above the planetoid. Dirac and his personal staff would want to see those records, to study them intently. This local, first review was conducted with the idea of learning more about the particular berserker—and also in the hope of the authorities’ finding something on which to base their own defense in the coming investigation.
Among the events shown clearly in the recordings was the movement of one particular small craft, the ill-fated courier, which had indeed separated itself from the research station and fled for safety in the last few minutes before the berserker struck. There had even been a hasty radio message from the station confirming the departure.
On hearing that message, at the time, people on the ground had felt their hopes soar (or so one of them now claimed), thinking that the Lady Genevieve might well have managed to get aboard that courier, and that she was going to be whisked away out of danger.
But very soon after it had separated from the station, the little vessel had been destroyed; the first crippling blast had been followed within a few minutes by a second, even more violent explosion, as some component of the drive let go. In the interval between detonations Hawksmoor’s Wrenhad just managed to reach the vicinity.
“What was the report from the Wren?” someone now inquired anxiously.
“No survivors.” Someone else cleared his throat.
A general sigh went round the holotable. The possibility of survivors had seemed remote, but naturally an intensive search, for the Lady Genevieve in particular, had been started as soon as possible. That search, by the Wrenand several other ships now on the scene, still continued, though from the start there had been little hope of finding anyone alive.
More ships were now arriving in the region where the courier had exploded, and many more were on their way, all wanting to help. But so far no survivors had been announced, and at this late hour there was no reason to think that any were going to turn up.
Some member of the conference of local leaders grumbled that records showed that the demolished courier had been short of emergency space suits, and that such armored suits might have offered the passengers real hope of survival. The announcement was greeted with silence. Certainly before the attack no one would have expected such a craft, maneuvering in supposedly peaceful regions, to have carried enough suits for several dozen people.
That there had been other real losses in space would obviously be impossible for the local authorities to deny. Not only the courier but several Solarian fighting ships, complete with crews, had been destroyed.
At least, one participant in the conference noted with faint satisfaction, the enemy had not escaped entirely unscathed: several small spacegoing berserker machines, the equivalent of human scout ships, had been destroyed by ground batteries in the brief fight.
* * *
Detracting from this modest achievement of the defense was the fact that the survivors on the planetoid and elsewhere in the system now had no armed ships left. The few such craft available had all been bravely hurled into the fight against the berserker, and in an engagement lasting only a few minutes the monster had efficiently destroyed them all, down to the last unit. The only encouraging aspect of this loss was that not even the Premier, when he arrived, would be able to blame the local authorities for not attempting a pursuit.
One local authority, trying out on his colleagues a statement that he meant to issue later to the outraged public, declaimed: “Though our blood boils with fighting fever, with the determination to be avenged—words to that effect—there’s no way we could have given chase to the escaping enemy. No way, I think, that we might have done anything more than we did during the critical minutes of the catastrophe or in its aftermath.”
His colleagues were silent, considering. At last one of them offered grimly: “At least our overall casualties were light.”
Another stared at the last speaker. “Light? Have you forgotten that the Lady Genevieve is missing, not only missing but almost certainly dead? Do you realize that?”
“I said overall. I meant light in total numbers.”
“Hardly light, even in total numbers, if the protopeople are counted in.”
“If what? If who?”
“I mean the intended colonists.” The speaker looked around, getting in return as many blank stares as understanding nods. “Those on the biostation, who are, or were, the basic reason for its existence. The human zygotes and a few fetuses. All of the living contributions, donations, gathered over a period of years, decades, from the families, the mothers, of a dozen—maybe more than a dozen—worlds.”
“I say ‘living’ is debatable. But how many of these donations, as you call them, intended colonists, were aboard?”
“I don’t have the exact number at hand. From what I’ve heard, somewhere near a billion.”
“A what?”
“Ten to the ninth.”
The fact, the quantity, took a moment to penetrate. “Then let’s see to it that they’re not counted, or mentioned in any estimate of casualties.”
“One of them is certainly going to be.”
“What?”
“Maybe you missed the publicity announcements made just before the tragedy. The Lady Genevieve wasn’t here on just a formal tour of inspection.” The speaker looked far to his right. “Well, Kensing? What do you say?”
The conference table was, of course, not a single real solid table at all, but a construct of artificial reality put together on holostage by computers and communications systems for the convenience of the local authorities, who were thus enabled to remain comfortably at home or in their offices while sharing in the illusion of mutual confrontation in a single room. At one point along the rim of this composite board sat the youngest in attendance, a man named Sandro Kensing. Ken
sing had so far remained silent. For one thing, he was distracted by grief. For another, he was not a local authority at all, but only the nephew of one of last year’s councilmen—and the fiancé of Dr. Anyuta Zador, who was now among the missing. But the real reason this young man had been invited to the council was the fact that for two years he had been a close personal friend of the only son of Premier Dirac, and had even been a guest in one of the Premier’s homes and aboard his yacht. Therefore, or so the local authorities thought, he might be expected to know something of that potentate’s psychology.
“Well, Kensing?”
Sandro Kensing raised shaggy sandy eyebrows and looked back. His heavy shoulders were hunched over the table, thick-fingered hands clasped before him. His face was impassive, except for reddened eyes. “Sorry?” He hadn’t heard the question.
“I was asking,” the speaker repeated considerately, “what you thought Premier Dirac’s reaction to this terrible news might be.”
“Ah. Yes.” None of the local leadership, even going back to include his now-retired uncle, much impressed Kensing. “Well, the old man won’t be happy. But you don’t need me to tell you that.”
There was an uncomfortable silence around the table. Respecting the upstart’s grief at the loss of his fiancé, no one spoke sternly to him or even glowered at him for his near-insolent manner. All the authorities realized that they had bigger things to worry about.
“We all have a lot of work to do,” the chairman said presently. “But before we adjourn this session, we had better settle the matter of the delegation.”
“Delegation?” someone asked.
“I should perhaps say deputation. A deputation to welcome the Premier when he arrives.” Looking around, he decided that clarification was in order. “If noneof us go up to meet him when he shows up in orbit, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he summons us all to attend him on his ship to report to him in person.”
The atmosphere around the table had suddenly grown even more unhappy than before.
“I move,” said another speaker, “that we appoint a single delegate. A representative to deliver our preliminary report. Since, for the foreseeable future, we are all going to have our hands full with our own jobs.”
All around the holotable, heads were swiveling, looking in the same direction. Their delegate had been chosen, unanimously and without debate. Kensing, paying more attention to the meeting now and only mildly surprised, managed a faintly cynical smile at the many faces turned his way.
FOUR
Several hours before he was really expected, the Premier entered the Imatran system at an impressive velocity aboard his large armed yacht, the Eidolon.This formidable fighting vessel—some expert observers said it looked more like a light cruiser—was escorted by two smaller craft, both armed but rather nondescript. The three ships were evidently all that Premier Dirac had been able to muster on short notice.
Instead of landing on the almost unscarred surface of the planetoid Imatra, as he doubtless would have done in time of peace and as some people still expected him to do now, Dirac hung his little squadron in a low orbit. From that position of readiness he immediately summoned—in terms conveying authority rather than politeness—the local authorities aboard.
He also called for the full mobilization of local technical resources to help get his squadron into total combat readiness. Some of the equipment on his ships would require various forms of refitting, rearming, or recharging before he was ready to risk a fight.
Under the circumstances, it was easy to understand the absence of any formal ceremony of welcome. In fact the only individual who obeyed the Premier’s summons, boarding a shuttle to ride up and welcome him and his entourage, was the chosen spokesperson Sandro Kensing. The young man, vaguely uneasy though not really frightened about the kind of reception he could expect, stepped from the docked shuttle into the main airlock of the yacht carrying in his pocket a holostage recording created by the local council. The recording was an earnest compilation of convincing reasons why the members’ currently overwhelming press of duties rendered their personal attendance utterly impossible. It empowered Kensing to represent them—all of them—in this meeting with the Premier.
Obviously the whole lot of them were really frightened of the old man, a few on an actual physical level. Perhaps, thought Kensing, some of them had good reason to be. He himself wasn’t personally afraid. Even had his feelings not still been dominated by grief, he would not have been terrified of Mike’s father, whom he had met half a dozen times when he and Mike were attending school together, and in whose house he had been a guest. Actually the relationship had led to a job related to the colonization project, and thus to Kensing’s meeting Annie.
Just inside the Eidolon‘s armored airlock, Kensing was met by a powerfully built, graying man of indeterminate age, dressed in coveralls that offered no indication of the wearer’s status or function. Kensing recognized one of the Premier’s chief security people, a familiar presence in the Sardou mansion Kensing had visited, and on its grounds.
“Hello, Brabant.”
The bodyguard, as usual informally polite to friends of his employer, identified the young visitor on sight, though several years had passed since their last encounter. “Hey, Mr. Kensing. Have a seat, the boss is expecting you. He’ll be free in a minute.”
Beyond the bodyguard the interior of the ship, somewhat remodeled and redecorated since Kensing had seen it last, looked like a powerful executive’s office planetside.
“I’ll stand up for a while, thanks. Been sitting a lot lately.”
Brabant looked at him sympathetically. “Hey, tough about Dr. Zador. Really tough.”
“Thanks.”
“You and the boss got something in common. Unfortunately.”
In the rush of his own feelings Kensing had almost forgotten about the presumed loss of the Premier’s new bride. But it was true; he and the Premier now had something very basic in common.
“Where’s Mike?” he asked the bodyguard suddenly.
The man appeared to be trying to remember, then shrugged. “He wasn’t getting on with his father a few months back, so he took a trip. Long before all this came up.”
“Anyplace in particular?”
“The family don’t tell me all their plans.”
“I just thought I might find him on board. His father’s going to have need of good pilots.”
“Hey, good pilots the boss’s got, this time around. Better pilots than Mike.”
Kensing raised an eyebrow. “Not many of those available.”
“One in particular who’s on board right now is very good indeed.” Brabant, with the air of keeping a pleasant bit of information in reserve, looked up and down the corridor. “Maybe you’ll meet him.”
“Yeah? You’re telling me this is someone special?”
“You might say so. His name’s Frank Marcus. Colonel. That was the last rank I heard he had. Retired.”
For a moment at least Kensing was distracted from his personal problems. “Marcus? You mean the—”
“That’s right. The famous man in boxes. They tell me he was driving the yacht just a little while ago when we dropped into orbit here.”
“Gods of flightspace. I guess I assumed Colonel Frank Marcus was dead, decades ago.”
“Don’t tell him that, kid. Excuse me, I mean I wouldn’t advise that as diplomatic, Mr. Official Deputy from Imatra.” And the bodyguard laughed.
Kensing was shaking his head. By now Colonel Marcus would have to be an old man by any standard, because for more than a century he had been something of an interstellar legend. As Kensing remembered the story, Marcus had at some time in his youth lost most of his organic body in an accident—or had it been in a berserker fight?—and ever since had been confined to his boxes by physical disability, a situation he apparently viewed as only an interesting challenge.
“Hey, you know what I hear, Mr. Kensing?” Brabant had lowered his voice slightly.
The gist of the story, as passed along now in clinical detail by the admiring bodyguard, was that Frank Marcus was still perfectly capable of enjoying female companionship and of physically expressing his appreciation in the fullest way.
“Glad to hear it. So how does he come to be working for the Premier?”
Kensing’s informant went on to explain that Marcus, ranked as one of the supreme space pilots in Solarian history, had signed on a couple of months ago as an advanced flight instructor, after first having turned down the offer of a permanent job as Dirac’s personal pilot.
Conversation had just turned to another subject when it broke off suddenly. Something—no, someone, it must be the colonel himself!—was rolling toward them down the corridor, coming from the direction of the bridge.
Had Kensing not been alerted to the colonel’s presence aboard, he might have assumed this was some kind of serving robot approaching. He beheld three connected metallic boxes, none of them more than knee-high, their size in aggregate no more than that of an adult human body. The boxes rolled along one after the other, their wheels appearing to be of polyphase matter, not spinning so much as undergoing continuous smooth deformity.
From the foremost box came a voice, a mechanically generated but very human sound, tone jaunty, just this side of arrogant. “Hi, Brabant. Thought I’d see the chief when he’s not busy. Who’s this?”
Kensing, wondering what might happen if he were to put out a hand in formal greeting, gazed into a set of lenses and introduced himself. “Colonel Marcus? Glad to meet you. I’m Sandro Kensing, a friend of Mike’s—the Premier’s son.”
Berserker Wars (Omnibus) Page 64