Karlsen unendurable, then Hemphill would support him, to the point of cheerful murder and beyond.
What else really mattered in the universe, besides smashing the damned machines?
Mitch spent hours every day alone with Chris. He no kept from her the wild rumors which circulated throughout the fleet. Salvador’s violent end was whispered about, and guards were posted near Karlsen’s quarters. Some said Admiral Kemal was on the verge of open revolt.
And now the Stone Place was close ahead of the fleet, blanking out half the stars; ebony dust and fragments, like a million shattered planets. No ship could move through the Stone Place; every cubic kilometer of it held enough matter to prevent C-plus travel or movement in normal space at any effective speed.
The fleet headed toward one sharply defined edge of the cloud, around which Hemphill’s scouting squadron had already disappeared.
“She grows a little saner, a little calmer, every day,” said Mitch, entering the High Commander’s small cabin.
Karlsen looked up from his desk. The papers before him seemed to be lists of names, in Venerian script. “I thank you for that word, Poet. Does she speak of me?”
“No.”
They eyed each other, the poor and ugly cynic, the anointed and handsome Believer.
“Poet,” Karlsen asked suddenly, “how do you deal with deadly enemies, when you find them in your power?”
“We Martians are supposed to be a violent people. Do you expect me to pass sentence on myself?”
Karlsen appeared not to understand, for a moment. “Oh. No. I was not speaking of—you and me and Chris. Not personal affairs. I suppose I was only thinking aloud, asking for a sign.”
“Then don’t ask me, ask your God. But didn’t he tell you to forgive your enemies?”
“He did.” Karlsen nodded, slowly and thoughtfully .”You know, he wants a lot from us. A real hell of a lot.”
It was a peculiar sensation, to become suddenly convinced that the man you were watching was a genuine, non-hypocritical Believer. Mitch was not sure he had ever met the like before.
Nor had he ever seen Karlsen quite like this—passive, waiting; asking for a sign. As if there was in fact some Purpose outside the layers of a man’s own mind, that could inspire him. Mitch thought bout it. If . . .
But that was all mystical nonsense.
Karlsen’s communicator sounded. Mitch could not make out what the other voice was saying, but he watched the effect on the High Commander. Energy and determination were coming back, there were subtle signs of the return of force, of the tremendous conviction of being right. It was like watching the gentle glow when a fusion power lamp was ignited.
“Yes,” Karlsen was saying. “Yes, well done.”
Then he raised the Venerian papers from his desk; it was as if he raised them only by force of will, his fingers only gesturing beneath them.
“The news is from Hemphill,” he said to Mitch, almost absently.’ “The berserker fleet is just around the edge of the Stone Place from us. Hemphill estimates they are two hundred strong, and thinks they are unaware of our presence. We attack at once. Man your battle station, Poet; God be with you.” He turned back to his communicator. “Ask Admiral Kemal to my cabin at once. Tell him to bring his staff. In particular—” He glanced at the Venerian papers and read off several names.
“Good luck to you, sir.” Mitch had delayed to say that. Before he hurried out, he saw Karlsen stuffing the Venerian papers into his trash disintegrator.
Before Mitch reached his own cabin, the battle horns were sounding. He had armed and suited himself and was making his way back through the suddenly crowded narrow corridors toward the bridge, when the ship’s speakers boomed suddenly to life, picking up Karlsen’s voice:
“ . . . whatever wrongs we have done you, by word, or deed, or by things left undone, I ask you now to forgive. And in the name of every man who calls me friend or leader, I pledge that any grievance we have against you, is from this moment wiped from memory.”
Everyone in the crowded passage hesitated in the rush for battle stations. Mitch found himself staring into the eyes of a huge, well-armed Venerian ship’s policeman, probably here on the flagship as some officer’s bodyguard.
There came an amplified cough and rumble, and then the voice of Admiral Kemal:
“We—we are brothers, Esteeler and Venerian, and all of us. All of us together now, the living against the berserker.” Kemal’s voice rose to a shout. “Destruction to the damned machines, and death to their builders! Let every man remember Atsog!”
“Remember Atsog!” roared Karlsen’s voice.
In the corridor there was a moment’s hush, like that before a towering wave smites down. Then a great insensate shout. Mitch found himself with tears in his eyes, yelling something.
“Remember General Bradin,” cried the big Venerian, grabbing Mitch and hugging him, lifting him, armor and all. “Death to his flayers!”
“Death to the flayers!” The shout ran like a flame through the corridor. No one needed to be told that the same things were happening in all the ships of the fleet. All at once there was no room for anything less than brotherhood, no time for anything less than glory.
“Destruction to the damned machines!”
Near the flagship’s center of gravity was the bridge, only a dais holding a ring of combat chairs, each with its clustered controls and dials.
“Boarding Coordinator ready,” Mitch reported, strapping himself in.
The viewing sphere near the bridge’s center showed the human advance, in two leapfrogging lines of over a hundred ships each. Each ship was a green dot in the sphere, positioned as truthfully as the flagship’s computers could manage. The irregular surface of the Stone Place moved beside the battle lines in a series of jerks; the flagship was traveling by C-plus micro-jumps, so the presentation in the viewing sphere was a succession of still pictures at second-and-a-half intervals. Slowed by the mass of their C-plus cannon, the six fat green symbols of the Venetian heavy weapons ships labored forward, falling behind the rest of the fleet.
In Mitch’s headphones someone was saying: “In about ten minutes we can expect to reach—”
The voice died away. There was a red dot in the sphere already, and then another, and then a dozen, rising like tiny suns around the bulge of dark nebula. For long seconds the men on the bridge were silent while the berserker advance came into view. Hemphill’s scouting patrol must, after all, have been detected, for the berserker fleet was not cruising, but attacking. There was a battlenet of a hundred or more red dots, and now there were two nets, leapfrogging in and out of space like the human lines. And still the red berserkers rose into view, their formations growing, spreading out to englobe and crush a smaller fleet.
“I make it three hundred machines,” said a pedantic and somewhat effeminate voice, breaking the silence with cold precision. Once, the mere knowledge that three hundred berserkers existed might have crushed all human hopes. In this place, in this hour, fear itself could frighten no one.
The voices in Mitch’s headphones began to transact the business of opening a battle. There was nothing yet for him to do but listen and watch.
The six heavy green marks were falling further behind; without hesitation, Karlsen was hurling his entire fleet straight at the enemy center. The foe’s strength had been underestimated, but it seemed the berserker command had made a similar error, because the red formations too were being forced to regroup, spread themselves wider.
The distance between fleets was still too great for normal weapons to be effective, but the laboring heavy- weapons ships with their C-plus cannon were now in range, and they could fire through friendly formations almost as easily as not. At their volley Mitch thought he felt space jar around him; it was some secondary effect that the human brain notices, really only wasted energy. Each projectile, blasted by explosives to a safe distance from its launching ship, mounted its own C-plus engine, which then accelerated the projectile while it flickered in and out of reality on micro-timers.
Their leaden masses magnified by velocity, the huge slugs skipped through existence like stones across water, passing like phantoms through the fleet of life, emerging fully into normal space only as they approached their target, traveling then like De Broglie wavicles, their matter churning internally with a phase velocity greater
