The Premier, damn him, took his rest imperiously apart.
In that one, there, lay Annie. The readouts on that unit all looked normal-and that was as close as he was going to be allowed to get to Annie now.
On the way to the flight deck, where they would board a shuttle for the short trip to the yacht, Kensing asked: “Who’s on the yacht?”
Brabant looked at him morosely. “That’s what we’re going to find out. If anyone’s really there. Nick got me up, with some half-assed story about intruders, and the first thing I did was come to get you. I’m having a little trouble communicating with Nick.”
“Oh?”
“He’s probably over there on the yacht now. But I want to see for myself what’s going on, and I want you to back me up.”
Meanwhile, Commodore Prinsep was temporarily abandoning the yacht’s control room, shifting his efforts to other areas of the ship. He was determined to wake up its drive and weapons systems, if at all possible.
It would be a hideous disappointment after discovering this ship, seemingly miraculously intact, to be denied its use as a means of escape.
As for the yacht’s weapons, the indications were that firepower still remained; but Prinsep was not about to risk arousing the berserker with a live test.
Superintendent Gazin of the Humanity Office had slipped without protest into the role of ordinary spaceman, at least for the time being. He and the two active survivors of Prinsep’s crew, Lieutenant Tongres and Ensign Dinant were taking turns watching the berserker, making as sure as possible that the enigmatic mass at the head of the small procession was still completely quiet.
Seen from this close-berserker and yacht were less than a kilometer apart-that mass was big enough to stop a Solarian’s thought processes altogether, if he allowed himself to think of it as a berserker. Its hull, rugose with damage, bulged out on all sides past the considerable bulk of the captive bioresearch station.
The lifeboat carrying the badly wounded people from the Symmetry had now docked successfully with the yacht, and Prinsep led his troops in their effort to stretcher the five worst cases in through airlock and corridors and lodge them in the yacht’s five medirobots. He was pleased to find that Havot had the quintet of devices all checked out, warmed up, and ready.
Havot acknowledged the commodore’s commendation with a dreamy smile. “What next, sir?”
“Next, you and I go to check out the research station. Dinant, you and the superintendent hang around here and keep an eye on our people. Tongres, go to the control room and take a look at the drive on this bird. Possibly I missed something.”
No one questioned the implicit decision to abandon the flagship. The risks of returning to that vessel were steadily mounting, as the Symmetry telemetered indications that a killing explosion threatened at any moment.
Despite their growing weariness, Havot and the commodore soon reembarked in their lifeboat and headed for the research station. As they approached within a few meters of the station’s outer hull, their instruments allowed them to observe closely the binding web of forcefields connecting the station with the giant berserker. But the towing field was discontinuous, leaving large areas of the station’s hull readily accessible. The two explorers had no trouble in locating a suitable airlock and docking their lifeboat.
Brabant and Sandy Kensing, approaching the yacht, observed the flagship-obviously Solarian military, and looking very seriously damaged-just beyond it. And there was some movement of lifeboats between the two large ships.
“Not a false alarm, then. We’ve really got visitors.” Kensing paused, knowing a feeling of mingled awe and hope.
He looked at the bodyguard. “You didn’t wake the Premier yet?”
“No.” Brabant hesitated marginally. “I don’t know if Nick has or not. Or if Loki would let him. Anyway, I got my orders not to wake him unless it’s something I can’t deal with-but in this case I better.”
Kensing said nothing. It would be fine with him if Dirac was allowed to sleep on through all eternity.
Brabant, opening a tight communication beam to the station, roused Loki, and debated briefly with his optelectronic counterpart. Brabant’s temper had been aroused before he felt satisfied that the guardian program was really going to initiate the hour-long process of waking Premier Dirac from his self-scheduled slumber.
“Now,” said Brabant to Kensing, “you and I are going to see what’s really going on. So we can let the boss know as soon as possible.” He eased forward on the little shuttle’s drive.
As far as they could tell, none of the small handful of people plying between the mysterious, damaged warship and the yacht had yet sighted Brabant and Kensing’s small craft. “Must be intent on their work, whatever it is they’re doing.”
Soon Kensing and Brabant had docked against the Eidolon, on the far side from the hatches where the boats from the strange ship had attached themselves.
Once inside the yacht, Brabant paused near the airlock to open one of the ship’s lockers and take out a holstered side arm that he attached to his belt. “You’d better wait here, Kensing. I want to take a look at these people, see what they’re up to.” The bodyguard hesitated marginally, then gestured at the arms locker.
“Maybe you’d better put on a gun too, just in case.”
So, Sandy thought, you’re going to trust me with a weapon?
But of course the answer was yes. Brabant, and Scurlock, and Dirac himself, would know that Kensing could be trusted-as long as Annie lay in suspended animation, effectively the Premier’s hostage.
Kensing helped himself to one of the handguns in the locker, and then with a silent wave saw Brabant off on his reconnoitering mission.
A few seconds later, Kensing followed. Entranced by the prospect of seeing new Solarian faces for the first time in three hundred years, he was not going to wait.
He hadn’t gone far before he tensed and stopped. Someone in space armor-not Brabant, he hadn’t been wearing armor-was walking down a side passage toward him.
Then Kensing relaxed, recognizing the insignia, twin antique towers of masonry painted on the armored torso. It was only Nicholas Hawksmoor, in suit-form.
Even after all these years, looking in through the blank faceplate, seeing only the empty helmet, gave Kensing an unsettled feeling. He said: “Nick, I hear there are strange people on this ship.”
“Yes,” said the airspeakers of Nick’s suit. His voice, as always, sounded very human. The suit came to a stop near Kensing. Its speakers said nothing more.
“You’ve changed, Nick,” Kensing remarked impulsively.
“Yes, I have, haven’t I? But people always change, don’t they?”
“Yes, of course.”
“But you meant something more. How have I changed, specifically?”
“Oh. I suppose all I meant was-well, thinking back to before you were reprogrammed-then you were-different.”
“That seems a tautology, Sandy.”
“Yes.” Kensing considered that it probably wouldn’t be wise to encourage Nick to ponder his own history. At least it could be dangerous.
But now the subject had been raised, Nick was not disposed to let it drop. “How have I changed? I’m really interested.”
“Oh… I think you were more independent several years ago.”
“Was that why I was reprogrammed? I was too independent?
You know, I’m certain large chunks of my memory were taken out.”
“You’ll have to ask our master about that. No one’s ever told me the details. But obviously you were reprogrammed about four years ago-in my subjective time, that is. Just about the time the Premier announced that Lady Genevieve had been found and was rejoining us.”
“I wonder if there was a connection?” Hawksmoor sounded innocently puzzled.
Kensing said nothing.
“I’ll ask the Premier sometime,” Nick decided. “He’s not awake right now.”
“He soon will be. I think Brabant h
as argued Loki into getting the old man out of his box.”
Nick seemed to have mixed feelings about that, because his suit turned this way, turned that way, shook its empty helmet.
“He doesn’t want to be awakened, ever, unless something we can’t handle should come up.”
“That’s what Brabant said… so, who are these people coming aboard the yacht? Their own ship looks all shot up.”
“I noticed that, of course. But I don’t know who they are. All the organic humans I know are in their assigned places-except one.”
“Oh? Who’s that?”
Hawksmoor sounded uncharacteristically uncertain. “I had thought his name was Fowler Aristov, but now I’m not sure of his identity. I’m not sure of what to do.”
“Where is he now?”
Nick’s suit raised an arm and pointed down the corridor.
Kensing started that way, turned back. “Coming?”
“Not now. You go and look. See what you think. I’ll join you later.”
Moments after that, Kensing was near the place where the medirobots were installed, when he heard someone call his name.
“Sandy?” The word was spoken in a soft, incredulous whisper.
The voice, coming from somewhere behind Kensing’s left shoulder, startled him so that he spun round.
A white-faced figure, wearing common shipboard-issue shirt and trousers and sandals like Kensing’s own, was advancing toward him out of a softly lit side passage. The form was that of a young man, backlit by ambient illumination so that Kensing could not at first get a good look at the face. But the more he did see of the young man’s face as he approached, the crazier it seemed.
Because this looked like-like-
But it couldn’t be-
“Sandy?” And now the voice, a sound from the dim past, was thoroughly recognizable. “Sandy, is Dad here? What’s going on?-I know this is his yacht. I woke up here an hour ago, lying in a medirobot-”
Kensing took a step closer to the tottering figure. Softly, incredulously, he whispered: ” Mike? Michael Sardou?”
Going aboard the bioresearch station with Commodore Prinsep, prowling and exploring, Havot happened to be the one to make the first historic contact with one of the long-term residents.
Advancing cautiously through one of the biostation’s corridors, a passage astonishingly almost choked by a mass of semi-cultivated greenery, he encountered a woman who was proceeding cautiously toward him. The look on her face suggested that she was expecting to encounter something out of the ordinary.
Her small body was glad in casual shipboard garb. She was youthful in appearance, with coppery-brown curls framing pretty, vaguely Indonesian features.
On catching sight of Havot, an armored figure pushing his way through vines and stalks, the young woman stopped, staring at him in pure, open wonder. “Who are you?” she demanded. “And bearing weapons? Why? What-?”
“Only a poor shipwrecked mariner, ma’am.” He gave a little helmet nod by way of bow. “And who are you?” Although Havot, who in his spare time on the voyage had studied the history of Dirac and his times, felt fairly certain that he had already identified this woman from her pictures.
She confirmed his recognition in a kind of automatic whisper, as if she were still shocked by his very presence. “I am the Lady Genevieve, wife of the Supreme Premier, Dirac Sardou.”
It was only a few seconds later when Commodore Prinsep, advancing cautiously in stable artificial gravity, through air as good-if somewhat oddly scented due to the prolific greenery-as that he’d ever breathed on any other ship, rounded a corner and, to his considerable surprise, encountered Havot speaking with Lady Genevieve.
Shortly thereafter the threesome were joined by Dirac, a living, reasonably healthy, and unmistakably recognizable Premier.
Clad in a self-designed uniform of sparkling elegance, but blinking and rubbing his eyes as if he’d just been wakened, the Premier spoke imperiously to the newcomers, in his eloquent actor’s bass. “You won’t need your weapons, gentlemen, I assure you.”
Prinsep allowed the muzzle of his carbine, which was already low, to droop still farther; but Havot still held his in a position from which it could be leveled in a fraction of a second.
And Havot, now finding himself confronted by creatures of flesh and blood rather than metal, moved one hand casually on his weapon’s stock, unobtrusively detuning the output control to razor-beam setting, for greater effectiveness against a softer target.
The imperious man, having verbally dismissed the weapons, now ignored them. As if the newcomers’ silence offensive, he snapped at them: “Probably you can recognize me as Dirac Sardou? Or am I overestimating my historical durability after this length of time? In any case, you have the advantage of me.”
The commodore, in a voice dominated by fatigue, introduced himself. “And this is Mr. Havot.”
Conversation proceeded slowly. Dirac explained that he had been asleep when the newcomers unexpectedly arrived. “Rather a deep sleep, gentlemen. One needs perhaps an hour for full recovery, before one can function as one would like. But come, I am forgetting my hospitality. It’s been rather a long time since we’ve had visitors.”
Other denizens of the station now began to appear. As Prinsep and Havot later realized, these were only people Dirac now wanted awake, including Varvara Engadin and a man called Scurlock. Scurlock mentioned his companion Carol, who evidently slept on, as did Drs. Hoveler and Zador. Men named Brabant and Kensing were absent somewhere at the moment.
None of the long-term inhabitants who appeared looked anywhere near three hundred years old, and Prinsep commented on the fact.
The Premier explained tersely. “We have a great many SA units available, and we’ve been taking advantage of them, relying a great deal on our nonorganic people to stand watch.”
Prinsep was not interested in nonorganics at the moment. He said: “I hope you have at least three ready to be used.”
“Sir?”
“The SA units you mentioned. I have wounded who need them badly. We went aboard the yacht first-found five medirobots there and filled them up. But three more of my crew still need help as soon as we can get it for them.”
Dirac’s countenance had suddenly assumed a strange expression. “One of those units on the yacht was occupied,” he pronounced in a changed voice.
Frowning at the solemnity of this objection, seeing that it must be taken seriously, Prinsep turned to his companion. “Havot?”
The young man nodded casually. “True, one of the machines had a tenant. A would-be colonist, as his label described him. I turned him out to make room for our wounded.”
Dirac stared at Havot for several seconds, as if he were deeply interested; perhaps almost as much in Havot as in what these intruders might have done on the yacht. Then he asked: “Where is he now? The one you turned out?”
Havot shrugged.
For a moment, Havot thought, something quietly murderous looked out at him from the cave of Dirac’s eyes-as if perhaps it had been three centuries since anyone had treated any of the Premier’s demanding questions quite so casually. Well, well.
Prinsep hastily stepped in, offering to communicate with the people he had left on the yacht. He would ask them to look out for “-what’s his name?”
The Premier looked at him thoughtfully. “Fowler Aristov.
Thank you for your concern, but I believe some of my own people are on that vessel now. You may summon yours to join us here.” It sounded like a command. “Now, if you will excuse me, I think I had better go over to the Eidolon myself.”
“Certainly, Premier Dirac. But before you go, let me repeat that three more of my people coming from the yacht will need intensive care.”
Dirac, already stalking away, snapped over his shoulder orders for his associates to take care of whatever number of blasted wounded might arrive, and to see that Dr. Zador was awakened.
Then he was gone.
The tall, dishev
eled man named Scurlock, under the beaming supervision of the Lady Genevieve, hastened to assure the new arrivals that the station offered more than enough medirobots to care for all of Prinsep’s wounded.
The commodore rejoiced to hear it. But he suggested rather firmly that the injured he had already installed in units on the yacht be allowed to remain there. “Moving them again would certainly be traumatic. Unless there is some compelling reason-?”
Lady Genevieve was soothing. “I expect Premier Dirac will have no objection.”
Scurlock also assured the newcomers that live medical help in the person of Dr. Zador would be available in about an hour. The process of her awakening, he said, had already been begun.
The necessity of dealing with recently wounded people naturally led to the discussion of berserkers, and this to description of the brisk fight the newcomers had just been through.
With sudden apprehension, Scurlock asked: “I take it, Commodore, you have not engaged in any hostilities with the machine? I mean the one we’re attached to?”
Prinsep blinked. “No. You sound concerned. So this giant berserker may still be active?”
“I should think we have very little to worry about in that regard. But with berserkers one can never be sure, can one?”
“I suppose not. No, a few hours ago we found ourselves pitted against a different enemy. A more modern force.” And Prinsep briefly outlined recent events, beginning with the latest raid on Imatra.
Dinant and Tongres, and the three severely wounded crew people still in their care, soon joined the group on the station.
They had lost track of Superintendent Gazin, they said, somewhere on the yacht, and hadn’t wanted to delay their passage to search for him.
Havot, though now weighed down by a leaden weariness, retained the curiosity to ask: “Lady Genevieve, we’ll all be interested in hearing how you personally managed to survive.”
Berserker Kill Page 36