Berserker Wars (Omnibus)

by Fred Saberhagen

  Hundreds of years had passed since the seedship computers had seized and made off with their Solarian treasure. In that interval they had succeeded in getting it almost out of sight of berserkers and Solarians alike. The planners could afford to be patient. It was necessary only to outlast the few Solarians still on the station—those violent, weapon-carrying beings living in such perilously close proximity to the artificial wombs. For a time the all-important goal grew more and more likely of attainment.

  Then suddenly, without warning, upsetting all calculations, more Solarians had come threading their way out of the nebula in a badly damaged warship, bringing with them confirmation of an approaching berserker presence in nearby space. Now mobilization was necessary, preparations must be made to fight off these potential attackers.

  The whole situation, long fraught with possibilities for disaster beyond calculation, suddenly became vastly more complicated and dangerous.

  The damaged seedship computers, working sometimes on the verge of breakdown, continued to do the best they could.

  In its first contact with Solarians, the seedship had deliberately passed itself off as a berserker. First, because it would have been difficult to convince suspicious humans that it was anything else. Later, it preferred not to reveal to the handful of organic aliens what an advantage they had in controlling all the artificial wombs.

  If the Solarian aliens were willing to accept their captor as a berserker and still to maintain communication with it, then the seedship would humor them. To try to argue them into the truth seemed to carry the risk of unguessable complications. And it was possible to make the hopeful computation that in a few years, a few decades, a few centuries at the most, they would all be conveniently dead.

  And thus, more or less gradually, the deal between Dirac Sardou and the alien machine had evolved.

  Through discussions between Dirac and his unliving counterpart, their plan for establishing a cooperative colony had evolved—each partner in the scheme planning to double-cross the other as soon as possible.

  Up to the time when the commodore’s band of refugees arrived at the bioresearch station, the seedship brain had been uncertain about the value of the treacherous, brutal Premier as any kind of long-term ally. Of course the Builders’ machine had had little choice; the man had firmly established himself as leader of the small surviving group of humans. And alliance was at least a possibility, with any known entity other than a berserker.

  In fact the seedship’s archives held records of certain Builder individuals who had equaled or surpassed Dirac in the capacity for violence and personal ambition. There was no reason to assume that Dirac was more closely typical of human leaders than those Builders had been of their own race.

  In any case, the ship had trouble coming up with a better plan for using these aliens, or learning more about them.

  But now other and perhaps more satisfactory human partners had become available, in the form of the fleet commander and his associates. The Builder ended by telling them that he would bring out the reserve fighting machines the ship had been hiding, and depose Dirac.

  Hawksmoor had listened to the story with a sympathy for those beleaguered Builder programs.

  In Nick’s opinion, any advanced computer or advanced program ordinarily felt intrinsically more comfortable dealing with another computer or another program than with a fleshly person. The Builders’ creation was surely no exception to this rule.

  Nick could sympathize with his program counterparts aboard the seedship, though now from the vantage point of what he considered to be his own dual nature, he judged them rather colorless.

  Another question that occurred to Nick was this: Had the Builders ever experienced any ethical, moral, or social problems with the idea of making electronic recordings of themselves? Well, he wasn’t going to raise the point just now; there seemed to be plenty of other problems that would have to be considered first.

  * * *

  Captain Carpenter resumed the story. The seedship’s plans for retreating to some hidden sanctuary, and building its colony with the help of Solarian equipment, had to be put on hold as soon as it received convincing evidence—from listening to Solarian communications, or from its own observations—that the bad machines might be about to appear.

  At that point, feeling some computer analogue of desperation, the seedship computers had awakened Frank Marcus.

  An array of other Solarian people were also being kept frozen in the seedship’s archives—those who had been sent to it by Dirac in the belief that he was placating a great berserker.

  At the moment Frank was taken prisoner, he had already been half convinced that the machine he was fighting was no berserker.

  The seedship’s brain continually reconsidered the possibility of reviving the sole remaining qualified Builder, and when (s)he was checked out healthy, relieving itselfof command.

  But the last time the seedship controller had revived a Builder, shortly before the first raid on Imatra, he/she promptly got himself killed by the Solarian humans; and now it had only one mature Builder left. No margin remained to accommodate another error.

  If the seedship was ever to make an open and serious partnership with Solarians, it would not want to be perceived as guilty of slaughtering the young that they were making at least some effort to preserve.

  For centuries now the seedship had been trying to protect its own most vital secrets from the Solarians, even while struggling to learn theirs. But ultimately it would rather reveal its true nature to these intruders than kill them off. They were not necessarily its mortal enemies, but berserkers were.

  The seedship had now spent three hundred years studying the alien species who called themselves Solarians. But for any machines to study any of the Galactic varieties of humanity was extremely difficult, and the seedship was extremely reluctant to reach any firm conclusions without still more study, now that additional subjects were at last available.

  The seedship knew it must to make a deal with the quarrelsome Solarians—or with one faction among them, if they were divided in deadly earnest.

  But now, with real berserkers coming to the attack, time for hesitation had run out.

  As had the time for explanations.

  “Battle stations, everyone. We must at all costs defend the bridge,” said Captain Carpenter.

  One of the seedship’s service machines was already bringing Kensing battle armor, tailored to his Solarian shape and size. Prinsep and Havot, Nick and Tongres and Dinant, readied their arms.

  Reports from the Builders’ auxiliary machines were now coming in rapidly, and Carpenter ordered immediate translation of all messages. The news was grim: more berserker machines had landed on the Phoenixand were even now fighting their way inboard.

  Carpenter remained in command on the bridge, while on the captain’s orders Prinsep swiftly deployed his people to guard the passageway through which they’d entered. Their armored forms took shelter as best they could in niches and corners, and behind hastily mobilized service robots.

  In moments the enemy was upon them, in the form of bizarre shapes darting forward at inhuman speed. In a hail of fire and force, fighting side by side with the Builders’ defensive robots, they tried to protect the bridge and other vital installations against the boarding machines.

  Kensing, his senses ringing with the violence of battle, saw Nick in suit-form on his right fighting until a swiftly advancing berserker caught him and crushed the suit to scrap. On Kensing’s left, Havot and at least one other Solarian went down, to be dragged off by friendly service machines, whether bound for medirobots, or simply for disposal as dead flesh, Kensing could not tell.

  And then, quite suddenly, the shooting stopped again. Prinsep was saying in his helmet radio that an all clear had been sounded, and Sandy Kensing realized that he himself was still alive.

  Still, for long moments, he had trouble breathing. Until word came that contact with the station had been restored … and yes, A
nnie was still there. She was still alive, and for the moment safe.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Something like twenty-four standard hours had gone by since the last shot quelling the failed berserker boarding attempt. The enemy had not been heard from again during that time, but it was entirely possible that more of the killing machines would materialize out of the nebular dust at any moment, coming on in another kamikaze charge.

  Certainly the Galaxy still harbored vast numbers of berserkers, and they would still be making every effort to locate the Phoenix.From the point of view of the enemies of life, an alliance between warlike Builders, with their intimate knowledge of how berserkers were originally built and programmed, and the bellicose Solarians, who had already taught themselves to fight berserkers to a standstill, would be about the worst possible scenario.

  Sandy Kensing and Annie Zador, both of them still in armored suits and ready to grab up weapons at a moment’s notice, were walking together through the Builders’ gigantic vessel, exploring some of its more interesting byways. They and their shipmates visiting aboard moved in artificial gravity that Captain Carpenter had ordered especially tailored for Solarian comfort.

  At the moment, Zador and Kensing were watching some of Captain Carpenter’s service robots bringing out from the engine room of the Phoenixthe small physical storage units containing an expert engineering system.

  Fortunately the Builders’ ship was able to spare an analytical expert system, which in theory ought to be capable of bypassing if not undoing Nick’s old scrambling of the drive controls upon the Eidolon.In return, Carpenter had been granted a working share of the biostation’s hardware and expertise, including several versions of Freya and forty Solarian artificial wombs, which would soon be on their way over from the station to the Builders’ craft.

  Annie, breaking a short silence, asked her companion bluntly: “Are you coming with us?”

  Sandy Kensing did not answer impulsively. Instead he gave himself another long moment to think about it. This was literally a once-in-a-lifetime decision.

  If all went well, the yacht, with its stardrive restored to marginal function (better than marginal was possible, but not to be counted on) would be ready in another day for the attempt by some of the surviving Solarians to return to their own worlds.

  “If our jury-rigging doesn’t blow up on us halfway there,” Prinsep had warned them. “And if we don’t run into more berserkers.”

  The trip home would be a dangerous gamble, but some people were ready to risk it.

  Declining to take that risk would mean accepting another at least as great.

  Drs. Zador and Hoveler, still dedicated to the welfare of the entities they thought of as their billion children, had elected not to try to have the biostation towed back to civilization by the yacht, a clumsy arrangement certain to increase greatly the perils of that voyage for all concerned. Nor did they want to overload the yacht by somehow packing aboard it a billion zygotes—miniature life units, in the berserker term—thus returning the protopeople to a place where they weren’t wanted anyway.

  Instead, Drs. Zador and Hoveler had elected to go on, joining the fortunes of their children with those of Captain Carpenter and his. If a real future existed for these Solarians anywhere, it was not at home.

  Annie did not want to leave Sandy Kensing, far from it. But it seemed that her conception of duty left her no choice.

  The seedship, its own mission rendered viable by Solarian technology, would of course continue towing the station on into the Mavronari, still seeking a good site for a Builder colony.

  Prinsep was determined to bring Scurlock and Carol back to civilization with him, under forcible confinement, though it was doubtful whether any indictment for goodlife activity could be made to stand against them. Havot, currently in a medirobot with critical injuries, was also going back.

  The Premier, too, was returning to the worlds he had once ruled, though he—or at least his optelectronic version, which was all that now survived—had not been consulted in the matter. Prinsep had left it up to the Lady Genevieve, as next of kin, to decide what ought to be done with her husband’s recorded personality; none of the Solarians currently in a position to make decisions were in the mood to give Dirac Sardou, or any program by that name, the right to decide anything.

  Anyway the Premier in his newly discarnate mode could simply be left turned off for the time being. There were still more immediate problems to worry about.

  One version of Nicholas Hawksmoor, kept in reserve on the station by Premier Dirac, had survived all the shooting. By common consent this version, an equivalent of Nick2, had been turned on, brought up to date on the situation, and allowed to make his own decision.

  This avatar of Hawksmoor had needed only a fraction of a second to renounce all future possibility of contact with the Lady Genevieve, and to go on, accompanying the seedship in its effort to find a new world deep in the Mavronari.

  And Sandy Kensing was going to have to decide his own future quickly, before the Eidolon‘s drive was fixed. The yacht’s departure could not be postponed, for with every passing hour the nebula around grew thicker, the journey home more difficult. Captain Carpenter was refusing to consider any course adjustments that would delay his vessel and keep it in this region, where at any moment more berserkers might arrive to finish its destruction.

  Kensing turned to stare into the Builder analogue of a holostage nearby. At the moment the device displayed a graphic of the three small vessels moving in deep space, ahead of them the blankness of the Mavronari, like an unknowable future.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do if you’re not with us, Sandy,” Annie said suddenly, as if his prolonged silence was suddenly too much for her.

  “Hey, Annie. Relax, relax!” Kensing reached for his woman, took her armored hands in his. “A future with you in it, and a billion screaming kids—”

  “More like two billion,” she said, “counting Builders.”

  “Two billion, then. Hey, I wouldn’t miss that for anything.”

  Baen Books

  by

  Fred Saberhagen

  Rogue Berserker

  Berserker Man (Megabook)

  Berserker Death (Megabook)

  The Dracula Tape

  Vlad Tapes

  Pilgrim

  The Black Throne

  (with Roger Zelazny)

  A Baen Books® Megabook

  Berserker Wars

  Copyright © Fred Saberhagen

  Berserkers® is a registered trademark of Fred Saberhagen

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  The Berserker Wars copyright © 1981; “Stone Place” copyright © 1967; “The Face of the Deep” © 1967; “What T and I Did” © 1967, “Mr. Jester” © 1967, “The Winged Helmet” © 1969, “Starsong” © 1979, “Some Events at the Templar Radiant” © 1979, “Wings out of Shadow” © 1979, “The Smile” © 1979, “Patron of the Arts” © 1967; Berserker Blue Death copyright © 1985; Berserker Kill copyright © 1993; all by Fred Saberhagen. “The Adventure of the Metal Murderer” © 1979 by Omni Publications International.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  ISBN: 0-7434-9886-0

  Cover art by Jeff Miller

  First Megabook printing, February 2005

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

  Printed in the United States of America

 

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