Berserker Fury

by Fred Saberhagen

  So far Jory's only companion on her exploratory stroll was her robot recorder, a dog-sized metal beast that sometimes walked beside her on its six short insect legs, and sometimes rolled upon extruded wheels, depending on the local terrain.

  Someone on Colonel Shanga's staff had made a thorough effort to see to it that all robots in use on the atoll were marked conspicuously in a way that was supposed to make it easy to tell them from berserker landers, which were known to come in a variety of shapes and sizes.

  She was rather fond of the thing, which was good at its job, but at moments reminded her of a curious child. She was trying to think of a suitable name for it, but the choice required some more thought; people had a certain wariness about naming robots. Nothing too fierce or too cute or too human was considered in good taste.

  Right now she and her metallic companion were several hundred meters—almost as far as it was possible to get while remaining on the surface—from the center of the frenetic activity at the base. A little farther and they would have reached the antipodes.

  Glancing down at the knee-high recorder, making eye contact of a sort with swiveling lenses, she said in a conversational voice: "I am now standing on what looks—and feels—very much like a beach, such as one might find at Port Diamond or on Earth. Although of course there is no lake or ocean here. I feel a yellowish substance crunching underfoot, and I can see a rim of blue sky following the nearby horizon all the way around.

  "The rest of the sky is a… well, one might call it a pearly gray, brushed with star-clouds here and there. The sky and the light are going to take some getting used to. It seems as if the ground beneath one's feet is bathed in brilliant, shadowless light indistinguishable from sunshine, while night claims the upper half of the field of view. People, buildings, and other objects standing on the ground partook of the bright illumination, while ships darting across the sky, or hovering, were bathed in the upper darkness. The whirling blurs of the newly installed defensive satellites look not quite like anything that I, along with most other visitors, have ever seen before."

  Her alertness to her surroundings paid a minor dividend. She could see that someone, a single figure in the shape of Solarian humanity, was approaching along her trail, gradually overtaking her. For a while the figure's walking legs were hidden from her by this miniature world's sharp curvature.

  The newcomer turned out, as she had pretty much expected, to be yet another assigned military guide, who now came jogging, skillfully taking advantage of the power of his armor suit, to talk to Jory.

  Why did she always draw a male? It would be interesting to find out sometimes on what basis mentors were assigned. So far she had the impression they were all eager volunteers.

  The robot recorder appeared to sniff at the newcomer, then to accept his presence.

  "Any questions I can answer?"

  "I have several. Several volumes of them, actually. To begin with, what is this stuff, exactly, that we're walking on? It looks and feels like sand."

  "In a way it does." Her guide crunched some underfoot by way of demonstration. "But if you look at it closely, it doesn't bear much resemblance to any Earthly soil or rock. For one thing, it's notably heavier than ordinary sand. Under the right conditions it can form a solid almost as hard as steel. It comes out of something like a nuclear furnace, buried in an alternate spacetime under our feet. I don't guarantee I've got the physics right. I wouldn't attempt to describe the chemistry."

  Jory picked up a handful of the peculiar material, and let it trickle away through her fingers.

  "One can almost hear the surf, no?"

  She closed her eyes and listened. "No. This is one damned dry place. And to me it's beginning to look ugly."

  "Really? I like it. There are moments… yes… when I get the distinct impression that I'm back on Earth."

  The pair strolled on, Jory's robot tagging along, while she kept on asking questions.

  It ought to be, she supposed, practically impossible to get lost here. The world was simply too small, and there was no real darkness. On the other hand, there did not seem to be much in the way of landmarks, apart from the base itself.

  Her guide pointed out several varieties of Earthly plants, along with one or two from other hospitable planets, which had been transported here in more peaceful days, and cultivated. Fast-growing vines were already climbing, leaf over tendril, across the new revetments, themselves no more than a few hours old.

  Soon her guide mentioned, and with a small detour they were able to see and walk beside, an artificially created lagoon, with real water and aquatic life imported from Port Diamond.

  There were, as the young officer pointed out, actually some mutant birds. One variety of these, long-legged creatures suggesting flamingos, were now feeding on the fish in the lagoon. Evidently things had rather gotten away from the bioengineers, and the ungainly, harsh-voiced creatures had become a nuisance to the human population, with their noise, their droppings, their occasional interference with machinery. Jory thought they must be feeding on some other imported life forms; a whole biota, sustained by the interior energy that lighted the atolls and kept them warm. Life here, as elsewhere, was refusing to accommodate itself to predictions made by humans or computers.

  There were regions on the atoll, like the one where Jory and her companion had now arrived, crunching along the yellow pseudo-beach for a few hundred meters, where so far no trails had yet been worn in by human feet and robotic wheels. Here the horizon took on a much more distant aspect, as the overall curvature of the surface underfoot became much less sharp. The gravity did not change noticeably. The eerie, sometimes unsettling resemblance to an Earthly seascape varied from one side of the atoll to the other.

  The guide was willing and ready to be helpful. "What else would you like to know, ma'am?"

  "Well…" The main problem still seemed to be in deciding what was most important to find out. The two of them had now regained the settlement, and were walking down an un-paved street, keeping well to one side to be out of the way of an almost-steady stream of moving machinery. "This thing, for example." She gestured to where some large machines were busy digging, scraping, remolding the peculiar stuff of the atoll. "Just what exactly are they building here?"

  "This particular shape is called a mantelet." They were standing in front of a low wall, formed of the native matter of the space reef. The wall was at a little more than head height, while it crossed an otherwise open space between two rows of buildings. Partway across, the structure split into a double wall, forming a kind of roofless tunnel. Other varieties of defensive works—turrets, revetments, large mounds of featureless exterior—were also being erected, carved out of the stuff of the atoll, at what the observer thought a dazzling pace.

  The guide picked up a chunk of surplus material the size of a large fist, part of the debris dropped by some digging machine, and casually tossed it to Jory, who caught it and was surprised by its weight. "This stuff can be made stronger than ferroconcrete if you know how to work with it. Our military engineers do."

  Jory's next question was interrupted when she and her guide had to step briskly aside for a motorized work party, rumbling past in a small cloud of dust.

  She observed, with something like awe, how the dust in falling back to the ground organized itself in midair into large intricate flakes, bigger than snowflakes, which crumbled into anonymity as soon as they hit the ground again.

  Of course thousands of additional people could have been brought in, but given the small area to be defended—no more than a few square kilometers—it was doubtful that greater numbers would have been of much help. The muscle of the defense was of course provided by machines. And the machines that were most needed were not available.

  The construction activity was almost entirely directed at creating a series of shelters, revetments, for the fighting ships that were based here.

  It looked to the visitor like a good job of digging in was well on its way to accompl
ishment. But her attention kept coming back to those ships—the actual hardware that was on hand, the only tools on hand to fight back against berserkers. She had been told that the weapons available were simply inadequate

  Jory went on, as methodically as possible, making careful notes and memos: "The spacegoing warcraft available at this base are few in number, compared with what the enemy is reported to be bringing against us. And for the most part our hardware is seriously outdated." Of course, everything would have to be passed by the censors before it went out.

  Despite the garrison's hard work in preparation, and their dedication to the cause of the defense, none of them had yet been told all that was known about the impending berserker attack.

  One of the first things Field Marshal Yamanim did on his arrival was award spot promotions to the two officers immediately in charge of the defense of Fifty Fifty.

  Commander Dramis, who commanded the fighting spacecraft, became a commodore, and Lieutenant Colonel Shanga, in charge of ground troops and installations, rose to the rank of full colonel. Then they were informed by their high-ranking visitor that on one particular day of the standard calendar, a day not more than one standard month in the future, they were to expect the onslaught. The date, of course, had been translated from the berserkers' own calendar (the code breakers were sure they had one, based on Galactic rotation) and schedules as the spying Solarians had come to understand them.

  At the hastily called briefing, Yamanim's audience, consisting of most of the officers available, had stared at him, respectfully incredulous as he reeled off all these details. Presently one of the bolder officers asked whether the times and dates the field marshal had given them were firm. They were indeed, Yamanim assured his questioner. And still he volunteered no explanations.

  Maybe it was the newly promoted colonel, perhaps feeling he now had the right to be curious, who came up with a more pointed question. "Sir—what if all this information is wrong? What if the berserkers pass up Fifty Fifty, maybe even Uhao, and head straight for Earth?"

  "We just hope that they will not," the field marshal answered at last.

  Again people exchanged wondering glances. But no one asked the next obvious question. All journalists had been excluded from this meeting, though perhaps they knew it was taking place, and were going to try to find out afterward what had been discussed.

  The field marshal still provided no hint as to how he could be so definite. Soon after his departure a rumor started among the defenders of Fifty Fifty, anonymously and mysteriously as rumors do, to the effect that someone, maybe a clever Carmpan, had managed to sneak a spy machine loyal to humanity into the heart of the enemy camp.

  Yamam'm and his aides had discussed this subject warily, among themselves.

  "People are always ready to credit the Carmpan with great achievements; myself, I don't see that they've ever contributed much to our common cause."

  "There are the Prophecies of Probability."

  "Bah. Predictions that no one can interpret have a very limited usefulness."

  "And if the berserkers can sneak in spy machines on us, why can't someone else work the same trick on them?"

  Officially the rumor, like most others, was neither denied nor confirmed.

  A chuckle and a shake of the head. "Well, I still say that agent of ours at berserker HQ is worth every credit we pay him."

  Jory now bade goodbye, for the time being, to the almost anonymous young man who had been her latest guide. She wanted to have another talk with Jay Nash.

  Bringing her robot back to her quarters, she switched it to standby mode and left it in a corner. She started to turn away, then swung back to face the machine. Jory smiled to herself. She was toying with the idea of naming her robot Pappy.

  The authorities, responding to some kind of political influence exerted from on high, had allowed Nash and his crew to set themselves up in a central position on one of the atolls. From this vantage point his instruments ought to have a good view of whatever attack finally hit the base.

  The officer locally in charge of defense was not particularly bothered by this. And the next time, perhaps the first time, Jory talked to Colonel Shanga she soon realized that he had his own reasons for sticking Nash and his crew out in such a conspicuous spot.

  "Any enemy fire he draws will mean just that much less aimed at our gun batteries."

  Meanwhile, as the numbers on calendars and clocks began to approach those assigned to the predicted D day, out on the sandy ground of Fifty Fifty, there was no faltering in the efforts at defense.

  The garrison engaged in digging themselves in on Fifty Fifty, as well as the fleet commanders preparing to hoist the hulls of their outnumbered fleet from distant Port Diamond, remained fixed in their determination to hit the attacking berserker task force with every weapon they could bring into play.

  Jory noted a group of people in distinctive uniforms. Taking a second glance, she realized that they were all male. Some Templar outfit, probably. For certain specialized military units to be exclusively of one sex or the other was not unheard of. They were doing some kind of exercise drill that reminded her of a kata from the martial arts, chanting and yelling as they moved about in unison.

  A passing spacer soon identified them for her as members of the Second Raider Battalion, Major Evander Karlsen commanding. According to Jory's informant, these were either a branch of the Templars, or members of some rival cult—he couldn't remember which.

  Jory frowned intently. "Is the founder related to the… ?" The Karlsen? The legendary berserker-killer of several centuries past? The spacer didn't know.

  Whatever their origin, the Raiders had appeared some days earlier on Fifty Fifty as part of the reinforcements. For a short time, or so Jory had heard, the Raiders had thought themselves above the routine tasks of fortification. But as soon as Colonel Shanga had given his opinion on the matter, they pitched in and worked as hard as anyone else.

  One of Jory's projects, during the lull in news that set in after a full alert had been called, and all spacecraft had got off the ground, was to seek out the commander of the Raiders for an interview.

  The major was certainly not reluctant. As their talk went on, he let on, by dropping hints, that he was indeed related to the legendary Karlsen, but he was vague about the details.

  Jory was intrigued by the discovery that the man she was talking to was indeed a member of the T-clan, as outsiders sometimes called it, the same ancient, half-tribal group to which Spacer Traskeluk belonged. The discovery brought back to her thoughts about the whole business of Gift and Traskeluk, which had begun to slip from her memory.

  Jory said to the young soldier: "I have a theoretical question for you."

  "I will try to answer it."

  "Suppose you were in a fight to the death with a berserker, somewhere, you and some colleague or comrade of yours who was not a clan member."

  The other nodded to show that he understood. "And suppose this other man—betrayed you in some way. Just ran away, saving his own skin, while knowing that you were still alive; and knowing that you depended on him to have any chance of survival. Suppose then that against all the odds you did survive. What would you… ?"

  The clansman was shaking his head. He seemed to be actually amused. "Couldn't happen. Nothing like that. Not in this outfit."

  "All right. But suppose it did happen? In some other outfit if not here."

  The other's face grew grim. "There would be nothing for it but to hunt that man down, and deal with him as he deserved. It would be a personal matter, you see, a thing of honor."

  "You'd see to it that he was court-martialed?"

  "No." A shake of the head, decisive and immediate. "That wouldn't do at all. There are forms that prescribe how such a traitor must be dealt with."

  "You mean, ah…"

  "Lady, I mean kill the son of a bitch."

  Running into Jay Wash, while both of them were getting their equipment ready, Jory heard a story from him
about the time he had made a documentary on the Templars, after being officially denied permission to do so. One thing was certainly true about Nash—he had a great many stories to tell. Jory remembered that the Templars were favorably portrayed in several of his adventure dramas—but she didn't want to take the time to listen to any more details now.

  Nash, before concluding this meeting with his new employee, still professed to be shocked at the depth of Jory Yokosuka's ignorance on certain subjects. Himself couldn't seem to get it through his head that she had learned a lot in the couple of days since their previous meeting. This, she suspected, was another pose, possibly meant to cover his own ignorance on a great many of the details.

  At one point he barked at her: "You can't record things intelligently if you don't know what you're recording."

  And she had to admit there was some logic in that. But by this time Jory was beginning to realize that Nash said a lot of outrageous things simply in an effort to be outrageous.

  Staring at a robotic bartender, another thought crossed her mind. "Mr. Nash, what do you think of the Trojan horse theory?"

  He grunted something in reply.

  Thinking an explanation might be in order, Jory amplified: "I mean, will the berserkers be coming at us here by means of some disguised machines? As the ancient Trojans did?"