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Berserker by

Steve Jordan

intended for private use only. Berserker e-Book edition does not apply Digital Rights Management

(DRM). It is the desire of the author to promote the use of e-Books, and the reading of his own

e-Books, with a minimum of DRM issues for the reader to deal with. He is therefore assuming that the

majority of readers are relatively honest and benevolent, and would rather read a good book than take

advantage of someone.

Please do not reproduce this book for the purposes of mass distribution without the express permission

of Steven Jordan. After all, he’s just a guy trying to make a few bucks. What, you don’t think people

can afford a couple lousy bucks for a full-length novel? What are you, an anarchist or something?

The characters in Berserker are fictional, and do not represent actual persons, living or dead. Any

similarities to actual persons, living or dead, are coincidental and unintentional. For further information,

contact steve@stevejordanbooks.com, or visit www.stevejordanbooks.com.

Thanks to pretty much everyone I know, and quite a few I don’t, who contributed to making me a better

person. To the ones who tried to make me a worse person: Bite me.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Afterword

Prologue

When the deck heaved the second time, there had been no collision alert sounded. That was not good.

It meant that the bridge was either too busy fighting off attacking Spider ships, or dealing with damage

control, to have time to issue alerts.

It also meant that when the deck dropped away, it sent dozens of crewmen, many of them in full run

from one place to another, pitching into the air unexpectedly. They came down everywhere, many of

them tumbling into each other in alarmed, painful knots. One such group of three crewmen sailed across

the corridor, collided with the deck, and slid in a tumble across the floor, to impact against the wall and

pin a fourth body that had already fallen there.

The crewmen cursed and shoved as they tried to untangle themselves. They seemed to be having limited

success, until a voice emanated from the body they had pinned against the wall.

“Get it together, Rangers!”

This seemed to do the trick, giving the crewmen the impetus to straighten themselves out and regain their

feet. The last one up looked back down at the person who had been pinned to the wall, and his eyes

winced in apology. “Sorry, Commander.” He offered a hand, and the woman on the deck used it to lever

herself back to her feet.

“S’okay. Get those power packs to your stations. Go!”

The crewmen gathered up their packs and bounded off down the corridor, leaving the Commander there

with the other three-dozen crewmen strewn about the deck. Most of them were on damage control,

made necessary by a barrage of particle fire from the Spiders that had caused a power surge and blown

out the conduits throughout the section. The Commander had been closest to the section, and she knew

how close the damage was to some vital shield cooling systems they could not afford to lose. So she had

immediately taken over damage control organization.

Unfortunately, it already looked like the systems were too far gone... and if the coolant lines blew out,

they would release a toxic cloud that would fill the corridor in seconds. While the Commander gave

orders, she expected at any second to have to evacuate the section.

“We’re back up, Commander!”

She turned to see one of the maintenance teams slapping the access plates back down on an access box

they had just finished patching.

“All right, lock that down and get out of this section! I want minimum personnel in here until—”

Her orders were cut off when the deck jumped out from underneath them again. And something

different: A force that struck her from behind, accompanied by a deafening noise. She was pitched into

more flailing crewmen, and landed in a heap with them.

Being on top of this heap, she was up quickly this time, and swiveling her head about to assess the

damage. The far end of the corridor was filled with a peculiar colored smoke, obscuring the space

beyond. That wasn’t the color of the coolant, she knew.

Then she became aware of a noise... a keening, high-pitched wail that grew louder and more insistent.

Her heart jumped.

“Hull breach!” She cried out, and pitched forward. There had been crewmen just a few meters into that

cloud, and she couldn’t see them now. She had to see if anyone needed help. “Everyone out except

damage control! Prepare to seal off this deck!”

She advanced into the cloud, waving her arms in an attempt to see. She could feel a slight breeze, but it

did not seem to be too insistent yet... and it wasn’t dissipating the odd cloud... so she continued on. She

almost tripped over the first crewman she found, slumped against the wall. She moved close to him,

checked his pulse, and breathed a sigh of relief to realize he was still alive. As quickly as she could, she

pulled the unconscious crewman’s arm over her shoulder and used it to lever him onto her back. He was

much larger than she was, but she managed to position him so that she could half-carry, half-drag him

away.

As she turned to leave, she saw something on the opposite wall, a vague shape in the fog. She took only

one step towards it, straining to make out the shape. Then she recognized the telltale nosecone, the

shattered glass ports on each side, and the cryptic markings ringing the ports.

“Oh, shit...”

She spun about fast as she could, struggling with her unconscious burden. “Somebody help me with this

m—”

An incredible blow to the small of her back cut her off. The Commander went flying in one direction, her

burden in another, and both of them ended up on the deck. She almost lost consciousness herself, so

hard did she hit the floor... until a wail emanated from within the cloud, a noise that turned her blood cold.

Pure adrenalin forced her to struggle upright, and she spun around to face a nightmare.

The shape came out of the cloud, bellowing, swinging massive arms and clenched fists. No sooner had

the Commander regained her feet, she doubled back down, and its first swing missed... following

through, the Commander instinctively swung about to land a foot in her attacker’s midsection. But her

attacker was fast, too: Before she knew what had happened, her foot was caught in a viselike grip, and

she was yanked off the ground. The Commander felt herself swinging through the air, her head almost

striking the opposite walls of the corridor. Her breath was gone, her captive leg burned as if about to tear

free of her hip, and she was completely disoriented. She was absolutely sure that her life was now over.

Then her foot was released, and she sailed wildly through the air. She hit the wall, and this time,

consciousness did leave her. The Commander slumped to the floor, limp as a rag doll.

Her attacker, meanwhile, had jumped on the poor unconscious crewman she had tried to drag out, and

in three swift barehanded strokes, had managed to rip off both of his arms and his head. Then it bellowed

again, the noise booming through the corridor, and it charged out of the cloud, right at the unconscious

Commander.

Suddenly the corridor was filled with a flash of light. A finger-thin beam of reddish energy lanced across

the corridor, catching the attacker full in the chest. There was a scream, and the smell of burning flesh,

and suddenly the attacker was in several pieces. Most of those pieces continued their forward

momentum, falling to the deck and skidding several meters, before coming to a stop.

“Got him!” “Watch for more!” Instantly the corridor was filled with people, most of them heavily

armored, and carrying particle rifles and handguns. They swarmed into the corridor, brandishing their

weapons and watching every unmoving body closely.

One of the soldiers stepped close enough to nudge the severed torso of the wild attacker they had just

cut down. “Oh, damn... that’s Drew Franks, he’s in my section... look, he dismembered that guy...”

“Try not to think about it,” another soldier advised him.

They moved into the corridor only as far as the edge of the cloud. The lead soldier peered into the cloud

for a moment, then backed off, fumbling at the mask dangling from his neck. “Berserker! Everybody out!

Masks on! Seal off this deck!”

The soldiers began to back out of the corridor, wasting no time. All were silent now, and many of them

held their breath as they struggled with their masks. Near the leader, another bent down to grab the

unconscious Commander slumped against the wall.

“What are you doing?” the leader batted his hand away. “Leave ‘er!”

“Lieutenant—”

“Leave her, I said!” the Lieutenant snapped. “She can’t be helped... she’s infected!”

“We can’t leave her!” the soldier protested. “That’s Commander Kestral!”

“I know,” the Lieutenant said, looking down at her. “And she’s as good as dead.”

Chapter 1

The cloudless, cobalt-blue sky was not the amazing thing about Kyxha Spacedock. After all, the best

spacedocks in the Oan Galarchy all seemed to have cloudless skies, many filled with stars even during

the day, and the sky over the planet Kyxha was always cloud-free.

The incredible number of Oans was not the amazing thing about Kyxha Spacedock. After all, more and

more Oan planets were being terraformed to accommodate more and more people every day, and the

human race was on another one of its famous population surges.

The amazing thing about Kyxha Spacedock was the columns.

On Kyxha, spaceships were berthed on the tops of columns. Due to Kyxhian environmental regulations,

ships’ exhaust emissions were highly controlled on the ground. When the Oan Galarchy specified the

need to put a spaceport on the planet Kyxha, the Kyxhians refused to accept the compromising of their

atmosphere with ships’ emissions. And considering how much work and expense had been put into

creating a viable atmosphere on Kyxha, they had every right to complain. Although the Galarchy had the

power of ultimate law on all of its planets, it strove to avoid dictating local policy whenever possible, and

deferred to Kyxhian desires in the matter.

So Galarchy engineers created a system of columned berths designed to limit the amount of emissions

that would reach the ground. With literally thousands of berths, some almost half a kilometer high,

arranged in a perfect geometric pattern and filling a plateau that stretched to the horizon, Kyxha

spaceport was inarguably the most unique and fascinating spacedock in all the Galarchy. In fact, it drew

tourists from all over the Galarchy just to see it.

The woman striding down the main avenue was clearly not interested in the forest of columns she passed

through. That set her apart from the gawking tourists. So did the white business suit she wore, an outright

anomaly among the working class personnel from old transports and cargo loaders that passed all around

her.

But what separated her from the crowd most was the woman herself. Her looks were striking, by any

human standards. She was tall, taller than the average man. The well-tailored suit she wore served to

highlight her lean, strong figure. And she walked with an air of authority, pride, and assurance.

As she marched down the avenue, many men turned to watch her go past, and many of those smiled in

appreciation. A few women turned as well, but to most of them, she may have been looked upon as

competition, not attraction. Even a few native Kyxhians, who generally exhibited a complete lack of

appreciation for the unaltered human figure (probably due to the height difference), took note of her

passing.

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