Berserker Base

by Fred Saberhagen

  "I'll live with it."

  For all effective densities, Runagate cleared atmosphere. Morgan ordered the simulators on. Her ears registered the distant rumble of the other fighters. The ship shuddered slightly beneath her and she heard the closer, reassuring roar of knife-edged fins slicing through vacuum.

  Holt glanced at the silver-furred 'Reen bulked in the acceleration couch beside his. His adoptive father looked steadily back at him.

  "The boojum is accelerating toward us," said Bob. "Must be getting impatient."

  "Perhaps merely suspicous," said the ship.

  "Keep on the direct intercept." Holt sighed and said to PereSnik't, *Was it necessary for us to wrangle before everyone listening over the channel?*

  PereSnikt's muzzle creased in a grin. *Are we not still speaking to the rest?*

  *No. For a short time we can talk in privacy.*

  The 'Reen paused in obvious deliberation. *My son, I now realize I haven't prodded you enough.*

  Holt stared at him questioningly.

  *I believe I erred in turning you back quite so young to the barbarians in North Terrea.*

  *I could not join the Calling. There was no—*

  PereSnik't held up a paw, the underside gleaming like well-worn polished leather. *It may be that my judgment was premature. No shame to—*

  *No!* Holt turned away from the 'Reen.

  PereSnik't shook his massive head slowly and sadly. *It will grieve me if I must conclude you are less of the People than I suspect.*

  *I am all too human—*what is it, Bob?" Holt answered the imperative blinking of a console tell-tale.

  "Runagate messaging," said Bob. "Morgan would like to speak with you."

  Holt's spreading, silly smile was indeed all too human.

  Amaranth goosed his ship out of the atmosphere. It was not that he had to be the first fighter in the assault—although he wouldn't have turned the position away—but he also knew he didn't want to place anywhere back in the pack. "First in the hearts of his countrymen," he sang atonally. "First to fight their wa-orrr.'' The last note jangled dissonantly in his own ears.

  Tanzin's voice crackled over the ship's link. "Perhaps you could, uh, sing, if that's the precise verb that fits, privately instead of on-channel?"

  "She's right." Bogdan's voice.

  "It's a war song," said Amaranth, "I'm building morale." He hit another, more than slightly askew, note. Only a meter away, his 'Reen passenger growled ominously.

  Amaranth stopped singing, "You're a critic too, my hirsute colleague?"

  Another growl, prolonged, rumbling low in the 'Reen's throat.

  "ThunderWalker, that's your name, right?" Amaranth said to the 'Reen hunter. "ThunderWalker, perhaps you'd like to join me in a duet."

  The ship's link garbled and jammed as a dozen voices said the same word.

  "Um; I… never heard anything quite like that said on a ship's link," Holt said. He wondered if the warmth showed on his face.

  "And quite probably you won't again," The smile permeated Morgan's voice. "Don't worry, it wasn't public. Runagate and Bob locked in the channel."

  "We had better open up that channel." It was Runagate's voice, "Things are heating up considerably with the boojum."

  "Channel open," said Bob, "Good luck, everybody."

  "Buy you a caf after this is over," Morgan said.

  The brain of the machine juggled probabilities, determining whether it should, for the time being, ignore the first ships now violating its zone of effective weaponry, in order to lure the great mass of them into range.

  SHIP'S LINK

  CHANNEL CHECKS

  Amaranth/All Ships: "Well, that was easy."

  Holt/'Reen Channel: *Though we are in range of its talons, the prey has not sprung for the bait.*

  Tanzin/All Ships: "It's got to be a trap."

  LNTCVP1-Bob/Runagate: It is a trap.

  PereSnik't/'Reen Channel: *Surely, then, the prey is attempting to gull us.*

  Runagate/LNTCVPI-Bob: It is a trap.

  Morgan/All Ships: "Okay, let's boost hard!"

  The machine suddenly came alive, bristling missiles as though they were quills erecting on a Q-beast. The missiles flew just as its enemy shattered into a cloud of wildly varied trajectories. The boojum had three hundred and seventeen separate sentient enemies to contend with now, not to mention the thousands of semi-intelligent missiles erupting from the fighters like insects swarming from a nest.

  Skeins of contending particle beams crisscrossed the sphere of defensive space, a traveling net with the machine spidered at the center. The boojum's shields and weapons phased in tandem. Incoming missiles sputtered, fused, and burned luridly. The machine had no program for esthetics, so it could not appreciate the beauty of nuclear flowers blooming brilliantly in the garden of the firmament.

  The machine looked for patterns to form as the human ships flew in all directions. It had projected that the battle might be won in the first twenty seconds. That was now clearly impossible.

  Victory was still a clear probability, but it would be neither fast, nor simple.

  SHIP'S LINK

  CHANNEL CHECKS

  Amaranth/All Ships: "We're in. Dammit, we're in!"

  Tanzin/All Ships; "Take it easy. We're just fleas, and it doesn't mean spit if the dog hasn't decided to scratch yet."

  Holt/'Reen Channel: *Close, we're close.*

  ThunderWalker/'Reen Channel: *Good. The chant will also wipe away the noise of my pilot.*

  MussGray/'Reen Channel: *At least your pilot has kept you alive.*

  Holt/'Reen-Channel: *We are all still alive.*

  Tanzin/All Ships: "Look out! It's scratch—"

  Morgan whirled her ship into a maneuver she could term, but never could have identified as to origin: an Immelman turn. Runagate looped around, rolled, then accelerated as a brace of boojum missiles flashed by.

  The woman blinked through the array of images Runagate projected throughout the control space. In the holographic display, the lasers and parade beams were colored bright neon shades for clarity. The webwork patterns danced around the painfully slow midge that was Runagate closing on the boojum. Sparks cascaded around the miniature image of the ship. Some were accelerating missiles. Some were bits of debris from the dead and dying.

  Everything seemed to move in slow motion.

  Morgan glanced at the 'Reen. beside her and did a double take. The artist MussGray had brought on board a pad Dr. Epsleigh had given him. Grumbling happily, he was staring at the screens, displays, and images, and sketching furiously. The pilot shook her head and her mind retreated to speed. She slammed Runagate into a full-ahead feint at the growing mass of the boojum.

  PereSnik't granted as the restraining straps dug into his thick shoulders. Bob rolled into a hard zig-zag, and Holt prayed the AG would stand up. If it didn't, the inside of the cockpit would look like it had been spread with berry jam.

  "You're within the parameters you requested," said Bob. "Good luck."

  Holt scanned the instruments, glanced at the chunk of machine balefully occluding his main screen. No casualties among the 'Reen ships yet.

  "Now!" he said into the ship's link. *Now!* he said to the 'Reen.

  *Hyo* came the chorus.

  He glanced aside at PereSnik't. The 'Reen shaman held tight to the alloy effigy. Fur glittered, reflected in the stylized circuitry. Holt wanted to touch his father a final time, but he didn't want to alter PereSnik't's concentration.

  The 'Reen reached over and clasped Holt's upper arm. *Remernber* said PereSnik't. *You are as much I as them.*

  Holt smiled.

  PereSnik't began the chant. His voice rumbled as the others picked up the resonance.

  *You are near*

  The ship's skin rumpled slightly. Bob's skeleton creaked. Holt couldn't see it with his eyes, but the instruments told him a charged beam had passed within meters of Bob's wingtip.

  *Come to us*

  *As we come to you*
<
br />   "Closer!" Holt said into the ship's link to the other pilots. "We've got to get in so close, the machine will take up the whole screen."

  PereSnik't's voice filled the ship. The chant filled the space between ships.

  *With your pardon*

  *We shall kill you—*

  Holt prayed thai the other ships, the ones not carrying the 'Reen, could continue to draw the machine's attention and its firepower.

  *—and devour you*

  He realized he was chanting too. 'Part of his mind, his concentration, his attention, more and more of it, was drawn into the skein of power. I have to pilot, he told himself. Careful, Careful—

  *That we the People*

  "I'm closer to that son of a bitch than you," said Morgan's voice. "Get in here, love!"

  *Might live*

  "I'm even closer," said Tanzin over the link. "Move it, Holt."

  *You are near*

  PereSnik't began the chant again. This time Holt sang with them from the beginning.

  *Come to us*

  *As we come to you*

  The images flashed in front of his eyes. The main screen swept across what seemed an endless expanse of machine.

  *With your pardon*

  The screen was filled with the images of asymmetric metal forms. The song, the ship—Holt meshed.

  *We shall kill you—*

  It all worked. He could be both—

  "Hey!" Amaranth's voice yelled. "We're in! Did you ever—" The transmission cut off Vacuum filled that space.

  One of the boojum's particle beams punched through Amaranth's ship transversely. Clubbed by a weapon moving at lightspeed, some things just were there, and then they were not.

  The components of the ship's brain instantly stressed to destruction under the energy overload and flared into darkness. The ship died of a thousand electronic aneurisms.

  Passing through the cockpit, the beam did far more immediate damage to Amaranth than to ThunderWalker.

  As the ship twisted sickeningly and began to break up, Amaranth could look down and see little where his chest had been. The scarlet spray beginning to cloud his eyes told him the AG was going wonky.

  He knew it should hurt, but it didn't. Shock. It wouldn't. No time.

  Amaranth saw a field of spring flowers, all red and gold and vibrant, in a meadow at the foot of the Shraketooths. He died before the season changed.

  The particle beam had barely grazed ThunderWalker. That was sufficient to vaporize the 'Reen's shoulder.

  *We shall kill you—*

  The chant still reverberated inside ThunderWalker's head. And continued for the hunter. *—and devour you*

  The ship split into ragged sections. The last air was expelled from the cockpit, ripping from ThunderWalker's lungs. Still held back by the elastic restraints, the 'Reen glared out at the machine that filled his sky.

  *That we the People*

  The 'Reen hunter was dying in a sea of debris. He reached and grabbed with his remaining paw. Claws tightened around something substantial and silky—the wrist of his severed arm.

  He grinned out at the prey filling his eyes and mind, feeling the chant rise to its climax.

  *Might live*

  Expending the last of his fury ThunderWalker whirled the orphaned limb around his head and then hurled it directly into the face of his prey.

  He could do no more.

  The smallest segment of the boojum's defensive brain detected she strange object moving toward it from the destroyed ship. Circuits reacted. A beam flicked out and turned the arm into a dissipating trace of ionized gases.

  The action was the result of a reasonable judgment on the part of the machine. Had the arm not been there to draw fire, the boojum would have selected another target…

  Bob flashed across the boojum's surface.

  Holt looked at PereSnik't and said, *Now!* The 'Reen' shaman felt the pattern of the magic that had just been worked. This prey was no different than a skelk— just, larger and inedible.

  The People repeated the sum of the chant.

  *We shall kill you*

  *And devour you*

  PereSnik't focused and guided the dispassionate grasp out and into the prey. He soared along the guideways and glowing paths of the boojum's mighty heart.

  It too was much energy even to imagine. But not so much be couldn't interrupt it. PereSnik'i touched the true heart of the machine.

  *That we the People*

  One millisecond the electrons spun and flowed in streams; the next, the wets of energy surged, staggered, choked—

  *Might live*

  —and died. Struck through its heart, the great, dead machine hurtled along its course.

  Bob abruptly angled to avoid a desultory defensive missile.

  The machine was an inert body in the center of a cloud of angry wasps.

  Holt looked at PereSnik't and the 'Reen nodded.

  *It is done* he said into the 'Reen Channel. Holt translated that for the other pilots.

  "Amaranth…" said Bogdan mournfully.

  "We'll count the dead later," said Morgan. Her voice was sober. "The machine—are you sure it's finished?"

  PereSnik't growled softly.

  "It is dead," Holt said.

  "Now to dispose of it," said one of the link voices.

  "Into the sun?" The voice was Bogdan's.

  "It will probably go for salvage," said Tanzin. "Drawn, quartered, and dismantled. Where did you think our bonuses were going to come from?"

  The link settled down to routine traffic as pilots began to tally the casualties.

  Morgan's voice came on the channel. "Holt? When we get back to Almira with the 'Reen… I don't think things are going to be the same." Holt knew exactly what she meant. Then Morgan said, "Don't forget the cup of caf. I want to see you."

  "I want to see you too," said Holt.

  Dr. Epsleigh came on the general channel and relayed thanks and congratulations from the PM and the Princess Elect. She tried to say all the right things.

  "What about that boojum?" said Bogdan. "Once we take it apart, can we figure out where it came from?"

  The administrator on Almira admitted that was possible.

  "And then follow the trail back and blow hell out of those machines, now that we have our secret weapon?"

  Dr. Epsleigh laughed. "Maybe we will, and maybe we won't."

  "We will," said Bogdan.

  But Holt, translating for the 'Reen Channel, wasn't so sure.

  Beside him, PereSnik't granted in agreement.

  Listen now.

  I have recounted to you the truth. It was the time of rejoining comradeship with "Holt," as the Other People called him, and the beginning of my learning strange and sometimes wonderful new ways.

  Young, young and eager I was in that battle, riding with the woman Kai-Anila, smelling her bravery and her spirit, and attempting to lend my own poor effort. Now I shall pause for both breath and refreshment.

  Just remember, my cubs, my children, my future, that this is the rightful tale of how we at last began to gain our freedom.

  CROSSING THE BAR

  The Kirsi/Almira vision was prolonged, so that Lars, on the verge of returning to the reality of his imprisonment, knew one last moment of contact with the 'Reen. In the time-warped world of telepathy, the episode of Holt Calder and Morgan Kai-Anila had come to him in the form of a revelation from the future. But this last direct contact with the 'Reen was in the present. Lars's mind touched those of two members of that race in particular: old PereSnik't, now recognizable to Lars as the dark-furred being he had glimpsed during a dream, and the artist MussGray.

  In that last moment of contact, Lars saw something of the possible modes by which organic, protoplasmic mind might be able to make contact with such mind as could exist within ruled metal plates—or within computing artifacts whose images came through the telepathic process looking like metal plates etched with silver lines.

  No chanting there, old PereSnik
't chanted. And MussGray's image in the background, painter's brush in hand, nodded wisely. The chant, the poem, the, art, is much. Not all, but much.

  With the last of the contact gone, Lars Kanakuru emerged from the linked telepathic session with his mind still echoing the derived thoughts of the fighter pilots of the Kirsi/Almira system. And still savoring the different flavor'of the 'Reen mind, as dissimilar from his mind and the Carmpan's as they were from each other.

  And from the 'Reen of course had come that last hectoring comment about the verse, the chant, the art. Was that supposed to be a secret too? Lars didn't know. Of course the berserker's probe had extracted it from his consciousness along with the rest of the episode, and whether it was supposed to be a secret or not, the berserker now knew it as well as he did, or better.

  The prisoners had just been returned to the cell complex and the door closed on them when the shock of an explosion came racing through the surrounding rock, a jolt almost violent, enough to shake them off their feet. The hardened ceiling overhead shed flakes. For a moment, Lars was mentally back with Gemma and Pat Devlin in their mine.

  Naxos shouted: "That's not mining activity. We're under attack!"

  The prisoners stared at each other. Lars saw fear, hope, and elation, mingled in the faces of the other four. There was a moment of silence that seemed to go on endlessly. Lars held his breath, waiting for either the berserker or its enemies to strike them all with annihilation.

  Then, titanic thrumming roars shook rock and air and space itself. Those are launchings, Lars thought, not blasts.

  It's getting its fighting machines into space, and taking chances to get them into action quickly, warping them into flightspace dangerously close to the planet. Someone, whoever is attacking, has caught it by surprise.

  Now new explosions hammered at the rock around the prison. Impacts, concussions jarring teeth and bones.

  Naxos crouched, fists clenched, then leaped, as high as anyone could leap in this low place. "Wahoo! Get it, get it, kill it, mash it flat!"

  "… and us inside…"

  "And us inside!" The captain made it into a cry of triumph. "Wahoo!" He was trembling; to Lars he looked to be on the verge of some kind of ecstasy.