Berserker Kill Read online

  Genevieve turned to make her way forward, with some vague idea that the pilot’s compartment ought to be in that direction, and that someone, human or autopilot, ought still to be there, still in charge, and that she and the other passengers needed help.

  But, for whatever reason, she found herself unable to open the hatch or door that led out of the main passenger cabin. There was a small glass panel in the door, and she could see through it a little, just enough to convince her that there was nothing but ruin forward.

  And still the air kept up a faint whining, hissing… an automatic sealant system was still trying, vainly but stubbornly, to ameliorate disaster.

  Now all around her, above, below (though such terms were swiftly losing any practical meaning) drifted the dead and dying, and a few others who like herself had freed themselves from their couches but were unable to do anything more. It registered with Genevieve that no one had even the most modest emergency suit or equipment, no way to keep at bay for long the emptiness outside the fragile, failing hull.

  Machinery twitched and moved. She could hear it, somewhere outside the compartment in which she and her unlucky fellow passengers were trapped. From somewhere, at last, an autopilot’s voice started trying to give reassurance and then shut up. The voice came back, calm as all robotic voices were, repeated twice some idiotic irrelevance about staying in your couches, please, then went away for good.

  Straining her aching limbs, Genevieve took hold of one or two of her drifting fellow passengers and tried to rouse them to meaningful communication. But this effort had no success.

  Her every breath hurt her now. Pulling herself from one acceleration couch to another, the lady observed with the numbness of growing shock that as far as she could tell, all of her bodyguards, publicists, and other aides-at least all she could recognize under these conditions-were dead. Probably no one among the few passengers still breathing was better off than she was, or even able to talk to anyone else, beyond a few groans.

  After an interval in which Lady Genevieve thought she had begun to accustom herself to being dead, a new noise reached her ears. She opened her eyes, gripping her fingers into fists, wishing that the light-headedness that was growing minute by minute would go away. What was she hearing? Something real, yes. Only sounds of the wrecked ship collapsing further?

  And out of nowhere, it seemed, the certainty suddenly returned to her: she was now clearly convinced, in the face of death, that it had been a mistake to give up her child. If she hadn’t agreed to make the donation, she wouldn’t be here now. She would be home instead-There it came again. Yes, definitely, a noise that spoke of purpose, not just of collapse.

  Yes. Someone or something was working on some part of the ship from the outside, trying to get in.

  A moment later, the Lady Genevieve, trying to focus her mind against a feeling like too much wine-with part of her mind she understood this was anoxia-thought she was able to identify the grating sound of contact between two vessels.

  Working her way almost weightlessly closer to a cleared port, she was able to see that another small vehicle had matched velocities with the wreck and was very close indeed.

  The same noise again, quite near at hand, and perhaps a flare of light as well; something or someone cutting through metal-Abruptly metal opened, without any murderous escape of air.

  She saw, with a shock of relief of such intensity that she almost fainted, that her visitor was no murderous machine, but rather a suited human figure that spoke to her at once, and reassuringly.

  Genevieve was by this time more than a little dazed, rapturously light-headed with lack of oxygen as cabin pressure dropped to dangerously low levels. Her body was scratched in several places, and seriously bruised. But she was not too badly hurt to glide her nearly weightless body across the foggy interior of the cabin and plant a big kiss on her rescuer’s faceplate.

  (And was it something her fuzzy vision discovered for her, or could not discover, inside his or her helmet, that made the lady’s eyes widen for just a moment?)

  In response to her kiss upon his helmet there seemed to be just a moment of hesitation, surprise, on her rescuer’s part. And then the armored arms came round her, gently, protectively returning the hug. Out of the suit’s air speaker came the same voice she remembered coming from a holostage, what seemed like an age ago. “Nicholas Hawksmoor, my lady. At your service.”

  Drifting back to arm’s length from the embrace, she demanded eagerly: “Can you get me out of here? I don’t have a suit, you see.

  It seems there are no suits aboard.”

  “That’s quite all right, my lady. I can get you out safely. Because-”

  And at that instant, with a great roar, all that was left of her newly salvaged life, her world, exploded.

  Drs. Hoveler and Zador meanwhile, with the stowage of experiments and materials just about completed, were snatching intervals, long seconds at a time, from their self-imposed duties, to watch, as best they could on holostage and instrument readouts, the fighting that flared intermittently outside the station’s hull.

  Between these intervals of dreadful observation the two oversaw robotic maintenance of the station’s life support systems.

  There was really nothing they could do to defend the station-the laboratory had not been designed or built for frontier duty, and was completely unarmed and unshielded. So far, it seemed to be essentially undamaged.

  Several times the two people standing watch in the laboratory expressed their hope that the courier ship had got clean away-they had heard no word about it one way or the other. And Acting Supervisor Zador once or twice wondered aloud, in such intervals for thought as she was able to seize among her duties, what success Nicholas Hawksmoor was having with the ramming maneuver she had commanded him to attempt. Hoveler had been meaning to ask her about that, but once more he decided that his questions could wait.

  Of course the ultimate result of the berserker attack did not depend very much on Hawksmoor, Hoveler thought. Whatever he might or might not have done, there were fairly strong defenses in place on the surface of the planetoid Imatra, and the station in its low orbit lay well within the zone of their protection.

  Also a pair, at least, of armed ships happened to be lying by close enough in space to put up a fight against the onrushing attacker.

  These ground batteries and ships, and the people who crewed them, as records later were to confirm, bravely offered opposition to the onslaught.

  But events proved that the single enemy was far too strong.

  The defenders watched powerlessly as the berserker, not in the least deterred or delayed by the best they could accomplish, came on in an undeviating course obviously calculated to intercept the bioresearch station in its swift orbit. The enemy’s immediate presence in the station’s vicinity was now less than a minute away.

  Hoveler’s next helpless inspection of the nearby holostage showed him the onrushing image of death changing, shedding little fragments of itself. He interpreted this to mean that the berserker had launched some small craft of its own-or were they missiles? He wondered why, on the verge of his own destruction, he should find such details interesting.

  Though neither of the people on the station were aware of the details, the planetoid’s ground defenses offered such resistance as they could manage to put up, bright beams of energy slicing and punctuating space, annihilating some of the small enemy machines; but only moments after the ground batteries opened fire, they were pounded into silence, put out of action by the even heavier weapons of the enemy. And the first pair of fighting ships who tried to engage the foe were soon blasted into fragments, transformed into expanding clouds of metallic vapor laced with substances of organic origin.

  There were only a couple of fighting ships left in the whole Imatran system, and only one of these was anywhere near the scene of the attack and in position to close with the attacker. Its captain and crew did not lack courage. Hurtling bravely within range, this last human f
ighter to join the fray opened up with its weapons on its gigantic opponent and the smaller commensal ships or spacegoing machines the attacker had deployed.

  But none of the weapons humanity could bring to bear seemed to do the great berserker any serious damage, though it was impossible at the moment to accurately assess their effect.

  And now it was no longer possible to doubt the enemy’s prime objective. The huge bulk of the berserker, basically almost spherical, vaguely ragged in its outline, wreathed by the glowing power of its defensive force fields, was easing to a halt in space within a few hundred meters of the biolab, dwarfing the station by its size, smoothly matching the sharp curve of the smaller object’s orbit.

  By this time Daniel Hoveler had left his post, where he had already carried out, quite uselessly, such duties as the manuals prescribed.

  Annie, startled to see him go, called out sharply: “Where are you going?”

  He called over his shoulder: “I’ll be back.” He had an idea that she might be better off if she did not know what he was about to do.

  Leaving the laboratory deck, he rode a quick lift to the level where the hardware comprising the station’s optelectronic brain was concentrated. Anyuta Zador had called after him again, demanding to know where he was going, but he had refused to answer. His thought in refusing was that she would somehow be safer from the berserker’s revenge if she didn’t know what he was doing.

  His plan, such as it was, involved finding some way to scramble the information code by which the station’s brain kept track of the enormous inventory of tiled, preserved zygotes.

  Even as Hoveler made his way toward the chamber where the station’s brain was located, Dr. Zador continued calling him on intercom. At last he answered, briefly and noncommittally, having a vague and probably irrational fear that the enemy might already be listening.

  The intercom system was tracking his progress, effortlessly and automatically. From one deck to another, Hoveler and Zador kept up a terse communication.

  Neither of the two expected anything better than quick death.

  Both of them, finding themselves still breathing at this stage, were fearful of some fate considerably worse.

  “Dan? It’s just sitting there a couple of hundred meters from our hull! Dan, what are you doing?” Perhaps she thought he was trying to hide or to escape.

  He couldn’t think while she kept shouting at him, and right now he had to think, because he had reached and unlocked the little room he wasted. Maybe it didn’t make sense to try to keep what he was doing secret; he would explain.

  “I’m not trying to hide, Annie. I’m going after the zygotes.”

  “Going after them?” She sounded nearly in a panic.

  “Annie, haven’t you asked yourself why we aren’t dead already? Obviously because the berserker wants something that we’ve got on board. It wants to capture something undamaged. I think that something has to be our cargo.”

  “Dan. The tiles…” Now her voice seemed to be fading.

  For years the two of them had worked together, lived, struggled, sometimes in opposition over details but always together in their determination that the overall colonial project should succeed. They had both devoted themselves to the welfare of these protopeople, to the hope of eventually contributing to their achievement of real lives.

  For the moment there was silence on the intercom.

  Now Hoveler, agonizing, was working with the hardware, entering computer commands, trying to remember how to isolate that portion of the ship’s brain having to do with cargo inventory without causing widespread failure in other functions. Now he was running through numbers on a readout, and now he was calling up on holostage a direct view of the vast storage banks of nascent people being housed on this deck and others-chamber after chamber of them, bin after bin. The idea flashed through his mind that it was at least a merciful dispensation that these could feel neither pain nor fear.

  Hoveler, swayed by an agonized moment or two of indecision, continued to stare at the imaged bins and cabinets protectively holding the protocolonists.

  Calling up one image after another on a convenient ‘stage, he inspected the endless-seeming ranks of tiles in storage. Row after row, drawer after drawer, densely packed. The handy little storage devices were amazingly tough, designed to offer great resistance to either accidental or purposeful destruction.

  In a flash it crossed his mind to wonder what had actually happened to the Premier’s newly donated protoperson. He remembered Annie’s putting the tile down on the top of his own console-but he couldn’t remember seeing it or even thinking about it at any time after that. In the normal course of events, one of the attendant machines in the lab, observing a tile lying about loose, would have picked it up and whisked it away for filing. But under present circumstances…

  Just looking at them didn’t help, of course. Whatever he was going to do, he felt sure that he had not much time in which to do it. But the seconds of inexplicable survival stretched on into minutes while Hoveler kept trying very cleverly and subtly to inflict damage, controlled but irreversible, upon the thinking hardware. And still the minutes of continued life stretched on…

  For whatever purpose, the fatal stroke was still withheld. The destroyer was treating the unarmored, undefended station very gently. But surely at any moment now something terrible would happen.

  Instead of swift destruction, there came a bumping, grating noise, at once terrible and familiar.

  Hoveler tried hastily to finish what he had started. The new noise sounded like some small craft or machine, evidently an emissary from the berserker, attempting a docking with the lab.

  Given the limited time and tools available, destroying any substantial proportion of the tiles seemed as utterly impossible a task as getting them to safety. Therefore he had concentrated on achieving hopeless confusion in the determination of the specimens’ identities. Because it seemed that, for some wicked reason of its own, the berserker was actually intent on taking them all alive.

  He could only try to deduce the reason, but it must be horrible.

  Minutes ago, when it became obvious that they were being spared quick destruction, a hideous scenario had sprung into Hoveler’s imagination, to the effect that the damned machine was planning to seize the zygotes and the artificial wombs and raise a corps of goodlife slaves and auxiliaries.

  Meanwhile Annie Zador, back on the laboratory deck, was listening to the station’s own calm robotic Communications voice announce that something had just completed a snug docking at Airlock Two.

  “Should I open?” The same bland voice asked the question.

  She didn’t bother to reply. Before the question could be repeated, it had become irrelevant. Whatever was outside was not waiting politely for an invitation. The airlock was only a standard model, not built to withstand a determined boarding assault, and within a few seconds it had been opened without the cooperation of any interior intelligence.

  Moments after the enemy had forced open the airlock, four boarding machines of deadly appearance came striding upon inhuman legs into the main laboratory.

  Anyuta Zador closed her eyes and, waiting for destruction, held her breath-

  -and then, unable to bear the suspense, began with an explosive shudder to breathe again. She opened her eyes to see that only one of the silent machines now stood regarding her with its lenses. The rest of the boarders had already gone somewhere.

  They must have fanned out across the laboratory or gone back into the corridor. Not back out through the airlock; she would have heard its doors again.

  “Obey orders,” the remaining machine advised her in a voice not much more inhuman than the station’s, “and you will not be harmed.”

  Zador could not force herself to answer.

  “Do you understand?” the machine demanded. It rolled closer, stopping no more than two meters away. “You must obey.”

  “Yes. I-I understand.” She clung to her supervisor’s consol
e to keep from falling down in terror.

  “How many other people are on board?”

  “No one else.” The brave lie came out unplanned and very quickly, before Dr. Zador allowed herself the time to consider what its consequences might be.

  Already another of the invaders was coming back into the laboratory room. “Where are the flight controls?” it demanded of her, in a voice identical to that of the first berserker device.

  Zador had to stop and think. “What few controls this vessel has for that purpose are on the next deck up.”

  The machine that had just reentered the lab stalked out again.

  Meanwhile Hoveler was working on furiously, but carefully. It would be good if he could avoid leaving any traces of this intrusion. Since it would be practically impossible for him to destroy the cargo of protopeople-he wasn’t sure that he could bring himself to make the effort anyway-he was determined to render them less useful in whatever horrible experiment the berserker might be planning.

  Assuming he was successful, what should he do then? He was not the type to contemplate killing himself in cold blood. Seek out the nearest berserker presence and give himself up? Simply return to his post, where Annie was more than likely already dead?

  He supposed that if he should choose to hide out, the length of time he would be able to avoid capture or death depended to some extent upon how many machines the berserker had sent aboard. If the number of invaders was small, he might be able to conceal himself indefinitely. He might also be aided by the enemy’s ignorance of the physical layout inside the station.

  Indefinitely?

  The overall shape of the facility was roughly that of a cylinder a little more than fifty meters in diameter, and about the same in length. Twelve decks or levels provided space for work, storage, and housing. There had been more than enough room for the usual crew of people and machines to move about without getting in one another’s way.