Serengeti (10 page)

The counter wound down, ticking off time, showing five seconds before the Aphelion’s gun was fully charged and ready to fire.
Seychelles
broke through, hull plating ruined, main gun spewing out long lines of plasma fire aimed at the fork-shaped metal rod sticking out of
Parallax’s
nose.

“
Parallax
firing!” Finlay called.

Seychelles’s
shots connected, sheering away
Parallax’s
gun in the second before it spat its swirling cobalt orb out. Bolts of electric fire arced in every direction, crackling along the shattered remains of the Aphelion’s gun, sparking brightly off his metal composite hull. The fire raced backward, consuming the Aphelion’s body, and then
Parallax
exploded in a bright blue flare, taking poor stricken
Seychelles
and half a dozen DSR vessels with him
.

“Seychelles,” Serengeti
whispered in heartbroken sorrow. “
Seychelles.
”

“Gone,” Finlay breathed, staring in shocked dismay. “I can’t believe she’s gone. I thought—The Valkyries—I thought they were invincible.”

“No such thing, Finlay.” Henricksen looked up, eyes locking onto a camera. “Anything can be hurt. Anything can die.”

Even a tenth generation combat AI like
Seychelles
, or
Serengeti.

“How did this happen?” Finlay whispered.

“She’s gone, Finlay, and that’s an end to it.” Henricksen grimaced, nodding an apology to
Serengeti’s
camera. “Now tell me about her crew. Give me status on those lifeboats.”

Finlay didn’t seem to hear him. She just sat there, staring at the display in disbelief as the mingled remains of
Parallax
and
Seychelles
drifted away. “They killed a Valkyrie.” Fear in her voice now, in the wide-eyed way she stared at the bridge’s windows. “How could they kill a Valkyrie?”

“Finlay!” Henricksen barked, making her jump. “Focus, Finlay.
Seychelles
is gone but she saw to her crew. Now where are they?”

Finlay half-turned, face pale beneath its smattering of freckles, mouth opening and closing as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t quite get the words out. “I don’t—I don’t know,” she managed, shaking her head.

“Then find them,” Henricksen told her. Soft voice now, but every bit as commanding. “We can do that much for
Seychelles
at least.”

Finlay sucked in a breath and nodded. “Aye, sir.” She faced back, hands settling somewhat uncertainly on the Scan station in front of her, fingers pecking at readouts and displays, moving faster, more confidently with each passing second. “Where are they?” she muttered, searching the confusion of ships’ signatures.

Hard to find anything with all that electronic chatter out there—lot of data to parse through, and
Seychelles
loss had rattled her, making it hard for Finlay to focus.
Serengeti
reached into the Scan station’s panel to help her, carving off the cluster of blips marking
Marianas
and
Atacama,
the rest of the Meridian Alliance ships that went with them, and throwing that data into a separate window. They didn’t have time to deal with that right now. The battle behind them was in full swing, ships exploding left and right, but so far the Meridian Alliance had the upper hand. Fewer ships in this second DSR fleet, and the Aphelion the only real threat in the bunch.
Serengeti’s
sisters had that conflict well in hand, so she
pushed the scene aside and focused on the sea of ships and debris and electronic signatures in front of her, parsing through the chaos in search of the locator beacons attached to
Seychelles’s
lifeboats.

Ten pods ejected before
Seychelles
went down, and even
Serengeti,
with all her sensors and arrays and high-tech systems,
had a hard time finding them. The chaff scrambled her scans, rail gun fire and plasma rounds that rattled against her hull, damaging sensors, causing feeds and relays to flicker and go dark. But she found a pod eventually, and another, and another, highlighting each one on Scan’s display.

“Finlay,” Henricksen called impatiently.

“Six, sir. I count six of ten pods that ejected.”

“Six.” Henricksen scrubbed at his face. “Six. Dammit.” He sighed heavily, eyes flicking to the camera in front of him. “It’s a wonder any of them made it. Can we get to them?”

Finlay consulted her screen, comparing their location to that of each of the pods, taking into account the ships and debris between them.

Too much distance, too much chaff.

Finlay closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands.

“Finlay. Talk to me,” Henricksen snapped.

“No,”
Serengeti
said, saving Finlay the heartache. “They’re too far away. Too many ships, too much fire between us and them.”

Henricksen flushed angrily. “So we’re supposed to just leave them out there? That’s crap,
Serengeti
.”

“I have no intention of leaving them.
We
can’t get to the lifeboats, but there are others in the fleet who can.”

She checked the schematic and passed the pods’ coordinates to the other ships in the fleet. Acknowledgements came back—
Tsunami
and
Zephyr,
and
a half dozen other small ships shuffled about before moving off line to intercept
Seychelles’s
escape pods.

Henricksen nodded his thanks to the camera and then thumbed ship-wide comms open to address his crew. “Alright. Listen up!”

Serengeti
cringed as Henricksen’s voice echoed across fleet-wide comms.
A
mistake
, she thought.
It has to be a mistake
.
Even Henricksen wouldn’t be that bold
.

Brutus
led this fleet—not
Serengeti,
certainly not her human captain—and only
Brutus
addressed the ships en masse. She flashed a private message to Henricksen’s panel, letting him know about the error.

Henricksen saw it and smiled, eyes lifting to the camera. “Oops.”

Totally unapologetic. He’d done it on purpose.

“You cheeky little monkey.”

Henricksen shrugged and temporarily shut down comms. “Fleet’s in turmoil,
Serengeti.
We need to bring it back together.” A nod at the schematic on the front window, the two battles raging on two different fronts. “And we need to do it
soon
.”

“What do you suggest we do?”

Henricksen reached to the mash-up panel in front of him and started adjusting ships’ positions, running scenario, mapping out a plan of attack that moved
Serengeti
to the fore with
Antigone
and
Sechura
, using the more heavily armed and armored Valkyries to bust through the line and take
Trinidad
out.

A bold plan, and definitely risky. Not at the stratagem
Brutus
had laid out.

“
Brutus
won’t like it,”
Serengeti
warned.

Henricksen shrugged again, obviously not caring. “It’ll work. Trust me,” he said, tipping a wink at the camera.
Serengeti
started to object but Henricksen thumbed comms back over and spoke right over her. “This is Henricksen on
Serengeti. Parallax
is gone and
Seychelles
with him. So while
Marianas
and
Atacama
make mincemeat of the Aphelion’s cousin back there and the rest of those wrecks he brought with him, we’re going to bust through this line and tear holy hell outta that Heliotrope
Trinidad.
The Valkyries—”

“
Serengeti.
”
Brutus’
grating voice echoed over fleet-wide comms, drowning Henricksen out. “You are to hold position with the other Valkyries.”

An order—no doubt about it, with the entire fleet as witness. To disobey was to invoke mutiny, creating a schism in an already divided fleet. But she couldn’t let this go.

A long-ignored sub-mind flashed a warning, pulsing insistently to get
Serengeti’s
attention. She dismissed it, pushing the sub-mind to the background while she
sent Henricksen’s battle plan to
Brutus
, using a private channel in the hopes he’d hear her out.

Brutus
deleted the message without even opening it. Deleted it and kept going, as if nothing had changed. As if the second fleet of ships behind them didn’t exist, and
Seychelles
hadn’t exploded before their eyes.

Bastard.
Seychelles
is dead because of you. You’re so full of pride you won’t even listen to reason.

Serengeti
opened a channel, hesitated, thinking through the ramifications of what she’d be doing, and belatedly shut it back down. “Acknowledged. Holding position,” she sent, and then flashed an apology to Henricksen.

Henricksen glanced at the message and shrugged. He’d seen enough battles to know the score—knew when to question authority and when to fall into line. “Remind me when this is over to have a word with
Brutus’
captain,” he said, glancing upward at a camera.

“I’m not sure—”

Serengeti
broke off as the sub-mind’s warning flared to life again.
What now?
she wondered, acknowledging it this time, turning her eyes to the blip it had been watching off the starboard bow.

Osage.

In the heat of battle, she’d all but forgotten about the poor, stricken vessel. It was closer now—much closer—but still more than four hundred kilometers out.

What’s the problem?
she asked.

The sub-mind scrolled through a packet of data, highlighting
Osage’s
course and speed, both of which had drastically changed while
Serengeti
wasn’t looking.

“Henricksen.”
Serengeti
waited until he looked up at the camera. “Take a look at this.”

She highlighted
Osage’s
position on the schematic, laying the ship’s current
path alongside the one she’d charted before.

Henricksen frowned darkly. “The trajectory’s changed. She’ll intercept us.” He considered the schematic a moment, watching
Osage’s
blip move closer. “What do you make of it?”

Serengeti
honestly wasn’t sure.
Osage
was a hulk and hardly seemed a threat, but it wouldn’t do to have the Titan running into her, and she couldn’t afford the distraction of dodging around an empty husk in the middle of a pitched battle.

“Trouble?” Henricksen asked her, quirking an eyebrow.

“Not sure. I’ll keep an eye her.”

Serengeti
sent her sub-mind back to watching, leaving instructions for it to alarm when
Osage
was two hundred kilometers out. If the ship’s course remained constant, they’d have to blow her. There was simply no other choice.

She messaged Henricksen, telling him much the same.

Henricksen grimaced, eyes drifting to the Number Two probe’s feed, all but forgotten on the far side of bridge’s windows. “Sikuuku.”

“Aye, sir.” Sikuuku answered without looking, fingers squeezing the triggers of the main gun, chewing away at
Trinidad’s
hull.

“Orders for the starboard-side batteries. When
Serengeti
sounds the alarm, you tell them to open fire.”

The main gun went silent as Sikuuku consulted the instructions Henricksen sent him. He turned his head, lifting the targeting visor away from his face.

Grim look on Sikuuku’s face,
not
happy with those orders.

“Look to the living,” Henricksen told him.

Shots from
Trinidad
found
Serengeti’s
hull, rocking her hard, sending Henricksen stumbling to one side.

“Aye, sir,” Sikuuku said quietly. He slammed the visor down and pivoted, gripping the main gun’s triggers hard as he fired back at
Trinidad.

Less than fifty kilometers separated
Brutus
and the rest of his half-fleet from
Trinidad
and the DSR ships now. Fifty kilometers and closing—close enough that Henricksen and the others could finally see the Heliotrope with their own eyes, prickling bulk showing as a dark grey blob against the deep black of space.

Serengeti
tapped into the Number Four probe—still out there, faithfully relaying every last shot of this battle—and swiveled it around before zooming in on the Heliotrope to get a better look.

He was a tough old thing,
Trinidad,
but the relentless pounding had taken its toll. The massive puffer fish didn’t look so prickly now. Most of the guns on the port side were gone, and the comms towers with them. Dark gaps showed in his hull where the metal composite skin had torn away, fires flaring beneath as inner compartments buckled and gave way.

“Almost there,” Sikuuku muttered. “Just a few more minutes…”

Another alert, this time from the sub-mind
Serengeti
had set to watching port side of the fleet.

“Proximity alarm,”
Serengeti
said, voicing the sub-mind’s alert.

“
Osage
?” Henricksen barked an order at Sikuuku, readying the starboard-side batteries to fire.

“Port side,”
Serengeti
told, highlighting an errant blip on the schematic.

“The Golem.” Henricksen leaned forward, frowning darkly at the Golem’s marker. “Sikuuku! Belay my last.”

Sikuuku recalled the order, smacked a panel to one side so he could view the front screen’s data while continued to plug away with the main gun.

Henricksen kept frowning at the schematic, obviously not liking what he saw. “Bastard’s up to something.” He tapped the panel in front of him and scrolled through the Golem’s data. The square-sided ship was dark and silent as ever, its course leading it far away from the other DSR vessels. “Not firing, though. Looks like he’s just lost.” He raised his eyes to the camera. “What’s the alarm about?”

“Check its path. The Golem’s on a collision course with
Antigone.
”

“God damn,” Henricksen breathed.

Serengeti
sent
Antigone
a warning
,
but she’d already seen the Golem. Her
port batteries swiveled, targeting the Golem and then pounding away at its blunt face.

The Golem bore the beating and gave nothing at all back. But it accelerated without warning, streaking toward
Antigone—
engines wide open, glowing bright blue against the darkness of space.

Antigone
diverted her aft batteries, adding their firepower to the others already in the mix, pouring round after round into the Golem’s square shape.

That, as it turned, was a horrible mistake.

A massive explosion erupted, lighting up the cameras, blotting out the feeds on the port side of
Brutus’s
half-fleet. Number Four’s video feed blanked out as they went offline—powered down, destroyed,
Serengeti
couldn’t tell which.

“What’s happening?” Henricksen shouted. “Talk to me,
Serengeti
.”

“Stand by,” she told him, because she was as blind as the rest, her port-side cameras overloaded by the blinding glare.

The light banked and faded an eternity later, leaving bits of drifting metal in its wake. And a massive crater in the Meridian Alliance fleet—the Golem gone,
Antigone
gone, nearly a third of the fleet wiped out in an instant.

“No,”
Serengeti
whispered, watching ships’ markers disappear, dropping one after another from the schematic on the front windows.

“
Serengeti!”

Henricksen rarely shouted, never raised his voice to her. That he did so now was a measure of his distress.

“Scanning.” She
searched the sea of wreckage and found complex compounds, traces of metals and explosives none of the Meridian Alliance ships carried. And a radiation signature that really,
truly
did not belong.

“Nuke,” she breathed in horror. “The Golem was carrying a nuke. They turned it into a bomb.”

“So when
Antigone
fired…”

“She set the bomb off.”

“Damn. God damn,” Henricksen swore, rubbing at his eyes. “The crews. Did anyone make it out?”

Serengeti
checked and found a few lifeboat beacons squawking into space, but not many. Not surprisingly really. It all happened so fast. Most of the ships probably never realized what danger they were in until that nuke went off.

A message came through—orders from
Brutus,
recalling
Marianas, Atacama,
the rest of the ships he’d split off.

‘Bout goddamn time.

Serengeti
flashing the message to Henricksen’s Command Post.

“Smartest thing that bastard’s done all day,” he said, lips twisting sourly.

Marianas
and
Atacama
slowed and then stopped, guns firing steadily as the ships behind them came to a halt. A flare of engines as the Meridian Alliance vessels reversed en masse, maintaining fire as they initiated a tactical retreat.

The second message from
Brutus
came not longer after. “Spool up hyperspace drives,”
Brutus
sent, broadcasting the command to both sections of the fleet at once. “Prepare for jump.”

Henricksen barked a laugh. “I stand corrected.
That
is the smartest thing he’s said all day. Tsu!” he called, turning to Engineering. “You heard the man. Fire up the jump drives so we can get the hell out of here.”

“Aye, sir!” Tsu bent over her station, almond-shaped eyes focused on the readouts, narrow face bathed in the panel’s multi-colored lights. “Three minutes,” she said, fingers flying across the keyboard, one hand lifting now and then to tap at the panels to either side.

“Start the clock,” Henricksen told her.

Tsu transferred the counter on her Engineering panel to the front windows, digital numbers showing blood-red against the darkness outside.

Henricksen rubbed his chin, studying the schematic on the front windows as Tsu spooled up
Serengeti’s
jump drives, filling the bridge with a low-pitched whine. “Three minutes for us,” Henricksen said, looking up at a camera. “That’s Valkyrie jump prep time. Titans and Auroras have smaller drives but proportionately less mass to haul through the buckle, so they’ll need about the same.
Brutus
is a bruiser, though. Needs closer to four, even with those big ass engines they dropped in his belly.”

And
Serengeti
couldn’t leave the battle until
Brutus
transited through the buckle. That was the way of things—the order of departure the fleet strictly followed when executing hyperspace jump: Flagship first, Dreadnoughts second, Titans and Auroras after, Valkyries bringing up the rear.

Serengeti
shuddered as plasma fire scored her side, tearing at her hull plating, peeling a few panels away. Environmentals showed a small breach—the doors on one of the cargo bays ripped off, everything inside it thrown out into space. A check of her schematics showed it was Cargo Bay 4. Four where’d she left
Barlow’s
remains, along with Probe Six and balky old Ten.

Damn.
Pain in the ass he might be, but she’d miss that cranky old probe.

Railgun rattled loudly, chipping away at her skin. Microphone pick-ups brought her ominous noises—the creaks and groans of metal composite straining to its limit before giving way.

More holes appeared in
Serengeti’s
hull. Atmosphere vented in explosive puffs of frozen gases, fire suppression systems lit up, deploying port-side bow as crews rushed to close emergency hatches, blocking off compromised compartments in order to save the rest of the ship.

“Come on, goddammit.” Henricksen leaned forward, hands braced against the panel in front of him as he watched the jump drive counter tick down. “Tsu!” he called, straightening up. “What’s the count on the Bastion?”

“Minute thirty, Captain.”

“Too long. Too damn long.”

“Incoming!” Finlay screamed.

Serengeti
slewed sideways, taking a direct hit from one of
Trinidad’s
guns. Henricksen lurched forward, grabbing at panels with both hands to keep from falling as the rest of the bridge crew held on for dear life.

A flare erupted outside, close enough to light up
Serengeti’s
bridge. She grabbed a camera and turned it that way, watching as an Aurora named
Happenstance
broke in half—one end drifting harmlessly away from the fleet, the other slamming into
Wrath
beside her.

Henricksen punched the panel in front of him. “Dammit! They’re tearing this fleet apart. This is not time for protocol,
Serengeti. Brutus
should send the smaller ships ahead.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

She tapped into comms to send a message and found
Marianas
had beaten her to it. The Valkyrie argued hotly with
Brutus
—growing angrier, more insistent with every ship they lost—and eventually he relented. With just thirty seconds left on the Bastion’s jump clock, the Auroras started jumping away. The Titans followed soon after, but barely twenty of them made it out before
Brutus’s
grating voice cut across fleet comms, announcing his intent to enter hyperspace.

“All ships hold,”
Brutus’s
captain sent out.

Too much mass behind
Brutus
for other ships to safely jump with him. Hyperspace transit created a distortion—a singularity of sorts they called ‘unstable space.’ Not a big deal when smaller ships like the Auroras traveled, but strange things happened when a ship
Brutus’s
size transited
.
Strange,
bad
things—hulls twisted, entire vessels sometimes turned inside out.

The hold order was for the fleet’s protection. Only a fool would ignore it.

A last few Titans jumped through anyway, transiting hyperspace in an instant. The rest—close to a hundred and fifty Titans plus
Serengeti,
the four other surviving Valkyries,
Brutus’s
Dreadnought bodyguard, minus shredded
Gorgon
—wisely held position and waited.