Shiva in Steel

by Fred Saberhagen

  Yes, this was not the worst spot he'd been in, not by a long way. If nothing else, he'd be out of this cell, being transferred somewhere else, in no great length of time. The possibilities were intriguing.

  Getting up from his bunk where he had been lounging, Havot stretched, doing a thorough job of it, arms, back, and legs. Tapping simple commands into a small, flat panel on the wall, utilizing the speck of freedom and authority he had been allowed to retain, he reconfigured the webby stuff of the bunk into an exercise machine and adjusted the height of its saddle to where he wanted it.

  Since entering the cell, he'd spent much of his time in physical workouts. Now, as he did more often than not when exercising, he pulled off his clothes and rode the bike stark naked. When his unseen guards looked in on him, as he had no doubt they would be doing from time to time, and disapproved of what they saw-well, they could stop watching.

  If, on the other hand, one or more of them became interested in his beautiful body, that could open possibilities. He knew, without thinking much about it, that his body was beautiful. He always rather expected people of both sexes to be physically attracted to him, and it seemed to him that he was often right.

  Of course-and he was ready to admit the weakness to himself-he tended to forget the occasions when he was wrong.

  Right now, the space given over to face-to-face visitors, just beyond the statglass wall, was deserted. Not that he'd had any visitors, except for a few official ones.

  Whether or not he was being watched, at any given moment, through hidden sensors in his cell's walls or ceiling, Havot had no way of knowing. It seemed a safe assumption, in any prison, that his behavior was being recorded.

  In recent years, his body had been through a lot, one way and another, but he felt serenely confident that it was still beautiful.

  Havot wondered if someday-somewhere, somehow-he might have a career as a consultant in prison design.

  Having spent most of his life, since the beginning of adolescence, locked up in one place or another, he'd become something of a connoisseur of cells and prisons. Many such facilities were already so well designed as to appear hopeless as far as managing, or even imagining, an escape was concerned. But the fact was that none of them had yet managed to contain him for more than about a year.

  Not that Christopher Havot possessed any superhuman powers that enabled him to walk through walls. It was rather that so far the universe had seemed to be on his side. Whatever kind of hole or trap his fellow humans stuck him into, whatever walls and fields they put up to contain him, something always turned up that opened a way out. That prison hospital on Good Intentions, for example. It was about as secure a facility as human ingenuity could devise, and his chance of ever leaving it alive had been about as close to zero as the real world allowed any probability to become. Yet here he was.

  His deliverance from Good Intentions was the second time in his life that berserkers had served, indirectly, as the agency by which the universe contrived to open ways to freedom for him. He supposed it would be only proper to feel grateful. But he wasn't quite sure whether he did or not.

  Not that he felt any inclination to worship the death machines-or any other entity, for that matter. But it was curious. Berserkers were highly entertaining opponents, and he didn't hate them, any more than he necessarily hated people. All he asked of the universe was to be allowed to seek his own amusement from it, in his own way.

  Pedaling his force-field bicycle, gradually quickening the pace, working his strong arms rhythmically against the resistance of its moving handgrips until his body gleamed with sweat, Havot thought over what little he'd learned about the military situation here, mostly gleaned from listening to others' conversations on the ship from Hyperborea. The situation must be desperate indeed for a Space Force commander to call for civilian volunteers.

  Every time he had the chance, which wasn't as often as he would have liked, Havot tried to strike up a conversation with the young spacer whose name he had already forgotten, his new caretaker. There was no indication that the youth had actually been ordered not to talk to him-only to keep him locked up, of course, and to prevent his communicating with anyone else.

  "I suppose the preparations for battle are coming along."

  "I guess they are."

  "Will you carry a message from me to the base commander?"

  "Maybe. What is it?"

  "Before they locked me up here, I went through a couple . of training sessions. I was beginning to get a feel for what kind of operation this planned attack is going to be, how important it is… I'd like to tell the commander that if she happens to have some job that's really too dangerous, so bad that she doesn't even want to ask any of her own people to volunteer-Well, what I'm trying to say is, I'm volunteering for that job right now, whatever it may be."

  The youth was staring at Havot, obviously undecided as to whether to take him seriously or not.

  "Will you carry that message?" The truth was that Havot himself wasn't entirely sure how seriously he meant it.

  The other nodded, and withdrew.

  Left alone again, Havot for a time allowed himself to indulge in fantasy. Here came Commander Normandy to visit him in his cell, to ask him if he wanted to volunteer for a certain practically suicidal job. It seemed they had just discovered some kind of booby trap in the Trophy Room, and it was going to have to be disabled before it blew up the whole base. Only a human could do the job. Of course there would be some fantastic reward if he succeeded. The commander was really desperate, and she was coming to plead with him to undertake the task.

  Havot could do that part of the fantasy quite realistically; over the years, he'd heard a lot of people pleading for things that seemed to them tremendously important. "Maybe if you go down on your knees," he told the commander's image in his mind, "I might just listen to you." The daydream faded…

  While Havot pedaled his bicycle and dreamed his dreams, Harry Silver was trying to convince himself that Marut's desperately improvised plan to ambush Shiva might possibly be made to work. Harry's conclusion was that sure it could-if the human side was going into battle with at least three more good ships and the properly trained crews to man them. And if the attackers had been able to practice the assault at least once with real hardware, machines, and bodies dropping out of space onto real rocks somewhere; and if they had some firm idea of what the real enemy strength at Summerland was going to be… and if that strength was not simply too great.

  But as matters actually stood, the harried humans of Hyperborea had not one of those things going for them.

  It was going to be practically suicide. And he, Harry Silver, was actually volunteering to go along.

  Over the past few days, the planners, working against the chronometer in a frenzy of anxiety, had tried to consider every possibility: What would Shiva do if it arrived at Summerland to find the berserker station under attack? It would assume leadership on the berserker side, unless the attacking force were of overwhelming strength, and if past results were any indication, it would very probably win the fight. If the Solarians could for once manage to bring crushing power on the scene-not that that would be a possibility now-Shiva could be expected to get itself the hell out of there and go on computing to fight on another day.

  Marut's improvisation-you might call it brilliant, you might call it crazy-called for the humans to get themselves into the berserker base and out of sight, taking over control of the enemy installation from inside before Shiva and its no-doubt-formidable escort showed up.

  There were just too damn many things that could go wrong. And they didn't even know enough to compile a list of all the ugly possibilities.

  There was really nothing that could be done about that.

  With liftoff for the reconstituted task force only a few hours away, now would be the time to load the miniships aboard the vessels that were going to transport them to the vicinity of Summerland.

  Marut insisted he was going to be able to tow t
hem all to the scene of action in a kind of force-bubble-but to Harry, that meant they all had to lift off from the field at the same time. There were problems, seemingly insoluble, any way he looked at it.

  Silver hadn't had a drink of anything stronger than mineral water for a day and a half, and it didn't look like his string of drinkless hours would be broken anytime soon. But that didn't prevent him from going into the lounge, when he found he had maybe a quarter of an hour of free time, and sitting down. Even if he generally had the place entirely to himself these days, he somehow felt more comfortable in a bar than staring at the walls in his little anonymous room. Or sitting in his combat chair, staring at the inner bulkheads of his ship-no, he corrected himself, of what used to be his ship. In just a few hours, he was going to have all he wanted of that scene.

  When the tall, bland, pyramidal shape of the inhuman waiter rolled over to his table, he ordered something soft, only fizzy water with a little sour flavoring, just to have a glass in front of him. Then he sat there, staring into the lounge's half-real greenery, wishing that he could melt into the jungle.

  All right, he wasn't really kidding anyone. Not even himself. He caught himself watching the doorway, hoping that Becky was going to show up again.

  He'd got himself trapped in a bad position, and there didn't seem to be a damn thing he could do about it. He'd done it to himself of course, stuck his neck out of his own free will, signed up on the dotted line, so now things were considerably different. A civilian could get away with a lot of things that a lieutenant could not. If only they'd given him the temporary rank of general… fat chance.

  He'd already pushed his objections to the revised plan of attack right up to the line of insubordination-had run a good distance over that line, according to Marut.

  Now, unable to come up with any wiser course of action, he mentally replayed his last encounter with the captain. For the last couple of days, their meetings had tended to be very similar, and had been running along these lines:

  Mafut: "I am giving you a direct order, Lieutenant, to cease making these insubordinate remarks."

  Silver: "Insubordination, hell! What do you think you're going to do, lock me up? Arrange a firing squad? You need me, Captain, if you're going to have even a ghost of a chance out there."

  Marut: "If you think for one minute, Lieutenant-"

  And it was generally up to Commander Normandy, who was usually present on these occasions, to get the two of them away from each other's throats and maintain at least a semblance of constructive planning in the meetings. Whether Harry was thrown into a cell or not was really going to be up to her.

  That was how matters stood at the moment. Silver had to admit that the captain was right about at least one thing-if Lieutenant Harry Silver objected to the plan so forcefully that he couldn't be trusted to take part in it, the logical course for a commanding officer was to lock up Lieutenant Silver; there weren't that many cells to choose from, he'd probably be right next to the murderer, to await courtmartial. That ritual would take place as soon as possible, whether anybody came back alive from the attack on Shiva or not.

  But Harry could think of another reason to curtail his arguments, one even better than staying out of jail. The time had come to put up or shut up. It was now too late to voice objections-unless he could come up with a better plan to replace the one that wasn't going to work, a feat that at the moment was quite beyond the powers of Harry Silver. Inadequate as Marut's scheme was, it represented the best chance they had to save the population of this sector, and the next one after this, and all the rest of Solarian humanity, from being ultimately consumed in Shiva's hellfire. And preparations, such as they were, had already been made, the countdown was running, and at this point it wasn't going to be turned off by anything that anyone else, except the commander, might do or say.

  And Silver came around again to the unhappy fact that Commander Normandy was going along with it. It wasn't that she was stupid, Harry told himself. It was just that she had nothing better to try, or to suggest, and for an officer of her rank to do nothing would have been criminal. Not for the first time, Harry was very glad he wasn't in her position of command, facing the decisions she now had to make.

  Harry decided that he must have been a little crazy when he signed up for active duty. Becky's supposed death had hit him hard, and he'd been thinking that his life wasn't worth much. Well, he wasn't the first one to do that. Most people went through spells of depression, and it was no good claiming that as an excuse. He'd just have to live with the results. He'd raised his hand and sworn an oath, and there didn't seem to be any good way out of that.

  Sitting in the bar now, sipping at his sour, watery, inconsequential drink, he was thinking that he might be strongly tempted to find some way out that was not so good-except for Becky. He'd have to get her but of it as well… but then he ran into the fact that subtracting two good pilots from the mix would definitely kill the planned raid's last faint possibility of success. It would definitely guarantee a berserker walkover when the stunt was tried. And Harry had to admit that a faint possibility of victory still existed. It was just a very lousy play on which to stake the survival of the human race.

  Anyway, Becky had flatly refused to consider desertion when in their last talk he'd tried to hint around the subject. Maybe his hinting had been too oblique-but no, he didn't think so.

  He'd been testing out the vague and possibly imaginary possibility that he could talk her away from participating in the raid while still going on with it himself. But Becky gave no sign that she was taking seriously his hints about bailing out-maybe she knew something he didn't. Like the fact that he wasn't serious about them himself.

  Damn it. All in all, that woman really knew him pretty well.

  And now suddenly, as Harry was sitting in the bar, she came in through the doorway he was watching, dressed in her new coverall with her own lieutenant's badge on the collar.

  He thought she looked better than ever.

  "Ready to go, Harry?"

  "Ready as I'm going to be. How about you?"

  "Same here. And the captain and his crew are ready."

  "I bet. How about the emperor?"

  "Oh, he'll show up. Julius and his prize crew." Becky paused. "I sure can pick 'em, can't I?"

  "You picked me, kid, once upon a time. As I remember."

  "Sure, Harry." Becky looked at her wrist. "Only about two hours to go to liftoff. I just had a nap. You should be resting."

  "I am. This is how I rest. Sitting in a bar."

  And that was the moment when all the alarms went off. Again.

  People had endured their last briefing for the ordeal into which they were about to plunge, and some of them were starting their final checklists, when once more the noise and flashing lights came crashing into their awareness.

  Whatever entity had triggered the alarms showed no manners at all, interrupting without any consideration. Right in the middle of someone's conversation, the first sound and visual signal of the alarm.

  Harry and Becky had been trying to say good-bye, or trying to find a way to do so. They had become reconciled to the fact that according to Marut's plan, they were not going into battle aboard the same ship. But if this new alarm was the real thing, if it meant battle, it would not be the battle they had been trying to rehearse.

  Harry Silver got automatically to his feet. Of one thing he was mortally sure: No one aboard the base was crazy enough to have picked this hour, this minute, to call a practice alert. Harry's mouth was suddenly going dry. But his first thought brought with it a certain wry inward lightening of spirits: If we're all killed here in the next hour, at least we're not going to have to carry out that damn fool attack.

  FIFTEEN

  They were both headed for the door, but before Harry reached it, he was stopped in his tracks by an order from Commander Normandy, coming through on his personal communicator: "Silver, we're in a red alert. I want you to go and make sure those launches all get
off." She'd discussed the difficulties in detail with him during the days of preparation, and there was no need now to spell out her doubts about the dependability of every component in the mix, from the assigned pilots through the hardware.

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Becky had come to a stop also, and she was looking back at him.

  "Take the Witch for me, kid," Harry said. "Suddenly I've got another job." In the now never-to-be-accomplished attack on Summerland, she'd been assigned to fly a cluster of Marut's pet pods, but suddenly the game was drastically changed. Now no one was going to try to tow pods into action, and Becky could be vitally effective aboard a real fighting ship.

  She had heard the communication, too. "We'll be a couple of minutes anyway, getting up. I'll try to wait for you."

  He might be able to catch up that quickly, or he might not. There was no time for Harry to kiss her before they parted, but he took time anyway. If the berserkers were coming, they could wait ten seconds more.

  Then they were both moving, running, Becky quickly several strides ahead of him. And at the last moment, he wanted to call her back, to make sure that she stayed with him no matter what happened. When their paths of duty separated, he watched her out of sight, the graceful figure moving at a flying run around a corner.

  Harry moved on, at a run too, the sound of his boots joining others that were pounding through the corridors. His absence from the control cabin of the Witch would doubtless delay matters a little, so Becky would probably be the last to lift off. But that might not matter a whole lot. And Harry would worry less about his woman and his ship if one was aboard the other.