Serengeti (31 page)

“Come here, Oona,” she called, coaxing the tiny robot near.

Oona—being Oona—grew suddenly shy. She ducked her head, refusing to look at
Serengeti,
squiggling like an octopus, trying to break free from Tig’s cradling legs.

Serengeti
called to her, whispering soft words of comfort, soothing her with gentle caresses until Oona finally calmed. She waited then—patient as can be—until Oona’s head lifted, and she stared through Tig’s eyes to
Serengeti
inside. “I have something to give you before I leave.”

“
Peep?
”

“Yes,”
Serengeti
smiled. “Peep.”

She popped open a panel in Tig’s body and dug around until she found a set of colored grease pencils he carried inside. A touch at Oona’s body, turning her just a bit, and she extruded a set of appendages from the end of Tig’s leg, pausing only to scan her database and sort through the thousands upon thousands of images stored there, before setting to work.

Serengeti
wasn’t much of an artist, but she sketched out the image she’d chosen as best she could, adding a round-eyed owl wearing a jaunty knit cap to Oona’s metal side—a tiny little friend for the field mouse nibbling at its piece of cheese. “Do you like it?” she asked.

Oona blinked and twisted around,
burbling
curiously as she touched the colorful creature
Serengeti
had set there.

“Owl,”
Serengeti
told her, touching the picture with Tig’s leg. “That’s an owl.”

“Ow-ooo,”
Tilli trilled
in her high-pitched voice. “Ow-oo! Ow-oo!” she sang, flailing happily, showing Tig and Tilli her shiny new badge.

“That’s right. Ow-oo.”
Serengeti
laughed. “The mouse is timid and shy, Oona, but the owl is filled with wisdom.”

“
Whoo?
” Oona stared in wide-eyed wonder. “
Whoo-whoo?
” she asked, doing a fair impression of an owl herself.

“
Whoo-whoo,
”
Serengeti
repeated softly, touching at Oona’s face. “You are both, Oona. One becoming the other. A mouse searching for wings to soar the skies above.”

“
Whoo-ooo?
” Oona asked, pointing at herself in surprise.

“Yes, silly. You.”
Serengeti
chucked at Oona’s chin, coaxing a shy giggle from her as she blushed and ducked her head. “Now come here and give me a hug before I go.”

No shyness this time. No timid demureness. No stand-offish games. Oona wrapped her stubby legs around Tig’s body and squeezed with all her might, while Tilli
hooted
sorrowfully and Tig let loose with a low whistle of mourning.

“Shhh.”
Serengeti
clutched Oona tightly as she leaned Tig close to Tilli, touching her cheek to cheek. “None of that now, you hear.”

Three robot heads nodded in unison, face lights flashing in scrolling patterns.

She touched at them—each of them in turn, feeling them shiver as she caressed their AI brains. “Good night, Tig,”
Serengeti
whispered, touching at his cheek. “Good night, Tilli.” A second touch, electric fire arcing from Tig’s chromed face to hers. “Be good, little Oona.” A smile for Oona, a cobalt kiss given back.
Serengeti
pulled them close and held them tight, and then she sighed and retreated, racing along pathways until she reached the bridge: the place where it all started, and someday it would all end.

“Someday,”
Serengeti
whispered. “Someday.”

A wish, a promise, she wasn’t sure which.

A last look around and
Serengeti
let go and slipped into darkness—a soft dark this time, different from the dream of fire, her memories of Henricksen and those days of long ago. This time there were stars, appearing one after the other, shimmering silver-white against an infinity of black.

“Dark,”
Serengeti
whispered, beginning to smile. “Dark and stars, just as I remember. Home. I’m home.”

Tig threaded his way through the shredded remains of the ship’s port side hull, tip-toeing through debris, navigating narrow passages and yawning chasms until he reached the darkness outside. A flash of metal as Tilli joined him, murmuring encouragements to Oona as she held tight to her leg.

Big day today: Oona’s first trip to the outer hull. A trip prompted by much begging and pleading because Oona desperately wanted to see the stars. Not just the patches showing through the holes in the ship’s corridors—
all
of them. And Tsu’s star—the star that kept the ship alive—most of all. Tig resisted at first—Tig and Tilli both, worrying for Oona’s safety, imagining a thousand things that could go wrong. But as time went on, they found it increasingly hard to deny her. Especially since they loved the stars themselves. And because they loved her, because they knew they couldn’t protect Oona from everything forever, Tig and Tilli finally relented.

“
Ooooh!
” Oona breathed,
trilling
with excitement. She pulled away from Tilli and scampered onto a section of hull plating, dancing on her tip-toes as she turned in a circle, taking it all in. A small menagerie of animals turned with her—a dozen different creatures added to her sides over the years, joining the little mouse that was the first of her decorations, the wide-eyed owl
Serengeti’s
gifted to her in parting. “
Oooh-ooooh!
” Oona exclaimed, looking around her, eyes wide as wide can be, smile wider still.

She turned and turned about, staring in amazement, drinking in the sight of the shattered ship they lived in, the endless darkness outside with its thousands upon thousands of silver bright stars.

“
Oooh-oooh-ooh!”
She hopped up and down, pointing at the shadowed shapes jutting up from the top of the ship, babbling out a long string of questions as she turned to Tig and Tilli, looking for permission.

Tig shrugged and waved them forward.

Tilli called Oona to her, taking her by one leg, warning her to stay close by her side as the two of them set off, leaving Tig to follow more slowly behind.

Oona babbled excitedly as she scuttled along, pointing out this thing and that, asking what they were and what had happened, wanting to know everything—all that
Serengeti
was, and had been, and would one day be. And Tilli—patient Tilli—answered as best she could. Everything but the ‘to-be’—on that particular subject she had nothing to offer her daughter. They had yesterday and today, and all the yesterdays before that, but tomorrow…tomorrow was a dream. A wish for bright stars and good fortune. A hope that someday soon,
Serengeti
would wake to join them again, and make their little family complete.

Excitement as they crested the top of
Serengeti’s
body, Oona staring raptly, chromed face shining in the glow of Tsu’s star. More excitement when Tilli pointed downward, at the hull plating twinkling and shimmering as it drank in the starlight. Oona smiled happily, face lights flashing, mimicking the twinkling of the ship’s body.

Now she saw. Now she knew. Now she understood why
Serengeti
loved the stars so.

But Oona was a child still, and in the way of children, her interest soon waned. She looked around and spied the forest of solar panels standing close by the bow. She pointed, babbling out a staccato burst of overexcited chatter, and then took off, all but dragging Tilli with her as she raced over to take a closer look.

That left Tig to follow after. Again.

He took his time, letting Tilli and Oona speed ahead, enjoying the sight of them surrounded by all those stars. Tilli slipped into teacher mode as they moved along the racks of solar panels, explaining the science and engineering behind it all so Oona would understand how the solar array worked.

Tig listened for a bit and then split off, turning away from the solar panel forest as he headed for the massive metal tower a short distance away. He rolled over to it and stopped at its base, tilted his head backward and stared up and up and up.

The antenna had grown over the years: dishes added, longer lengths of girdering bolted on in places, a hodge-podge of odds and ends tacked on wherever they could be fitted, transforming the makeshift sniffer into a massive communications device—a gnarled, crooked finger pointing at the stars. A finger that, with each new addition, reached a little bit further, expanding their listening range out into the dark.

Serengeti
designed the original but this…the additions were all Tig’s. That and the relay he’d cobbled together, a primitive thing that sent a pulse across the channel shared between himself, Tilli and Oona, notifying them instantly if anything noisy drifted into range. He’d designed it, built it, but to this day he didn’t know if it actually worked. After all, nothing had ever come into range to test it on. At least, as far as he knew. And if something had…

Best not to think about that.

Tig and Tilli busied themselves around the ship, fixing things, teaching Oona along the way, but they always made time to come out here and tap into the tower, using a cable snaking from its base to connect themselves directly to its listening array. Tig loved it out here, with nothing but the darkness and the stars. He stood on
Serengeti’s
hull, listening through the comms tower, dreaming of days long gone, hoping each time he plugged into hear a
pop
or a
fizz
, a
squawk
or
crackle,
something, anything that even
remotely
resembled interstellar communications. But weeks passed, months and years, with nothing and nothing and yet more nothing.

And still Tig came. Day after day, year after year. Because to do otherwise, was to give up hope. And hope was one of the few things they had left.

Tig moved a step closer to the tower of misfit pieces and plugged himself in, dialing his receivers all the way up.

Silence at first, just as he expected. And then…something. Something that wasn’t quite sound. Something
felt
more than heard that was surprisingly familiar.

Tig panned his head around, searching the stars, tilted it back and examined the empty stretch of space above him. Nothing to see, nothing but stars. But that something, that
feeling
kept getting stronger, setting his pathways to humming, reverberating with sound that wasn’t quite sound.

“
Beep,
” he muttered, face lights frowning in concentration. And then, “
Beeeeeeep
.” Tig’s eyes widened as a dark void formed—inky black nothingness bending and twisting as it blotted out the stars.

That too was familiar. He’d seen that nothingness a thousand times and more, knew that void was a buckle—a spot of unstable space, the precursor to hyperspace transit.

“
Tilli!
” Tig twisted around, waving excitedly, but Tilli and Oona were deep inside the solar panel forest, unable to see him from here. He tapped into the robot comms channel and babbled like an idiot, trying to get her attention. “Tilli come see! There’s something—”

“In a minute,” she said, and shut the channel down.

“Bugger.” Tig
wonked
in annoyance and faced back around.

The buckle widened, darkening as it resolved. A shimmer as it sucked inward and flared bright, silver-white. A flood of communications poured through the breach, filling Tig’s brain with the grinding sound of electronic signals as a sleek-sided shape appeared, sparkling in the starlight.

More flashes, more breaches forming and resolving, silver-white flashes popping off like fireworks all around that first shape. Each new arrival threw more noise into the ambient, cluttering up the once-empty section of space with a vast ocean of sound that washed over Tig like an electronic storm. He focused in, listening intently, leg wrapped around the metal girders of the antennae to boost the signal that much more. A flash of face lights as he parsed through data, filtering the chatter until one voice came through clearly—louder, stronger than all the others. A voice he remembered from long, and long, and long ago.

Tig whooped with joy and spun in a circle, legs ends flailing the air around him. “
Sechura
,” he called, dialing up his comms, making his small voice loud as possible. “Here! We’re here!”

A brief delay before a response came back. “What of
Serengeti
?”

“Here! She’s here. Sleeping, dreaming, waiting for you, all this time.”

Another moment of silence, and then the mass of ships turned and glided toward
Serengeti,
starlight twinkling along their hulls.

Tig bounced up and down, waving his legs excitedly, calling out to Tilli and Oona, telling them to “Come-come-come! Come see, come see, come see, Tilli!
Sechura
is here!”

Sechura.
Sister ship. After all these years, the Valkyries had come to bring
Serengeti
home.

Read on for a free sample of Battlefield Mars