Shiva in Steel

by Fred Saberhagen

  Over the next half hour, an additional three or four ships' medirobots, each containing a shattered but still-living human body, were brought aboard the station, and the same number of units-he couldn't tell if they were the same ones-went back out, empty, yet again. They must be laboriously prying people from the wreckage out there, peeling away damaged armor somehow, bringing them still alive out of a ruined hull invaded by vacuum. Silver inadvertently got a close look at the contents of one incoming unit and turned away, not blaming Commander Normandy for feeling ill.

  By now, Silver had heard repeated confirmation of the basic numbers involved-in Marut's squadron there had originally been six tough ships, three cruisers and three destroyers. And now there were only two destroyers left, and both of them were damaged, and both their crews badly shot up.

  Another of the things that Harry Silver began to wonder while he stood waiting, adding up scraps of information, was why a fighting squadron, especially a shot-up one, would put in at a weather station, even in an emergency. One good reason would be if the surviving ships were just too badly damaged to reach any other friendly port-but that did not seem to be the case here, according to the information he could overhear coming from damage control.

  You wouldn't choose a place like Hyperborea just to obtain the services of medirobots-had the squadron commander's overriding concern been the condition of his wounded, he'd certainly have found a greater number of human doctors, and probably an even better supply of helpful hardware, less than an hour's travel sunward, on Good Intentions. By now, Harry had also learned that among the perhaps sixty or eighty people who crewed the small base on Hyperborea, there were just two qualified physicians, who were now overwhelmed with more work than they could handle.

  The facts strongly suggested that Marut and his squadron had been intending to put in at Hyperborea all along.

  Confirmation of this idea lay in the fact that Commander Normandy hadn't been surprised to see Marut when he arrived, only horrified at the condition of his squadron. Everyone else on the base now gave the impression that they'd been taken by surprise to see warships dropping out of the black sky in such a headlong rush to get here that they cut it very close with their reemergence into normal space. That meant that Claire Normandy, and she alone, had been expecting the fighting squadron's arrival. Which in turn indicated to Harry that its mission was some kind of a deep secret.

  By now, some ten minutes had gone by since the commander had brought Harry Silver into her office, meaning to tell the civilian that she was commandeering his prospecting vessel, which, though showing signs of damage, was certainly in better shape than any of Marut's craft. But her attempts to do so kept being forestalled by interruptions, by the necessary demands of people concerned with matters even more urgent. This happened half a dozen times before she could hit Harry with the announcement she'd been trying to make.

  When at last the woman in charge was able to deliver her message to him, Harry only nodded, slowly and thoughtfully, and did not put up the argument that the officers had evidently been more or less expecting.

  Getting his ship wasn't all she had in mind. "Mr. Silver, let me ask you something plainly."

  "Shoot."

  "Do you represent, in any way, any agency of the Kermandie government?" The look on his face was evidently answer enough. "I didn't really think you did," Claire Normandy concluded, a trace of humor showing through her stress. "But if you had, I might have given you a message to pass along to them… never mind, forget I brought up the subject."

  And even before the commander had finished speaking, there it was again-Harry could hear, for the second time since his arrival, someone in the background talking in tones of fear about someone or something called Shiva. Silver was able to identify the name as that of one of the gods of old Earth, but ancient mythology seemed an unlikely subject for an urgent conversation at this time and place.

  Instead of arguing about having his ship taken from him, he said: "Commander, obviously you've got some kind of major dispute with berserkers coming up. I don't like 'em any better than you do, and I'm eager to be helpful. But just so I can be a little intelligent with my helpfulness, maybe you can answer a question for me: Just what in hell is this Shiva that we're all so worried about?"

  The commander seemed to consider several responses before she finally settled on: "A berserker."

  "Special one, evidently. Is it just so damned big, or what? New weapons, maybe?"

  Suddenly her features reminded him of delicate ice crystals. "I don't have time to discuss the subject today, Mr. Silver."

  "All right. Let it pass for now."

  The Space Force regulations regarding security were more numerous, and more rigidly enforced, here on the frontier. Claire Normandy almost invariably followed regulations, though she had no reason to suspect the presence of any goodlife agent, or Kermandie agent for that matter, in her crew.

  Goodlife-a name coined long ago by the berserkers themselves-were humans who sided with the cause of death.

  Rare, warped minds who favored dead and murderous machinery over live humanity-such were uncommon anywhere, and almost nonexistent in the Force. There was no doubt, however, that they did exist. "Almost" was very far from good enough.

  There were several reasons why an unfriendly agent might want to get close enough to her crew to be able to observe them at their work-but it was hard to imagine just how the hypothetical spy hoped to accomplish that.

  For the moment, Commander Normandy looked a little more worried than before, as if she might be trying to remember just how much in the way of military secrets Silver could have overheard while standing in her office. Any breach of security was her own fault, of course, for bringing him in-but there was no use fretting over that now. When true disaster struck, when fate stopped merely taking potshots and pulled the trigger on a machine gun, no one could dodge every bullet.

  She assured Silver that the Space Force would see that he was compensated-according to the standard scale-for the use of his ship, or for its loss if things happened to fall out that way.

  Again, he didn't try to argue the point.

  Not that she was really offering him any opportunity to do so. "And now you must excuse me, as we are very busy."

  In return, he gave the commander a nod, and a parody of a salute that she never saw, having already turned her back to plunge into yet another urgent discussion. Silver scooped up his helmet and his bag of personal gear and lugged them out of the office, methodically tramping away through corridors, locating without much trouble the small room he'd earlier been assigned as quarters. And in the back of his mind as he tramped, he was thinking: Kermandie government? Me? What in all the hells was that all about?

  He supposed he'd be able to find out sooner or later. Once in his room with the door closed, accepting the assurance of his instincts that the enemy was not actually at the gates, he got out of his space armor, scratching his head and sighing with relief.

  And there in the snugly comfortable little room he waited, sitting in the one chair, for a couple of minutes actually twiddling his thumbs. The possibilities of amusement in that activity being soon exhausted, he began working simultaneously on a short drink-he'd thoughtfully brought a bottle of Scotch whiskey in from his ship-and a chess problem, which his room's holostage set up for him. The device was quite accommodating, allowing him to choose from a wide Variety of styles in the appearance of the virtual board and pieces. Harry selected characters from Alice in Wonderland.

  No use trying to get any rest now, he wasn't going to have time. Ah, peace was wonderful. But Silver didn't expect that he'd be granted much time to enjoy it.

  FOUR

  After a while, Harry used the room's communicator to call his ship. When the housekeeping system aboard the Witch answered, he checked to see whether any messages had yet come in from Sniffer. Nothing yet.

  He'd been in his room for almost an hour, quite a bit longer than he had expected, and was consi
dering trying to catch a nap after all, but then the holostage chimed an incoming call, and the head and shoulders of Commander Normandy appeared, disrupting a rather interesting end game, the original chess problem having long since been solved. Speaking without preamble and in a forceful voice, the commander requested the codes required to make his ship's drive work. Evidently the Space Force techs she'd sent out to the Witch had been stubborn enough to keep trying for many minutes to crack the programming locks, but eventually they'd given up.

  "Codes?" Silver squinted, one eye going almost shut, at the little stage on which the commander's shapely head, asserting her official priority, had obliterated most of his imaged chessboard. "I can't seem to remember any."

  Commander Normandy was being the maiden of ice again. "All right, Mr. Silver. I am impressed by your down-locks, and I want them removed, right now."

  He held the glass in his hand up a little higher so she'd be sure to see it. "A downlock code, hey? Did you try looking that up in the ship's manual?"

  Captain Marut's head now appeared on-stage, looking over the woman's shoulder. He actually seemed to have calmed down a little. "Silver, I'm not sure that the type of code you're using on your ship is entirely legal-in fact, if we look into it, I bet we find it isn't. I wonder who put it in?"

  "Can't seem to remember that, either."

  It was Commander Normandy who proved equal to the situation. Sweet moderation was back, at least for the time being. "The point is, Mr. Silver, we need your ship, or we may need it, and the military necessity is too urgent for us to play around. You told me earlier that you were eager to be helpful. What is it you want? Something more than standard compensation, I assume?"

  "Nothing so unreasonable as that, Commander." Harry leaned back, rocking gently on his chair's springs. "My problem is, I've stumbled into a situation where I don't know what's going on. I can lose a ship if there's no way to avoid it-wouldn't be the first time. But I do want to know why. Surely you can tell me more than you have so far-which is just about nothing."

  Captain Marut started to interrupt with renewed mutterings about legality, but the commander gave him a look that quieted him. In this, she was going to remain in charge. "All right, I'll explain. I'm taking a chance on you, Mr. Silver, because of the positive things in your record, and because of the fact that in our situation, your willing cooperation may be even more important than your ship."

  "Oh?"

  "The point is, we are in grave danger of missing what may be our only opportunity to neutralize the berserker advantage that devastated the Omicron Sector. Shiva happens to be our code name for that advantage."

  "Ah." Earlier, she had said it was a particular machine. "And what would this advantage look like if I ran into it?"

  "Have you ever seen a berserker's optelectronic brain, Mr. Silver?"

  He stared at her for a long moment before replying. "Yeah. Matter of fact, I have. Why?"

  It wasn't the answer she had been expecting. "Well… actually I suppose it doesn't matter whether you have or not. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes and materials." Normandy was visibly weighing a number of factors, most of them things Harry could only guess at, and confirming for herself her idea that what she wanted from him could best be obtained by this kind of an appeal. Cards on the table.

  She went on: "Shiva is the code name that headquarters has assigned to a certain piece of berserker hardware. More precisely, to the pattern, or to the pattern of patterns, of information that that piece contains. One particular berserker brain that has somehow grown to be tremendously capable, monstrously good at making strategic and tactical decisions."

  He nodded slowly; the information fit with everything he knew from other sources. And it was bad news indeed-if true. What he couldn't understand was how the commander could be so certain about it; probably she just wanted to sound absolutely firm and convincing.

  "All right," Harry said. "We've got a name for what just devastated Omicron. So now-?"

  "If the berserkers took prisoners from the ambushed task force, and we must assume they did, chances are good they already know what I'm about to tell you. So I think the security risk in my doing so is minimal. The mission of that task force was to intercept Shiva and knock it out."

  "That still is our mission," the captain put in firmly. "We are going to carry it out."

  Claire Normandy paused long enough to turn her head, favoring her aggressive colleague with an unreadable look. Then she confronted Harry again. "However that may be, this base may be in grave danger of attack. Any way you look at it, we face a desperate local shortage of fighting ships and crew, particularly pilots."

  As long as the information was flowing, Silver was eager to squeeze out all he could. "Wait a minute. You say you're going ahead with some kind of interception. How do you, or headquarters, or anybody, have any idea where this Shiva is?"

  Marut's expression, his slight head shake, seemed to say that such a question was irrelevant. Worrying about it was someone else's job.

  Harry tried again. "Was your task force expecting to pick up reinforcements here on Hyperborea?" No verbal answer for that either, but he thought the glum look in the two officers' faces signaled a negative. Silver kept pushing: "All right, say you have somehow managed to locate this super berserker. You even know just when it's going to be at some precise place. Headquarters assigned you six good ships to hunt it down-but now you want to tackle the job with one or two beat-up wrecks, plus maybe a couple of borrowed patrol boats?

  "And if we throw in the Witch, which isn't even a fighter, you still won't be more than half your original strength. Imagine what kind of escort must be defending this Shiva if it's so damned important. Unless you've got some resources I haven't yet heard about, your plan doesn't make any sense."

  The two officers were both glaring at him, but for the moment, they had nothing to say.

  Harry kept at it. "And I still haven't heard an answer to the key question: What makes you think you know where Shiva is?"

  Marut was ready to clap him in irons. "When we want your strategic assessment, Silver, we'll ask for it."

  "You probably think you'll commandeer it."

  But Normandy was determined to remain in control. "We do have the required information, Mr. Silver, about where and when to intercept the target. And we're even pretty sure about the strength of its escort. You can take my word for that."

  "Maybe I can, but I don't. Sorry, Commander. I've taken people's words on things-well-meaning people-and lived to regret it. I've heard a lot about vital plans and inside tips and absolute essentials-heard about 'em, hell, I've tried to sell them-and some really are, and some aren't. Now, a minute ago you told me that my willing help might be more important than my ship."

  "That is correct."

  "Well, if you want my help, you'll have to explain that much to me at least."

  Her cool gaze weighed him for a moment. "Stay where you are, Mr. Silver. I'll call back in about one minute."

  The two human heads disappeared simultaneously, and briefly his latest end game was back. Silver sat staring unseeingly at the inhuman faces of the Red King and White Queen, and the little pawn between them. If they thought…

  Meanwhile, in the base commander's office, Claire Normandy ordered Sadie to screen out all distractions for a couple of minutes. Facing Marut across her desk, she said: "We're going to have to decide this locally. There's no time to consult with headquarters."

  "I agree, Commander."

  "I'll give you the best advice I can regarding Mr. Silver, Captain. Looking at his record, it's absurd to suspect him of being goodlife. I'm now convinced that he is no one's secret agent-his abrasive manners alone seem to me proof of that-and if you're determined to push on with the attack, you're going to need every bit of help you can get."

  That last point scored with the captain. But he was still reluctant. He had eased his wounded arm out of its sling and was tentatively trying its movement. "I have my doubts a
bout his dependability. I wouldn't take a man's defiant attitude as proof that he's reliable."

  "Again, I suggest that you look at his record."

  "I have, ma'am. It's pretty spotty."

  "Yes, I admit that. But I think the parts that most concern us are reassuring."

  "With all respect, Commander, you say you haven't seen him for fifteen years, and knew him only slightly then. People change."

  "I don't see any real alternative to using him. Captain, if you are as determined as you say to improvise some kind of fighting force to go ahead and tackle Shiva-"

  "Commander, that is the job that I and the people under my command are going to do. We have our orders from CINCSEC, and I hope you're not considering trying to countermand them?"

  Claire Normandy's attitude seemed to say that she had already given that idea serious thought. "No, I'm not," she said at last, "given the importance of your objective. It's only by a lucky chance that we know where and when to try for Shiva, and if you and the survivors on your crew are willing-"

  "We are."

  "But coming back to Harry Silver. Whatever your impression of the man may be, he's one of the best combat pilots you'll find anywhere."

  The captain remained dubious.

  "Not only that, Captain, but he's familiar with the Summerland system."

  "Ah."

  Only a couple of minutes had gone by when Commander Normandy's head once more erupted in the middle of Silver's chessboard and she began an explanation-at least a partial one-of what she wanted from him and why:

  "It is more than likely that we are going to want to commission you as a pilot. Put you back in uniform."

  "Oh?" At this point, the news didn't exactly strike Harry as a big surprise. And he understood that he had no legal grounds for argument. The Space Force had the right not only to commandeer his ship in an emergency involving berserkers, but it could also draft anyone it wanted to for the duration. But he had to say something. "Piloting what? Someone just took my ship away."