Berserker Blue Death

by Fred Saberhagen

  It was certainly not as if he really needed Polly to fill a backup position on the crew, skilled though she was. Had that idea really been in the back of his mind? It would be foolishness. Six people were really the optimum number to have aboard. Practical experience confirmed it.

  Things were all right the way they were. The pace of Domingo’s walking speeded up.

  While going through his routine of departure clearance at the port, he ran into an acquaintance who had actual information about Gujar. Sidoruk was again captaining a ship owned by someone else, but this time he was serving in the expanded Home Guard fleet that had been organized by Gennadius from among all the Milkpail colonies. No telling where Gujar and his ship were right now or where Gennadius was either, for that matter.

  Captain Domingo’s new crew hadn’t really had a chance to get off his ship and stretch their legs before he was back among them. He quickly assembled them on board his ship again, took a quick look at his updated model and set out in the direction of the most recently reported sighting of Leviathan.

  Two days had passed, and the Pearl had covered about half the distance to that spot when, as on their previous departure from a world, a call on intercom from his Carmpan crew member made the captain decide to change course sharply. But this time the call carried an unprecedented urgency.

  Fourth Adventurer, in a strained voice, reported himself in telepathic agony. He said the cause was the destruction, currently in progress, of the population of yet one more small world colonized by ED humans, this one out on the edge of the nebula.

  “Berserkers?”

  “I am sure of it, though as you know I cannot perceive them directly.”

  “Of course, berserkers. What else would it be? But is it Leviathan ?”

  “I cannot tell that, Captain.” Nor could the Carmpan see, or the other crew members deduce from his report, the name of the afflicted planetoid. But the direction and the approximate distance of it were determinable: that way, for a couple of days’ hard traveling.

  The ship had traversed less than half the estimated distance when Fourth Adventurer reported that the attack, the agony, was over now.

  “How did it end? You mean—”

  “I perceive only that it has ended. But the application of logic to that fact produces no reassurance.”

  Domingo held his course steady in the same direction.

  Aboard the Pearl a conversation was in progress, concerning what was reliably known of the actual fighting strength of Leviathan, and how the Pearl’s armament compared with what the enemy was known to have.

  A computer model, this one an image that Simeon had rarely seen before, was on display. The holographic model showed the size and structure of Leviathan, based on what had been recorded and reported from all known sightings, and what had been deduced and estimated from that.

  On the little holostage the jagged shape of the model rotated slowly. A symbolic presentation of the Pearl on the same scale showed all too clearly how much smaller the human ship was than its potential opponent.

  The comparison was sobering, but everyone on the Pearl’s crew was able to look at such matters with a professional eye, and there appeared to be good prospects for victory. No one had any doubts that Domingo’s objective was to win, and that they had reasonable expectations of achieving that objective. No one, the captain least of all, wanted to make a futile effort that would serve only to give the enemy another triumph.

  During these tactical discussions Domingo emphasized that there were advantages in being relatively small. One was the capability of moving faster within the nebula. Another point was that the shields of the human ship had a more compact area to defend—a much easier job than trying to cover the whole sprawling surface of a planet or planetoid, or even the area of a machine the size of Leviathan.

  The armament of the Sirian Pearl did not include a c-plus cannon, but she did mount some of the latest missiles capable of driving themselves effectively faster than light, by skipping in and out of normal space in very nearly the same way as a projectile from such a gun. The ship also carried beam projectors modified for nebular work, with new focusing modulation that ought to be able to eat through such shields as Leviathan was known to possess.

  This discussion in the common room was interrupted by a call to battle stations, delivered by the crew member manning the forward detectors. The detectors had offered a sudden indication of what looked like a whole berserker fleet, cruising the eternal mists out there at no very great distance ahead of the Pearl.

  Everyone aboard the ship scrambled to get to his or her combat position. Even before Domingo had any chance to think about tactics, it became apparent that there was no chance to retreat. Evidently the Pearl had been sighted too, by whatever or whoever was ahead. That shadowy fleet up there was reacting, turning toward the single ship. The range was already so short that it would be hopeless for the Pearl to attempt flight.

  “Weapons ready. We’re going to—”

  The IFF transponder chirped, bringing a spontaneous and general gasp of relief from the crew, or at least from four of its five ED human members.

  The captain was the only one whose manner betrayed no relief; if anything he sounded exasperated. “It’s the Space Force.”

  “Well, damn it all anyway.” Iskander’s intercom tone managed to make his annoyance almost convincing. “If we’d been trying to find them, we never could have done it.”

  Domingo was quick to open communications with the approaching ships. The Space Force responded, sending clipped jargon with their usual tightbeamed caution. The pulses of transmitted talk came through only blurrily at first. Then as the distance lessened, with the Pearl and the Space Force fleet speeding through the nebula on gradually converging courses, a real conversation could get started.

  Soon the image of Gennadius, seated on the bridge of his combat ship, had come into being on the several small individual holostages the crew members of the Pearl were watching.

  Even padded and armored as he was, obviously on red alert for combat, the commander looked more haggard, more cadaverously thin than ever. His voice was suspicious, almost hostile. “What the hell are you doing out here, Domingo?”

  “I think you know what I’m doing. I just hope you’re doing the same thing, and suddenly I find I have a new reason to hope so. Is this really where your big computer says Old Blue ought to be?”

  “Nothing my computer says has been doing me much good lately. So I’m trying some guessing, as I suppose you are. All right, I admit I’m after Leviathan.”

  Domingo stared for a moment at the commander’s little image. Then, in a sharply changed voice, the captain of the Pearl demanded: “He’s hit another colony, hasn’t he? Which one is it this time?”

  ” ‘ He?’ ” The commander sounded mystified. Then he gave up quibbling. “All right. It’s hit another colony.” Gennadius named the latest victim. Simeon tried to place its location on his mental map. Yes, it was presumably the same world whose suffering, detected by the Carmpan, had brought the Pearl moving in this direction.

  “And you guessed his route of departure might lead him along this way.”

  “Something like that.” Gennadius appeared to take counsel with himself and came to a decision. “Look, Domingo. My theory is that some berserkers, the one you call Leviathan probably among them, have a repair and refitting base somewhere around here in the nebula, maybe in a dark-star system. I’m looking for it now, but my chance of finding it would be better if I were able to call in more ships.”

  “Then call them in.”

  “It’s not that simple. If I call ships here, I have to take them away from somewhere else. Most probably from guard duty near some colony, and I don’t want to do that. I’ll make you a deal. Take the Pearl and stand guard duty at da Gama, and I’ll call two of my ships in from that area to help out here with the search. It would give us a considerably better chance of finding what we’re looking for. If I can catch Leviathan w
ith my battle group, I’ll bring you back a blue light. Or any other part of its anatomy you want.”

  “No deal,” said Domingo instantly.

  “I didn’t think so.” Gennadius was angry, though not surprised. “All right, then, let me repeat my first question. What the hell are you doing out here? If you know something, I want to know it, too. What have you seen? Or found out?”

  “I’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve been extrapolating Leviathan’s earlier movements—as you must have been doing also.”

  The commander snorted. “With your little shipboard computer? You’ve been damned lucky, then.”

  The captain nodded, smiling lightly. “You might say that a certain amount of luck has come my way.”

  Gennadius had his fleet deployed in a far-flung formation for maximum sweep, Simeon observed. He supposed that for that reason it was not amazingly odd that the encounter with the Pearl had occurred, given that the two commanders were following the same basic plan of search.

  The Space Force commander once more demanded to know what other sightings the Pearl had recently made.

  “None at all,” Domingo repeated at once. “What about yourself?”

  “We picked up something about two hours ago—movement of some kind at spacecraft speeds. At extreme range, and we weren’t able to close on it. I’m still not sure if it was berserker movement or not—but out here, nothing else is likely to… what in all the hells is that !”

  Checking his indicators, Simeon realized that Fourth Adventurer had just turned his intercom station on two-way as if intending to join in the radio conversation. Now for the first time Gennadius was able to get a good look at all of the six crew members on Domingo’s ship—including the one whose presence represented a unique event in the history of Earth-descended spacefaring.

  “Just one of my crew.” Domingo sounded distracted; his thoughts as usual were still on berserkers.

  “One of your crew. Just one of your bloody crew. Iskander, what’s going on over there?” For a moment the Carmpan’s presence appeared to outrage Gennadius more than anything else that had happened yet.

  “Things are just as you see them, sir.” Baza sounded sweetly reasonable. “If I may, I would suggest a more diplomatic attitude toward our ally of the Carmpan theme.”

  “I… should have known better than to ask,” Gennadius muttered, almost inaudibly. Then he roused himself, or tried to rouse himself, to his diplomatic duty. “Absolutely.” He started to address himself to the Carmpan. “Let me assure you, sir, or—” He was getting nowhere. “Domingo. Domingo, I warn you, if you’re doing anything to get us in trouble with—with—”

  Fourth Adventurer spoke at last. He introduced himself calmly and assured the commander that there were no difficulties in prospect involving intertheme diplomacy. He, Fourth Adventurer, was present on this mission by his own free choice as an individual, and his presence would be more likely to alleviate diplomatic trouble than to cause it.

  Gennadius briefly tried to grapple with that but gave up.

  He had too much else to think about. “I, I don’t understand that, sir.”

  “You need not worry about it now, Commander.”

  There was a pause. “You do claim diplomatic status, then?” Gennadius at last inquired. The image of his face was growing clearer as the hurtling ships approached each other.

  “I have made no such claim as yet, and at present I do not intend to do so. But I would be within my rights, and I reserve the right to do so in the future. Matters of vast importance are almost certainly at stake here, Commander, more important than getting rid of a berserker.”

  Suddenly Fourth Adventurer’s shipmates were staring at him too, as if they had never seen him before this moment.

  “Ah.” Gennadius obviously couldn’t make any sense at all out of what he had just heard. Everyone was waiting for him to try. “Ah—Fourth Adventurer—matters of vast importance?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Such as what?”

  “I said ‘almost certainly at stake,’ Commander. If and when the proper word is ‘certainly,’ you will be informed.”

  “Ah. Good. Well, in the meantime I have a job to perform. We all do.”

  The commander and the captain talked a little longer.

  Gennadius pragmatically welcomed the presence of Domingo’s ship as adding to the total strength available in the region; but at the same time the commander was fearful that Domingo’s fanaticism was going to raise more problems. Certainly it was keeping Domingo and his ship from being as useful as the commander would have liked.

  In the privacy of his own mind, Gennadius decided that he was going to try not to think about the presence of the Carmpan and what it might mean.

  “Captain, I don’t suppose it would do any good to order you to take your ship and stand Home Guard duty near da Gama. Or to go home.”

  “I don’t suppose it would. I’ve told you again and again what I’m doing. My plans haven’t changed.”

  The commander heaved a long sigh. “All right.” In an easier voice he added: “Looks like we’ve got some dirty weather coming up ahead. Going to run for it?”

  “I’m not that much worried about a squall.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The detectors on all the ships now showed a nebular storm ahead and coming on. The storms arose from a combination of magnetic and gravitational forces; in them the matter composing the eternal clouds was compressed beyond any density it normally attained. The masses of it were ringed and shot through like Earthly thunderstorms with electrical discharges—though each storm was considerably bigger than the Earth itself—and glistened with iridescent rainbows. The onrushing disturbances were now only minutes away.

  If a colony lay in a storm’s path, the inhabitants took shelter in shielded underground rooms or perhaps in reliable ships that could outrun electronic weather. Sleets of atomic and subatomic particles, knotting and lashing fields of magnetic and other forces, would disrupt human movement and communications, wipe out food crops in the nebula and on planetary surfaces and almost certainly inflict some human casualties. It was fortunate that storms of great size were rare.

  This was not one of the larger ones. The squall, as Domingo had called it, struck the ships.

  Screens and holostages went blank as the nuclear-magnetic lash tore up communications between ships and impeded forward progress. The energies of the miniature tempest extended outside normal space, confusing astrogation systems and temporarily negating drives, robbing them of their normal hold in the mathematical reality of flightspace.

  The people on Domingo’s ship had a glimpse of the Space Force ships scattering before their own instruments roared with white noise, cutting off the world. And then the Pearl was swept away.

  The intercom was still working perfectly, but the Carmpan’s unit remained blank even after repeated efforts to call him. When Branwen and Iskander went to Fourth Adventurer’s berth to investigate, they found him tossing in his acceleration couch as if he were spacesick or feverish.

  Bending over the supine, blocky figure, Branwen shook him gently by a corner of his gray garment. But Fourth Adventurer was unable or unwilling to respond to that stimulus or to the first anxious questions from his visitors.

  The woman turned uncertainly to Baza. “Can a Carmpan have a fever?” she asked. “He feels warm.”

  “I don’t know.” For once not amused, Iskander flicked the intercom. “Anyone on board claim to be an expert in Carmpan biology?”

  No one did, apparently. Nor did anyone want to suggest what sort of first aid or medical treatment, if any, to attempt. The decision fell to Domingo by default, and by his orders a policy of watchful waiting was adopted.

  Hardly had this been decided when to everyone’s relief Fourth Adventurer roused himself enough to announce that he had not really been taken ill. He was, he said, only suffering from the strain of having made telepathic contact with strange forms of life in the raw,
seething nebula outside. The native life forms here were also endangered by the storm when it engulfed them and suffered pain, and their distress communicated itself to the Carmpan’s mind.

  Simeon didn’t understand. “I thought you were able to tune things out.”

  “Ordinarily. But just now I dare not.”

  There was silence on the intercom, but Simeon thought most of the crew were probably listening. He asked the Carmpan: “You knew all along there was life out there in the nebula, didn’t you? Of course, everyone knows that.”

  The feeble answer was more a gesture than a sound. It conveyed no meaning to Simeon.

  “I’d say it would be a good idea to keep your mind away from it if it makes you sick.”

  Fourth Adventurer managed to get out intelligible words. “I repeat, that is not possible at present. Matters are not that easy.”

  Branwen took up a point in which everyone was interested. “You said you could, ah, keep your mind away from ours.”

  “And I have done so, be assured. But in the case of the life outside, my duty is to probe.”

  “The ‘matters of vast importance’ you mentioned to Gennadius?”

  “That is it.”

  Beyond that it was hard to get the Carmpan to say anything on the subject at all.

  After some hours the storm began to weaken. It no longer represented any threat at all to the survival of the ship, but the weather was still too nasty to allow much headway or any determination of position.

  With the ship no longer endangered, Domingo relieved three of his people from duty and sent them to rest. They were all tired, but none of them rested easily.

  Spence Benkovic didn’t try to rest at all. Instead he came looking for Branwen Galway, wanting to talk to her, wanting to do more than that; it was almost the first time since this attractive woman had come aboard that he allowed himself to show an open interest in her.

  When Spence appeared at her door, trying to get himself invited in, Branwen had somewhat mixed feelings about his renewed attentions. Mainly she was repelled by them. Branwen found Benkovic acceptable as a casual acquaintance, even—so far, at least—as a shipmate. But as soon as she tried to think of him as a potential lover, something about him changed. Or something in the way she saw him changed, which amounted to the same thing. Well, naturally, the altered role would make a difference in how you thought of anyone, but…