Berserker Fury

by Fred Saberhagen

  Somehow the living crew members of these farlaunchers were fooled, or fooled themselves, into thinking that they had done substantial damage to the enemy. Of course, they and their machines did what they could to record the results of the attack, and it was these recordings, computer enhanced, that later assured them they hadn't hit a thing.

  Meanwhile their computer copilots were-much less emotional in their assessment.

  Almost all of the Strongholds were able to return safely to their base on Fifty Fifty. One was lost to unknown causes.

  Enemy fighters were in nearby space but had a hard time getting at them.

  Once landed, the heavy farlaunchers were hastily repowered and reloaded, so they could get spaceborne again before the expected berserker raid hit home.

  Solarian analysts examining the recordings decided that the berserker fleet undergoing this attack might well have been deliberately deceptive, creating what looked like massive secondary explosions and emissions of radiation. An additional effect of the same kind was owed to a peculiarity of the nebula through which they were moving; the clouds of thin gas and dust in which the shooting and missile-launching took place.

  From the start, the Solarian leadership had counted heavily on having a third large carrier in space and ready to fight in defense of Fifty Fifty. Days ago, maybe a little over a week, Lankvil had been rushed to the dock at Port Diamond for repairs, after earlier combat damage in the Azlaroc Sector.

  A preliminary estimate had stated that three months would be needed to complete repairs, but now maximum effort made by the shipyard workers was paying off. Repairs had been completed inside the three-day deadline, and the vessel, carrying Admiral Bowman's flag, had already left Port Diamond, hoping to catch up with and join her escort of smaller ships.

  In fact, everyone agreed, the shipyard people and their machines had worked something of a miracle. Lankvil was ready for combat on schedule, loaded with fighters, undersluggers and hardlaunchers, and a full crew. Repairs were being completed while the carrier was under way again, in the center of her own task force, designated Seventeen.

  A human outlook aboard the Lankvil, her eyes intent on the main holostage, confirmed the presence of a berserker scout, which had been reported by a robot scanner only a few seconds earlier.

  "Looks like we've been spotted, sir."

  "Begin evasive action," Admiral Bowman ordered.

  With artificial gravity clamping the interior in a rigid vise of normalcy, the huge ship lurched and spun, stuttering on the verge of departing normal space, then skipping back. Around her other vessels of the fleet zigged and zagged, turned and darted, trying to maintain something like a desirable formation.

  Now Bowman, pacing his bridge in armor, had to assume that the berserkers knew the location of at least a portion of his Solarian fleet—that now called Task Force Seventeen. The admiral ordered all hands called to battle stations. People on board his flagship, and the other vessels, did what they could to be ready for an attack.

  Swarm merged with opposing swarm at headlong velocity. Solarian fighters fought to defend their carriers against the onrushing berserker attack machines. A complex knot of fire and force, moving more slowly than the enemy had been without opposition, swept in on Lankvil. Ten of the small berserker machines had been blasted from space before any of them were close enough to launch against the carrier.

  Now it was up to Lankvil to defend herself. Automatic cannon, borrowing the synapses of organic Solarian brains to use as oversight circuits, sighted on the incoming enemy and blew most of the hurtling missile launchers into radii of fragments.

  But Lankvil's defenses failed to score the necessary clean sweep. A report came to the bridge of a missile exploding on the flight deck. First casualty figures listed seventeen dead and eighteen wounded.

  The Solarian carrier's chief damage control officer, in a suit of special armor, followed the path of destruction from deck to deck, directing his crew of robots, which threw themselves—seemingly inspired by his rage—into the job of damping reactions, and fighting chemical fires, of which it seemed a hundred had sprung into existence like blooming flowers.

  The center of the flight deck had now been decorated with a hole big enough to drop a fighter through. The same missile, blasting onto the hangar deck below, had started fires in three parked small ships, one of them already loaded with heavy missiles. Quick action by a human officer on duty turned on damper fields and finally a sprinkler system, averting catastrophe for the moment.

  And now another wave of berserker launchers was coming in. Again, many did not survive long enough to loose their missiles, but a few did. One scored a very near-miss close astern of the Solarian carriers. Concussion and an inwash of radiation killed half a dozen more livecrew on the carrier, and wounded a greater number.

  The carrier turned, unhappily right into a third charge of berserker small ships. One scored a clean hit, with a semi-intelligent weapon, designed to break and burrow its way as deep as possible into a target before exploding. After penetrating the carrier's flight deck, it passed through offices and the ready room of one of the small-ship squadrons. Leaving the latter chamber ankle deep in healthful beverages and snack foods, the intruder finally attained critical mass inside the engine room. All three of the huge hydrogen power lamps were snuffed, and conduits and busbars ruptured. The carrier lost motive power at once.

  Having confirmed to their own satisfaction that one Solarian carrier had now been knocked clean out of the flight, the berserker command computers faced a hard decision on the most advantageous sequence of landing and rearming its fighters and bombers.

  In addition to those that had just destroyed the carrier, a large number of these machines had recently returned from taking part in the bombardment of the object called Fifty Fifty. All attack machines now needed to be repowered, their weapon systems and defensive fields brought up to full capacity, before they could be sent back into combat. To do otherwise would be simply throwing valuable assets away.

  Berserkers were ready to squander their own machines, big or small, with total abandon, as long as the result could be computed as a net gain for their cause. But naturally they preferred to keep their assets intact as long as possible. For a long time it had been computed as virtually certain that, whatever the results of one day's fighting, much more badlife could be counted on to appear upon the next.

  In the berserkers' overall battle plan, the destruction of the large Solarian warships, especially the surviving carriers, was assigned a much higher value than merely assaulting—or even occupying—the lump of matter called Fifty Fifty. The atoll, after all, was not going anywhere.

  EIGHTEEN

  Cedric Traskeluk's first goal, as he turned his back on Port Diamond with his leave orders in his pocket, was to pay a visit to one of his clansmen. This was a member of his extended family whom he had never met, but who, he knew, lived on Uhao. Some time ago Cedric had become acquainted, through a letter from home, with his nearby kinsman's profession—more accurately, his calling.

  To fully satisfy the demands of honor, revenge had to be accomplished with one of a traditional group of ritual weapons. Revenge rudely achieved was fully acceptable only in an emergency—though of course, in any case, it was vastly better than no revenge at all.

  Compared to Traskeluk's homeworld, Uhao was vast in terms of population. That was why his fellow clansmen who came here tended to settle in the remote, thinly peopled regions. Areas of this world seemed to the visitor insanely crowded. Looking around him, he wondered what the Cradle Planet itself must be like. Bad enough, if all he'd heard and seen on stage was true, to drive a man crazy. He was relieved that he wouldn't have to follow Gift to Earth. But he would have tackled far greater obstacles than that in pursuit of the goal to which he was now committed.

  Traskeluk's cousin, a man named Maal, lived with his family approximately a thousand kilometers from the base at Port Diamond, in the midst of a small colony of his and Cedric'
s compatriots.

  Traveling at first by train and then in a rented ground car, Cedric eventually caught up with his kinsman on a grassy, windswept headland overlooking the sea.

  There was little physical resemblance between the two men, though Maal was just about as dark. He was also considerably older, taller and not as muscular, with squinting eyes and a wry smile.

  The two greeted each other in a language that was not much spoken outside their clan. Cedric had trouble remembering more than a couple of words, when he was called upon to use it in response.

  His kinsman, noting his lack of fluency, immediately switched to the more common speech.

  Maal and his large family lived in a tent, or rather they shared a collection of tents, with several hangers-on or attendants. The tent fabric was of bright traditional colors, and the housing seemed adequate in this planet's mild climate. Cedric assumed that the tents were part of a harking back to a nomadic, or supposedly nomadic, past. Maal was evidently prospering, and he spoke vaguely of owning flocks, but what kind of animals these were, or where they might be found, were matters on which the visitor remained unclear.

  The tents were large, of very modern materials and design, but they were still tents, in keeping with the clan's venerable traditions. At home on their distant planet, Cedric's immediate family lived in a house like everybody else.

  As soon as the greetings and ritual hospitality had been concluded, the cousin listened intently to Cedric's story, nodded grimly, and then set to work.

  Maal nodded slowly. "It is well that you have come to me."

  So far the subject of payment had not come up, and he did not raise it now.

  After a moment's thought, he announced that his first task would be to give Cedric his choice among several types of weapons, each thoroughly approved by clan tradition. Or so Maal said; he claimed to be an expert on such matters.

  "I," said Cedric, "am certainly no expert on traditional weapons. But I want to do everything connected with this business properly."

  "Of course you do. Come with me."

  At some distance behind the tents, surrounded by tall grass, was a storage shed, including a workshop, with solid walls. Cedric's cousin unlocked the door and gestured his visitor inside.

  A minute later, Maal was holding up a small device for his visitor's inspection. He seemed to have had no trouble at all laying his hand on one. "This little tube fits in between the second and third metacarpal bones—fires a small-shaped charge that I can guarantee you will penetrate ordinary space armor at arm's-length range.

  "And this is a somewhat more elaborate system. We combine heat and radiation in the fingertips with enhanced strength in the bones and the polymer muscles."

  Traskeluk stared, becoming fascinated despite his original determination to get this over with as quickly as practical. "It sounds complicated. How would I control it?"

  "You have the deathdream, right? In your head." Maal raised a long finger, tapping his own skull. "I know they give it to people in certain jobs."

  Traskeluk wondered if his cousin had once worked for the Space Force, or for the Templars, but decided not to ask. He shook his head. "I had the deathdream, but no longer. They removed it when I was in the hospital just now. The idea was that from now on I will be working in a safe job, at the base."

  "But they did not dig out all the mechanism that was put into your head? No. They usually do not, in cases like yours. So, we adapt what you have left in there, the control system, to working this new tool that will be in your new hand. Don't worry, it won't kill you when you use it. And I have no need to open up your head!" The older man laughed, a fierce sudden bark. "Sit down here, let's have a look at you."

  When Cedric was seated, his cousin put a probe into the skullport under his scalp at the back of his head, and in a moment had activated the icon.

  Cedric was distracted by the icon of the device that he had thought was permanently erased. But now suddenly it was back, drifting slightly in his visual field. For a little while, he had allowed himself to think that he was done forever with such things. The little glowing shape appeared in both his eyes. And he was distracted even more by the thought that it might be there perpetually.

  That question had to be answered right away. "Am I going to be looking at this thing for the rest of my life?"

  "Not at all. It will go away as soon as the weapon is used," Maal assured him. "Anyway, you get accustomed to it. You should have as many to look at as I myself have."

  Traskeluk didn't care to ask how many icons that might be. His own original icon, now returned, was a skull with blinking eyes. When it was hooked up to the deathdream there had been an intermediate stage, so that the skull had only appeared after a preliminary ritual of thought.

  But now it seemed that for the time being, at least, he was stuck with the skull. The little icon stayed where it was, up in the upper left-hand corner of his visual field, however he moved or focused his eyes. You might think that a man would be able to get used to it; it was really so inconspicuous. But…

  Maal was giving him his preliminary instructions now. To trigger the device, in any of its modes of destruction, he was going to have to look directly at it, and think a certain thought—adapted from the termdream he no longer had.

  And through all this Cedric was conscious of no physical discomfort. It seemed that underground technicians could be every bit as skillful as those with official jobs.

  Even when Traskeluk closed his eyes, the icon was still there, though it dimmed in intensity. He knew from experience that it wasn't going to keep him awake at night—at least it never had, when it was wired to his own suicide.

  "What if I have to go offworld?" Traskeluk asked. "Is this new hardware going to show up on a detector at a spaceport, or someplace like that?"

  "No. No ordinary detector will see a thing. Don't worry about that. I know my business. If anything a little funny does show up, they will attribute it to your old termdream installation."

  Cedric tended to accept Maal's word. He knew that some branches of the extended family, the clan, had long experience in these matters.

  The weapon's components were soon hidden between the artificial bones of Cedric's left hand, inside the small bones of his fingertips, and amid the large polymer muscles of his forearm.

  Now they were coming to what Maal called the really enjoyable part. Cedric's first intention had been to choose whichever variety of lethal hardware that could be installed most quickly, and he still wanted to get this business over with. But he allowed himself to be talked into a somewhat more elaborate array—it was easy to see that Maal really had his heart set on that installation.

  Maal waxed enthusiastic, and even poetical, about the death agonies of the miserable victim under attack by the more elaborate weapon system.

  His client kept trying to cut him short. "I'm not that much interested in his death agonies. What I mainly want to do is just finish him off."

  "Bah. Think about it a little. There is plenty of room for artistry."

  Cedric had no need for an anesthetic during the installation, since none of the work would be done on live flesh or live nerves. But his mind was wavering. There were moments when he thought that coming here had been a mistake.

  Once this skilled artisan had the work in hand, he was not so humorless. This job put him in chronically high good spirits, never better than when contemplating some plan of serious revenge. As he toiled, he muttered anecdotes regarding his own vengeance upon some merchant he thought had cheated some family member, while his impassive wife, with veiled face and tattooed arms, and their barefoot children looked on curiously from the background.

  The two men continued their discussion, in and out of the workshop, while Maal worked steadily at choosing and fitting and calibrating the technology. Meanwhile the women of Maal's household cooked and cleaned, or supervised the labor of their human and mechanical servants, sending clouds of dust blowing through the air, along with appet
izing aromas. Most of the clan owned few robots or none, and the only hardware on which they set great value was mainly lethal, or of symbolic value only.

  Cousin Maal was deeply interested in the crime for which the man called Gift had now been sentenced to such a deservedly painful death. He kept pressing for more details of Cedric's story, and after hearing them he heartily agreed that Cedric now had only one honorable course open to him.

  Once more Maal paused, with tools in hand. "Where is he to be found, this wretched scum of a traitor?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "Ah! How do you plan to locate him, then?"

  The hunter sighed. "It will be difficult." He realized that in the ordinary course of events, it was quite possible—no, even probable—that he and Gift would never see each other again. There weren't going to be any crew reunion parties.

  "Will he have summoned his own clan members to his assistance?"

  Cedric made a little throat-scraping sound of contempt. "I doubt that lump of pig dropping has any clan. Or that they would do him any good, if they are anything like him." When he thought about Gift, his rage heated up again; there were moments when he wished he had opted for the poison after all.

  His relative shook his head, expressing wonder and contempt. "You will denounce him to the authorities? Hey?" Maal's tone implied that he felt confident of a negative answer.

  Is this a trick question? Once again Traskeluk was seated in a comfortable chair in his cousin's workshop; the younger man's left sleeve was rolled way up, and the painless fabric of his artificial hand and forearm was partially disassembled.

  "I have thought of that, of course. Actually, according to the Space Force rules, it is my duty. And for the most part they are good rules."

  "But not in this."

  "No, not in a thing like this." Cedric shook his head definitively. "So it seems to me that denouncing him would only make it less likely that I will have the chance I heed."