The other big news of the day was that the enemy had just made one of their periodic code shifts; Hypo of course was attacking the new code with all its intellectual power, but months might pass before their transmissions became readable again.
A cautious move by the berserkers—but it seemed to have come a little too late to do them any good.
On that same day, Gavrilov and Flower left Jay Nash's rented house, taking Gift with them. Tanya remained behind—the job of house-sitting was officially as much hers as Gavrilov's, and presumably the client would notice no difference.
The spacer went as a willing refugee. Gavrilov said that if Gift wanted to desert the Space Force, he and some other friends were ready to help him. Three people in casual clothing, who might have been setting out on a picnic. Here on Uhao the weather was usually cooperative. No one was carrying more than a picnic basket in the way of baggage.
"Where are we going?" Gift asked.
"Where they won't find you."
"Where's that?"
Gavrilov slowly shook his head.
"Someplace here on Uhao?"
The other's head was still shaking. "You'll find out where it is when we get there. If what's really important to you is getting out of your current problem, then that should be satisfactory."
And Gift was willing to be satisfied with that.
Gavrilov led the way along a roofed walkway to the garage, where the three climbed into the oldest-looking, least conspicuous ground car.
Looking back at the big house as they rolled down the drive, Gift could see the robot butler, with its unchangeable smile, gazing after them as they departed.
Nobody interfered with the travelers; nobody seemed to be following, or paying them any attention. Gavrilov seemed edgy on the subject, and several times drove in a great loop, frequently looking behind him. The drive lasted several hours, and carried them several hundred kilometers, to a quiet, unfrequented lagoon, green-scummed and uninviting, surrounded by the local equivalent of palm trees.
Here Gavrilov took a small device from his pocket, and transmitted a coded summons, which a moment later brought up an ordinary-looking small spacecraft to float on the water.
Gift asked: "So, I take it we're not staying on Uhao?"
His guide didn't answer.
Gift knew that after liftoff the ship would certainly be noticed and tracked by traffic control. But the chances were against them paying much attention to a vessel outward bound.
The party waded and swam, getting thoroughly wet, through brackish water out to the barely floating hull. Fortunately the weather was warm, as usual on Uaho. One by one they slid aboard through the open passenger hatch, after Gavrilov had programmed his ground car in robot mode back to the house.
A few low-voiced commands, and power and lights came smoothly on aboard the spaceship. The hatch was closed again, and the vessel sank once more out of sight under water.
"We'll do our liftoff after dark."
Gift didn't think that would help, if anyone was seriously watching. But he offered no suggestions. It was a small ship, smaller than anything he was used to, but he didn't doubt that it had interstellar capability.
Gavrilov waved a generous hand at him. "Pick out a cabin. Take any one you want."
Gift had never been in a small private spaceship before. He wondered if they were only hopping to somewhere else on the same planet.
When Flower came to join him in the small cabin he had chosen, he asked her where they were going.
She didn't know. "It's up to Gavrilov."
"Oh." Gift paused. "Were you and he ever… ?"
She seemed indifferent to the question. "There's nothing like that between us. Not any more."
Snug and dry under water, it was time to eat. There was plenty of food on board, and a good recycler.
Shortly after sunset they got off into space, sticking to the planetary shadow and sliding up fast toward a display of very visible stars. It soon became apparent that casual comfort was the note for captain and passengers. Actually Gavrilov, once he'd punched in some destination that Gift couldn't see, was content to leave all the calculation to the machines.
Several days passed on the voyage. Gift was no longer at all concerned about pursuit, or being followed. Once a ship or machine started going in and out of flightspace, tracking it at all became a major endeavor.
Gift told himself he had no regrets about making his desertion official. Actually, he had some, but he was certain by now that there was nothing he could do about it.
Ever since he'd learned that Traskeluk had been miraculously rescued, it seemed that he really had no other choice. If he tried to go back to duty, the best thing that could happen would be that Traskeluk would blow the whistle on him, and he'd be court-martialed. Even if he was found officially innocent, whatever future he might otherwise have hoped for in the Space Force would be in ruins. Once his record looked in the least doubtful, there wouldn't be any easy, chairborne job with Hypo. More likely he'd be reassigned to the ninety-fourth mess kit repair squadron, stationed on some dim rock at the end of the known universe.
And that outcome was about the best he could dare to hope for. The worst…
He knew Traskeluk, knew him all too well, after they'd spent months together on a small ship.
And Gift had other things to worry about too—or thought he did. In this high state of alert, military people who failed to show up for duty were not simply marked AWOL (for which the consequences would be unpleasant enough) but were considered as having deserted in the face of the enemy, as the old phrase had it—and when deserters were caught, they were generally shot, after a short trial and with little ceremony. Such cases were extremely rare. Gift had never given the matter much thought until now, but he had a strong impression that such people were almost always caught.
SEVENTEEN
Out on the space atoll called Fifty Fifty, everyone not already wearing personal armor was scrambling to reach it and put it on. All the ships still on the ground were powering up, recharging drives and onboard weapon systems through cable connections at each service bay and launchpad. Jory's monitors, all of which she now had in position, observed a process of flashing lights and almost eerie silence. At all costs, every useful spacecraft must be spaceborne before the enemy arrived.
A group of spacegoing machines, assumed to be the berserker striking force, had at last been located by scout ships, still an hour away but closing fast. Land-based fighters and bombers were being urgently dispatched in an attempt to get in the first blow.
Combat veterans on the atoll expected that the berserker raiders would be coming on almost as fast as the scout that brought word of their presence—and in fact they were right on that scoutship's heels.
Jory was thinking that one of the livecrew people on one of the ships taking part in this strike would be Warrant Officer Tadao, the latest in her succession of guides, who had tutored her on the various kinds of fighting ships.
Tadao had never told his civilian client exactly which job on the combat crew was his, and now Jory was wishing that she'd asked—he might be a copilot, or maybe astrogator on one of the heavy bombers—a Stronghold farlauncher.
Next moment she pictured Tadao as a spare gunner, and had been assigned to a crew when one of the regular gunners had to drop out for some reason. Such a man would be more easily spared to brief civilians.
But in one capacity or another, the latest version of her friendly guide, the one whose name she had been having trouble remembering, was going into combat. Hell, they probably all were. She wished now that she had taken the opportunity to wish them all well before liftoff.
Come to think of it, it looked like she was going into combat too, and practically at their side.
Listening and watching with the aid of her equipment, exchanging bits of information with other media workers, she picked up a few more facts about the sighting: It had been made by one of the long-range scouts flying regular recon missio
ns from Fifty Fifty.
The Solarian scout had hastened to get off a robotic message courier, which ought to be able to carry the news back to the atoll faster than the scout ship itself could do so, at least in space relatively heavy with gravitational fields.
After dispatching that first robot courier, the scout ship spent the next few minutes hanging in position to observe the enemy fleet, while its livecrew of two or three Solarians exchanged terse comments among themselves.
Then the spacecraft commander fired a second courier back to base with some details. He could now count upwards of twenty large berserker vessels in the force that had just been discovered, but unless the scout closed to a suicidal range, it seemed impossible to be sure whether any of them were carriers.
Shortly after sending its last message courier, fearing it had been discovered, the scout turned and ran for home.
Each robot courier, on arriving in the vicinity of the atoll, actually materialized in space at a distance of a hundred klicks or so, then darted in to hover in a position several kilometers above the center of the base, and from there sent its burden of information to the ground in a tight beam. This was the usual procedure, a few minutes faster than actually landing the courier, and was virtually just as secure.
Jory watched the latest of these couriers arrive at Fifty Fifty. When its movement flickered to a halt, it was so low that she could see it hovering in the perpetual thin overcast. She knew that the courier was probably transmitting urgent information, saving precious seconds, even as it came darting down to land.
She hurried over to Colonel Shanga's headquarters, moving as fast as possible in her armor, to which she was still struggling to become accustomed. She didn't expect that she would be allowed inside HQ, where no one would be able to take time to talk to her anyway, but she could at least hang around outside.
For the last several days the colonel and his staff had been spending most of their time in the central command bunker. When Jory got there, she tried to find out what the latest news had been. But the people inside were obviously very busy, and the guard at the door had orders to keep out all civilians. Jay Nash wasn't visible.
Everyone on the atoll could tell that a message of importance had just arrived, but this time the colonel and his aides released no information.
But soon any lingering suspicion that this alert might be only practice had been removed; an enemy fleet must have been sighted, for preparations were being made to get all spacecraft up into space.
Jory had already learned that a scout normally carried four or five such robot couriers. She gathered that they were generally of the same type as the little vessel in which Spacer Gift had made his escape; but some couriers were smaller, lacking any compartment in which even one human might ride.
Naturally, the more couriers or other massive cargo that a scout ship carried, the more sluggish it became—though craft of that type were still comparatively agile, in a class with fighters, compared to much larger military vessels. If threatened with pursuit, a scout might fire off or jettison all its couriers in an effort to get away.
Jory returned to her own shelter, then reemerged after fine-tuning her equipment. She came out to watch, as well as actively record, the squadron of farlaunchers as they lifted off and went heading out to try to get in the first blow against the enemy.
These heavy spacecraft, informally named Strongholds, were much bigger than fighter craft, and were heavily armed against berserker fighters. Watching them make ready and get spaceborne was thrilling.
The Strongholds were supposed to be able to do without fighter cover, defending themselves effectively against attack by small berserker fighter machines. Each of the heavy farlaunchers carried a solid array of defensive armament, designed for just that purpose.
Nineteen Strongholds went out as Jory watched, bounding up in sequence from their several launching cradles, then gathering in formation, hovering at low altitude, before heading spaceward. Almost before she could blink her eyes, they were silently out of sight.
The lead ship had been informally christened by its crew as the Knucklehead. The name was hand painted on the hull just forward of the main left pinna. The glowing letters disappeared temporarily, along with all other insignia, when the ship powered up and its hull went live just before liftoff.
Each of these heavy bomber types carried a livecrew of at least eight, some as many as ten Solarians. So many people were necessary to provide the brain-computer (officially called bio-hardware, more informally fleshware or boneware) combinations that, for reasons still not fully understood, gave better combat results than could be obtained using either kind of thought/reaction alone.
Jory wished she'd been able to go through the interior of every ship type, but there just hadn't been time.
According to her notes, which she hoped to be able to keep out of the censors' hands, each crew included several people whose duties in flight were usually restricted to gunnery. Each heavy-bomber crew included another specialist who concentrated on aiming, releasing, and guiding the main weapons when the proper moment arrived. One was a flight engineer, whose job was to fine-tune the drive when things were going well, and to keep it going as long as possible when things turned nasty.
An astrogator's mind was melded with the programming of the computer maintaining the ship's course, calculating its position, both in normal space and flightspace, relative to its destination. No object in space ever stood absolutely still, relative to any other object. And yet another member of the crew had the full-time job of bonding with the equipment managing incoming and outgoing communications—frequently, amid the white noise of battle, this became an impossible task.
When at battle stations, the whole crew, like that of any other fighting small ship, rode with virtually immobilized bodies and wired heads, blind and almost deaf to their environment, including the presence of their shipmates' bodies almost packed around them, except as they perceived it through their silver helmets. They could sense the location of their own ship, and could study the immediate environment of space in considerable detail—with emphasis, of course, on any suspicious presence that might represent an enemy.
On every small fighting ship that carried more than one crew member, the helmets also provided a kind of intercom, where subvocalized speech was exchanged among the crew. Normally the crew had no other contact with each other. Even a single-crew ship had an intercom, between human and machine.
Physically all the crew's combat chairs were generally within the same compartment, arranged in a circle, backs together and facing outward, at the center of the ship. In some cases they were arranged around the inner surface of a sphere, putting all of the crew's securely helmeted heads close together near the middle, saving picoseconds on the intercom time. Yet another alternate configuration was to have them all facing inward toward a central, multifaceted console.
All members of the crew were physically very close to one another, but yet could make contact only through the virtual reality they shared through their helmets.
While the helmets were in use, all physical control consoles and panels had been folded away, out of sight and out of reach. Only the pilot had a set of solid controls permanently before him, for use in emergency. These warriors did their fighting for the most part with folded hands, but little stanchions had been installed in the proper places, just to give their space-armored fists something to grip.
No escorting fighters had been sent out with the heavy bombers, given the Strongholds' self-defense capabilities, and the poor quality of the land-based fighters available. But poor as they were, they were going to be needed here.
After an hour or so of flight, with several C-plus jumps included in that interval, the heavy bomber squadron dispatched a robot courier back to base carrying the report that they had sighted the enemy.
Belatedly the Solarian commanders on land and in space realized that what their successful scout had actually sighted was not the berserker carr
ier group, but rather an invasion force of transport vessels, twenty-seven machines in all including a modest fighting escort of cruiser- and destroyer-class machines. Some of the berserker transports were loaded with the fighting machines needed to force a landing, while the cargo of others consisted of tools and materials for the construction of a berserker base on the space island.
Aboard the various transports, the Solarian leaders speculated, would be the tools needed to begin the swift and efficient construction of a berserker base, with all the complex heavy machinery that such an operation would entail.
The formation of nineteen Solarian Strongholds released their missiles at long range, targeted on what seemed to them the most important components of the berserker task force.
Tight-beam, short-range radio communicators crackled. "I'll take this one, you take that one—"
At a 100,000 kilometers, the berserkers could intercept radio communications and have a fraction of a second in which to put the information to immediate use.
Practice in peacetime conditions, and on simulators, had led the crews of these machines to believe that launching from this distance promised a high percentage of success.
The actual launching went much too fast for verbal orders and acknowledgements, even among members of the same crew, to be useful or even possible while it was going on. Still, each farlauncher crew kept up an excited chatter among themselves, on intercom.
Launching from long range, and from behind thin screens of interstellar matter, protected the farlaunchers pretty effectively from the berserker carriers' defensive fire. But it also made for poor accuracy, and the Solarian missiles failed to hit any of their moving targets.
Berserker Fury Page 19