Shiva in Steel

by Fred Saberhagen

  So Shiva decided to hit us here. But why didn't it mobilize a bigger fleet?" Harry asked.

  "Evidently it decided that it couldn't afford to wait. Or-"

  "Or what?"

  "Or maybe, after the string of victories it's had, it's developed a certain contempt for our ability to defend ourselves."

  When deliberately grounding itself on the planetoid, the machine carrying Shiva had avoided actually ramming any portion of the badlife base. At that stage, it had taken great pains not to demolish the precious computer it wanted to study, the store of information it needed to extract, not to kill too quickly the life-units in whose living brains so much more information was likely to be available. Rather, it had come down on rock, in such a position that would give its landers the greatest possible advantage in assaulting that base.

  It would have come right up to the outer wall of the base, but defensive blows and obstacles had prevented so close an immediate approach.

  Struggling against the force-field hammers and spear thrusts launched at it by the ground defenses, it was unable to control its path with any precision and was forced to stop at a greater distance from the walls of the fortress before it.

  The landing had brought its heavy carrier scraping across the landing field, very much as Harry Silver would do with a different purpose in mind, and then crunching to a halt. Anything like precision of control was hardly to be expected, because Solarian weapons were pounding at the transport machine almost without letup, and shields were beginning to give way. And it would have to be able to count on getting away again, with its new treasure of information, or the losses sustained in the attempt would be wasted.

  Humans considering this maneuver on the enemy's part found it hard to believe that Shiva, coldly aware of its own value to the berserker cause, would take such heavy chances with its own survival-unless it knew with certainty that its key features had already been duplicated in at least one other piece of hardware.

  The people on the base reasoned that the bad computer had learned not only of the successful Solarian spying, but of the badlife assassination plan directed at itself. Shiva could have gained this knowledge scavenging information from the data banks of the ruined ships in the ambushed task force, and by extorting confirmation from live prisoners.

  Shiva had forced its prisoners to confirm what the data captured in the Solarian astrogational banks had already strongly suggested. The intermediate destination of the task force was the supposed weather station on Hyperborea. More information on the vital subject of Solarian intelligence gathering and code-breaking must be available there. So Shiva calculated that the possible gain to the berserker cause outweighed the risk of its own destruction. It would take direct command of the units that would carry out the raid.

  It seemed a safe assumption that Shiva traveled always with a strong escort. But when Commander Normandy began to compile an inventory of the types of machines that were arrayed against her, she realized, with a surge of hope, that the enemy force was nowhere near as formidable as she had feared at first. It included no machines of the heavy cruiser or dreadnought classes, nor any carriers. Evidently the enemy's main forces were occupied elsewhere, seeking the most profitable targets in terms of the quantities of life, human and otherwise, that could be extinguished. Shiva had chosen not to wait, not to delay for the time necessary to assemble an overwhelming fleet.

  But in other ways, the berserker task force was alarming indeed. One question now puzzling the commander was: How had Shiva been able to equip its force, on short notice, with so many boarding and landing machines? They must have been intended for use elsewhere, until Shiva diverted them to the Hyperborea operation.

  Conversely, it might have been the fortuitous availability of such a force that had decided the enemy to attack at the time and in the way it did.

  The implication was that the berserker too had accepted a desperate gamble. The fact that Shiva was here, risking its own existence, could only mean that it computed that grave risk as acceptable-and the only thing that would make it acceptable was the probability of inflicting an enormous loss upon the badlife.

  An hour after the first strike came roaring in, after the Solarians had survived the first onslaught, their chance came to counterattack on the ground. The space-borne counterpunch, such as it was, had been delivered by the ships that had been ready to launch anyway.

  Commander Normandy would have given her right arm for a heavy tank or two to throw into the battle now, taking the enemy in the rear. But the Solarians had nothing like that available.

  The same idiosyncrasies that made Shiva such a formidable antagonist also caused it to behave oddly, for a berserker.

  If audacity succeeded-and it had then next time, the enemy would tend to be even more daring.

  Harry wondered how much of human history Shiva might have been able to absorb. Whether it had learned that even the greatest of military commanders, human or otherwise, tended to show some characteristic weakness.

  NINETEEN

  Shiva's unliving warriors had indeed succeeded in bearing their unliving master with them into the computer room. It had been possible to remain therefor only a brief time, under intense Solarian fire, but those few seconds of close contact with the badlife machine had been enough. The berserkers had succeeded in at least partially achieving their prime objective-they had gained certain Vital secrets.

  Commander Normandy, an advanced computer expert, theorized that Shiva had chosen to put itself in the forefront of the battle because the plundering of the Solarian computers' most important secrets would be possible only if it got itself into close physical proximity with them, its circuits reacting to theirs at no more than picosecond range. And now she realized, with a sinking feeling of defeat, that during the berserkers' brief occupation of the computer room, the security of one of the machines had been breached, and vital data plundered.

  Shiva had now managed to confirm, to its own optelectronic satisfaction, the answer for which it had risked its valuable existence. Across vast stretches of the Galaxy, the information cargoes of berserker couriers were being secretly copied by some new Solarian science that bordered on fantasy. By a superior technology that left no trace, no reason to suspect tampering.

  The precise means by which the badlife were able to accomplish such feats of wizardry were still obscure, but the fact that they did so had now been established, beyond any possibility of logical dispute.

  The deeply disastrous truth had been discovered, and any purely human psychology would have found it devastating. But berserkers were utterly immune to such blows. What was necessary now was what was always necessary to a computer First to discover, and then to take, the next step toward the ultimate goal. In the present situation, new means of conveying information must be devised as soon as possible, and some of the badlife spy technology must be captured, studied, analyzed, duplicated, and effective countermeasures put in place.

  The vital knowledge gained would be of little use unless it could be conveyed to berserker high command. Shiva moved on, with its usual nerveless elan, to the next necessary step, the arrangement of a means of escape, or at least of transmitting the data to berserker high command. Its own space-going craft were all shot up, blown to bits or hopelessly crippled, the last one blasted out of low orbit by an unexpected round from a c-plus cannon mounted on a grounded ship. Another means must be found to convey the vital data to its destination. Some Solarian equipment that was still intact must be taken over.

  Alternative means of transmitting the information, dependent on radio or other light-speed signal, were hopelessly slow and inadequate over the distances involved.

  Commander Normandy said: "It's going to have to steal one of our ships to get away. Looks like all of its own carrier machines were wrecked, thanks to our defenses, when they crash-landed."

  Harry Silver nodded. "And we're going to have to see that it dies trying."

  Only two ships remained on the field, H
arry's Witch and the emperor's Galaxy. As seen from outside, neither appeared to be damaged.

  Marut's destroyer had gone roaring off in the early minutes of the attack, and there was good reason to believe it had been destroyed, lost with all hands. Commander Normandy as yet had no absolute confirmation of that fact.

  With the fight in nearby space at an end for the time being, a few of the smaller Solarian craft that had survived had also returned to the field. But those smaller than the patrol craft lacked interstellar drive. And the single patrol craft to come down had landed only because it needed repowering, which could not be accomplished now. Its mate had lost contact with the base, and had to be presumed lost.

  "Lieutenant Silver, get out to your ship and see if you can get space-borne. If you can, stand by in low orbit to take out the Galaxy if the berserkers seize it. If you can't manage a liftoff, let me know."

  "Yes, ma'am. But let me stop in the hospital on the way, see if I can talk with Becky-Lieutenant Sharp. She was at the controls of the Witch after I was. She's probably still in a medirobot, but maybe she can tell me what happened to the thoughtware."

  Commander Normandy nodded her agreement. Harry saluted-some old habit surfacing, evidently-and was gone.

  The commander turned back to her holostage. "What's going on with the emperor and his ship? Sadie, try to raise them, see if we can find out."

  "Yes, ma'am." But Sadie's first effort to establish communication failed, drowned out by hellish noise.

  At the moment, there was little noise inside the shielded main cabin of the Galaxy. Only two people sat there, surrounded and greatly outnumbered by empty combat chairs, and the pair was gripped by a hushed and terrible silence.

  Not that an impartial observer would have thought their situation all that desperate, not for the crew of a warship that was supposedly engaged in battle.

  Admiral Hector was in the pilot's chair, with the Emperor Julius seated next to him upon a throne-like chair that had been slightly and symbolically raised above the others.

  None of the rest of the crew, the people upon whom Julius had counted so intensely, had reached the ship before the emperor had ordered liftoff.

  Julius had refused to delay more than half a minute for the laggards. "Lift off, I say!" he had commanded the admiral, his pilot. "The fewer we are, the greater the share of glory that must come to each."

  Now, half an hour later, Julius smiled grimly, remembering the admiral's warning that it would be very dangerous going into combat with the crew short-handed. Such had been the emperor's difficulties with the single crew member who had made the trip that he was ready to believe that having his full crew might have been tantamount to suicide.

  The smoothest part of the whole exercise had been the landing, handled by the autopilot. The interior of the main cabin was still as calm as his bedroom in the palace, back on Good Intentions. The Emperor Julius, conscious of looking regal on his small throne, wondered whether any of the great empires of the past had entered their final stages of collapse in such a mundane setting.

  Not long ago, during most of the few days he'd spent in his Spartan assigned quarters on the Space Force base, and especially in those early minutes after the alarm had sounded, the chief and secret fear of the Emperor Julius had been that he and his fighting ship would never get off the ground at all. That his effort to find redemption in battle, like so many others he'd made in recent years, would be aborted, was doomed to die in futility and disappointment.

  As recently as an hour ago, he had been proud of the fact that the training and practice in spacecraft that he had insisted on for the crew of his flagship, before ever coming to Hyperborea, had not been wasted. The immediate difficulties had been overcome, and he and his selected crew of one had lifted off successfully in their ship.

  Then, with the pilot's helmet seated more firmly than any crown on the incompetent head of his chief and most loyal supporter, they'd lifted off in a blast of acceleration, and had gone roaring out at full speed, on the emperor's express orders to seek immediate contact with the enemy. This was not, of course, the battle for which they had been several days preparing, and he had received no orders from Commander Normandy on how to deal with this situation. But to the emperor, such details hardly mattered now. He had his own goal and knew, essentially, what he had to do to reach it.

  At some point during those early minutes of flight, while he'd thought he was being carried into battle, the emperor's mood had soared, becoming euphoric, almost ecstatic. They were looking for a fight, as ready for one as they could be-

  But somehow, in the midst of a battle, they hadn't been able to come to grips with the enemy, or even to locate it precisely. It had been in the ensuing bewilderment that his fanatical aide suggested, in all apparent seriousness, that the berserkers were afraid of the Emperor Julius. The death-machines had fled on learning that His Imperial Highness had taken the field.

  Julius had not laughed on hearing this. Instead, he'd stared at Admiral Hector, who was gazing back at him, waiting to find out from him whether the theory the admiral had just put forward might possibly be true. Hector was like all the other worshipers, dependent for instructions from their god on what to say, what to think. That, of course, was what Julius wanted them to be, but sometimes, as now, he infinitely despised them all. He gave them no signal. And so none of them knew what to think.

  For a horrible few minutes, the Emperor Julius had wondered whether the battle might be over before he could take part.

  As the minutes passed, two, three, ten, then a quarter of an hour, with the planetoid Hyperborea falling farther and farther behind them, it had gradually become obvious that the whole berserker attack must have bypassed the Galaxy, left her drifting peacefully alone in deep space. They had not been defeated, but ignored by an enemy that went plunging on toward its chosen objective.

  Vaguely, Julius had been picturing a thousand, or at least several hundred, berserker battlecraft swarming around the planetoid. But now it seemed that the numbers involved had to be very much less than that. And he wondered, military innocent that he was, what had prompted the enemy to attack with less than overwhelming force.

  And then at last he broke his silence. "Where is the enemy?" he demanded of his loyal crew person. For a long time this man had represented himself to Julius as competent in matters of space warfare, but now the emperor could see that Hector's competence was a delusion.

  The question was rhetorical, because its answer was plain for both of them to see. The wave of attacking enemy machines, intent with single-minded ferocity upon some other goal, had evidently ignored them, had gone right past the Galaxy. All the berserker force was now concentrated in the close vicinity of Hyperborea.

  Then, lashed by the tongue of an angry emperor, the pilot turned the ship in space and headed back toward the planetoid, where the berserkers were.

  It had taken them another quarter of an hour to get back to the near vicinity of Hyperborea. And then, less than a minute more than that, to be forced out of the fight, not by direct enemy action, but by their own incompetence. Somehow, the control system, the thoughtware, had become scrambled in such a way that the autopilot had automatically taken over and brought the craft in for a landing.

  Monumental futility! They seemed to be laboring under a curse. The emperor swore, in four languages, starting in a whisper and ending in a full-throated bellow.

  The tirade was cut short a few minutes later, and its object saved from having to respond, by the signal of an incoming message on the main holostage.

  Soon the head and shoulders of Commander Normandy appeared there, demanding, in a very military voice, to know what the hell was going on.

  The emperor's expression as he faced the holostage was as proud as if he had a smashing victory to report. "Commander, our ship has experienced difficulties, but we will soon be reentering the fight."

  The face of Normandy's image was blurred by battle noise, but her voice came through crisply
. "I must warn you that Shiva is on the ground here. It has taken direct tactical control of the enemy forces." After a short pause, just long enough to draw breath, she also informed him of what had happened to his missing crew members. Shortly after the Galaxy lifted off, they had been killed en masse by a berserker that caught them milling about on the landing field. "I tell you this in case you have landed expecting more of your crew to join you. That will not be possible."

  "I understand." Julius drew a deep breath of his own. He wanted to say good riddance-but he did not. "That was not the reason for our landing."

  But Commander Normandy had broken off communication as soon as she finished speaking. Had Julius intended to offer any explanation or excuse, she would not have heard it. But that made no difference to him, because he had nothing more to say.

  What he did have to do now was to deal somehow with the remnants of his incompetent crew. Turning to Admiral Hector, who still occupied the pilot's seat, Julius got to his feet and calmly ordered the fellow to take off his helmet.

  With trembling hands, the admiral did so.

  "Our ship is not damaged, as far as you can tell?" the emperor demanded. "It is possible for us to lift off again?"

  "I believe so, Your Imperial Highness. But I must refuse the attempt. I am not qualified." This man was sobbing, his words almost indistinguishable. He wasn't going to pick up his helmet and put it on again.

  "So you have demonstrated. But you drove us successfully from Gee Eye to Hyperborea," Julius mused aloud.

  "I must admit, sire, that journey was accomplished largely on automatic pilot. Not all the way, only at every point where we might have encountered difficulty. But in combat, to use the autopilot is not… not feasible."

  "I should imagine not."