Berserker Prime

by Fred Saberhagen

  The ED humans who came from worlds not yet sucked into the whirlpool of war, having come here to dissuade their fellow Earth-descended from fratricidal conflict, were of course stunned to find the actual state of affairs in this system so different from anything they had imagined.

  The Lady Constance, delegate from Earth, asked: “How can we stop this?”

  The admiral had a quick answer ready. “Maybe you can suggest a way, my fellow humans. But don’t advise me to sue for peace. You can take my motherless word for it, that’s been tried.”

  The visiting diplomats were aghast to see what shape the dreadnought was in, and at least one of them offered to take survivors aboard their own ship.

  The admiral was cold and grim. “Sorry. My functioning survivors are very much needed at their battle stations. That’s where they have to stay.”

  The Huvean delegate, Zarnesti, a small, pop-eyed man, his skin a jaundiced shade from some chronic disorder, made little effort to conceal his satisfaction at the thought of Twin Worlds death and suffering, but he seemed to doubt that things had gone as badly for them as they claimed. His chief concern was for the Huvean hostages, and he was quick with questions and demands regarding them; they must be handed over at once, or the Twin Worlders would be made to suffer severe consequences.

  But the great majority of the neutral delegates were compassionate. “If we can be of any humanitarian assistance”

  Admiral Radigast with savage politeness expressed his formal thanks for the offer, and in the same breath firmly and profanely refused it.

  Then he told the diplomats: “Nor am I inviting any of you aboard my ship. All but one of you’d be quite welcome, except that we may have to clear for action at any moment. Not to mention that we’re very busy with damage control.”

  Nothing had been done to pretty up the image on the holostage. Doubtless Radigast’s virtual visitors could see, in the background, his damping field projectors going full force, fending off a hell of heat and radioactivity threatening to push down one of the corridors leading to the bridge, coming from a spot where one of the dreadnought’s main structural members was being slowly consumed in an induced reaction. One of the berserker’s slower acting weapons was still at work, no means having been found as yet to dig it loose, or quench the nuclear fires it had brought aboard. Prairie’s ground defenses had doubtless launched several similar devices at their foe, but there was no sign yet that any had been effective.

  Gregor had been standing by, and did his best to smoothly take over the conversation, saying the admiral was busy. And anyway, this was his, Gregor’s, job.

  Introducing himself as acting president certainly got their attention. They were exchanging worried glances, and some were ready to start fretting about protocol.

  Gregor tried to be calm and reassuring. “Respected colleagues, unhappy circumstances have propelled me into the position of head of the Twin Worlds government. I think, as you look around you, none of you will accuse me of seizing power is one of the many things the president of this system no longer has.

  “I am sure you will understand that I cannot join you in a conference. My place is here, in this system, now and for years to come. Also I literally have no deputy, no alternate, to send.”

  Several delegates expressed their sympathy.

  The Carmpan suddenly wanted to physically board the Morholt. When difficulties were pointed out, she insisted, a brief visit would be enough. The admiral had his doubts, and could not guarantee the delegate’s safety; but he and the Twin Worlds cause had nothing to lose.

  The transfer was quickly carried out.

  The Huvean in his remarks made only passing reference to the unfortunate people of the Twin Worlds system. He went on to suggest that as the Twin Worlds government had effectively ceased to exist, the system might henceforward be considered as a colony of Greater Huvea.

  Gregor diplomatically chose to ignore what had just been said. Looking over the Carmpan’s shoulder, more accurately, past the place where a shoulder would have been, he caught a glimpse of what Ninety-first Diplomat happened to be writing. Gregor was one of the few ED able to read some of that script. He had even been known to attempt to speak the language.

  It seemed to him that now would be a good time for another effort. Gregor forced his throat and tongue into making an approximation of the correct sounds. “You know what it is, then, this monstrous thing?”

  A liquid thing that he knew to be an eye was looking at him. The Carmpan mouth moved. “I know. Gregor, you should speak in your own language.”

  Gratefully he relaxed into the common tongue. “What is it?”

  “One of your own people, descended from the tribe and clan of Earth, has called it a berserker.”

  “Ahh.” He paused. “And the individual who said that is?”

  “Is still living, as I speak. But he, with others, is in very dangerous captivity. More about him I ought not to try to say.”

  “I thank you for what you have said already. ‘Berserker.’ Yes, that seems to fit.”

  “There are in the Galaxy, or there were, other branches of humanity, who have given it other names, words neither of us could pronounce, that I could probably not even hear. But the meaning in each case is close.”

  Gregor pondered briefly. Then he asked: “How long have you known of the existence of this berserker-thing?”

  “Insofar as any answer I gave to your question was true, it would also be deceptive.”

  “But it, this berserker, it is not Huvean.”

  “No, it certainly is not.”

  And the Prophecy officially began:

  Someone else asked: “Is this, this, thing, prolonging the agony just to make us suffer?”

  “No. It is utterly indifferent to your suffering, except as it might advance its purpose.”

  “And that is?”

  “Your death. and mine, and the death of everything in the Galaxy that lives. It might have sterilized Timber, as it did Prairie, hours or days ago; but it is prolonging the process because it seeks to learn more about Earth-descended humanity.” A good Carmpan answer. “Also it is using the time for self-repair.”

  “How badly is it hurt?”

  “That I cannot tell.”

  “Is there anything or anyone alive aboard?”

  “There are living ED in two prison cages.”

  Radigast for one did not seem the least awed by a Carmpan presence, and as usual he was blunt. “Ma’am, what can you tell us about our enemy?”

  “All I can tell you will be in the Prophecy,” was the gentle answer.

  A new report, from the most forward elements of the fleet, arrived on the admiral’s private little holostage, a display inside his helmet, the one no one else got to look at without a special dispensation. Radigast almost gratefully tore himself away from diplomacy to deal with it.

  The great berserker that was ravaging the Twin Worlds had just been observed to have launched a robot courier of its own. This device accelerated swiftly to a distance from the sun where a c-plus jump would be a reasonably safe gamble, and from there, only a matter of minutes later, the berserker courier jumped away.

  It had to be assumed that it was carrying word to some entity associated with the great machine, perhaps to the world where it had been created.

  Gregor asked one of the observers: “I don’t suppose we have any way of tracking that?”

  The officer nodded. “You’re right, sir. Quite impossible for us to know where it’s headed.”

  “Even if somehow tracking it would lead to those who built our enemy?”

  “The ones the Carmpan could not describe.”

  “Could not, or would not. Yes.”

  “Or to those who might be currently giving it its orders, sorry, can’t be done.”

  After a moment, Gregor said softly: “If it has living masters, I can’t imagine what they’re like.”

  “I can. I’ve met a few motherless people who could qualify, the type who
are good for scaring away nightmares.”

  “if it has none, then perhaps the trail would lead to others of its kind.”

  “That is not the trail I would be currently inclined to follow. But, it would be my dream to do it someday.”

  Several devices, under the control of different human authorities, and at different distances from the event, recorded the berserker courier’s departure, within minutes or hours after it took place.

  The admiral was notified, and so were the assembled diplomats. But few people, military or civilian, paid much attention to the observation at the time.

  The population of the Twin Worlds system, and their human visitors, both peaceful and bellicose, had more than enough other things to worry about.

  The shocked delegates were still deliberating what to do next, when word came that the skeleton force that now constituted the solar system’s sole outer defense was registering new intrusions at more than a hundred places, practically simultaneously.

  There could be no mystery about this intrusion. The main Huvean battle fleet had arrived in system.

  “No doubt about it, sir.”

  Radigast stared numbly at the far-flung battle array, its extremities only gradually, at mere light speed over planetary distances, coming into view on his display. It might be that as much as an hour would pass, after the fast courier had brought him word of the new intrusion, before he would be able to see it all. He thought the full array might look somewhat larger, if anything, than his own fleet had once appeared.

  “Thank God!” The words came out of him spontaneously, and quite sincerely.

  “Sir?”

  “Just offering up a bloody prayer of thanks. That at least it’s not another berserker. Whatever humanity does in this system now won’t be entirely up to me.”

  A robot courier, transmitting a continuous request for a truce, was immediately dispatched to seek out the Huvean flagship, more massive than the Morholt, if not quite as long, carrying a terse summary of the events of recent days.

  The message consisted for the most part of a bald recitation of the terrible events of the past few days, and concluded with an appeal to the Huveans to remember the humanity they shared with the people of the Twin Worlds.

  It was signed by Acting President Gregor.

  Minutes later, that message had been carried by Delegate Zamesti to the bridge of the dreadnought Mukunda. There Zamesti had ceremoniously placed it in the hands of First Spacer Homasubi, commander of the Huvean fleet, who, as he read, sat rocking slightly in his ornately decorated combat couch.

  Around the first spacer, in this smoothly quiet and undamaged space, the ship’s crew was performing activities essentially similar to those that went on aboard the Morholt, in an environment much like that (except for the absence of damage here) in which his Twin Worlds counterpart had spent the last several standard days.

  The current atmosphere aboard the Mukunda was one of nervous letdown. The Huveans of course had come in system on full alert, with weapons set on hair-trigger, prepared for immediate skirmishing, or even for an all-out battle with Twin Worlds defenders. Their fleet had materialized in an aggressive combat formation.

  But as the seconds ticked by, and the reality of the situation before them sank in, it was the turn of their high command, led by First Spacer Homasubi, to be struck almost dumb with astonishment, taken aback and thrown off balance by what they actually saw.

  The first spacer’s face remained impassive as he perused the document, obviously reading it more than once. “Incredible,” was his one-word comment, when he put the paper down.

  Zarnesti, seated on a kind of visitor’s stool, an amenity the more spartan Morholt did not afford, nodded quickly. “Truly incredible, indeed, First Spacer. I have read it, of course….”

  “Of course. Your assessment?”

  “Frankly, my first inclination is to not believe a word of it. I suspect an elaborate deception.”

  Homasubi was known to be generally reserved and formal in attitude and appearance, commanding his followers from an eminence rather than inspiring personal loyalty as Radigast somehow managed to do. But the Huvean crews followed orders very effectively.

  The first spacer asked the diplomat: “Let me hear your analysis of the message then. What explanation can you provide?”

  Zarnesti remained determined that this whole business must be some kind of Twin Worlds trick.

  “Possibly they have suffered an actual attack, but if so it will only make them desperate, therefore all the more untrustworthy. Their chief aim must now be to involve us somehow, to our detriment.”

  “What do you advise?”

  “First Spacer Homasubi, before doing anything else you must demand the surrender of the Twin Worlds fleet. The ships must be brought under our control, the officers imprisoned.”

  The expression on the first spacer’s face changed very little, under the impact of this civilian telling him what he must do. But several of his close associates were suddenly holding their collective breath.

  The political officer, unaware of having made a grievous blunder, clung stubbornly to his convictions. Indicating the message, he repeated: “This has to be some kind of deception. A Twin Worlds trick.”

  Homasubi slightly raised one eyebrow. “I await your further explanation of this extremely ingenious trickery.”

  “The details, First Spacer, may well be hard to establish. These people are cunning almost beyond belief.”

  “So I have been told.”

  “It is so, I assure you. Their admiral is a loathsome person, incredibly crude and savage”

  “I have been told that also.”

  “it is the truth! And before we even burden our ears with any explanation they attempt to offer, you must demand to know what has happened to our heroic hostages.”

  One of the officers standing at attention nearby made a slight noise in his throat, indicative of inward strain. No one seemed to notice. Homasubi did not respond to the delegate’s statement, beyond a slight nod. This politician had not yet learned how the first spacer reacted to being told what he must do, on the bridge of his own flagship, by a mere guest, however high the outsider’s rank.

  But for the time being Homasubi let the transgression pass. He was nodding, his face grimmer than it had been. “Yes, the hostages. Of course. I will begin serious inquiries at once.”

  After a careful review of the situation by his own trusted observers, Homasubi went over the facts in his own mind.

  First of all, there could be no doubt that planet Prairie had actually been devastated, with chilling thoroughness and efficiency. Talk of trickery was rubbish. The world had been sterilized as if by some painstaking medical procedure. That shocking truth was confirmed by a close look by Huvean scouts and probes, including spectroscopic analysis of the heavy cloud that enshrouded the doomed world.

  And the violent murder of a planet was not the only surprise. The powerful Twin Worlds fleet had somehow been reduced to a mangled remnant, the bulk of that feared and respected power vaporized, nothing left but traces of heavy space combat, slowly expanding faint clouds of gas and dust and debris, scattered halfway across the inner system. Spectroscopic analysis of the clouds seemed to confirm their origin.

  Homasubi had thought himself and his fleet ready to deal with any eventuality, but he had certainly not prepared himself or his crews for any combination of circumstances like this.

  As soon as he had grasped the essentials of the situation, and before doing anything else, the Huvean commander dispatched a fast courier home, outlining the incredible circumstances he faced, and asking for guidance from the very highest levels. In dealing with a situation so unprecedented, the mere opinion of a single civilian peace negotiator, however elevated his rank might be, was not going to be sufficient.

  “I of course intend to vigorously pursue the matter of the hostages, but beyond that, I confess I am uncertain.”

  “First Spacer, I see no room here for
uncertainty. It seems to me we can hardly do anything but demand total, abject surrender from whatever remaining Twin Worlds authority it is possible to find.”

  “Perhaps. But what will that gain us?” Homasubi called up the berserker’s image. “And what is our attitude to be with regard to this intruder?”

  “An attitude of cordiality, I should think. It has accomplished our purpose for us, has it not?” The political officer smiled faintly. “Of course we must not be lulled into carelessness. I will talk again with this man who claims to be the acting president.”

  Gregor, beginning a dialogue with the first spacer, was able to give something like a firsthand report on the subject of hostages. “As far as I know, all are alive, and on the surface of Timber. When I spoke with them, face to face, all were in good health. And in reasonably good spirits, considering their situation. You have seen a copy of my first executive order as president. Believe me, First Spacer, if it was in my power to do so, I’d gladly turn them over to you.”

  “I must insist upon more definite information. I am instructed to demand assurances that they are in a place of safety.”

  “Honored sir, I think you can see for yourself that no such place now exists in this solar system. A few hours before the attack fell on Prairie, your people were all safe, held in a deep shelter. As to what may have happened to them since then … I have no means of knowing. Our president was in a similar shelter, and he is dead. They must be at least as much at risk as all our other citizens who still survive.”

  “Your government will be held responsible for whatever may have happened to them.” Homasubi’s calm look was more frightening than Zarnesti’s bluster.

  “Sir, I understand the concern that prompts you to say that. But, as you will have noticed, my government barely exists. Threatening a ghost will do nothing for your own people.”

  The first spacer was shaking his head. “I am not interested in making threats. You say there is no place of safety within this system. But I say now there is one.” He pointed with a long forefinger down at his own deck. “Our people must be brought aboard this ship.”