Rogue Berserker Read online

  Harry offered what seemed to him an appropriate comment. The cop was giving him a ride in a police car, taking him back to his hotel beside the Cascadian spaceport. As a rule Harry didn’t talk much, but there were times when once he got started he tended to go on at some length. Tonight he found himself, by his own standards, almost babbling. Discussing your troubles with someone you didn’t know was easier than complaining to a friend—not that Harry was exactly surrounded by a roster of interested friends all clamoring to hear what had him down.

  He explained to the cop that he had come to this world in search of financing for a new ship. The lease was about to expire on the ship he had been using. He had driven it to Cascadia, with whatever cargo he had been able to scrounge up, because he had heard that a certain company doing business here was making deals with small, independent ship owners and operators. But that hadn’t worked out. Even getting another cargo here was proving difficult.

  The police car was running on autodriver while the cop just leaned back in the driver’s seat and looked at Harry and listened. He seemed to be one of those good cops who could deal with most problems by sympathetic talk. Harry would bet that the total amount of good he had done in the world was never going to show up in his official record.

  When Harry paused, the good cop observed: “I suppose owning your own ship is the way to go. If you’re in the piloting business.”

  “Yeah, just about the only way. I actually had my own ship, until about five standard years ago.” Soon Harry found himself explaining how the last craft he had owned, the Witch of Endor, had been lost in action against a berserker.

  “That would entitle you to compensation, right? From one government or another?”

  “Sure, in this case maybe from more than one. But their idea of what it’ll cost to replace the Witch doesn’t quite match with mine.”

  “What kind of ship are you in the market for?” the investigator sounded genuinely curious.

  “A nice one.” Harry didn’t feel like going into details. And he didn’t bother to mention that he had a name all picked out: Sonovawitch. He wasn’t sure this officer was the type to appreciate it.

  * * *

  Over the last few months, in the course of seeking private financing, Harry had made the same explanation a number of times, to a variety of different people, none of whom had seemed overwhelmingly impressed. He had grown tired of repeating that the amounts the various governmental bodies were willing to compensate him did not add up to what he needed for a real replacement for the Witch, the kind of ship he was determined to have. People responding to his presentation tended to leave unspoken comments hanging in the air, things like This is an arrogant so-and-so. Entitled to some special consideration, is he? Who does he think he is?

  Well, Harry knew who he was. Others might entertain different ideas about him, but self-image was not his problem—at least he had never given it any serious consideration. So when, a few weeks ago, Harry had been handed the invitation from Winston Cheng, delivered in a form that suggested it had been sent a good many light-years by special superluminal courier, Harry suspected it was a joke, and his first thought was: Who would be the most likely perpetrator?

  The Winston Cheng whose apparent signature sat like a foundation stone at the bottom of the message was one of the wealthiest humans in the known Galaxy. Cheng Enterprises was widely believed to be quite capable of organizing a private army or even a small fleet of spaceships if the need arose. It was a name Harry would never have considered when drawing up his list of possible angels to whom a small fish like Harry Silver might reasonably go looking for an honest loan.

  The invitation was as simple and direct as it was mysterious:

  Mister Harry Silver—

  Please come see me in person at once, regarding an arrangement in which I will buy you the ship you want.

  Winston Cheng

  Well, it didn’t seem at all impossible that Winston Cheng knew that Harry was looking for a good ship. That was hardly a secret—Harry had been bitching and moaning his way across one Galactic sector after another, traversing so much of the inhabited territory that probably half the human population could be aware of his complaints. Harry had gripped the paper—yes, real, simple, single-use paper—in both fists, muttering. “Come see him, huh? Just like that. How the hell am I supposed to afford just getting there? Take a vacation in my leased ship? If he thinks …”

  Such irreverence seemed to make the human courier, the one who had brought Harry the message, uncomfortable. Not that the courier knew the message content, or the reason it had been sent.

  He could, however, clarify one point. Whatever the great man wanted with Harry, it was very serious business and he was in a hell of a hurry. Yes, he could assure Harry that Winston Cheng had really gone to the length of sending a ship for him, a full-sized courier with a human crew. Most magnates with half of Winston Cheng’s wealth would have expected to be able to buy and sell several Harry Silvers for a fraction of the cost of doing that.

  The possibility, even a probability, that the offer might be perfectly serious was beginning to sink in. “Who do I have to kill?” Harry had wondered aloud.

  The courier captain, still waiting deferentially for Harry’s reply, evidently thought that Harry was trying to be funny, and showed polite amusement. “It’s not a joke, Mister Silver. A genuine invitation, I assure you.”

  Mister Silver waved the document, jabbed a pointing finger at it. “Even the part about his buying me a ship? Under what conditions does that hold?” Harry was making a fuss, but already in his own mind there was no doubt at all that he was going to see the man.

  The captain was determined to be as opaque as he was courteous. “Sir, I’ve told you everything that I know. Details will have to come from the boss himself.”

  Port clearance and liftoff were routine. After about two days of ride in the fast courier—two restless days of doing little or nothing— Harry arrived at an outpost of Winston Cheng Enterprises, in the middle of a sizable city on a world that was very largely owned by the gentleman himself, where he was ushered with what seemed amazing speed into the great man’s presence.

  The visitor wasn’t sure whether this room at the top of a high-rise building ought to be called an office or a study, but it was appropriately long, high, and magnificent. Long, long, red drapes half concealed windows of crystal that seemed alive with light, their clear depths suggesting rather than displaying vistas of impossible landscaping.

  Actually, presence chamber was the label that sprang to Harry’s mind. But, after all, he had seen breathtaking walls before, with rich patterns scrolling over them. He had seen heavenly furnishings. The truly most impressive thing about the welcome was that he hadn’t been made to wait.

  A tall, attractive woman of uncertain age, her slender body sheathed in a long, black flow of rich fabric, came to greet Harry once the courier captain had seen him in past the first, preliminary receptionist.

  Ignoring the courier captain as he bowed himself away, she introduced herself as the Lady Masaharu, in crisp tones that seemed to want to waste no time. Her smile seemed brittle in a chiseled face, her pale eyes bored into Harry. Evidently what she saw was acceptable, because in another moment she was escorting him into another, smaller and less exotically decorated chamber two rooms away. The private office of Winston Cheng? No, Harry thought not. It was probably the lady’s. Or that of the third deputy assistant to the third assistant deputy.

  Gesturing Harry to a chair, and seating herself behind a dominating desk, she continued to be pleasant and welcoming, in a businesslike way. All emotions were as firmly controlled as her tightly coiffured hair.

  Her voice was soft, in contrast to her appearance. “How was your journey, Mister Silver?”

  “Mysterious.”

  The smile that had gone away came back, faintly. “I hope we’ll soon be able to clear up any essential questions. Mister Cheng wants to do that in person. Were there any other pro
blems?”

  “No. Otherwise very comfortable.”

  Giving the impression of responding to some signal that Harry could not detect, the Lady Masaharu was suddenly on her feet. “Come this way, please.”

  In another moment she was ushering him into the next room, which outdid the original reception room in splendor. As Harry entered, the space before him, practically big enough for a game of volleyball, was dominated by an impressive though silent holostage display. Obviously it was meant for him to see, and there was no need to point it out.

  The two human figures in the silent holo were a vaguely blond, young-looking woman with a face and figure that would pass unnoticed in a crowd, and a delicate-looking boy of about eight who somewhat resembled her. Both were lightly dressed, in sporting togs of richly understated elegance. In the huge room the two life-sized images, faintly transparent, had more space than they needed to move about. They were relaxed, enjoying their leisure, casually playing some kind of game, tossing back and forth the image of a small ball that now and then demonstrated some purpose of its own. Hints of the game’s real background, an open space of grass and sunlight, showed through here and there in the recording. The two were laughing as they played, but no sound of any kind reached Harry’s ears.

  A new voice said something, from behind Harry.

  He turned to confront an elderly man who could only be Mister Winston Cheng himself. The tycoon was readily recognizable from public images but looking older in the flesh, a slight figure, almost as plainly dressed as Harry himself.

  Cheng gestured toward the vaguely ghostly figures. He looked frail, in the same sense that a sculpture of delicate metal wire might deserve that name.

  “There they are, Mister Silver—may I call you Harry?” Winston Cheng’s face was a version, grown and aged, of the small boy’s in the video. His hair was gray and wispy, and his hands seemed too large and young to match the rest of him. Only the dark, impressive eyes seemed likely to belong to one of the Galaxy’s richest humans.

  “Suit yourself.”

  The Lady Masaharu had silently withdrawn into the background, but Harry noted that she did not leave the room. A resource in place, for the master of the house to draw on if he chose. She did not move or blink an eye when the recorded image of the young woman, silently laughing, ran almost through her.

  The old man repeated: “There they are, Harry. My granddaughter and her son. Her only child. My only living descendant of that generation. Please, have a seat.”

  Harry nodded agreeably. “Handsome people.” He tried out a chair of interesting appearance, one that received his weight with a slight quiver, as if it might be nervous. Or maybe it was just impressed by the importance of any visitor eminent enough to be invited to sit down in these rooms. “Your message said plainly that you might buy me a ship.”

  “Indeed it did.” Cheng clasped his large hands in front of him. “Let me explain what I would expect from you in return.”

  “Fire away.”

  One of the old man’s arms moved out, perhaps involuntarily, as if to catch a laughing barefoot child just darting past. But Cheng’s extended hand went right through the speeding figure, as if the boy’s body were only smoke.

  “Winnie,” Winston Cheng murmured sorrowfully. “Henrik Winston Cheng, my great-grandson.”

  “Yes.”

  “Less than a standard month ago, Winnie and his mother were as you see them in this recording.” The fingers of the extended hand closed tightly, the arm fell slowly back to the old man’s side. “Today I do not know if either of them are still alive. If they still breathe, it may be in a situation where they pray for death.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Mister Cheng.”

  For a moment the tycoon seemed to be drifting. Then he went on. “Mister Silver—Harry—time and life had worn me into an old man before I began to realize the importance of certain traditional elements of human existence. And the triviality of other things, indeed of most of what we strive and suffer for.”

  He paused again, as if considering the speech he had just made. “Harry, I speak now in clichés and truisms. You are not a young man either, though certainly you are not as old … tell me, is the most important thing in your life today the same as it was ten years ago?”

  Harry bit back a smart-assed answer, thinking as he did so: Becky would be proud of me. Instead he said: “No, it sure as hell isn’t. But however that may be, my purpose in coming here was to look for some way of getting my hands on a good ship.” Harry fidgeted a bit; the chair was still moving slightly under him, pressing here and there at his bottom and his legs, as if it were determined to discover the position that would provide him with the absolutely greatest comfort. Or something. “I’m truly sorry about your relatives, whatever happened to them. What can I do for you?”

  Lady Masaharu was still standing silent, back against a richly paneled wall, one arm extended, a long fingernail elegantly tapping something on a shelf. She was watching the men, and seemed to be listening with intense concentration.

  Bluntly and efficiently, the old man revealed the stark facts of his problem. His granddaughter, Claudia, and her only child, little Winnie, were missing. All evidence pointed to a remarkable event: they had been kidnapped in a berserker attack on one of Winston Cheng’s space yachts.

  In the background, the Lady Masaharu was doing something that banished the images of idyllic playtime. A broad conventional holostage rose from the center of the large room’s floor, and on the stage a new scene began to play.

  It was the lady who provided commentary: “This recording was made by a surviving eyewitness. From another ship that happened to be only a short distance from the yacht.”

  Several witnesses had been watching from that ship, through magnification. Two sets of testimony came from human, and two more from impartial automated systems.

  Harry sat forward in his strange chair, trying to catch every detail. He could tell that a good deal of time and effort had been invested, setting computers to work to enhance and enlarge the images:

  A spacegoing device had suddenly appeared in normal space nearby.

  Cheng’s voice had taken over the commentary. “The defenses in that system have needed upgrading for some time. They were flat-out fooled by the intruder, for almost a full minute. Logged it in as a small civilian ship. Took them entirely too long to realize that it wasn’t a ship at all.”

  The intruder had seemed to know from the first microsecond what it was after. Only seconds after materializing in normal space, it had literally pounced on the yacht, before the victim could start to move.

  An explosion of moderate size had torn open the yacht’s main airlock. Out of the intruder had poured a small squad of what looked like berserker boarding machines, the largest no bigger than the paddy Harry had fought only a few days back. They had crossed a very modest interval of space, and plunged into the victim. In what seemed an incredibly short time, the boarding machines were back in sight, dragging living people garbed in helmets and spacesuits.

  Berserkers were superbly efficient, fully automated war machines, of ancient lineage, though some were as modern as the latest battlecraft produced by the shipyards of Earth-descended humanity. The prototypes and archetypes of the berserker line had been artifacts of an interstellar war, a gigantic conflict fought across some uncertain, distant region of the Galaxy. That had happened at about the same time that humanity on Earth was discovering the use of fire, and beginning to wonder who had made the star-sparks in the sky, and how far away they were.

  Cheng’s voice was weary. “Of course I have watched this scene a thousand times. And it has been analyzed in great detail, by a battery of experts.”

  One side in that ancient war, a shadowy race known to modern humanity only as the Builders, had built the first berserkers, intending them as ultimate weapons, and launched them in the territory of the rival Red Race. Whatever precisely had been the original programming of those machines, the result had b
een a brood of prodigious inanimate metal killers, driven by a built-in compulsion to destroy all life wherever they could track it down. It seemed obvious that the Builders must have intended to equip their monstrous weapons with effective safeguards, to protect themselves and their own worlds. It was equally obvious that whatever effort they might have made along that line had failed catastrophically.

  The berserkers’ assault had quickly driven the Red Race into oblivion, where they were followed shortly by the Builders themselves. After them the populations of uncounted other planets had been wiped out. So far, in the known Galaxy, only the Earth-descended variant of humanity had been able—sometimes—to match the unliving enemy of all life in intelligence, ferocity, and strength, combined into overall destructive power.

  * * *

  Either Cheng or the lady had done something to pause the recording.

  Watching the capture and pillaging of the yacht, the removal of live people clad in space suits, Harry had ceased to be aware of whatever the furniture might be trying to do to him, or for him. Now, leaning back in a relaxed chair, he shook his head. “That’s grim, all right. Not only grim, but almost unheard of. I’m surprised it wasn’t on the news.”

  Cheng nodded slowly. “As yet there has been no account in the media—is that still true as of this morning, Laura?” The lady in the background nodded, and he went on: “I’ve made a strong attempt to delay any public announcement. You can imagine why. When the news does get out, as inevitably it soon will, my staff and I will certainly face distraction in several forms. There will be fraudulent ransom demands. We will be subject to a heavy volume of lunatic advice, crazy threats of further harm, and offers of psychic assistance, some of the latter guaranteed to be from sympathetic Carmpan.”