Berserker Fury

by Fred Saberhagen

  As he stepped close to her again, she recoiled from him in horror.

  Gift said: "I am one of the good machines you always wanted to meet. Come, we are leaving." The torch had taken care of the chain quite nicely.

  She kept staring at him with as much astonishment as either of the men had shown. She seemed incapable of moving, until Gift with his one still functional and fleshly hand grabbed her by the arm and started dragging her away.

  Abruptly she started screaming again. What now? Maybe, he thought, it was just the impact of the discovery that her lover was no more than a machine.

  He didn't try to hold her. And Flower, suddenly released, tore away from him and went running for the open hatch of the little ship.

  Gift tried to follow. His first awareness of the Templar's presence came when he heard a hoarse cry of triumph from behind him, and saw from the corner of his eye a figure darting forward. Before Gift could fully turn, a smashing impact on the back of his head threw up a Galactic panoply of stars across his eyes and brain, then plunged him into darkness.

  Some time later—it couldn't have been very long—he regained consciousness, and got back on his feet, too late. The air was going quickly now through all the leaks, and his life would soon be going with it.

  Turning around shakily, Gift stood staring at the spot where the little spaceship had been sitting. The wall had closed over the empty spot where its hatch had been, preserving a remnant of atmosphere a little longer.

  Neither Flower nor the Templar were anywhere to be seen. There were still only dead bodies and frozen machinery.

  "Victory. Somebody ought to sing," said a voice very close to Nifty Gift. It took him a moment to realize that he himself had spoken. The air was going out faster now, and everywhere he looked there were only dead human bodies and frozen machines.

  Something moved, flashing past at high speed outside the barrier, and Gift in solemn greeting and salute, raised an arm to the last wave of attacking Solarian small ships. None of them were going to see him now. But with image enhancement of their recordings later, who could say what might be possible? He'd seen some pretty amazing tricks pulled off.

  No more missiles came. They would be wasted on this ruined target.

  And then he could no longer stand. Oh yes. Singing. It was hard to draw a good breath in this lousy air, but Nifty remembered what lines came next, and he whispered them through bloody lips:

  the grapes of wrath are stored

  He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword

  THIRTY-TWO

  The hardlauncher crews who unleashed the finally successful missiles, saw, and were quick to report, that they had delivered a succession of fatal blows on three of the four berserker carriers.

  The livecrews in the Solarian fighting ships yelled and screamed their elation inside their silver helmets. Mailed fists, helpless to strike the enemy directly, pounded joyfully on console ledges. The virtual worlds through which these men and women saw the world erupted in glory, in the symbols of their chosen languages.

  None of the attackers ever realized that there were some goodlife people, and also at least one badlife prisoner, on one of the big berserkers when it went smash.

  It would have been quite impossible for any living crew member on an attacker to distinguish human bodies, living or dead, on or near the great berserker, as the hardlauncher swept by in its curve of flight; a path that would take it back into flightspace the instant that became practical.

  A military analyst reviewing the battle of Fifty Fifty, after it was safely over, reported thoughtfully:

  "Out of all that chaos, out of all that confused heroism that seemed so futile—somehow came tactical beauty, victory, perfection. As if some superhuman genius had planned it all…"

  A Solarian colleague disagreed. "We can claim no genius. Not in this case, at least. Not except for the code breakers. We just had damned good luck."

  "There's more to it than that. We had to be there, fighting, ready for the good luck when it came."

  At the crucial moment, not only were the great majority of the small berserker interceptor machines low on power. With all the berserker carriers' energies devoted to arming and armoring their small machines for the next offensive strike, the defensive force fields were weak all around the great launching platforms. Shifting power back to them could not be accomplished instantly.

  In some cases too, the small machines' computers were no longer functioning at peak efficiency because of an overload of combat information. Trying to formulate a plan that would account for the apparent craziness of Solarian tactics and weapons sent them reaching too far. Very few of their problems were really owed to the direct action of Solarian weapons.

  But most importantly, in meeting the series of previous attacks, which had followed one after another in rapid succession, the berserker fighters now found themselves hopelessly out of position to defend against the climactic one. Their position was analogous to that of airborne fighters caught at low altitude while an attack screamed in from on high. Meaning they had to go around a large cloud of gas or dust to get back to their own motherships and the attackers.

  Do you know karate? someone asked. A descriptive phrase, long used to describe that art, floated up from somewhere: Empty hands, and a mind like the Moon.

  Well, our hands were damn near empty. That was a little too true for comfort.

  The overall effect, something the Solarian command would have loved to achieve, but which no planner on their side could take credit for, was that of an exquisite combination of kicks and punches, none of which really got home except the last. But that last blow was quite enough. It hit with catastrophic effect. Unplanned; and yet, in a sense, the Solarians had forced the winning combination by their planning, by determining on an unremitting attack.

  At last, after a long run of bad luck, the determination of leaders and fighters alike had them in a position where they were ready to take advantage of superb good luck when it came. The enemy lay for the moment exposed to a barrage of deadly punches.

  Early journalistic reports credited the heavier land-based Solarian ships, the Stronghold farlaunchers coming out from Fifty Fifty, with doing most of the damage to the enemy—in fact, they had inflicted no real damage at all.

  Ensign Bright, still alive, still strong enough to wave vigorously with his good arm, was picked up by a Solarian patrol craft, a long-range ship coming out from Fifty Fifty, on the day after the big battle, after spending approximately one full day in space. What remained of the enemy fleet had withdrawn hours ago—they were heading back across the Gulf, with Solarian task forces in cautious, tentative pursuit. Fortunately, he hadn't been too close—just near enough to have a ringside seat at a comparatively safe distance from the doomed machine, as Pestilence, code name for the fourth berserker carrier, burned and finally exploded.

  One never knew whether a given big berserker was carrying human prisoners or not—logic suggested that the chances were very small, because such a situation was really rare— berserkers were single-mindedly devoted to killing people, not making them uncomfortable. But legend thought otherwise, and the situation did come up from time to time. Well, if Pestilence had had any live victims in its grip, they certainly hadn't come through all that alive.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Some berserker fighters, Voids, getting back into defensive position a few minutes too late to save their last carrier, observed the little spaceship's liftoff from the flight deck. Most of these orphaned killers, all of them doomed themselves, assumed that a small craft lifting from a berserker must be under berserker control, while a substantial minority of the Voids' computer brains were quite as confused as organic pilots in their place would have been, so that they found it impossible to compute any decision regarding the small ship. It got away unscathed.

  "I never saw the like before," the escaping Templar told his new shipmate, in one of his more lucid moments. "It looked almost exactly like
a man—might have convinced me—except where its arm was broken, I could see the hardware spilling out."

  Flower was hardly listening. She was punching commands into the autopilot, not knowing or caring where she was telling the yacht to carry her, as long as it got her away—somewhere.

  The fourth berserker carrier blew up, its fragments vanishing irrecoverably into a tricky local fold of spacetime, some four standard hours after the other three, and seventeen hours, after being first hit by Solarian missiles.

  And with that the Battle of Fifty Fifty was effectively concluded.

  The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had been beaten back yet again—the heart of Solarian humanity was still beating, and home could still be defended at something of a distance.

  Compared to other great, decisive battles of Solarian history, the casualties in the battle of Fifty Fifty were very small, almost trivial—except of course when considered from the viewpoint of the individuals and the units directly concerned. In this sense too it must be counted as a defeat for the berserkers. The Solarians officially lost 307 people killed, and 147 small ships, in addition to one carrier and one vessel of the destroyer class.

  Some experts described the site of the battle, the environment out in the middle of the Gulf, as being subject to cyclical changes analogous to those of day and night upon a planetary surface. Certain great thin gas clouds tended to go through regular phases. This under the right conditions afforded ship captains and admirals certain opportunities to maneuver free from all but the unluckiest chance of enemy observation.

  Pulsations from variable stars washed through nebulae of varying density, and synchronized pulsars played a part in creating cyclic changes with a period of hours. Those stellar objects produced heavy microwave transmissions, but almost all of their radiation was absorbed inside the gas.

  Thus heavy disturbances in the interstellar medium could propagate in a periodic way, driven by pulsar beams. Mere humans and machines remained to some extent at the mercy of forces that reduced to insignificance anything that they might do.

  Both sides naturally tried hard to predict how this "weather" was going to be days in advance. But chaotic behavior in the gasses and dust clouds made it impossible to tell more than a couple of standard days ahead.

  In one of these periods of diminished visibility, causing confusion in the radar wavelengths as well as visual, an interregnum that was expected to last for several hours, the Solarian fleet retreated toward Galactic east (i.e., roughly toward Port Diamond and Earth), rather than risk a direct encounter, at comparatively close range, with the berserker battleships that were still believed to be somewhere in the region. Those battlewagons were probably faster, in either kind of space, than any of the big carriers on either side.

  Still, all of the human recon efforts during the course of the battle of Fifty Fifty turned up no more than a single battleship, the Hate, though several times cruiser-class machines were mistakenly identified as dreadnoughts.

  Intelligence intercepts—those that had been made before the enemy's last code change, or else as soon as the new code was broken—confirmed that berserker command had made a strategic decision to keep those ships of the line—little more than spacegoing gun platforms—well in the rear. In fact no battleship on either side ever saw action during the entire battle.

  The berserker units that had been so fortunately (from the point of view of Life) kept in reserve could, if brought forward in time, have done a superb job in reducing the land-based defenses of Fifty Fifty, pounding the place into a lifeless, steamy fog bank of little particles. But before they would have been able to get in range to do that, they would have been vulnerable to attack by small fighters and bombers coming out from the islands. To the enemy, this did not seem to be the time or place to gamble heavy assets.

  And admirals on both sides pondered a large question: Was it possible that the day of the battleship was truly over?

  Some people aboard the ships of the task force grumbled angrily when the admiral, having at last stunned and staggered the enemy, ordered a retreat. The protesters swore that

  Naguance was making a blunder, wasting all the good fortune that had brought success to the task force; he should now be going after the crippled enemy with all the force that he could muster.

  Naguance listened to the arguments from some of his staff, and though some were impassioned, they did not sway him. When he thought he had heard enough on the subject, he told the arguers so, in no uncertain terms.

  After setting a course that would take his fleet away from the berserkers for several hours, perhaps keeping in normal space all the while, or maybe making a few routine jumps, the Solarian fleet, relishing success but wary;—and after a prudent hesitation perhaps dictated by the uncertainties in Galactic "weather"—turned back toward the enemy again.

  The admiral's aides who had complained about his sudden lack of enthusiasm for battle began to understand. Naguance was hanging in the area, ready to fight again as soon as conditions turned favorable for the Solarian side—but he was doing his best to avoid running into a fleet of battleships at close range and head-on.

  Long-range visibility was pretty good again. Now, if the berserkers were still intent on trying to take Fifty Fifty, the live-crewed ships were ready to resume the task of defending it.

  A journalist aboard the flagship took note of the fact that Admiral Naguance had turned east, away from the enemy, then north (toward the Galactic Core) for three quarters of an hour, then south, then back west again a couple of hours later.

  Wise maneuvering, but, as it proved unnecessary. The enemy was in full retreat.

  The berserker fleet had now lost all four of the carriers that formed its heart, and which had provided the reason for its existence. Before the battle, the linked computers forming the berserker general staff had calculated that any setback of that magnitude was so wildly improbable as not to deserve serious consideration.

  But now they remembered that one simulation, in which the lifeless computers prepared themselves for battle, had ended similarly. But that result had been discarded—it computed as too unlikely.

  However, now that the disaster had happened, berserker command decided to withdraw rather than risk the rest of their fleet in what looked like a losing fight.

  After finally deciding to commit their battleships, but then being unable to locate the main Solarian fleet, they determined to return instead to their distant base and stronghold, where the plan had been made for the ultimate assault on Earth. The vast computers ran test programs on themselves, and on each other; the results were inconclusive. Something had gone severely wrong, and it was hard to determine what.

  Solarian scoutships located the enemy again, and kept it in sight for a long time, as the shattered berserker task force headed back across the Gulf. Robot couriers came in with reports from the network of automated spies. The retreat was genuine. The war would go on, as fiercely as ever, but for the time being, and for some number of years to come, Earth was saved.

  Back on Uhao, Cedric Traskeluk, at the landing field to watch part of the fleet come home, from time to time still braced himself for an uglier confrontation that would never come.

  And now, only a few meters from Cedric Traskeluk, here came Ensign Bright, moving briskly among a small crowd of other walking wounded, stepping on the ramp of a landed shuttle, into clean air and sunlight, being welcomed home by weeping relatives. Music performed by live musicians stumbled and glittered in the fragrant air.

  A young woman and a child came rushing in the forefront of the waiting crowd, their arms open to enfold their man, as he ran the last few steps to meet them.

  Down on them all shone the brilliant sun of Uhao, where Bright had been stationed and his ship had been based. The planet was his carrier's home port.

  And was still his.