Berserker - Berserker Base Part 3

"Take it easy," Gracias said. "One thing at a time. Artificial intelligence is feasible. s.h.i.+p thinks for itself, maybe. Or on automatic. Exploration probe might-"

Another coa.r.s.e s.h.i.+ft cut him off. A violent inertial kick- too violent. Her head was jerked to the left.

Alarms went off like klaxons. Aster's Hope was trying to bring herself back toward collision with the other s.h.i.+p, trying- The screens flashed loud warnings, danger signs as familiar to her as her name. Three of the s.h.i.+p's thrusters were overheating critically. One was tearing itself to pieces under the s.h.i.+ft stress. Aster's Hope wasn't made for this.

She was the s.h.i.+p's' nician: she couldn't let Aster's Hope be damaged. "Break off!" she shouted through the squall of the alarms. "We can't do it!"

Gracias slapped a hand at his board, canceled the collision course.

G-stress receded. Lights on Temple's board told her about thrusters damaged, doors jammed because they'd s.h.i.+fted on their mounts; a locker in the meditech section sprung, a handful of cryogenic capsules gone on backup. But the alarms were cut off almost instantly.

For a second, the collision warnings went into a howl. Then they stopped. The sudden silence felt louder than the alarms.

Gracias punched visual up onto the screens. He got a picture in time to see the other s.h.i.+p go by in a blur of metal too fast for the eye to track. From a range the scanners measured in tens of meters, the alien looked the size of a fortress-squat, squarish, enormous.

As it pa.s.sed, it jabbed a bright red shaft of force at Aster's Hope from pointblank range.

All the screens in the auxcompcon went dark.

"G.o.d!" Gracias gasped. "Scanners burnt out?"

That was Temple's province. She was still reeling from the shock, the knowledge that Aster's Hope had been fired upon; but her hands had been trained until they had a life of their own and knew what to do.

Hardly more than a heartbeat after she understood what Gracias said, she sent in a diagnostic on the scanner circuits. The answer trailed across the screen in front of her.

"No damage," she reported.

"Then what?" He sounded fl.u.s.tered, groping for comprehension.

"Did you get any scan on that beam?" she returned. "Enough to a.n.a.lyze?" Then she explained, "Right angles to the speed of light isn't the same direction for every force. Maybe the c-vector sent this one off into some kind of wraparound field."

That was what he needed. "Right." His hands went to work on his board again.

Almost immediately, he had an answer. "Ion beam. Would've reduced us to subatomic particles without the s.h.i.+eld. But only visual's lost. Scanners still functioning. Have visual back in a second."

"Good." She doublechecked her own readouts, made sure that Aster's Hope's attempts to maneuver with the alien hadn't done any urgent harm. At the same time, she rea.s.sured herself that the force of the ion beam hadn't been felt inside the s.h.i.+eld. Then she pulled her attention back to the screens and Gracias.

"What's our friend doing now?"

He granted, nodded up at the main screen. The comp was plotting another graph, showing the other s.h.i.+p's course in relation to Aster's Hope.

She blinked at it. That was impossible. Impossible for a s.h.i.+p that size moving thai fast to turn that hard.

But of course, she thought with an odd sensation of craziness, there isn't anything living aboard to feel G-stress.

"Well." She swallowed at the way her voice shook. "At least we got their attention."

Gracias fried to laugh, but if came out like a snarl. "Good for us. Now what?"

"We could try to run," she offered. "Put as much distance as possible between as and home."

He shook his head. "Won't work. They're faster."

"Besides which," she growled, "'we've left a particle trail even we could follow all the way back to Aster.

That and the incessant radio gabble- If that mechanical behemoth wants to find our homeworld, we might as well transmit a map."

He pulled back from his board, swung his seat to face her again. His expression troubled her. His eyes seemed dull, almost glazed, as if under pressure his intelligence were slowly losing its edge. "Got a choice?" he asked.

The thought that he might fail Aster's Hope made panic beat in her forehead; but she forced it down.

"Sure," she snapped, trying to send him a spark of her own anger. "We can fight."

His eyes didn't focus on her. "Got laser cannon," he said. "Hydrogen torpedoes. s.h.i.+p like that-he nodded toward, the screen-"won't have s.h.i.+elds we can hurt. How can we fight?"

"You said they're ordinary force-disruption fields. We can break through that. Any sustained pounding can break through. That's why they didn't build Aster's Hope until they could do better."

He still didn't quite look at her. Enunciating carefully, he said, "I don't believe that s.h.i.+p has s.h.i.+elds we can hurt."

Temple pounded the edge of her console. "d.a.m.n it, Gracias! We've got to try! We can't just sit here until they get bored and decide to go do something terrible to our home world. If you aren't interested-"

Abruptly, she leaned back in her seat, took a deep breath and held it to steady herself. Then she said quietly, "Key com over to me. I'll do it myself."

For a minute longer, he remained the way he was, his gaze staring disfocused past her chin. Slowly, he nodded. Moving sluggishly, he turned back to his console.

But instead of keying com over to Temple, he told the comp to begin decelerating Aster's Hope. Losing inertia so the s.h.i.+p could maneuver better.

Softly, she let a sigh of relief through her teeth.

While Aster's Hope braked, pulling her against her momentum restraints, and the unliving alien s.h.i.+p continued its impossible turn, she unlocked the weaponry controls on her console. A string of Sights began to indicate the status of every piece of combative equipment Aster's Hope carried.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, she thought to herself. She'd never imagined it like this. When/if the Asterin mission encountered some unexpected form of life, another s.p.a.ce-going vessel, a planetary intelligence, the whole situation should've been different. A hard-nosed distrust was to be expected: a fear of the unknown; a desire to protect the homeworld; communication problems; wise caution. But not unprovoked a.s.sault. Not an immediate pitched battle out in the middle of nowhere, with Aster itself at issue.

Not an alien s.h.i.+p full of nothing but machinery? Was that the crucial point?

All right: what purpose could a s.h.i.+p like that serve? Exploration probe? Then it wouldn't be hostile. A defense mechanism for a theoretically secure sector of s.p.a.ce which Aster's Hope had somehow violated? But they were at least fifty lightyears from the nearest neighbor to Aster's star; and it was difficult to imagine an intelligence so paranoid that its conception of "territorial s.p.a.ce" reached out this far.

Some kind of automated weapon? But Aster didn't have any enemies.

None of it made any sense. And as she tried to sort it out, her confusion grew worse, it started her sliding into panic.

Fortunately, Gracias chose that moment to ask gruffly, "Ready? It's hauling up on us fast. Be in range in a minute."

She made an effort to control her breathing, shake the knots of panic out of her mind. "Plot an evasive course," she said, "and key it to my board." Her weapons program had to know where Aster's Hope was going in order to use its armament effectively.

"Why?" he asked. "Don't need evasion. s.h.i.+eld'llprotect as."

"To keep them guessing." Her tension was plain in her voice. "And show them we can hit them on the run. Do it."

She thought he was moving too slowly. But faster than she could've done it he had a plot up on the main screen, showing the alien's incoming course and the s.h.i.+fts Aster's Hope was about to make.

She tried to wipe the sweat from her palms on her bare legs; but it didn't do much good. Snarling at the way her hands fell, she poised them over the weapons com.

Gracias's plot stayed on the main screen; but the display in front of her gave her visual again, and she saw the alien s.h.i.+p approaching like a bright metal projectile the Galaxy had flung to knock Aster's Hope out of the heavens. Suddenly frantic, as if she believed the other s.h.i.+p were actually going to crush her, she started firing.

Beams of light shot at the alien from every laser port the comp could bring to bear.

Though the s.h.i.+p was huge, the beams focused on a single section: Temple was trying to maximize their impact. When they hit the force-disruption field, light suddenly blared all across the spectrum, sending up a rainbow of coruscation.

"Negative," Gracias reported as Aster's Hope wrenched into her first evasion s.h.i.+ft. '"No effect."

Her weight rammed against the restraints, the skin of her cheeks pulling, Temple punched the weapons com into continuous fire, then concentrated on holding up her head so that she could watch the visual.

As her lasers turned the alien s.h.i.+p's s.h.i.+elds into a fireworks display, another bright red shaft of force came as straight as a spear at Aster's Hope.

Again, the screen lost visual.

But this time Gracias was ready. He got scanner plots onto the screen while visual was out of use.

Temple could see her laser fire like an equation on a graph connecting Aster's Hope and the unliving s.h.i.+p.

Every few seconds, a line came back the other way-an ion beam as accurate as if Aster's Hope were stationary. "Any effect yet?" she gasped at Gracias as another evasion s.h.i.+ft kicked her to the other side of her seat. "We're hitting them hard. It's got to have an effect."

"Negative," he repeated. "That s.h.i.+eld disperses force almost as fast as it comes in. Doesn't weaken."

Then the attacker went past. In seconds, it would be out of reach of Temple's laser cannon.

"Cancel evasion," she snapped, keying her com out of continuous fire. "Go after them. As fast as we can. Give me a chance to aim a torpedo."

"Right," he responded. And a second later G-stress slammed at her as all the s.h.i.+p's thrusters went on full power, roaring for acceleration.

Aster's Hope steadied on the alien's course and did her best to match its speed.

"Now," Temple muttered, "Now. Before they start to torn." Her hands quick on the weapons board, she primed a whole barrage of hydrogen torpedoes. Then she pulled in course coordinates from the comp.

"Go." With the flat of her hand on all the launch b.u.t.tons at once, she fired.

The comp automatically blinked the c-vector s.h.i.+eld to let the torpedoes out. Fired from a scarce moving as fast as Aster's Hope was, they attained .95c almost immediately and went after the other s.h.i.+p.

Gracias didn't wait for Temple's instructions. He reversed thrust, decelerating Aster's Hope again to stay as far as possible from the blast when the torpedoes. .h.i.t.

If they hit. The scanner plot on the main screen showed that the alien was starting to turn.

"Come on," she breached. Unconsciously, she pounded her fists on the arms of her seat. "Come on. Hit that b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Hit."

"Impact," he said as all the blips on the scanner came together.

At that instant, visual cleared. They saw a hot white ball explode like a balloon of energy rupturing in all directions at once.

Then both visual and scan went haywire for a few long seconds. The detonation of that many hydrogen torpedoes at once filled all the s.p.a.ce around Aster's Hope with chaos: energy emissions on every frequency; supercharged particles phasing in and out of existence as they screamed away from the point of explosion.

"Hit him," Gracias murmured.

Temple gripped the arms of her seat, stared at the garbage on the screens. "What do you think? Can they stand up to that?"

He didn't shrug. He looked like he didn't have that much energy left. "Wouldn't hurt us."

"Can't you clear the screens? We've got to see."

"The comp's doing it." Then, a second later: "Here it comes."

The screens wiped themselves clear, and a new scanner plot mapped the phosphors in front of him. It showed the alien turning hard, coming back toward Aster's Hope.

The readout was negative. No damage.

"Oh, G.o.d," she sighed. "I don't believe it." All the strength seemed to run out of her body. She sagged against her restraints. "Now what do we do?"

He went on staring at the screens for a long moment while the attacking s.h.i.+p completed its turn. Then he said, "Don't know. Try for collision again?"

When she didn't say anything, he gave the problem to the comp, told it to wait until the last possible instant-considering Aster's Hope's poor maneuverability-and then thrust the s.h.i.+p into the alien's path.

After that, he keyed his board onto automatic and leaned back in his restraints. To her surprise, he yawned hugely.

"Need sleep," he mumbled thickly. "Be glad when this s.h.i.+ft's over."

Surprise and fear made her acid. "You're not thinking very clearly, Gracias." She needed him, but he seemed to be getting further and further away. "Do you think the mission can continue after this? What do you think the chances are that s.h.i.+p's going to give up and let us go on our way? My G.o.d, there isn't even anybody alive over there! The whole thing is just a machine. It can stay here and pound at us for centuries, and it won't even get bored. Or it can calculate the odds on Aster building a c-vector s.h.i.+eld big enough to cover the whole planet-and it can just forget about us, leave us here and go attack our homeworld because there won't be anything we can do to stop it and Aster is unprotected. We don't even know what it wants. We-"

She might have gone on; but the comp chose that moment to heave Aster's Hope in front of the alien.

Every thruster screaming, the s.h.i.+p pulled her ma.s.s into a terrible acceleration, fighting for a collision her attacker couldn't avoid. Temple fell like she was being cut to pieces by the straps holding her in her seat.

She tried to cry out, but she couldn't get any air into her lungs.

Her damage readouts and lights began to put on a show.

But the alien s.h.i.+p skipped aside and went past without being touched.

For a second, Aster's Hope pulled around, trying to follow her opponent. Then Gracias forced himself forward and canceled the comp's collision instructions. Instantly, the G-stress eased. The s.h.i.+p settled onto a new heading chosen by her inertia, the alien already turning again to come after her.

"d.a.m.n," he said softly. "d.a.m.n it."

Temple let herself rest against her restraints. We can't- she thought dully. Can't even run into that thing.

It can't hurt us. But we can't hurt it. Aster's Hope wasn't built to be a wars.h.i.+p. She wasn't supposed to protect her homeworld by fighting: she was supposed to protect it by being diplomatic and conning and distant. If the worst came to the very worst, she was supposed so protect Aster by not coining back. But this was a mission of peace, the mission of Aster's dream: the s.h.i.+p was never intended to fight for anything except her own survival.

"For some reason," Temple murmured into the silence of the auxcompcom, "I don't think this is what I had in mind when I joined the Service."

Gracias started to say something. The sound of frying circuitry from the speakers cut him off. It got her attention like a splash of hot oil.