Hector groaned. Obviously, he was practically dying of shame. "I should never have attempted combat flight, it is beyond my ability."
"Well," said the emperor slowly, "what you have done, you have done. There is no help for it now." He took a step closer to the combat chair where Admiral Hector sat, and standing over him, reached out a hand. "Give me the helmet."
The pilot's helmet left the admiral's face exposed, eyes behind a transparent shield, and the emperor could see him blanch. "Sire. You have not the training, not even as much as I-"
"But I have other qualifications that you lack. Give me the helmet." He was thinking that wearing the pilot's helmet ought to at least give him a good look at the ship's surroundings, a more immediate sense of what was happening than was provided on the holostage.
As soon as Julius had placed the helmet on his head, he became aware of blurry presentations, perceptions of the ship's systems and of the outside world. But for the moment, he ignored them; there was another matter that had to be concluded first. Drawing his sidearm, he lifted it, aiming it point-blank between the admiral's unprotected eyes. When the pistol came up to aim at Hector, the man closed his eyes, but he did not flinch or turn away. Such executive punishments were rare in the empire, but not unheard of.
At first the emperor thought that the gun had made no mess at all; but when he looked again, beyond the admiral's shattered and now immobile head, he saw that someone would have to do some cleaning up. Well, it would not be him. And maybe it would not be necessary, after all.
There was a crisp sound of movement, of the operation of a door, in the direction of the main airlock, and Julius turned, pistol still in hand. Someone was coming in.
"Who-?"
And then the emperor understood that he might better have asked what. It seemed to him that if he drew in a deep breath, he would be dead before he had the chance to let the air all out again.
In keeping with the crew's unblemished record of ineptitude-in this indictment, Julius did not exempt himself-no one had seen the enemy approaching the ship.
A silvery quartet of berserker boarding machines, moving alertly, on guard against treacherous Solarian ambush, marched into the grounded Galaxy, which seemed to them at this moment the most readily capturable means of transportation. Four of them, their shapes a poor approximation of the human, silvery metal showing through where some kind of outer coating, what must have been an attempt at camouflage, had been shredded. Silently, they deployed themselves in an almost regular arc, all four of them equally distant from the emperor. Silently, they thus confronted him.
Too late the sole survivor realized that the outer door of the airlock had, through yet another calamitous oversight, been left unlocked. Maybe it had automatically unlocked itself when someone called for an emergency landing.
The deep breath came and went, and was followed by another. And he was still alive.
As always, even if no one was now left alive to watch him, Julius was making every effort not to appear indecisive. But he really had no idea of what to do next.
In his quiet desperation, he was even toying with the idea of personally taking the ship up into space again. He couldn't do any worse than his supposedly expert helper had done.
The death-machines remained standing in their deployment before him, saying nothing. All was quiet in the cabin, save for the muted background noise of intermittent combat.
Deliberately, as deliberately as he had executed the admiral, the emperor raised the pistol and fired at the machine that happened to be standing nearest to him. This time, the effect on the target was negligible. Whatever came out of the barrel glanced harmlessly from berserker armor to smack into a bulkhead on the far side of the cabin.
The Emperor Julius looked at his hopelessly inadequate handgun-but any machine that calculated he was going to pitch it away was sadly mistaken. Unhurriedly, without the slightest loss of dignity, he raised it for another calculated shot at the foe.
In the time required for his arm to perform that motion, one of the machines had crossed the cabin, in a movement whose speed and fluidity took his breath away, and laid a hand of clawlike grippers on his gun. Before Julius could get off another round, the pistol's stubby barrel had been bent, the sides of the magazine, a centimeter from the imperial fingers, crushed to uselessness. Then the weapon was pulled away.
The emperor's skin had not been scratched, not a hair had been turned on his head or a thread of his clothing even rumpled. The hand with which he'd held the gun had not been damaged by the violent treatment accorded the weapon.
The man who had been ready to embrace death found that death, in its most virulent form, seemed to be trying to treat him as gently as possible.
"Remove your helmet," one of the machines squeaked at him. It seemed to Julius that the berserker was deliberately taunting him, echoing his own words spoken just before he'd shot his once-trusted second-in-command.
"I will not," his airspeakers rasped out. He thought they somewhat augmented the tones of power and dignity that he had so long and carefully cultivated in his voice.
He stood there, having got to his feet when they came in, his body tensing in anticipation of a death that did not come. He could feel his knees actually quivering, something that had never happened to him-not since the days of his little-remembered childhood. Why would they not kill him?
Why this further, terrible, humiliation?
Shiva, processing data as methodically as ever, paused for an unusually long time when it read a certain insignia that was new to its extensive memory. The insignia, borne by the body of the dead life-unit now lying before it, was that of an admiral-and an admiral in some Solarian fleet whose very existence had been unknown to the berserker until now.
It seemed extremely, astronomically, improbable that the badlife would have created such an insignia, endowed one of their units with an apparent rank, simply in an attempt at deception.
Remembering what Commander Normandy had told him in her latest communication, the emperor demanded of the machines that seemed to be playing the role of honor guard for him: "Where is the one called Shiva? It cannot be any one of you." Even as he spoke, Julius formed a sudden mental image of what Shiva ought to look like, regal and lethal and metallic all at the same time. No doubt his imagination was technically incorrect, but he found it inwardly satisfying all the same. None of the berserkers before him now came close to matching it.
But he had scarcely finished speaking before one of them, he wasn't quite sure which, because of course there were no lip movements, replied, "I am the one called Shiva, and I can speak to you through any of the units that stand before you."
Turning his gaze away from the machines in front of him, Julius said: "Then you are not physically present in my ship. I am Emperor of the Galaxy, and I do not deal with intermediaries. I want your physical presence. Come here, into this cabin, and stand before me. At that time, we will discuss my handing over the control device."
A moment later, when the same machine voice-he still couldn't tell which of the four machines the words were coming from, but he supposed it didn't matter-questioned Julius on the subject, he repeated in a firm voice his claim to be the ruler of the Galaxy.
According to all berserker records of Solarian behavior, the great majority of totally deranged humans were kept under confinement by the relatively rational members of the species. It seemed illogical that those with serious mental deficiencies would be allowed to pilot their own spaceships. But no completely satisfactory interpretation of badlife behavior had ever been computed.
These machines did their best to secure the Galaxy for their master's use. But they were unable to make a decision in the matter of this strange prisoner without consulting Shiva.
Shiva was about to order its subordinate units to confine the life-unit for further investigation, since that could be easily and quickly done, and then to hold the ship ready for liftoff.
But the video transmitted by Sh
iva's servants told it that the badlife was wearing the pilot's helmet. And that put a whole new face on the matter.
The best prediction of the outcome that Claire Normandy could now get from her computers was that the battle would most likely grind down to something like a draw.
Aboard the Galaxy, the standoff still held, one man, unarmed now except for his thoughts, the electrochemical changes in his fragile brain, facing a row of mechanical monsters. Occasionally there was some exchange of dialogue between human and murderous machine. The thing spoke in a squeaky voice, the way berserkers generally did when they decided to speak at all-no one had ever discovered why.
Why was it wasting energy now on argument? The emperor's vanity allowed him to convince himself that even berserkers were vulnerable to his charm, his charisma.
People watching him, had there been any, would think that he was stalling for time, with nothing to lose, in hopes of some favorable event. But that wasn't really it at all. It wasn't time that Julius was waiting for, but opportunity.
And suddenly, through the helmet, he heard a voice that he was able to recognize as that of Commander Normandy.
"Emperor Julius? Are you still there? We saw the berserkers enter your ship."
"I am still here, Commander."
"Subvocalize your answers and I don't think they can hear us. What is your situation?"
Briefly, he outlined the position. "Commander, how big is Shiva? I want to know how I might be able to recognize that device, when-if-it should stand before me."
"Do you have some reason to think that's going to happen?"
"I have my hopes. How will I know when it is in my ship?" Any ordinary human in his position, talking with the enemy, might be accused of being goodlife. But it never crossed Julius's mind to worry about such things. The Emperor of the Galaxy was above all ordinary law. Such rules could not apply to him.
The voice of the commander sounded strained. "I can't tell you what Shiva looks like, exactly what size it is. I don't mean that I refuse, but that no human being knows. There is, however, something of great importance that I must tell you. As long as you continue to wear the pilot's helmet," said Commander Normandy, speaking carefully, "they probably won't kill you. They won't even take the chance of shocking your nervous system with a disabling wound. With that helmet on, your nervous system is very closely engaged with the ship's systems, including the interstellar drive. To engage that drive while your ship is sitting where it is, right on the surface of a planetoid as big as Hyperborea, would destroy your vessel on the spot. And that, you see, must be what they are trying to avoid."
"I see," said the emperor. It came as no great surprise.
His greatness, his glory, his leadership-all that meant nothing to them. Nothing. To them, he was another badlife unit, and no more. It was the ship they wanted. The ship that for some reason, they felt they had to have…
Any combatant, human or otherwise, who had great need of a ship would be very careful not to wreck it. Just now the berserkers were being very careful about that, and it was easy to deduce that they did not want the life-unit who happened to be wearing the control helmet to die a violent death. Probably for the same reason, the intruders had very carefully taken his pistol away-they were taking no chances on his deciding suddenly to shoot up the control console.
Meanwhile, he could sense through the helmet how, outside his quiet ship, the battle flared and died away again.
Even when on the verge of its own destruction, Shiva's compulsion to learn was such that it couldn't resist trying to find out whether the whole situation that had brought it here to destruction was an elaborate trap, a hoax, a scam worked on it with fiendish cleverness by the badlife, who had been willing to sacrifice numbers of their own life-units in the process. It wanted to know if one of their computers had enabled them to figure out and work a plot of such terrible complexity.
Someone-a spacer Harry Silver could not remember having seen before-who had been shot down by a berserker lander lay dying in a corridor and had pulled his helmet off.
Harry, on his way to the hospital to interview Becky, stopped briefly to attend the dying man.
The mangled spacer gulped for air, and for a moment, Harry wondered what today's scent in the corridors might be. No one who had a helmet on could tell. It might help a little, he thought, to go out with fresh pine scent in your nostrils, or maybe oceanside salt air. Either one of those would be nice when his own time came.
Back on the Galaxy, Julius was thinking that this was not exactly the kind of ending he had envisioned for himself or for his cause. He had seen himself and his loyal followers as charging gloriously into battle. Over and over again he had imagined the Galaxy in a suicidal ramming against some kind of berserker flagship.
No doubt if any of the people on his maladroit crew had actually tried a stunt like that, they would have committed some hideous mistake and crashed into the wrong object.
And now fortune, fate, destiny-so often against him over the past few years-had now relented, had given him one last advantage. It was just that he had happened to be wearing the live control helmet when they came in-not even a berserker could move faster than human thought across the quantum interface between his brain and the optelectronic systems of the ship.
His mind went scanning through the images of controls and systems that he had been practically ignoring up till now-yes, that must be the drive, and there were the mains of power. Exactly how would one go about ordering a suicidal c-plus jump? It would be terrible, an inconceivable failure, to attempt such a stroke and then to botch if somehow. As it seemed to be his fate to botch mechanical, physical things in general.
Now he was earnestly attempting to delay the blast until he could be certain, certain enough to act, that Shiva had actually been brought aboard.
When one of the berserker units before him spoke to him again, the emperor insisted on confronting the enemy chieftain, or commanding officer, face to panel.
At last, the voice in which the enemy spoke to him agreed. It promised him that it would come aboard.
"I await your arrival," he said, and sat down once more in the pilot's chair. He seemed to have been standing too long, but even sitting, he took care to hold himself upright, as if he were on a throne. Whatever happened now, whatever the enemy might do, he must not faint.
TWENTY
For thousands of years, berserker computers had understood-to the extent that such machines were able to understand anything about humanity-that the badlife, in their swarming billions of units, often behaved and spoke illogically, in modes of thought incomprehensible to the pure computer intellect. To Shiva, or to any other berserker capable of making decisions of comparable complexity, the claim of the life-unit Julius to a certain title, and all that title implied, was irrational. But it was no less rational than many other assertions made by other units of badlife, and believed by billions of their fellows all across the life-infected portion of the Galaxy.
How many or how few life-units agreed with the claim of the one now calling itself an emperor was a question of no intrinsic importance to Shiva. Of infinitely greater moment was the fact that the self-proclaimed emperor continued to wear the pilot's control helmet of a certain ship, and that this ship was perhaps the only intact means of departure from the planetoid.
Contact with the helmet in effect placed the brain of the life-unit in intimate communion with all the systems of the ship, including the thermonuclear power sources and the interstellar drive. Activating that drive this deep in the local and systemic gravitational fields would be immediately disastrous. As long as the life-unit in question continued to wear the helmet, it could not be destroyed, or even subjected to serious shock, without gravely endangering the ship.
Shiva decided it was necessary to make some move to break the deadlock. To board the ship would be to tell the enemy its whereabouts-so it sent a decoy on first, to see what the badlife, in particular the unit claiming to be emperor, would d
o.
Meanwhile, Shiva waited outside, nearby, physically a small, compact unit carried in the grip of a fast-moving boarding device. If no treachery impended, a very quick boarding would be accomplished just before liftoff.
When battle noise once more broke off her contact with the Galaxy, Commander Normandy sat back and took thought. She no longer commanded forces or weapons capable of keeping the emperor's ship from lifting off. Had she done so, she would have used them now. But the power reserves of all her strongest weapons were now exhausted.
"What's he going to do?" Lieutenant Colonel Khodark asked.
"Your guess is as good as mine. I told him what'll happen if he takes the helmet off."
"And if he keeps it on? How long can a standoff last?"
"My guess is that they're going to make him an offer-"
"-and if he's crazy enough to take a berserker's word-"
"-not even an emperor could be that crazy. Could he?" She really wasn't sure.
Another fact that still unsettled the calculations of the death-machines was their observation that one of the dead bodies aboard the emperor's ship bore a written label designating the rank of admiral. The presence of a life-unit of such status strongly suggested a whole fleet of badlife warships somewhere in the vicinity, but no such force had been detected
Shiva had yet to make a decision on what to do with the unit calling itself emperor.
Shiva was quite ready to promise continued life to this life-unit or any other in exchange for a viable getaway vehicle. And it knew that some would always be ready to believe such a promise, even when it came from a berserker.
The emperor had no idea of when more Solarian ships might appear in the black sky of Hyperborea, nor did that any longer matter very much to him.
If only, he thought, the woman who truly loved him could be with him, she would understand. She would comprehend his motives, how he had wanted to save his failing fame, inflate his almost nonexistent reputation, by sacrificing himself to kill this worst berserker of all time…
Shiva in Steel Page 25