“I consider them very trustworthy.”
Zarnesti, as if out of habit, looked around as if to make sure they were alone, and lowered his voice. “One more point is to be considered.”
“Yes?”
“If the enemy aggressor shows any reluctance to surrender, it might be well to detain him here until he can be convinced. Even if he is willing to sign a formal document, these Twin Worlds schemers are full of trickery, not to be trusted.”
Homasubi’s stare was icy. “I have given my word that the admiral will have safe passage back and forth.”
“But of course you did. How would it have sounded otherwise?”
Homasubi: “I would like to hear your advice on another matter, my honored counselor. Am I to be suspicious of Twin Worlds?”
“Of course!”
“And at the same time trust this murderous stranger unreservedly?”
The suggestion of trusting anyone or anything killed the PO’s enthusiasm for the prospective alliance. “Unreservedly, no, of course not.” He paused. “Let us first dispose of the adversary with whose treachery and malice we are well acquainted.”
With a slight gesture Homasubi again called up on stage the latest image of the Twin Worlds fleet. He looked at it and shook his head. “It would seem that disposal has already been accomplished.”
The berserker had sent some destroyer-sized units against the forming swarm of scoutships, testing to see how formidable these smallest human warcraft would be.
Not very, as it turned out. Several small hulls were soon converted to glowing globes of gas. But the scouts were fast and agile, and many of them managed to skip handily away when one of these berserkers tried to chase them.
None of the scoutships’ weapons seemed to inflict any damage on their bigger opponents.
The enemy did not waste much time in unsuccessful pursuit.
Homasubi’s fleet also included a component of small ships, the equivalent of the Twin Worlds scouts, but in nothing like the same numbers.
While First Spacer Homasubi waited for the Twin Worlds launch to bring his counterpart aboard for a conference, he crisply decreed the launch of several robotic probes from various vessels of his fleet. His intention was to get a closer look at the berserker, approaching it more and more aggressively until he provoked some kind of reaction, viewing the thing from all sides if possible. He fully expected to take some hardware losses in the process.
While still talking only to his own people, the first spacer had said: “If we cannot do anything else, we can at least learn more about this, our potential ally.” His tone made the last words mockery. “For whoever fights it next time.”
The dialogue between admiral and first spacer had hardly got well under way when it was interrupted.
Homasubi had to delay his conference a bit, to deal with what seemed urgent business.
Most of the Huvean probes he had dispatched to look at the berserker, like the great majority of the encroaching cloud of Twin Worlds scoutships, were destroyed before they could more than begin to do their job. Their crews died in the burning of concentrated beam weapons, or were exterminated at long range by small outlying units sent by the berserker.
But at least one of the probes managed to accomplish its mission before a small, speeding unit from the enemy clamped on to it with forcefield grippers and started to drag it off as a prize.
Officers and crew on several ships were watching the skirmish from a distance. With a delay of several seconds enforced by the stretch of space-time in between, they could do little directly to influence the outcome of the struggle.
When it seemed the small berserker unit was certain to prevail, destructor charges in the Huvean probe blasted both machines to bits. But before that happened, the probe had transmitted useful data.
“A strong suggestion that it no longer considers us its close allies, let’s see what we’ve got.”
Gregor, and any other diplomats who had not yet retreated out of range, were later brought up to date on the situation, and joined in discussions with Homasubi and the admiral.
While the admiral was visiting his Huvean counterpart, Gregor was fairly steadily engaged, for a considerable time, in keeping the political officer busy.
They had a virtual conference room of their own established, and were engaged in trading non sequiturs and other forms of formal noise.
Gregor was long schooled in maintaining a diplomatic calm, but he could see that his reserves of determination were likely to be tested in talking with this fellow.
“It is time, Acting President Gregor, that we got down to business.”
“Oh, I quite agree. If we”
“I shall outline terms, that in the circumstances are quite generous. You are not to interrupt.”
Gregor nodded meekly. “That would be rude indeed.”
Obviously the Huvean meant to impose harsh surrender terms.
Zarnesti was of course suspicious of the reports that had reached him regarding President Belgola’s death. He thought there might have been a coup. “It would be unfortunate if you were to sign a surrender document, and later a claim was made that you had no authority to do so.”
“That is a very remote possibility, I assure you.” Gregor paused. “I think, respected delegate, it would be hard just now to find anyone eager to take over the reins of Twin Worlds government. If we advertised the position as open, we would not draw many applications.”
Gregor felt a little odd discussing the terms of a surrender he was certain he was never going to make. At the risk of being accused of interruption, he might insist on having the Huvean fleet pledged to protect Twin Worlds people against attack by other parties.
The PO brushed that aside as preposterous, and insisted on strong guarantees that all the hostages were to be returned safely. “If they are not, there must be a substantial increase in reparations.”
Gregor could demonstrate his concern for the hostages by showing that he carried with him a complete list of their names. But beyond that, the surviving Twin Worlds authorities could do nothing.
The images transmitted back to the Huvean flagship provided the closest look at the berserker yet obtained by anyone who was not its prisoner.
They strongly suggested that the heavy weapons of Prairie’s ground defenses, and the Twin Worlds’ battleships, had not failed as utterly as their users had at first thought.
Admiral Radigast, when invited to look at the recent images, said: “That’s about the first good news I’ve had in several bloody days.”
Reading the latest version of its perpetually ongoing internal inventory, the central processor found mounting reason for dissatisfaction. Overcoming the defenses of a planet had been costly in terms of energy, as well as in additional damage. Vast stores of the berserker’s fuel had been expended in the fighting, and still more had burned in its fusion lamps to power the depopulation of a planet.
…and the moving atomic pile was still working its way closer, centimeter by centimeter, to the central processor … and no maintenance machines were left, capable of entering those inner passages to interfere with it.
As a result, material reserves were low. Near the center of one of its massive flanks, the giant opened a hatchway half a kilometer long. Moments later a destroyer-sized machine, almost as long as the hatch itself, emerged, followed by a couple of robot tankers, each a kilometer in length.
This foraging party, ignoring the passive array of badlife ships that hovered uncertainly somewhat out of efficient shooting range, sped out toward one of the system’s outermost planets, hours away at achievable sublight speeds. It was intending to plunder hydrogen from one or more of that dead world’s lifeless moons.
The more the first spacer and his Huvean experts saw of the oddities of the great murderous machine, the more they were impressed and puzzled, as the people of the Twin Worlds had been before them.
Now it was possible to see more clearly how the berserker had been heavily ma
rked and scarred by ancient battles, even before it entered the Twin Worlds system. In places, one crater partially overlay another, as on the surface of some airless natural satellite, suggesting a prolonged bombardment.
Homasubi and Radigast jointly inspected the recorded images.
“Well, one thing for bloody sure, it’s been in a war before.”
But of greater interest were the fresher scars that showed in the latest images. Some places were still glowing. There were pits more than a kilometer deep, wounds penetrating to unknown depths in armor and machinery. Spectroscopic studies showed the holes still outgassing both common and exotic vapors.
Here was evidence enough to awaken a faint hope. Though the human side had been badly outclassed in weaponry, they had at least managed to hurt their attacker, wounded it sufficiently to make it pause for refitting. They had also forced it to lower its reserves of power to the point where it found it advisable to stop for a refueling with interplanetary hydrogen.
One of the Twin Worlds veterans rasped out: “That’s something. Something, by all the gods. We slowed it down, at least.”
The techs and scientists aboard Homasubi’s flagship were eager to discover all the details that they could having to do with this tough potential enemy’s construction and capabilities.
They were eagerly pointing out to each other that the nozzles of the berserker’s beam projectors were of an unexpected shape. And there were other surprises.
“Here, see?” A laser pointer probed the magnified image, after the onboard computer had disentangled some of the blurring created by the monster’s forcefield shields.
“I see. What kind of material is that, in the secondary layer of armor?”
“I’m trying to run a spectrogram on it, confusing, but we’ll keep working on it.” A pause for emphasis. “It looks to me, First Spacer, that we could be getting some indication here of the reason it suddenly started stalling, talking about alliances. Possibly it’s hurt more than shows on the surface.”
“You mean it might want more than just a time-out to refuel, get ready for the next round.”
“Possibly.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Reaching its target satellite in less than an hour, the escort destroyer-machine probed routinely into dead rock. Its first business was to look for signs of the presence of dangerous life units, and secondly, traces of any form of life at all. Any live organism that was found would be expunged, of course, while the necessary equipment was here on site.
There were no life forms, even of the most elementary kind, to be found here, not that the berserker had really expected any on such a small, cold world. But there were abundant signs that dangerously combative badlife had made repeated visits to this place. None were present now.
The smaller machine reported these discoveries dutifully, by tightly focused communication beam, to its hulking parent. Meanwhile the tankers had attached themselves to the small moon, and immediately began the process of extracting quantities of the lightest element from the moon’s thick layer of water ice. The hydrogen was compressed into a readily transportable form by heavy freezing, and packed securely into the vast storage spaces. In a different process, carried out at the same time, the machines filled several large tanks with pure oxygen. The berserker considered that the examination of some of its latest crop of prisoners might turn into a long-term project.
Along with the many other things that Gregor had to consider, apart from his diplomatic project of keeping the PO occupied, were the mind and personality of Homasubi. The first spacer had turned out to be precise and pedantic, as advertised in all the intelligence reports. But the man was also curious, and intolerant of inactivity. He seemed to work on the rule that there was always something to be done to improve one’s position.
Informed of the latest activity on the berserker’s part, the first spacer sent two of his fresh and unscarred Huvean ships, two of the best at agile maneuvering in normal space, to shadow the foraging machine more closely, and, as always, gather more information.
Turning to the figure half reclining in the adjacent acceleration couch, he observed: “If I do not have time to make small talk with you, Admiral, I am sure you will understand.”
“I can do without the motherless small talk.” Radigast’s voice was as monotonous as his grim looks.
Homasubi said: “You understand that my government, my people, had nothing to do with the attack upon your system.”
“I never thought you did, though some of my people think so.”
“You have heard of its proposal of alliance.”
“Sure. That’s more than we ever got. It just sailed in here and started shooting.” The admiral paused. “After what’s happened the last couple of days, all I really understand is that we, I mean you too, I mean all motherless humanity, have got to find some way to kill that bloody thing.”
Homasubi considered. “If I may, without offense, pose a hypothetical question?”
Radigast shrugged. “After the hits we’ve taken already, a question isn’t going to do much damage. Shoot.”
“If your attacker should now demand your surrender, what would be your response?”
A question had had an impact after all. “What the hell business is that of yours? My fleet’s not running away, not from the berserker and not from you.”
“My interest in the matter is this: that I have been instructed to require your surrender.”
Radigast gave a small snort that might have been the start of a laugh. “I suspected you were going to bring that up, though I was hoping you’d be too smart to bother. Go ahead, you can require any motherless thing you like. My point is, we’re already dead, we don’t have to pay any attention to your motherless requirements.”
He pushed himself halfway up out of his chair. “I’ll say it again, we have to kill that bloody thing. And I don’t see how any motherless human being can fail to see the motherless fact. How we get to that point, the point where we kill it, I don’t know and I don’t care. I hope you can give it a better shot than we did. I hope you’ll try. Do you think your fleet is up to finishing the job?”
Homasubi was listening, thinking. So far, offering no real answer.
The admiral leaned forward, and seemed on the verge of threatening. The first spacer remained impassive.
Radigast said: “So you want me to surrender? Is that really all that’s worrying you? All right, let me set the terms, which are non-negotiable.” He stabbed at the stage with a pointing finger. “When that thing is dead, you and I have killed it, and my fleet’s down to a single scout, at which time I expect you’ll be down to maybe two destroyers and a lifeboat, then I’ll surrender to you, just like your little politician wants. That is, I will if you and I are both still alive.
“Meanwhile, maybe you’ll find this interesting, I’m ordering my scouts to cooperate with whatever aggressive action your fleet may undertake against our enemy. I’ve got a few hundred good scouts left, as you have probably observed. By themselves, they probably can’t do much against this enemy. Working with your fleet, maybe enough to tip the balance.”
“I find the suggestion interesting indeed.” Homasubi nodded. “But it is beside the point of our present discussion.”
“And that point is?”
“I am of course fully authorized to accept the surrender of any agent of the Twin Worlds government. Beyond that, absent new orders from my own government, I cannot formally commit my fleet to any new course of action.”
Radigast stared in silence for a full quarter of a standard minute. Then he said: “Of course, if some strange, motherless enemy should repeatedly attack your fleet, while your fleet is just peacefully going about its bloody business…?”
“I am sure that those occupying the seats of power in my capital will not deny my fleet the right to defend itself.” Perhaps the first spacer’s carven features displayed the faintest suggestion of a smile.
Side by side in silence the two men wat
ched the swift Huvean ships approach the distant moon, their images Doppler-shifting for a moment into the red with the speed of their flight, before the holostage computer compensated.
Radigast had sent a high speed courier with orders for his gathering force of scoutships. There were now several hundred of them in one place.
As soon as the first spacer called on his own staff officers for advice, one at least of his advisers began to urge an immediate all-out attack on the main berserker.
Gregor noted silently that everyone was beginning to call it by that name, the Huveans having picked it up from the Twins, who of course had heard it from the Carmpan.
“That would certainly be an act of war,” Homasubi observed.
“Yes sir.”
“And how do you propose I justify this to my superiors at home?”
“Sir, I say they cannot call your act unjustified, in that this enemy has already declared war, not on the Twin Worlds, but on humanity.”
“Is there a document, a record, of any such formal declaration?”
Radigast called up the image of the murdered planet Prairie. “This is the message being sent.”
Now and then Gregor gave a moment or two of worried attention to his grandchild, wherever she might be, down on the perilous surface of Timber.
Whatever her fate was going to be, she would probably share it with many millions of others.
And bigger questions kept crowding in. The berserker had said that it considered itself Homasubi’s ally.
True, it had blasted the Twin Worlds fleet, and devastated a planet, in a way that showed it put only a negative value on human life. But the action the Huvean fleet had been ready to take, coming here, had not been so utterly different.
Contemplating a magnified view of the ruin that had been the world called Prairie, in wavelengths that let him see some of the devastation beneath the clouds, the first spacer dictated his own message to be sent on to the high authorities at home. He concluded: “Not that we would have done anything, like that. Nor could any other human fleet. Even supposing one could have wanted to.
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