Domingo cursed and groaned. He wanted to thwart Leviathan, achieve its destruction on his own terms, not allow it to run up a final score, a final personal insult to him, as it died. He offered to sell his soul for a c-plus cannon and three or four cartridges.
Simeon reflected that a near-miss of the enemy now with such a weapon might well wipe out all life on da Gama as the planetoid’s gravitational well sucked in the massive leaden slug, traveling effectively faster than a photon. But the captain would not have been unduly worried about that possibility. In any case the question was academic. No power was bidding that much hardware for Domingo’s soul.
The captain’s muttering went on. “Someone stop it. Someone delay it. Hold it up just a little, and I’ll ram this vessel down its bloody throat.”
“We’d wreck ourselves for sure, trying that trick. I don’t know if we’d be able to wreck—that.” Simeon recalled the model showing how structural members stuck out around the body of the enemy like an exoskeleton of ribs—or the bars confining a caged skull. He wondered what that framework was made of and how much of it was left.
Suddenly Domingo went on radio, trying to reach the enemy, shouting now. “I’m back here, Skullface, behind you. I’m the one you want. Turn back and get me, here. Turn back for me and I’ll come aboard you.”
Something in Simeon’s imagination was fascinated by the mad plan. But Old Blue did not respond. “We’re going to have to catch it, Captain, somehow.”
Now Domingo sounded almost rational again. “Maybe we can catapult the launch ahead … it’s a much smaller cross-section, we can get it moving faster without piling up. Ike, are you suited up?” The only good reason not to be in combat armor at this stage would be if you were tending your wounds.
Ike’s first answer on the intercom made no sense. The words were hard to make out, but they sounded like a snatch of song.
The captain tried again. “Ike, are you suited and ready?”
“Be there in a minute, Cap.”
* * *
Baza could be seen on intercom, coming through the padded tunnel for a face-to-face confrontation with his captain. Iskander, startlingly, was not wearing his helmet, and his face, even in the tiny image visible to Simeon and Branwen, was no longer that of a sane man. It was as if all the strain had been removed; actually Simeon thought Iskander’s countenance showed a very great relief, as if it had somehow been revealed to him that in a little while, very soon, he was going to be free of this unendurable situation at last. In one way or another.
His first words as he met the captain were: “I mean, Cap, a joke’s a joke, but you’re on the verge of carrying it too far.” And Baza laughed, something he rarely did for all his jesting, and began pulling off what he was still wearing of his combat armor.
At first Domingo persisted in trying to get his second-in-command into the launch. But quickly even the captain realized he had to give up on that. “Get back to your station.”
His former second-in-command ignored the order. “I thought it—didn’t matter. To me. What happened, now or later. Thought it was all a big joke. But I can’t take this. Can’t take going after it again, see, Cap? I—” Another chunk of the protective suit came off and was cast aside.
“Get back to your station. Or to sickbay. This is the last time I’m telling you.”
“I don’t care, Cap. I was … I was supposed to be the one who kept you going. Or watched you crack. But I …”
Domingo shot him. It was a beam-projector weapon that the captain used, and Simeon could only think, or hope, it had been set to stun and not to kill.
In the next moment Domingo had shoved the fallen body out of his way, and turned his full attention back to his fleeing enemy. No time to drag the man to the sickbay, there was piloting to do.
The chase went on.
The next voice that came over Domingo’s radio was that of Gujar Sidoruk, now commanding the Home Defense ship next closest to da Gama, and visible now on the Pearl‘s detectors. Domingo acknowledged the call without surprise. The two captains were soon doing what they could to coordinate their efforts.
Gujar was quickly provided with an outline of what had been learned so far about the Nebulons.
He commented that with such allies, berserkers could now be cleaned out of the Milkpail entirely.
Probably. Eventually. But that didn’t help the immediate crisis. The Nebulons were already doing all they could, as Fourth Adventurer still reported feebly from time to time. Gujar was simply too far away to be able to intercept Leviathan before it hit the planetoid.
Da Gama’s Ground Defense weapons opened up abruptly on Old Blue at long range. The berserker fired back. Communication between the two ships became very difficult, what with all the ionization and other noise spreading out between them, and no one wasted words trying to tell Domingo that Polly was on Gujar’s ship.
Aboard Gujar’s ship, Polly and Gujar talked after the communication with the Pearlwas broken off.
Polly knew now that the ship pursuing Leviathan was Domingo’s and that he was at the helm. But her thoughts were frozen on her two children, who were both on the imperiled colony of da Gama. Gujar was getting there as fast as he could. But not rapidly enough.
Gujar was also thinking about Polly. But he was very well aware that she was really concerned with certain other people much more than with him.
The Carmpan, who had been huddled at his station for a long time, rarely speaking, now had a new communication for his ED shipmates. The berserkers had for some time been concentrating on attacking those colonies the Spacedwellers had approached, trying to examine the ED humans’ way of life. The death machines had wrongly assumed that the two kinds of intelligent life forms were already cooperating in some way against berserkers. Therefore the berserkers had targeted their attacks with a view to breaking up or frustrating the cooperation.
“Thank you, Adventurer,” Simeon said when the report was over. Domingo said nothing.
Old Blue’s weapons, from medium range, leveled the inadequate ground batteries on the surface of the planetoid ahead. It dropped intelligent proximity mines to blast at the Pearlwhen the pursuing ship drew near. And it used its own remaining missiles to pound at Gujar’s craft.
Simeon hurled the last of his missiles, hoarded until now. More near-misses that must have inflicted more damage. But Leviathan plowed on.
The world of da Gama was coming closer and closer, now only a few minutes distant.
This close to da Gama’s sun the density of the nebular medium interfered even more seriously with the progress of the huge machine. Its drive was evidently failing as well. Now it was rapidly losing speed, despite all that its battered engines could do.
* * *
Ferdy and Agnes, along with a thousand other people, were in a shelter, down about as deep as anyone could get on a small planetoid, with kilometers of rock above their heads. Drastic measures were being taken to conserve power, and only a few distant emergency lights relieved the darkness. The game the two children had been trying to play was halted when the lights went out.
They both wished aloud for their mother, and both assured each other that they knew she couldn’t be there but that she was going to be all right in her ship.
Then the artificial gravity let go. The two children and the people around them had no warning before it happened. But the authorities came on the loudspeakers promptly and managed to prevent panic at least for the moment.
Leviathan, trailing blue flames, still came on toward da Gama at a rate measured in kilometers per second. But the ground defenses were making their final inspired effort to slow the hurtling mass of death. A countersurge of inverse gravitational force was generated and focused, burning out all the generators and doing other damage everywhere across the surface; but not nearly as much damage as an undampened impact would have done.
One strange and unexpected result was observed, a scattering away from the enemy of what looked on instruments like
a swarm of harvestable nebular life. But that made no sense and had no bearing on the immediate threat, and the technician who made the observation said nothing about it until later.
The Nebulons, caught at a crucial moment by the surge of contending gravitational fields in space, had to retreat from the conflict. They were stunned and scattered, and until now their great dead-metal foe had managed to keep its most vital organs shielded from their attacks.
The berserker, stopped almost completely by the unexpected countersurge of force, came crashing down on the surface of the planetoid. At the last moment, forced to change its plans, it used what was left of its own drive to brake its forward progress. It had lost so much momentum that a mere crash would no longer do the damage that it wanted. Now, having been slowed so much despite itself, it wanted to arrive on the surface with some dangerous hardware left intact.
Its final impact with the surface took place at a very modest velocity. Nothing was vaporized in the impact, and even the subsurface shelters nearby were not collapsed.
* * *
But the humans huddled in the control center of Ground Defense and those in the watching ships understood the situation and held their breath collectively, waiting for the c-plus blast that did not come.
To fire at the enemy now with heavy weapons might trigger the berserker’s c-plus drive into detonation, so that was ruled out. Not that Ground Defense had any heavy weapons available that could fire at an object on the ground.
Domingo had none left, either. He might not have used them if they were available. He had decided—or he understood now that it was his destiny—to go aboard one more berserker before he died.
CHAPTER 23
Domingo, on the point of jumping into the launch alone, held back at the last moment, forcing himself to calculate carefully. It was possible that he would need all the support his ship was still capable of giving him. He had to make sure that the most effective person available was left at the helm. Iskander—no. Dead, or still unable to function. Domingo hadn’t seen the man since Simeon had dragged him away, but Baza could hardly be in shape to command. He would have to trust his ship to someone else.
The captain, standing in the ventral bay outside the launch, quickly patched into the intercom. “Fourth Adventurer? You are to assume command of this ship in my absence. This is an order.”
“I must respectfully refuse, Captain.”
Domingo was taken aback. “An order, I said.”
“I understand, Captain, and still refuse. You do not know what you are ordering.”
In that voice Domingo could hear stubbornness equal to his own. He was sure that threats would do no good, nor would shooting Fourth Adventurer bring about the desired result. Besides, if the Carmpan was that sure, he was probably right.
Branwen, then; but no, she was still suffering from her concussion-like injury. .
Spence? No, another use for him had just suggested itself to the captain. And if the captain had a choice, he didn’t particularly want to leave Branwen and Spence Benkovic effectively alone together. Not after hearing the story the woman had related to him.
It would be Simeon then. He was, Domingo judged, in the best shape of anyone aboard.
It required only a moment on intercom to leave Simeon Chakuchin in command of the Pearl.
Domingo’s next call was to Spence. Benkovic, like everyone else, was haggard and on the verge of cracking. But when ordered by the captain to come along on yet one more boarding, Spence did no more than give his leader a strange look before acknowledging the order without protest. A minute later Benkovic, suited and ready, appeared in the ventral bay.
Domingo’s plan called for the launch with the two boarders on it to be slung on ahead of the Pearlby a maneuver of the larger ship. Chakuchin, now at the Pearl‘s helm, would manage that as best he could, with what help Galway could give him.
Leviathan, though crashed and grounded, was not yet totally subdued. Or at least Domingo would not have been willing to believe for a second that the machine had been effectively defeated. But the captain’s first good look at his fallen archenemy through the clear windows of the launch brought home to him with striking force how close he now was, or ought to be, to final victory. The great mass of the berserker was sprawled on rock, physically broken. Like a flung starfish, still more like a shattered skull, the huge machine lay bent over what had once been a small rocky hill. Though the central part of the hull was still intact, it seemed clearly impossible that the vast ruined bulk could ever move again under its own power. The huge ribs of the projecting exoskeleton were bent and fractured, and even as Domingo watched, what remained of Leviathan’s defensive forcefields were sputtering and dissolving in a faint rainbow whose dominant hue was still essentially blue.
There were no signs that human habitation had ever existed in the immediate vicinity of the downed giant, but in the distance, dropping back over the near horizon of the planetoid as the launch hurtled closer, were roads, harvesting towers and buildings, most of them now at least partially destroyed.
“Looks dead. Damned dead,” said Benkovic, meaning the berserker.
“It’s not. Not yet. I know.”
Benkovic said nothing.
The voice of Elena Mossuril, the mayor of da Gama, came into the launch through a radio relay requesting Captain Domingo to respond.
The captain ignored the first two calls before answering the third out of irritation. “Niles Domingo here. I’m busy.”
A brief pause. Then the voice on the radio resumed. “I’m sure you are, Captain Domingo. I must talk to you, though. This is the mayor, Elena Mossuril, and I want you to tell me what you’re doing. Coded transmission and tightbeam, please.”
“Talk to my acting second. Simeon, take over this conversation.” And the captain concentrated again on his ship. But he listened in to what was being said on the radio.
Simeon, on the Pearl, explained to the mayor what Domingo was doing and assured her that his ship was standing by, ready to use what weapons she had left.
Mayor Mossuril in turn urged Chakuchin not to fire at the downed berserker because of the danger of a secondary explosion. He should fire only at landers if they were deployed from the wreck, but none had been observed so far. He gave her assurances that he was not going to fire unless his captain ordered it; and that was the best that she could get.
The mayor in her deep shelter kept receiving discouraging reports from her tiny ground-based forces. They stated that they were unable to do very much at all about the berserker.
To begin with, there were no suitable all-terrain fighting vehicles available. With the artificial gravity gone, the surface atmosphere was being lost too rapidly to allow for the practical use of aircraft. And the assault force that was trying to reach the enemy on foot in space armor was bogged down in giant crevasses where the newly fractured and churned land kept slipping and sliding and piling up around them.
The mayor could hardly blame anyone for moving very deliberately in approaching the downed monster.
Even if—and this the mayor had not dared try to tell her allies out in space, for fear the berserker could be listening—even if there was a subshelter holding a thousand people almost underneath the thing.
Simeon’s stock of missiles had been totally used up. All of the heavy weapon systems of the Pearlwere virtually exhausted. She continued to move toward da Gama and Leviathan, but would be able to do little or nothing when she got there. It would be a couple of hours before another ship was in a good position to help.
Simeon and Branwen stayed at their battle stations and kept the ship going as best they could. There were still some light weapons in usable condition.
The Carmpan groaned in his berth, crying out with the psychic pain of singed and slaughtered Nebulons, and with his own untranslatable interior torment.
Iskander Baza in sickbay was nearly dead. The stunner at a range of only two meters had done to him what such supposedly non-lethal weapons a
ll too often did.
And now a blood vessel broke inside the victim’s brain.
Presently the machines gave up on his heart.
Minutes passed before any of his used-up shipmates noticed that he had died.
The launch with Domingo and Spence Benkovic aboard, descending swiftly and smoothly, came to a halt not quite touching the slabs of rock thrown up along the enemy’s broken side. The little vessel came very close to docking against rock, even against the berserker’s hull, but Domingo deliberately avoided solid contact.
Crisply the captain gave Benkovic his orders: to remain on the launch, to stay on guard and be ready to respond to whatever other orders might come from Domingo.
Judging from Spence’s quiet, subdued response, and the fact that the simple orders had to be repeated, it was evident that he was in an increasingly odd mental state. But there was nothing to be done about that now.
As soon as the vessel was practically motionless relative to the ground, the captain in his armor, carrying weapons and tools, slipped out of a hatch and dropped lightly and slowly the few meters remaining.
The sprawled body of his archenemy towered over him, the broken ribs of the birdcage twisted into fantastic shapes. A gust of almost invisible blue flame played harmlessly from a rent in the berserker’s hull. Another larger rent nearby, one Domingo had already picked out as a good means of entering the body of his enemy, was dark and quiet.
After looking the scene over for only a few seconds, Domingo moved on alone. It did not seem particularly strange to him that he was about to carry out yet another boarding, though he supposed it was doubtful whether any other human being in history had invaded active berserkers so many times. The captain knew only that he must seek out the deadly life of this thing that had destroyed his own life, face it somehow in a final confrontation. After having come this far and been through this much, simply to destroy the hardware of it—to blast and burn its physical shape away—would no longer be enough. Whatever he needed to release him had not yet happened.
There were no immediate death traps ready for him as he went inside Leviathan’s hull. There was no resistance of any kind.
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