Serengeti (11 page)

Brutus
spooled up his jump drives—a complicated, carefully choreographed operation requiring synchronization of all four hyperdrive engines at once. A swirl appeared ahead him as a buckle took shape, sucking space inward as
Brutus
advanced, aiming for the swirling void at its center.

“Taking his time about it, isn’t he?” Henricksen growled. He looked up at the camera and then back to the windows.

Brutus
entered the buckle, front end disappearing into darkness, the void creeping along the Bastion’s prickling, porcupine shape like it was eating the ship alive.

“Hurry it up, you oversized, wallowing bastard,” Henricksen muttered under his breath.

An alarm sounded—perimeter alert from the sub-mind keeping tabs on
Osage
of
Serengeti’s
port side—drawing her eyes way from
Brutus
. She tapped into a few of her surviving cameras and turned them in
Osage’s
direction
.

The ship was in firing range now—just a two hundred kilometers out—but there was little chance of a collision. By the time the tattered Titan’s path intercepted hers,
Serengeti
would be long gone. She cancelled the perimeter alarm and detailed the sub-mind to another task.

That’s when she remembered the Number Two probe.

Damn. It’s still inside her.

She hated to leave it, especially after losing Six and Ten, but
Brutus
had just about cleared the buckle and soon it would be her turn to jump. She checked the Chron, realized there was just enough time.

Hang on, little buddy.

Serengeti
tapped into the Number Two probe and recalled it, telling it to hurry-hurry-hurry as the buckle consuming
Brutus
passed the ship’s midpoint and slowly consumed the remainder of his bulk.

“Tsu. Status,” Henricksen called.

“Jump drive is primed and ready. We can transit as soon as
Brutus
is gone.”

“Good.” Henricksen stared hard at the window, arms folded over his chest, lopsided smile twisting his lips as the Number Two probe started to move. “Huh. Almost forgot about that little guy. No man left behind, eh?” He flashed a smile at
Serengeti’s
camera and stumbled to one side, cursing loudly as missile fire slammed into
Serengeti’s
bow. “Time!” he yelled.

“Twenty seconds,” Tsu called back.

“The probe? How long—”

Henricksen frowned and leaned forward, studying Number Two’s feed as it worked its way back out of
Osage’s
frayed body, dodging melted girders and snarled nests of burnt out cables. Not much else left inside her, but as the probe passed by a blown cargo hold,
Serengeti
spotted a cluster of blinking red lights—signs of life, of
power
where nothing at all should be.

Henricksen saw it too. “What was that? Back it up. Turn Two around and—”

“
Osage
is accelerating!” Finlay warned.

The wrecked ship halved the distance between herself and the fleet faster than
Serengeti
would have thought possible given her condition.

“Blow it! Blow it!” Henricksen yelled.

Serengeti
tapped into the artillery system, taking the controls from Sikuuku. She turned the main gun on
Osage
and started blasting away, targeting the Titan’s engines to at least slow her down. “Jump. Jump now,”
Serengeti
ordered.

Tsu checked the timer and then shook her head. “Ten seconds left on the clock.”

“We’re out of time.”

Serengeti
initiated the jump sequence herself, and passed orders to
Sechura
and the other ships to do the same.

Henricksen threw a worried look at the camera, obviously wanting an explanation. “What’s going on?”

“
Osage.
She’s booby-trapped. Just like the Golem.”

“Shit.”

“Initiating jump.”

Serengeti’s
engaged her hyperspace drive, shuddering violently as the fabric of space around bent and twisted and the buckle took form. Ships winked out around her, disappearing in silver-white bursts as they jumped away.
Antigone
went, and
Marianas
and
Atacama
after, leaving just
Serengeti
and
Sechura
, and sixty or so Titans.

“Time!” Tsu yelled.

Serengeti
moved forward with
Sechura
at her side, but as the hyperspace void sucked inward,
Osage
exploded.

After that there was nothing—nothing but smoke and fire, darkness and chaos and death.

Alarms shrieked everywhere, filling the bridge with a cacophony of noise. Comms filled with shouts and screams coming from every compartment, every corridor along the length and breadth of her body. And beneath it all, the sounds of
Serengeti’s
destruction—the screech and groan of internal structures twisting, failing as a bottomless vacuum sucked at her torn hull.

Henricksen picked himself up off the floor, wiping blood from his cheek. “Damage report!” he barked, pressing a hand to the gash in his temple. Blood poured down his face, staining his jet black uniform, turning the silver stars of command a deep shade of crimson. “Damage report!” he repeated, but Tsu didn’t seem to hear him. She just sat at her station, staring wide-eyed at the windows wrapping the front of the bridge.

He reached over, killing the klaxons shrieking at him like angry ghosts. No need for the sirens now—they already knew they were well and truly fucked.

“Tsu!” Henricksen slammed a hand against the panel in front of him. “Wake up!”

Tsu jumped and turned, cheeks pale, eyes wide as dinner plates.

Lost look on Tus’s face, a hint of terror showing deep in her eyes. Henricksen saw it, and lowered his voice, using his calmest, most patient tone.

“Damage report. Now, Tsu.”

“Damage report.” She wobbled back around, brow furrowed, staring at her panel like she didn’t know what to do with it.

Henricksen tapped the panel in front of him with a finger and then looked up at the camera.
Serengeti
sent a data package to his Command Post and then waited while he scanned through it.

He already knew the worst of it—the buckle collapsed, jump drives knocked offline, most of
Serengeti’s
starboard-side aft torn away. The rest made a decidedly grim read. When
Osage
exploded, she carved a huge hole in the Meridian Alliance fleet, taking out twenty-six ships. Those that survived the explosion drifted aimlessly—damaged, dying.
Brutus
was long gone, and the Dreadnoughts with him,
Sechura…
she didn’t know about
Sechura,
but
Serengeti
hoped she’d escaped in time and wasn’t drifting out there, mixed in with the other debris.

Either way, I’m alone, Serengeti
thought.
Last Valkyrie standing, responsible for thirty-eight half-crippled ships.

A stream of fire rattled along her side, reminding her that the DSR ships were still there.

Henricksen closed his eyes and drew a breath, palms pressed against the panel in front of him. “Fine mess we got ourselves into this time,
Serengeti,
” he said, looking up at the camera. “Tsu. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

Serengeti
gathered up more information and sent it to his Command Post but Henricksen gave it hardly more than a passing glance. This wasn’t about information, she realized. Henricksen had every last bit of data he needed, right there in front of him, but he didn’t have Tsu. Tsu was frozen, stuck in the moment, locked up tight by the terror inside her. What she needed was purpose—something to distract her from the horror showing on the bridge windows and filtering through comms. And Henricksen—solid, patient, tough as nail as Henricksen—gave it to her.

“We’re in a world of shit, Tsu, and I need you to get us out of it.”

Tsu turned around, blinking slowly.

“I want to know the status of the ship’s systems and where the worst of the damage is at. But first I need you to get the jump drive back online. You got that?”

Tsu blinked and then nodded slowly. “Aye, sir,” she said numbly. She faced around, eyes drifting to the front windows, and then she ducked her head and worked away at the panel in front of her, redirecting crew below decks to repair the jump drive.

Serengeti
dipped into the Engineering station and, after assessing the situation herself, decided to send in a robot crew as well. The DSR were still out there, pelting
Serengeti
and the other left-behind ships with sustained fire.
Serengeti
ordered her remaining batteries to keep fighting and stave them off the best they could, but she had no intentions of staying here. Standing and fighting was a fool’s errand, escape their only real option.

She had to get her jump drives working. She had to save her crew.

“Tsu. Status.”

“Jump drives were damaged in the blast, Captain.” Tsu’s fingers flew across her panel, eyes drinking in the information on her display. “Crew is Gerry-rigging them together—bypassing some of the safety protocols to get them working again.”

“How long?” Henricksen asked her.

Serengeti
shuddered as plasma fire raked her port side. Tsu glanced up, staring anxiously at the front windows.

“Tsu!”

“Few minutes,” Tsu told him. And at Henricksen’s angry glare, “Four minutes. That’s my best guess.”

Her eyes slid to Finlay as her fingers tapped out a message. Finlay frowned, nodded, sent her own message back.

“Four minutes,” Henricksen muttered. “Three more before the breach forms and we can get out of here. Damn,” he breathed, wiping more blood from his cheek. He turned toward the Artillery station, watching Sikuuku blast away. “Armaments?”

Tsu reached across the panel, pulling another data window in. “Starboard turrets are pretty much down. Port-side batteries are operational except for the few we lost around the bow. Aft…aft’s a mess, honestly.”

“Well, we’ve got guns. That’s something anyway.” Henricksen still looked grim. “And the rest of the ship?” he asked, turning back to Engineering. “Hyper drives are down. What else is broken?”

Tsu pointed at a schematic of the ship she moved to the front windows. “See this?” She highlighted a series of pulsing red indicators showing along
Serengeti’s
aft end. “Rear quarter of the ship’s been compromised—compartments vented on every level when that blast ripped open the hull. Emergency doors came down in time to limit the damage further in but…” Tsu paused and ducked her head. “We lost everyone in there, sir.”

Henricksen closed his eyes, blood running in thin streams down his face. “How many?” he asked her. “How many did we lose, Tsu?”

“Twelve crews. Sixty personnel in total, sir.”

“Sixty. God damn.” Henricksen wiped at his cheek, scrubbed bloodstained fingers through his hair.

Sixty personnel killed of three hundred and twelve on board—nearly a fifth of
Serengeti’s
compliment wiped out in an instant. A quick check of
Serengeti’s
systems showed she’d lost seventy-eight robots.
Serengeti
mourned them all—human and robot, both. Even balky, contrary probe Number Ten who’d always been such a pain in the ass.

“Damn.” Henricksen opened his eyes and looked out the front windows, studying the DSR fleet. “Finlay. What’s happening out there?”

“Three ships departed. I read…thirty-three waiting to jump, sir. Plus us. Thirty-two. Thirty.” Finlay paused and frowned, staring at a section of her screen. “Captain. There’s a problem.”

“What now?” he sighed.

“
Normandy’s
dead in the water.
Trieste,
a dozen others reporting the same.” Finlay looked around at him. “They can’t jump, sir. They’re stuck here, just like us.”

“Damn. Damn and damn and damn.” Henricksen braced his arms against the panel in front of there and leaned there for a few seconds, looking incredibly tired all of a sudden.

Finlay chewed her lip, throwing anxious glances Tsu’s way.

Tsu typed something, erased, started typing again.

More shots landed, scoring along
Serengeti’s
hull. Sikuuku did his best—giving back as good as he got—but they were badly outnumbered. And seven minutes—six now and slowly counting down—was simply too long for
Serengeti
to hold out on her own. Unless…

Serengeti
queried her systems and found her propulsion engines were still operational. She shot a message to the remaining ships—twenty-eight now, two more had jumped away—and then turned herself hard to starboard, setting her engines to full.

“Tsu?”

Tsu shook her head. “Not me, sir.
Serengeti,
” she said, pointing.

Henricksen frowned at the camera. “We’re running?”

“I see no other option. If we stay here, we’ll die. But if we put some distance between ourselves and those DSR ships, we might be able to buy ourselves enough time to get the jump drives back online and get ourselves out of here.”

“And the others?” he asked softly, nodding to the windows in front of him.

Two more ships flashed away, twenty-six remained. Half of them followed
Serengeti,
trailing after her like a bunch of roughed up, oversized metal ducklings, but the rest of them… thirteen ships showed as dead in the water, basic systems operational but everything else—propulsion, hyper drive systems, even armaments—completely offline.

“They’re on their own,” she said, hating the words, knowing it was true. “Nothing we can do.”

She sent a last message—a final farewell to the brothers and sisters left behind before their AI minds went dark—and then turned her eyes forward and focused on saving herself.

DSR fire chased after her and the other fleeing ships, raking their sides with plasma fire. Warning lights flashed everywhere, reporting more damage, more rents in
Serengeti’s
abused hull. Comms went down, sending Kusikov scrambling, tearing into his panel, swapping chips and wires in an effort to at least get internal communications back on-line.

Serengeti
hated the invasion—hated anyone digging into the guts of her electrical systems—but she left Kusikov to it and focused on navigation as a Titan named
Gallipoli
exploded and dropped off her scans.

Damn, damn, damn!

A scattering of plasma rounds tore a chunk out of
Serengeti’s
aft end. A few more shots and two of her propulsion engines went off-line.

Serengeti
slowed, her remaining two engines running wide open, slowly tearing themselves apart. Her body trembled terribly, internal structures groaning then shrieking, threatening to come entirely undone.

No. We’re getting out of here.

“Why are we slowing?” Henricksen reached for his panel, swearing softly when he saw the new damage. “Tsu. Status report.”

“One minute.”

A flare of light beside them as another Titan disappeared in a shower of fire and metal composite pieces.

“Bloody hell. Tell the crews to hurry.”

Tsu looked over at him, then nodded pointedly at the Comms station. And Kusikov’s legs sticking out from a gutted panel.

“Right.” Henricksen sighed and rubbed at his eyes, smearing blood across his face. “I need—”

“Jump drives on-line!” Tsu’s face lit with excitement. “Beginning jump prep.”

The counter reset to three minutes and started ticking down as the hyperspace buckle writhed into existence outside. Henricksen watched it for a moment and then straightened and drew a deep breath.

“Kusikov. I need those comms.”

“Almost there,” Kusikov told him, voice muffled by the layers of metal and plastic and electronics above his head. “I’ve just gotta—there!” The comms panel flared to life. Kusikov wriggled out, smiling smugly. “Baddest tech in town. Ain’t nuthin’ I can’t—”

A buzz of electricity and something flashed deep in the panel’s guts. A fizzling, crackling sound followed soon after, accompanied by a puff of smoke. Half the panel went dark, the other half flickered, clinging tenaciously to life.

“Crap.” Kusikov poked tentatively at the station but the dark half stubbornly refused to light. “That’s not good.”

“Talk to me, Kusikov,” Henricksen growled. “Do I have comms or not?”

“Internal comms are working. External comms are fried. Sorry, sir.”

Henricksen swore loudly, getting the anger out of his system. And then he reached over and opened the ship-wide channel. “This is the captain,” he said in a calm, crisp tone. “Hyperdrive engines are back on-line. All crew prepare for jump. Clock sits at forty-eight seconds.”

He cut the comms and seemed to think for a moment, tapping a finger against the panel before keying the comms back open.

“Thirty seconds!” Tsu called.

“We’re getting out of here,” Henricksen said firmly. “We’re going back to the fleet.”

“Ten seconds! Nine. Eight…”

Tsu called the count until the clock reached zero, and the buckle sucked inward.
Serengeti
pointed her nose toward the breach and opened her engines wide, propelling her damaged body into the jump singularity. A last look behind, a last farewell to the ships left behind, before the breach wrapped around her, spiriting
Serengeti
away.