Berserker Fury

by Fred Saberhagen

  "Staying with the battleships: We have none in our two task forces, as I have said. The approaching enemy has eleven."

  "Just a moment. Admiral?" This was one of the cabinet members, a shadowy figure behind a mustache, whose title Bowman had forgotten. "It was my understanding that we did have battleships available in the Gulf area."

  "Available, sir, but not deployed near Uhao or Fifty Fifty. It's our belief that they would only get in the way, in the kind of battle that this is going to be. And we couldn't come close to matching the enemy numbers if we did deploy them."

  Cabinet members and premier exchanged a round of glances among themselves; then the gray-haired lady nodded. "Continue, please."

  "Yes, ma'am. Cruiser strength, eight for us, for the enemy twenty-three, assuming our intelligence is correct. So far, it seems frighteningly accurate. What may be the most important matchup is this: We have three heavy carriers—assuming the Lankvil can be made spaceworthy in time. And the berserkers have eight."

  Admiral Bowman's briefing of the premier of Earth and her chief advisers was now drawing to the conclusion of its allotted time. He had intended from the beginning to tell these powerful folk about the new intelligence discoveries, but they kept sidetracking him onto matters even more basic—somehow, though, he was going to have to insist on making the point.

  There were about thirty men and women in attendance, only a small handful of them actually in the room. They wanted from him, as they put it, confirmation of some basic facts about the military situation out in the Gulf.

  Bowman did get started on the subject on intelligence revelations, and the Hypo triumph.

  "Do I understand, admiral, that your intelligence information is so detailed that it extends down to the level of individual machines?"

  "That is correct, ma'am."

  "Could you go into a little more detail on that?"

  "Certainly. Each of the large berserker carriers/mother-ships has its own code number in the enemy's dispatches. For our own convenience in planning and discussion, we have assigned each one a code name. Since there are four large carriers in their task force that is now heading for Fifty Fifty, someone on my staff, with a bent for legend and history, thought of naming them after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. That is, Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death."

  The premier's expression indicated that she had heard of the Apocalypse. "I'd be interested to know—can you tell me anything about these units in detail?"

  Bowman did his best.

  A couple of hours later, Bowman, who had been invited to have a brief private discussion with the premier after the formal briefing, and who had now been left for a time to his own devices, stood staring at the night sky.

  He couldn't really see the Gulf from here, except in his mind's eye. Over there on its other side, several human bases and settlements had been overrun during the last few standard months, with a mind-boggling loss of life. Hundreds of millions—no, certainly tens of billions—had died, efficiently slaughtered once their defenses had been stripped away. When those planets had been stripped of life, their soil and atmospheres, what remained of them, had been efficiently poisoned. It would be difficult indeed for life to ever reestablish itself on them.

  All numbers are abstract; those measuring the latest death toll were so huge that they defied emotional response. Whole planets had been sterilized. Some of those settlements, in particular, had been large, and the defenses of at least one, Eropagnis, had been exceptionally strong.

  The regular, substantial Solarian traffic that usually flowed across the Gulf in every direction, in a hundred threads of commerce, had of course shuddered and stuttered to a standstill with the outbreak of active war.

  In all the long centuries of the Berserker Wars, neither Earth itself, nor any of the planets of the nearest systems, had ever been seriously threatened by attack. Not until now.

  When Bowman was joined by the premier, he mentioned this, and she promptly shook her head. "That's not quite true. We've seen a few instances of attempted infiltration, right here on Homeworld One."

  "I wasn't aware of that, ma'am. You're saying infiltration on Earth itself? Not goodlife activity?"

  "Oh, yes. Infiltration, by small machines. Goodlife is something else altogether. You should read your history, admiral."

  "Yes, ma'am. Were any of these attempts successful?"

  "I'm sure the details were released, long ago. No such attempt has been successful that we know of. Officially our defensive record in that regard is perfect. But then, if an infiltrator had got in, we might never have realized the fact. Hmm?"

  Conversation turned to the subject of local defenses. Those of Earth and the other homeworlds were formidable, of course, and when seen at close range they impressed layman and expert alike as awesome. But they had never been tested by a real attack. Any defensive battle fought right in among the planets of Sol System, even if the berserkers were ultimately beaten back, would be certain to involve horrendous human casualties.

  Almost certainly many billions of human lives would be lost, and the conditions under which the survivors lived would be forever changed.

  And if that last desperate defensive battle should be lost… but that was a result that would simply not bear thinking about.

  "Of one thing we can be certain, ma'am. Premier. If we lost the coming fight for Fifty Fifty, and the enemy can build up their own base there—that's the next battle we're going to have to fight."

  TEN

  Jory Yokosuka, her one piece of luggage slung over her shoulder, gazed about eagerly, getting her first close look at Fifty Fifty, looking out through a port while she was riding a shuttle down from the cruiser that had carried her from Port Diamond along with Field Marshal Yamanim.

  Seen at close range, the place looked every bit as eerie as it had from space.

  And then the shuttle had touched down, and she was out of doors, blinking in Fifty Fifty's peculiar light, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The guidebook said that until you got used to it, the natural illumination here had a way of seeming either too bright or too dim.

  The immediate strong impression was one of swarming human activity. There, arranged in revetments, ready presumably for a fast liftoff, were dozens, no, scores of the livecrewed fighting machines that would form an important part of the defense when the attack came. She was going to have to learn a great many technicalities, in a hurry, if she was to do more than a merely acceptable job here.

  Lieutenant Duane, who had served as Jory's guide aboard ship, persisted gallantly in trying to extend the relationship somehow, but she brushed him off. While handsome, he was not her type and she was here on business.

  Jory continued to be excited and pleased by the prospect of working with the famous Jay Nash. But all of the people she met in the first minute after her arrival were intent on their own jobs, and none would or could tell her exactly where the great man was.

  She descended the landing ramp, was passed quickly and efficiently through a military checkpoint, and then paused amid a scene of furious activity, looking around her uncertainly. The rolling land between the landing field where she was standing and the near horizon, was all brightly lit—a natural glow, but looking very much like that produced by the most elegant electrical indirects. Barren hills and valleys, mostly a yellowish sandy color, striped with darker gray and brown. Here and there Jory spotted a green tinge, a scattered puff and swirl of what looked like vegetation—but she'd understood that there were no native life forms. Something to find out about. In one low-lying spot she thought she saw reflecting water, but she supposed that could be some kind of a mirage.

  Here on the atoll, as on Earth and Uhao, and everywhere else in the newly threatened Home Sector, it was evident even to a newcomer that many things had changed in a short time. And here, where the berserkers were expected as if they had sent an announcement of their plans ahead of them, the alteration was far more drastic.

/>   Jory knew that for perhaps two weeks before Field Marshal Yamanim and his small entourage had arrived on this low-profile and hurried visit, a massive effort had been under way with the goal of fortifying the atoll. Deep underground it was really two objects, two islandlike projections into normal space, though the bifurcation was buried, down out of human sight. From the angle of one approaching the atoll in normal space, or actually standing on it, it looked like only one, and could be so treated. The habitable portion was about a kilometer in diameter. Some called it an atoll, and some a reef.

  As she understood the recent military history, a few months ago, before the raid on Port Diamond, the garrison here had been quite small, composed of about a hundred volunteer Solarian military people. But those days were gone. Weeks ago the garrison had plunged into an intensive effort at fortification, and officers and enlistees alike were putting in plenty of overtime.

  Another sizable ship had landed soon after Jory's shuttle, settling through atmosphere with only a whisper of sound, and people in uniform, not waiting for robots but carrying their own military baggage, were soon streaming down its ramp. Selected reinforcements were still coming in, and the garrison now totaled about three thousand people. The human force was helping and directing an approximately equal number of robots—none of which, as far as the visitor could see, had anything even vaguely anthropomorphic about them.

  Adjoining the main landing field, and the assortment of buildings strung out along the field's edge, stretched a kind of parade ground or common, much flatter than most of the surrounding terrain. This space looked, thought Jory, as if at some time in the past it had been used for occasional reviews and ceremonies. Right now it looked anything but ceremonial, filling up with shelters and equipment. A number of small fighting ships, most of them behind individual screens or revetments, were parked or docked on it.

  The habitable portion of the atoll, reiterated Jory's pocket guide, comprises the surface of a slightly oblate spheroid, about a kilometer in diameter.

  Coming to the book's description of the apparent sky, Jory looked up at the real thing. A score or more of defensive satellites, smaller, more easily transportable versions of those that guarded Earth and other full-sized worlds, had recently been set in orbit here. Around the spherical speck of Fifty Fifty, the orbits were much tighter, faster; some were so low as to be only glistening blurs.

  Another such defensive machine was being launched even as Jory watched. Some kind of tender or transport hauling it up off the launching pad.

  Even before the cruiser had landed, everyone aboard had been told that full-body armor was now required to be kept in reach of everyone on the atoll. Colonel Shanga, it seemed, was going to be very strict about this. Jory had not been a full minute off the ship before she had to arrange this, which was required before she could do anything else.

  The armorer's shop beside the field was doing a booming business. A wide choice of sizes, and a fair variety of styles and equipment were available. She was not a total stranger to body armor, but her brief experience had not been enough to allow her to get comfortable with the system.

  In addition a new insignia had to be painted or pasted in several places on the armor, identifying her first as a civilian, then as a member of Nash's crew. A robot that was standing by took care of this chore efficiently.

  Equipped at last with a new suit of personal armor, which made a bulky bundle atop her meager store of other possessions, the whole trundled along after her by a patient baggage robot, Jory soon succeeded in locating Jay Nash's secretary, a stocky, red-haired woman named Millie Prow, with whom she had once had a phone conversation back on Port Diamond. Ms. Prow was still in civilian clothes, but seemed to have somehow retained her function as buffer between the great man and the rest of the world.

  The sign over the front door of the low structure proclaimed the specific military jargon, a series of letters and numbers, that the new arrival had been told to look for.

  "Himself will be back inside the hour," said Ms. Prow, leaning over a kind of counter, as soon as the two women had introduced themselves. "And he's expecting you."

  Himself? Jory wondered silently. It was a long time since she'd heard anyone, outside of some kind of ethnic melodrama, use the word as a name.

  Ms. Prow efficiently took care of the task of assigning Jory her quarters. All the new housing was being dug underground, so the settlement was considerably bigger than it had looked at first.

  When she found the dugout to which she had been assigned, she rejoiced that at least it was not so far beneath the surface as to make it hard to dash up now and then and take a look around. She had the feeling that she might want to do that at least once or twice during an attack; her recording and observing hardware was among the best stuff of its kind, but there was no substitute for personal immersion in an event.

  This housing unit, like most of the others on the atoll, was low-ceilinged, three or four paces square, with a small semiprivate latrine and shower adjoining. Two double-decker bunks and four capacious lockers. The walls, floor, and overhead were of the hardened stuff of the atoll, like sandstone transformed into the best concrete.

  She took possession of one of the available bunks and the locker next to it in the small dorm room, and resumed her search for her boss. Here in quarters it was allowed to take one's armor off, though it was recommended to wear it all except for the helmet at most times. When she went out again, she planned to bring along a robot to trundle after her with the bulky suit. The great majority of the people she had so far encountered on the surface were similarly equipped.

  Going out again, asking more or less at random for directions as to where the famous director could be found, she discovered by chance that some of the aides who were familiar with the man called him "Pappy"—but not to his face.

  And they said he was in the bar.

  "The bar?"

  Her informant nodded casually. Not wanting to sound like the utter newcomer she was, she didn't ask for details.

  No one told her where the bar was, but there weren't that many buildings big enough to qualify.

  It was a low, undistinguished building, devoid of any advertising or other indication of its function: sided with imported wood, and with a settled look of having been in place here for some years. The windows were opaque, at least from the outside, and there was no sign that the place was occupied at all, except for a row of armor-laden personal robots standing patiently outside. Jory, abandoning, her own burdened attendant there, was reminded of horses at a hitching rail.

  The front door offered no clue as to what might lie behind it, and the journalist briefly considered knocking. Rejecting this plan as a sign of weakness, she discovered that the panel yielded to a firm push. When closed, the portal must have been an effective sound barrier, for immediately noise came welling out.

  Standing just inside, she looked around incredulously. "This is a bar?" She hadn't really believed in its existence until now.

  "That's what it looks like, lady."

  And indeed it did. And smelled. And sounded.

  The man who had already spoken to Jory now told her that this was the only public bar the atoll had ever boasted. A sign, bearing the graphic of a pointing finger, informed her that the next saloon was a truly vast number of light-years in that direction. No doubt this establishment had a name, but maybe that was some kind of military secret. It vaguely surprised the journalist to find the place still open, serving men and women who evidently chose to spend their precious off-duty time this way; so far it had not been thought necessary to declare the place off-limits to the military. But it wasn't crowded; evidently few people had much time for relaxation.

  Approaching the long, dark-wood counter lined with stools and rails, Jory caught the attention of one of the two human attendants who were being kept busy behind it, long enough to ask a question. She was told that the place would be closed when it seemed that attack was imminent.

  Orderi
ng the mildest drink she could think of that had any kick to it at all, she peered around through the dim, cavelike, noisy atmosphere, hazed with the output of several recreational appliances. And there he was, on the far side of the room, readily identifiable by his artificial eye and other features. That had to be the man she had come looking for.

  Nash and a few associates or hangers-on, their numbers augmented by a cohort of stray civilians, were sitting drinking at a table. All she could hear of their talk at this distance was one man bemoaning the lack of other such establishments on Fifty Fifty.

  Abandoning the bar stool she had appropriated only a moment earlier, Jory moved closer.

  Her first close look at Nash's artificial eye reminded her of her robots' lenses. She wondered why a man would choose to wear a thing like that in his face, instead of one of the naturalistic models that were readily available. Drawing attention to oneself was of course the most obvious reason. Giving her new boss the benefit of the doubt, she supposed that possibly the design served some special medical or technical purpose.

  Meanwhile Nash was getting a fair amount, but by no means all, of the other patrons' attention. He was achieving this, whether intentionally or not, by pounding a fist on the table, meanwhile shouting abuse at someone who was evidently another of his workers. The man, sitting three or four chairs away at the same large table, looked pale and disconcerted. He couldn't seem to find much to say in his own defense.

  From the little Jory could overhear, he sounded like one who had determined to go home, retreat to Uhao—or even farther—on the next available ship. Jory stared at the man's face, which was familiar to her from a dozen popular entertainments. She recognized him immediately as one of Nash's stock company of actors.

  Jory, slowly making her way closer, half expected the two men to come to blows, but apparently no one else did, and in a moment they were grumbling at each other in low voices again.