The robot Porphyry, on the Mukunda more or less by accident, and not needed aboard for any other task, no one admitted to wanting a household servant, was detailed to accompany the boarding party.
Aboard a Huvean hospital ship, two officers were waiting in line for treatment of minor injuries.
They were privileged to share in a bottle being surreptitiously passed around. On occasions of celebration it was customary to propose toasts.
One said: “I drink to Ninety-first Diplomat, or whatever the hell he called himself, she is confirmed dead?”
“So I have heard. One has serious regrets. I believe ‘herself would be the proper form.”
“Whatever.”
“Whomever.”
“That’s what I said.”
Several more bottles had appeared, and more people were now drinking, becoming increasingly open about it. The victory celebration was well under way. As joy and exuberance increased, the level of coherence tended to diminish.
“We must somehow notify the Carmpan home world, or worlds, of their diplomat’s demise. I understand they’re a hell of a long way off.”
“Of course, we should make the gesture. Though the experts think it likely that they already know.”
“And I drink to the late Admiral Radigast, the would’ve been a worthy opponent, if we’d ever fought.”
As yet no one, Twin or Huvean, was willing to confidently pronounce the great berserker dead. But calculations showed that its last kamikaze charge had already been sufficiently deflected so it was certain to miss Timber. More and more people in both groups were beginning to believe that the victory had been won.
The persistent rumors that the enemy had taken human prisoners were proving true. Continuous scanning by scoutships and teams of recon robots detected signs of human life at one place on the vast, ruined hulk, the location of one crashed scoutship that was down on nightside, close to the edge of the region of deepest damage.
The small ship dispatched by First Spacer Homasubi had come down on the berserker’s hull just a few meters from where Random stood waiting to offer welcome. Prudently trying to avoid being taken for a berserker, the robot had established radio contact several minutes earlier. When the ship landed, Random explained concisely to the new arrivals that only a few minutes ago a Twin Worlds scoutship had safely evacuated all the live humans known to have been aboard.
“That’s good.” The expeditionary commander thought the situation over briefly, then asked the robot: “They weren’t too worried about losing you, hey? By the way, would you like some help? let me rephrase that, would some help be useful to you?” The officer had not really wanted to be saddled with the robot Porphyry, the remnants of whose servant’s costume seemed to give the whole expedition an unwelcome air of irregularity.
Random answered promptly. “Any help you can provide me might prove very useful, ma’am, if the enemy resumes activity. The probability of that is very difficult to estimate.”
“I don’t suppose the ship you’re guarding can be salvaged?” A moment’s inspection showed that it could not. The ramming impact had been a glancing one, and at nothing like the optimum speed for destruction. A surviving fragment of forcefield defense might actually have cushioned the impact. It was hard to tell, but possibly the rounded hull of the scout was actually wedged into place where the monstrous outer layer of the berserker’s armor had been peeled back like the thick skin of some mechanical fruit.
Ella reported that several Twin Worlds scoutships were standing by, over on the berserker’s dayside, ready to resume pushing, or pulling, if that should become necessary.
Earlier in the battle, such tactics could not have succeeded; the small craft would have been kept at a distance by the berserker’s firepower, wiped out as they drew near. But its defenses were not what they had been, and with the larger ships of two fleet remnants still shooting at it, the monster could not always find time and armaments to deal with the smaller badlife vessels.
By the count of human military historians, nearly two hundred scoutships had attempted to ram the berserker. Of these, approximately forty were able to get within a kilometer or two of its hull before its weapons burned them or vaporized them. Between twenty and thirty of the small ships had actually hit the berserker’s surface, and half of those had come down hard enough to be almost totally destroyed on impact.
The remainder of those making contact, about ten ships, had struck at a glancing angle, and were not totally destroyed. Three or four had not bounced clear away, but were stuck in several scattered locations, wedged into the cratered wounds blasted into the huge surface by Huvean or Twin Worlds firepower, or by weapons far older than Homo sapiens, tools of war forged in the light of suns that Earth-descended eyes perhaps had never seen.
Moving on, following the first spacer’s orders, the captain of the expeditionary ship intended to conduct a hurried examination of the great berserker’s overall structure, and try to determine the ideal place to set off an explosion that could break it into fragments. Given the fact that there was no room to maneuver even a small ship inside the enemy’s hull, this part of the project proved impossible to accomplish in the time available.
A small ship could serve as the weapon, positioned as near as possible to the ideal spot. Then, if the crew was not bent on suicide, they would try to maneuver their getaway vehicle into a favorable position.
By this time the berserker’s own defensive shields had been all but completely neutralized by damage to their generators. The power that sustained them was exhausted. There was an interval in which some of its weapons systems still fired, by reflex, at any foreign object that approached.
First Spacer Homasubi, having dispatched his expeditionary force, realized that he had to take some time out to tend to his own body and mind. Rest and food were required, and part of each brief interval away from duty was devoted to soothing physical and spiritual exercises.
But whatever exercise he tried, his mind could not go off duty.
The battle was not over, would not be over until the berserker’s last suicidal charge had missed the planet.
Berserker landers had now fought their way even a little closer to the Citadel’s outer wall. Ever since landing, days ago, the murderous machines had displayed an acute military intelligence, extremely tough armor, and formidable weapons. They had been working on ways to tap into local energy sources, to recharge themselves, until the power mains beneath the streets were cut off by human engineers. They had now lost contact with the great berserker hurtling toward the planet.
Infantry armed with shoulder weapons and grenades, aided by a variety of large industrial robots, and a dug-in semicircle of military tanks, seemed to be effectively holding the weakened enemy off.
Gregor could faintly hear the sounds of sporadic fighting, as he moved slowly about from room to room, trying to pick out one that he might find still usable as his own temporary office, while he re-established the seat of his interim government. He had arrived girding his weary mind for the massive effort that would be necessary to get the systems of human decision and communication working again. He would soon be trying to convince his people it was time to put down their weapons and get to work.
Several robots moved with him, providing emergency power, being helpful in several other ways.
“Where’s Porphyry?” he suddenly asked a human aide. “I liked that robot, and it served me well.”
There were inquiries; Porphyry turned out to have gone up to the Huvean flagship, for some reason, with Luon and her Huvean comrades. Gregor, with a thousand other things to think about, had not been aware of the fact.
To his aide he said: “Make a little diplomatic effort, see what you can do about getting that robot back. If it’s not absolutely essential to them up there.”
“Yes sir.”
Plans were already being made for rebuilding a human habitat in the Twin Worlds system. Gregor made the Galaxy a promise: “Someday the planet Prai
rie will again be home to thriving life.”
A corps of hard-working engineers, both human and robotic, was rapidly restoring the communications network that the enemy had so skillfully shredded. Messages had arrived from scores of other ED worlds, and from the Galactic Council, promising help, with housing refugees if necessary, with mending Timber and rebuilding Prairie. It seemed that the whole species might once more stand together.
Gregor intended to play a big role in all of it. But right now he was very tired.
Before resuming his work on the rebuilding program, he wanted to sit down, just briefly, and reread, yet again, the message recently arrived from Luon and Reggie, the couple were still aboard the Mukunda with Uncle Horn.
Their note was meant to congratulate Grandfather Gregor on his presidency, and on all that he had accomplished so far. But it kept wandering off into other subjects.
This time, Gregor just got as far as the line beginning: “Reggie and I are so happy…” when he decided that was a good place to pause, for just a moment, to rest his eyes.
The berserker’s closest passage to the planet was going to make a great show in Timber’s sky, a small cloud of bits of wreckage blasted loose in the fighting was accompanying the hulk in its last futile attack, and many small elements of this cloud were going to hit Timber’s atmosphere, creating a spectacular meteoric show—a handful of the larger fragments, up to a thousand kilograms or so, were expected to plummet to the ground, and possibly inflict some local damage.
Nearly every surviving crew member of the Huvean fleet, and nearly all the people of the Twin Worlds, were ready to pledge that humans must never again war against each other.
First Spacer Homasubi remembered, and quoted, something Ninety-first Diplomat had said: “It is as if we have carried the burden of warfare through all our history, knowing that it would at last be needed.”
“It seems,” agreed the newly promoted Admiral Charlie, “there will be no shortage of enemies, of things to fight against.”
After a moment he added thoughtfully: “I suppose there never has been.”
People and machines were carefully tracking the berserker fragments that were going to miss Timber, meticulously keeping watch on them. A Huvean ship that still had some legs was in pursuit, planning to gather all the debris it could, and also to disintegrate any large chunk that might pose a problem in a year or two, on its succeeding trips round the sun. Every scrap of knowledge regarding the enemy that could be gained, must be gained.
An interstellar courier had just arrived in-system, bringing news of a berserker attack on some distant human colony. Another home world had been totally destroyed, but a large part of the population had escaped in ships.
“They’ve heard some garbled report of what’s going on here, they’re hoping that we survived, and they’re pleading with us to send them combat veterans.”
Admiral Charlie was sure that some of his people would want to answer that call. “But tell our distant brothers that they’ll have to send a ship or two to pick our people up. We’re just a little short on transport at the moment.”
The two robots were still standing on the berserker’s surface, close beside the wrecked scout that had for a few hours provided sanctuary for fragile living humans. Porphyry and Random both understood that soon, probably in a few standard days, they would be relieved from their current duties. In the days and months to come, teams of humans and machines would be swarming over the dead berserker, determined to mine it extensively for the knowledge that it carried.
Porphyry had been standing in the same position for several hours, almost since the departure of the ship that brought him. He happened to be facing in the wrong direction to witness the planet’s spectacular passage, and had computed no reason to turn his head and watch. Porphyry was content to ignore the huge display as the bulk of Timber, an oddly mottled sphere that took up a goodly portion of the otherwise star-filled sky, slid smoothly by at close range.
As predicted, part of the cloud of debris that accompanied the speeding berserker was colliding with Timber’s upper atmosphere, and with the remnant of the planet’s defensive forcefields. This produced glorious fireworks, as if in celebration. At a range of only a few hundred kilometers, the rate of change of position was quite visible, and almost any human would have called it a beautifully impressive sight.
Random, by accident or intent, happened to be facing in the opposite direction from his colleague. As the world of Timber majestically sailed by, Random’s head turned smoothly, observing the flaring demonstration. It was as if the robot might be demonstrating some form of aesthetic appreciation.
Such behavior was unheard of. Porphyry looked briefly, redid his calculations, and confirmed that there was nothing useful to be learned from the sight. But it was not unusual for robots to have programmed in a form of curiosity, regarding the behavior of people, or other machines.
On the radio circuit shared by the two machines, Porphyry asked: “Why are you watching?”
Random offered no immediate reply. Porphyry allowed the pause to stretch out to a full standard minute before he repeated the question. This time he followed it with a second query, coded in a language understood only by robots and a few human engineers.
“Why do you seek to imitate humanity?”
The passage of Timber, its upper atmosphere sparking and flashing rainbow colors with the piecemeal incineration of an enemy, proof of human triumph, was very beautiful.
Random watched the show, and kept on watching it, until the planet in its hard-won safety had fallen thousands of kilometers behind the speeding hulk the robots rode.
Still he gave no answer.
TOR® Books
by
Fred Saberhagen
The Berserker Series
The Berserker Wars
Berserker Base (with Poul Anderson, Ed Bryant, Stephen Donaldson, Larry Niven, Connie Willis, and Roger Zelazny)
Berserker: Blue Death
The Berserker Throne
Berserker’s Planet
The Dracula Series
The Dracula Tapes
The Holmes-Dracula Files
An Old Friend of the Family
Thorn
Dominion
A Matter of Taste
The Swords Series
The First Book of Swords
The Second Book of Swords
The Third Book of Swords
The First Book of Lost Swords: Woundhealer’s Story
The Second Book of Lost Swords: Sightblinder’s Story
The Third Book of Lost Swords: Stonecutter’s Story T
he Fourth Book of Lost Swords: Farslayer’s Story
The Fifth Book of Lost Swords: Coinspinner’s Story
The Sixth Book of Lost Swords: Mindsword’s Story
Other Books
A Century of Progress
Coils (with Roger Zelazny)
Earth Descended
The Mask of the Sun
A Question of Time
Specimens
The Veils of Azlaroc
The Water of Thought
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
BERSERKER PRIME
Copyright © 2004 by Fred Saberhagen
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
A Tor® Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York,
NY 10010
Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Saberhagen, Fred, 1930-
Berserker prime / Fred Saberhagen.—1st ed. p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates b
ook.”
ISBN: 0-765-30625-5
1. Life on other planets—Fiction. 2. Space warfare-Fiction. 3. Robots-Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.A215B465 2004 813’.54dc22
2003061467
First Edition: January 2004
Printed in the United States of America
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Berserker Prime Page 36
