“Well, Kensing?”
Sandro Kensing raised shaggy sandy eyebrows and looked back. His heavy shoulders were hunched over the table, thick-fingered hands clasped before him. His face was impassive, except for reddened eyes. “Sorry?” He hadn’t heard the question.
“I was asking,” the speaker repeated considerately, “what you thought Premier Dirac’s reaction to this terrible news might be.”
“Ah. Yes.” None of the local leadership, even going back to include his now-retired uncle, much impressed Kensing. “Well, the old man won’t be happy. But you don’t need me to tell you that.”
There was an uncomfortable silence around the table.
Respecting the upstart’s grief at the loss of his fiance, no one spoke sternly to him or even glowered at him for his near-insolent manner. All the authorities realized that they had bigger things to worry about.
“We all have a lot of work to do,” the chairman said presently.
“But before we adjourn this session, we had better settle the matter of the delegation.”
“Delegation?” someone asked.
“I should perhaps say deputation. A deputation to welcome the Premier when he arrives.” Looking around, he decided that clarification was in order. “If none of us go up to meet him when he shows up in orbit, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he summons us all to attend him on his ship to report to him in person.”
The atmosphere around the table had suddenly grown even more unhappy than before.
“I move,” said another speaker, “that we appoint a single delegate. A representative to deliver our preliminary report.
Since, for the foreseeable future, we are all going to have our hands full with our own jobs.”
All around the holotable, heads were swiveling, looking in the same direction. Their delegate had been chosen, unanimously and without debate. Kensing, paying more attention to the meeting now and only mildly surprised, managed a faintly cynical smile at the many faces turned his way.
CHAPTER FOUR
Several hours before he was really expected, the Premier entered the Imatran system at an impressive velocity aboard his large armed yacht, the Eidolon. This formidable fighting vessel-some expert observers said it looked more like a light cruiser-was escorted by two smaller craft, both armed but rather nondescript. The three ships were evidently all that Premier Dirac had been able to muster on short notice.
Instead of landing on the almost unscarred surface of the planetoid Imatra, as he doubtless would have done in time of peace and as some people still expected him to do now, Dirac hung his little squadron in a low orbit. From that position of readiness he immediately summoned-in terms conveying authority rather than politeness-the local authorities aboard.
He also called for the full mobilization of local technical resources to help get his squadron into total combat readiness.
Some of the equipment on his ships would require various forms of refitting, rearming, or recharging before he was ready to risk a fight.
Under the circumstances, it was easy to understand the absence of any formal ceremony of welcome. In fact the only individual who obeyed the Premier’s summons, boarding a shuttle to ride up and welcome him and his entourage, was the chosen spokesperson Sandro Kensing. The young man, vaguely uneasy though not really frightened about the kind of reception he could expect, stepped from the docked shuttle into the main airlock of the yacht carrying in his pocket a holostage recording created by the local council. The recording was an earnest compilation of convincing reasons why the members’ currently overwhelming press of duties rendered their personal attendance utterly impossible. It empowered Kensing to represent them-all of them-in this meeting with the Premier.
Obviously the whole lot of them were really frightened of the old man, a few on an actual physical level. Perhaps, thought Kensing, some of them had good reason to be. He himself wasn’t personally afraid. Even had his feelings not still been dominated by grief, he would not have been terrified of Mike’s father, whom he had met half a dozen times when he and Mike were attending school together, and in whose house he had been a guest.
Actually the relationship had led to a job related to the colonization project, and thus to Kensing’s meeting Annie.
Just inside the Eidolon’s armored airlock, Kensing was met by a powerfully built, graying man of indeterminate age, dressed in coveralls that offered no indication of the wearer’s status or function. Kensing recognized one of the Premier’s chief security people, a familiar presence in the Sardou mansion Kensing had visited, and on its grounds.
“Hello, Brabant.”
The bodyguard, as usual informally polite to friends of his employer, identified the young visitor on sight, though several years had passed since their last encounter. “Hey, Mr. Kensing.
Have a seat, the boss is expecting you. He’ll be free in a minute.”
Beyond the bodyguard the interior of the ship, somewhat remodeled and redecorated since Kensing had seen it last, looked like a powerful executive’s office planetside.
“I’ll stand up for a while, thanks. Been sitting a lot lately.”
Brabant looked at him sympathetically. “Hey, tough about Dr.
Zador. Really tough.”
“Thanks.”
“You and the boss got something in common. Unfortunately.”
In the rush of his own feelings Kensing had almost forgotten about the presumed loss of the Premier’s new bride. But it was true; he and the Premier now had something very basic in common.
“Where’s Mike?” he asked the bodyguard suddenly.
The man appeared to be trying to remember, then shrugged.
“He wasn’t getting on with his father a few months back, so he took a trip. Long before all this came up.”
“Anyplace in particular?”
“The family don’t tell me all their plans.”
“I just thought I might find him on board. His father’s going to have need of good pilots.”
“Hey, good pilots the boss’s got, this time around. Better pilots than Mike.”
Kensing raised an eyebrow. “Not many of those available.”
“One in particular who’s on board right now is very good indeed.” Brabant, with the air of keeping a pleasant bit of information in reserve, looked up and down the corridor. “Maybe you’ll meet him.”
“Yeah? You’re telling me this is someone special?”
“You might say so. His name’s Frank Marcus. Colonel. That was the last rank I heard he had. Retired.”
For a moment at least Kensing was distracted from his personal problems. “Marcus? You mean the-”
“That’s right. The famous man in boxes. They tell me he was driving the yacht just a little while ago when we dropped into orbit here.”
“Gods of flightspace. I guess I assumed Colonel Frank Marcus was dead, decades ago.”
“Don’t tell him that, kid. Excuse me, I mean I wouldn’t advise that as diplomatic, Mr. Official Deputy from Imatra.” And the bodyguard laughed.
Kensing was shaking his head. By now Colonel Marcus would have to be an old man by any standard, because for more than a century he had been something of an interstellar legend. As Kensing remembered the story, Marcus had at some time in his youth lost most of his organic body in an accident-or had it been in a berserker fight?-and ever since had been confined to his boxes by physical disability, a situation he apparently viewed as only an interesting challenge.
“Hey, you know what I hear, Mr. Kensing?” Brabant had lowered his voice slightly.
“What?”
The gist of the story, as passed along now in clinical detail by the admiring bodyguard, was that Frank Marcus was still perfectly capable of enjoying female companionship and of physically expressing his appreciation in the fullest way.
“Glad to hear it. So how does he come to be working for the Premier?”
Kensing’s informant went on to explain that Marcus, ranked as one of the supreme s
pace pilots in Solarian history, had signed on a couple of months ago as an advanced flight instructor, after first having turned down the offer of a permanent job as Dirac’s personal pilot.
Conversation had just turned to another subject when it broke off suddenly. Something-no, someone, it must be the colonel himself!-was rolling toward them down the corridor, coming from the direction of the bridge.
Had Kensing not been alerted to the colonel’s presence aboard, he might have assumed this was some kind of serving robot approaching. He beheld three connected metallic boxes, none of them more than knee-high, their size in aggregate no more than that of an adult human body. The boxes rolled along one after the other, their wheels appearing to be of polyphase matter, not spinning so much as undergoing continuous smooth deformity.
From the foremost box came a voice, a mechanically generated but very human sound, tone jaunty, just this side of arrogant. “Hi, Brabant. Thought I’d see the chief when he’s not busy. Who’s this?”
Kensing, wondering what might happen if he were to put out a hand in formal greeting, gazed into a set of lenses and introduced himself. “Colonel Marcus? Glad to meet you. I’m Sandro Kensing, a friend of Mike’s-the Premier’s son.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about Mike. Haven’t had the chance to meet him.”
“What’s the Premier’s plan?” Kensing badly wanted to know, and he felt it rarely hurt to ask.
“That’s no secret,” the box assured him. “We’re going after the bad machine.”
That was what Kensing had been hoping to hear. Something inside him, somewhere around his heart, gave a lurch at the possibility-no matter how faint-of catching up with the ongoing disaster that had carried Annie off. Of finding out at first hand what had happened. Of coming to grips in violence with the monstrous inanimate things that had done this to her and to him.
And here right in front of Kensing was the person of all people who might make the possibility real. Frank Marcus, who at one time or another had retired, it seemed, from just about every armed force in the Solarian Galaxy except the Templars; Colonel Marcus, who as it turned out was now piloting Dirac’s yacht.
Kensing said bluntly, “Colonel, if anyone’s going after that berserker, I’m going along.”
“Yeah?” The talking boxes sounded interested but not entirely convinced.
“Dr. Zador and I were going to be married in a month. More to the point, I’m an engineer who’s trained and working in defensive systems. I’ve been doing the preliminaries for the projected colonial vessels.”
“Combat experience?”
“No.”
“That may not matter too much. Most of our crew doesn’t have any either. If you’re a qualified defense systems engineer, maybe the chief’ll want to fit you in.”
Moments later Brabant, having evidently received some invisible communication from the Premier, was ushering Kensing into the inner office.
Setting foot in the inner rooms of the Premier’s suite for the first time in several years, Kensing again noted that certain remodeling and redecoration had taken place since his last visit.
As if the ship were becoming less a ship and more a place of business.
In the center of the innermost room was a large desk, a real desk constructed basically of wood, though its upper surface was inhabited by a number of electronic displays. The desk held several stacks of real paper also, and behind them sat a real man.
The Premier was not physically large. He had changed, in subtle ways that Kensing would have been hard put to define, in the two years since the two of them had last come face to face.
Dirac’s hair was steely gray; thick and naturally curled, it lay trimmed close round his large skull. Sunken gray eyes peered out from under heavy brows, like outlaws preparing to sally from a cave. Skin and muscles were firm and youthful in appearance, belying the impression of age suggested by the gray hair. His hands toyed with a fine-bladed knife, which Kensing recognized as an antique letter opener. Dirac’s voice, an eloquent actor’s bass, was milder than it sounded on public holostage.
As Kensing entered the cabin, the Premier was in conversation with the image of a rather handsome and much younger man, who appeared on the largest of the room’s three holostages, the one beside the desk. The younger man, who wore pilot’s insignia on his collar, was saying; “-my deepest sympathy, sir.”
“Thank you, Nick.” The presumably bereaved husband gave, as he often did, the impression of being firmly in control though inwardly stressed. He looked up and nodded at Kensing, whose escort, withdrawing, had already closed the door behind him.
Kensing began: “Premier Dirac, I don’t know if you-”
“Yes, of course I remember you, Kensing. Friend of my son’s, he called you Sandy. Mike always thought highly of you. So you’re delegated to explain this mess to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fill me in on the details later. And you’re in on the colonizing project-and you’re also Dr. Zador’s fiance. Very sorry about her.
A terrible business we’ve got here.”
“Yes, sir. My sympathy to you. Mine and everyone’s on Imatra.”
Dirac acknowledged the condolence with a brusque nod.
“Mike’s not with me this time,” he remarked.
“Someone told me he’s off on a long trip, sir.”
“Yes. Very long.” The Premier indicated the ‘stage. “I don’t suppose you’ve met Nick here, have you? Nicholas Hawksmoor, architect and pilot. Works for me.”
“We haven’t met yet, sir.”
Dirac proceeded with a swift introduction. Was there just the faintest momentary twinkle of some private amusement in the old man’s eye?
The formality concluded, the Premier once more faced the imaged head and shoulders of Nicholas Hawksmoor. “Proceed.”
Nick reported quietly: “There was nothing I could do, sir. I was… almost… in time to get myself aboard the courier before that last explosion. But not quite in time. I couldn’t be of any help to anyone aboard.”
“Had you any direct evidence that my wife was among the passengers?”
“I couldn’t even confirm that. I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault, Nick.”
“No, sir. Thank you for understanding that, sir.” A brief hesitation. “There’s another matter I suppose I should mention.”
“What’s that?”
“Shortly after the alert was sounded, I was given a direct order by Acting Supervisor Zador on the biostation. She commanded me to take my ship out and ram the enemy.”
This statement was made so casually that Kensing, who thought he was paying close attention, wondered if he had heard right, or if he had earlier missed something. He understood that as soon as the alert was called, Annie as acting supervisor would have automatically become local defense commander. A wildly inappropriate function for her, but…
Dirac nodded, accepting the information about the ramming order with surprising placidity. “So what happened next?”
“Well, sir, Dr. Zador wasn’t-isn’t-a combat officer, but she must have thought she’d come up with a good plan to at least distract the berserker. Obviously it wouldn’t have worked. I couldn’t have got the Wren within a thousand kilometers of a monster like that before it vaporized me without breaking stride.
“So when the acting supervisor gave me that order, rather than argue and distract her further from her own real job-at which I am sure she’s more than competent-I just acknowledged the command and then ignored it. The only really useful thing I could do with my ship at that point was to stay close to the courier and try to look out for those on board.
“If the berserker had sent one of its own small spacegoers after the courier, or a boarding machine, I would probably have tried ramming that. Or tried to get the machine to come after me instead. But of course, as the scene actually played out…” Nick looked distressed.
Dirac said gently: “It’s all right.”
“Thank yo
u, sir.”
“But-”
“Yes, sir?”
The shadowed eyes, with a danger in them that Kensing had never seen there before, looked up from under the steel brows.
“From what you tell me, we don’t really know that the Lady Genevieve ever actually boarded that courier at all. Do we?”
Nick’s holostage image appeared to ruminate. “No, I don’t suppose we do.”
Dirac nodded slowly. He glanced at Kensing. “In fact, what I’ve heard of the recorded radio traffic indicates that Dr. Zador had some concern about the courier leaving prematurely. She feared the pilot might pull out before everyone who wanted to get aboard had done so.”
“That’s correct.”
Premier Dirac now turned his full attention back to the visitor who was physically present in his cabin. “Kensing, have you people on Imatra any further information on that point?”
“I don’t know anything about it, Premier. I’ll certainly check up on it as quickly as I can.”
“Do that, please. I want any information bearing on the question of the Lady Genevieve’s presence on that courier.”
“I’ll get it for you, whatever we have.”
“Good.” Dirac knitted steely brows. “So far no one has shown me any firm evidence one way or the other. So I have to believe there’s a good chance she was still on the station when it was so strangely-kidnapped.”
Kensing didn’t say anything.
Dirac was not ready to leave the point. “We do know that some people were still aboard the station, right? Supervisor Zador, for one. And didn’t she say something to the courier pilot to the effect that others were intending to stay?”
Nicholas Hawksmoor put in: “At least one other, sir. The bioengineer Daniel Hoveler apparently remained with Dr. Zador.
That seems to be the only definite evidence we have on the presence or absence of any particular individuals.”
Dirac nodded, displaying a certain grim satisfaction. “So at this moment, as we speak, there are still living people on the station.”
Berserker Kill Page 9
