Serengeti (4 page)

Henricksen frowned in annoyance and then glanced outside, considering
Brutus’s
far-off bulk. “Have at it,” he said, waving his hand angrily.

“
Brutus,
this is
Serengeti.
Request you hold position while we finish our sweep of the area.”

Silence. Absolutely silence for a full five seconds.
Brutus’s
way of showing his displeasure.

“Acknowledged,” he
sent back. And after a short pause, “Hurry up about it.”

Annoying
.

“That’s the plan,”
Serengeti
said brightly and then
closed the comms, all but cutting the Bastion off.

Seychelles
sent a message—private channel, one Valkyrie saying hello to another, trading messages faster than a human blinked an eye.

Sorry for the intrusion,
her message read.
Our fearless leader was in a hurry.

Smiley face appended to the end.
Serengeti
couldn’t help but laugh.

He’s grumpier than usual, Serengeti
sent back.

Yeah. Well. Cerberus called while you were away.

The Citadel himself. Wow. That can’t be good.

Nope. Seems the masses aren’t very happy that this is taking so long. Cerberus is thinking of replacing him, Seychelles
confided.

Really.

Uh-huh.

This was a private message I assume. Ship-to-ship, not meant for other ears?

Mm-hmm.

And how, pray-tell, did
you
come by this message?

Seychelles
sent a winky smiley face.
Refit crew owed me a favor.

You bugged him. You bugged Brutus’s comms system during an upgrade. Unbelievable!

You’re just mad you didn’t think of it first.
Another smiley face, then,
Ciao, sister. Stay out of trouble.

Serengeti
wiped the messages—best not to keep that kind of thing around—and returned her attention to the bridge.

“Hurry up he says.” Henricksen snorted in derision. “What’s he think we’ve been doing? Sitting here with our thumbs up our asses?”

“Brutus is under pressure,”
Serengeti
told him. “We’ve been chasing those DSR ships for almost three weeks now and
Cerberus
wants this over and done with so he can call the rest of us back to the fleet.”

Cerberus,
Citadel class—the one and only, the AI Admiral in charge of the entire Meridian Alliance fleet.
Brutus
was one of five Bastions,
Serengeti
one of four hundred and ninety-eight Valkyries, the twenty Dreadnoughts out there a small subset of a nearly seven hundred ship contingent, and the Titans and Auroras numbered almost eight
thousand.
All those ships, and just one
Cerberus
. Just one Citadel in all the galaxy, because that’s all the Meridian Alliance could afford to build
.
Serengeti
wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

“
Cerberus
will take his command if he fails,”
Serengeti
noted.

“Yeah? Well, boo-hoo. We’re all sick of chasing those bastards around the galaxy.” Henricksen folded his arms over his chest, grey eyes glaring out the windows. “Shouldn’t be here,” he growled. “Armada’s got no goddamn business being here until we’ve swept the area and called them through.”

“
Brutus
leads the fleet,”
Serengeti
reminded him.

“Not all of it,” he told her, eyes shifting, staring angrily at a camera. “Just this piece. Last I checked, it was
Cerberus
who called the shots.”

“
Cerberus
is the flagship of the fleet,”
Serengeti
agreed, “and it was
Cerberus
that put
Brutus
in charge of this armada.”

“And it was
Brutus
that sent you on this scouting mission,” Henricksen thundered. “You tell him to wait, that arrogant AI prick needs to wait!”

Serengeti’s
laughter caught Henricksen off-guard. He flushed darkly, thinking she laughed
at
him, but truth was, she found his righteous anger amusing. And she had to admit, she was the tiniest bit pleased that Henricksen—proud, protective Henricksen—was angry on her behalf.

“I’ll relay your message,”
Serengeti
said.

Henricksen froze, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. “Wait. What?”

“You’re right. We were sent ahead for a reason. It was stupid and careless of
Brutus
to come barreling through without knowing what was waiting on the other side. I’ll let him know.”

“Umm…alright…” Henricksen glanced over at Sikuuku, but the gunner just shrugged.

Serengeti
tapped into comms, bypassing the normal ship-to-ship channel to send a message directly to
Brutus
. And then she copied the message, sending it via an encoded channel to the Valkyries in the armada, trusting them to relay it to the rest of their small fleet.

“
Brutus
has been notified.”

“Notified? Notified of what?” Henricksen asked suspiciously. “What the hell did you say to him,
Serengeti
?”

“I told the arrogant AI prick he needs to wait next time.” That wasn’t
quite
what she’d said, but it was close enough. And the look on Henricksen’s face was priceless.

“You told him…” Henricksen blinked and stared, eyes wide with disbelief. He turned his head, looking to where the hulking monstrosity that was
Brutus
floated outside, and started laughing.

“Finlay,”
Serengeti
called. “Please proceed with the sample capture. Have Six and Ten siphon up as much of the debris as they can and bring it back here for the robots to go over.”

The robots were her other crew—three hundred and sixteen configurable electronic minions charged with maintenance and repairs, among other things. If there were ship parts inside that debris cloud, they’d know it. And if those parts belonged to a Meridian Alliance ship, the robots would know that too. They were clever little things, and every bit as loyal as Henricksen and the others.

A message came back from
Brutus
.
Serengeti
didn’t bother opening it. She was pretty sure she knew what it said. “And Finlay. Tell them to hurry up about it,” she said, letting a hint of amusement creep into her voice.

“Yes, ma’am. I mean, ship. Valkyrie,” Finlay corrected quickly, cheeks flushing furiously as she stumbled over the honorifics.

The etiquette for addressing AI warships was a bit…vague to say the least but they were used to taking orders from the captain, and he from
Serengeti,
not having to address her themselves.

Serengeti
slipped into Finlay’s console, flashing a smiling kitty face on her screen. “
Serengeti,”
she said. “
Serengeti
will do just fine, Finlay.”

“Yes, ma’am.” A shy glance at the camera as Finlay tapped at her station, sending a little cartoon owl back.

“
Serengeti,
” she corrected with a laugh.

“
Serengeti,
” Finlay repeated, flushing even brighter. She ducked her head, smiling happily as she relayed
Serengeti’s
instructions to the probes. “Six and Ten heading in. Grid mapping…thirty-two percent complete. Nothing yet.”

“Thank you, Finlay.”

Silence after that brief exchange, all of them waiting, studying the feeds Ten and Six sent back as they worked their way through the debris field, sucking up the drifting space junk and storing it in the compartments at their middles. Lot of debris out there, no way they could get it all—the probes were small, after all, and the cloud of debris diffuse and massive—but they only needed enough for the robots to analyze.

Serengeti
tracked the probes’ progress as they passed through the mass of floating bits, ran some calculations—measuring the width of the debris field, the density of the pieces—and made a disturbing discovery.

Not just big,
she thought.
Huge. Large enough to be a ship.

She looked to Henricksen, wondering if he saw what she did. But Henricksen seemed distracted. He watched the probes’ operation for a while, but his eyes kept returning to
Brutus
and the other ships.

“They’re keeping their distance,” he noted, looking to the camera, quirking an eyebrow in question. “Your doing I assume?”

“I advised the Bastion that it would be best if the armada stayed put until the probes complete their scans and we’ve had a chance to analyze the debris.”

“And he listened?”

“He may be an arrogant AI prick but he knows sense when he hears it,” Serengeti said dryly. That got another laugh from Henricksen.

“Collection complete, Captain,” Finlay announced.

“Alright then, Finlay. Bring the boys back. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Finlay nodded and ordered Six and Ten back to the ship.

Serengeti
checked the Chron and found the entire operation—from the launching of the probes to the order to return—had taken just a little under twenty minutes. Not bad, considering they had a human running the operation.

“Finlay. How much longer do the rest of the probes need to complete the grid sweep?”

“Pattern is…sixty-eight percent complete, Captain. Chron estimates ten minutes, twenty-eight seconds. Give or take.”

“You suppose that’ll be quick enough for him?” Henricksen nodded to the video feed showing
Brutus
lurking behind them.

Serengeti
was about to answer when a message arrived. A message sent directly to her
,
bypassing the comms station entirely. She opened it, read quickly and then flashed the message to Henricksen’s Command Post.

“Apparently not,” she said, and then deleted the message in a fit of pique.

Six and Ten were back on board in a little under five minutes.
Serengeti
flipped her attention to the cargo hold, watching the huge outer doors slide open and the two collection probes slip inside. The hold was a huge space, empty and echoing, but the probes—silly, mischievous things that they were—seemed not to know it. They skittered around like frightened moths, making wandering loops of the hold’s frigid confines before dropping down to the floor.

The outer doors slid closed as the probes settled. Atmosphere systems kicked in, repressurizing the cargo bay, banishing the worst of the vacuum’s chill before an inner hatch opened, letting six little robots into the cargo area. The robots were cute little things and walked on long, spidery legs, oval bodies gleaming dully, round, chromed faces lit with brilliant cobalt eyes. They stepped into the hold and squatted down, dropping onto triangular tank treads set in their bellies, trundling across the open space with their jointed legs tucked tight against their bodies, blue eyes glowing brightly in moon-shaped faces, pin lights flashing in pre-programmed patterns across their cheeks and foreheads as they communicated in their shared robot language—a strange combination of
beeps
and
borps
and other electronic noises that filtered through
Serengeti’s
microphone pick-ups.

The robots rolled to the middle of the cargo bay and then divided—three of them heading over to the Number Six probe while the other three trundled in the opposite direction, clustering around balky, oft-capricious Ten. Out came those long, spidery legs, unfurling from the robots’ sides, metal tips tapping at the decking as they lifted themselves up and tucked their tank treads tight against their bellies. No trundling like tiny tanks now. The robots
crawled
across the probes like the metal arachnids they were, poking at hidden panels, entering coded sequences to get access to the probes’ insides.

Six slid open with a puff of air, hinged doors releasing on either side of its ovoid body, revealing a space packed tight with scorched metal, melted plastics and every other thing the probe had collected. Ten, on the other hand, had to be a bit more difficult. Ten flat out rejected the first set of codes the robots entered, and then balked at opening its doors when they tried to use a back-up set of codes.

“Ten. Behave,”
Serengeti
ordered, speaking through a comms panel set in the hold’s wall.

Ten
beeped
loudly and then flashed a series of error messages, insisting its door controls weren’t working properly.

“Fine. You want to do it the hard way, we’ll do it the hard way.”

Part of her was tempted to shut the probe down completely. The controls were there, an integrated part of her systems, and all it would take was a single command.
Serengeti
considered it and then tapped into the robots’ comms channel instead, calling in the cavalry.

“TIG. Cargo bay.”

A maintenance door opened at the far end of the huge space and another, even smaller robot rolled out. It paused just a few feet in and assessed the situation, face lights flashing, front legs lifting, scraping together in a gesture of worry that was peculiar to all the TIGs. The TIGs were smaller than the TSDs gathered around probes Six and Ten—repair robot, not analysis like their larger cousins—and came equipped with eight legs instead of the usual six, but other than that, the two robot models were nearly identical.

The TIG
beeped
softly and raised its head, staring at the camera as it waited for orders.

“Come here.”
Serengeti
flashed the light above a camera and then waited while the little robot extended its legs and tippy-tapped over.

It stopped just below the camera, neck craned backward, chromed face looking up.
Serengeti
zoomed in on its side, reading the numbers and letters stenciled there to get its designation.

TIG-442
.

“I want that probe open, 442,”
Serengeti
said sternly. “Repair the doors and then run a full diagnostic so we don’t have any more problems. A
full
diagnostic,” she added, emphasizing that one word, “inside and out.”

A strange, strangled sound from Ten and his compartment doors magically sighed open.

Too late, you little pain in the ass.

“Run the diagnostics anyway.”

TIG-442 nodded, face lights ticking up one side and down the other, and then he flailed his legs excitedly and scurried away.

Serengeti
turned the camera, addressing the TSDs around Ten. “Go through its hold,” she said, pointedly ignoring the probe’s protests. “Run a broad spectrum analysis on everything in there and then clear all that junk out.”

Beeps
and
borps
all around. Flashes of swirling face lights as the TSDs communicated with one another, figuring out who was going to do what.
Serengeti
left them to it.

“TIG-442.”
Serengeti
swung the camera away, pointed it at the little repair droid again. “I want you to wipe Ten’s software when you’re done. Wipe it and reinstall, then run the diagnostics again to make sure there are no bugs left behind.”

Ten
beeped
in complaint, insisting he was fine now. Really. Just a temporary malfunction and hardly worth all the fuss.

Serengeti
really didn’t care. It was high time Ten learned how to behave.

A message popped up, flashing insistently, clamoring for attention. A message from
Brutus—
no surprise there—demanding to know when they’d be done so the armada could move in.

Patience is a virtue,
she started to send back, and then deleted it, querying her systems instead, checking on the progress of the other probes.
Ten minutes,
she wrote.
Stand by.

Serengeti
sent the message and closed the channel, patently ignoring the indignant response
Brutus
sent back. “Go,” she told the TIG. “Be quick about it.”

TIG-442 nodded, face lights flashing, cobalt eyes blinking slowly as he opened a panel beside Ten’s hatch and stuck the end of one leg into a socket inside.

The TSDs, meanwhile, had crawled inside Number Ten’s compartment and were busy sifting through its contents, using the sensors, diagnostic equipment and other specialized electronics built into the ends of their long, metal legs to analyze each and every piece of space junk the probe had gathered before chucking it outside, adding it to a growing mound on the cargo bay floor.
Serengeti
watched the operation closely, switching from one camera to another, eager to see what the probes had brought back. She even tapped into the TSDs themselves after a while so she could sort through the analytical data in real time rather than waiting for them to feed it to her.

And all the while, the messages kept coming. More messages from
Brutus,
each one angrier, more impatient than the one before. And a single query from Henricksen on the bridge.

Wait,
she told them all. That and nothing more while the robots went through the last few pieces of space junk and closed the two probes back up.

She tarried a moment longer, making sure Number Ten didn’t give TIG-442 any problems before switching her primary consciousness back to the bridge, flashing an indicator on the Command Post’s mash-up panel to let Henricksen know she was there.

“Well?” he asked her.

“
Barlow
,” she said. “The debris the probes brought in is from
Barlow.
That’s all that’s left of him
.
” She cut off Number Ten’s video feed, shunted the TSDs’ data to the front windows so the crew could see for themselves.

“Shit,” Sikuuku swore.

Kusikov stood up and leaned forward, hands pressed flat against the comms panel as he read through the data. Finlay just sat there, eyes wide and staring, head moving from one side to the other.

“Any chance we can salvage the AI?” Henricksen asked her.

“No.” A single word, filled with sadness and anger. “
Barlow
died with his crew.”

“And the others?” Henricksen asked softly. “
Osage? Veil of Tears
? Is there—are they…” He frowned and glanced at the crew around him. “Was there anything from them?”

“No. Just
Barlow.
If
Osage
and
Veil of Tears
were here—” A perimeter breach warning flashed through
Serengeti’s
systems, cutting her off. “Proximity alarm,” she announced, voice calm and cool as ever. She reached out with her sensors, searching for whatever was out there.

“Shit-shit-shit-shit-
shit
!” from the Artillery station. Henricksen might not swear often, but Sikuuku had no such qualms.

Finlay leaned forward, working desperately at her station, looking for the black void of displacement that marked a ship coming in. It was there,
Serengeti
could feel it through her sensor arrays, but from the way she shook her head, Finlay obviously hadn’t found it yet.

Serengeti
tapped into the Scan station, scrolling the detection grid to one side until the jump breach showed at the center.

“Buckle forming one thousand kilometers off the starboard bow,” Finlay called.

Good girl.

Brutus
sent a message, using the main comms channel this time rather than the direct line to
Serengeti
herself.
Serengeti
read it and then waited, letting Kusikov relay the communication to Henricksen.

“
Brutus
is asking for details, sir. Wants to know what’s coming in.”

“As if we have any more idea than he does,” Henricksen growled. “Tell that son-of-a-bitch—”

Flare of cobalt blue light in the video feed tracking
Brutus
and the other ships in the armada. More flares, bright spots of color popping up everywhere as the fleet of ships fired up their engines and closed in on
Serengeti’s
location.

“
Brutus
in-bound, sir!” Kusikov called, a hint of alarm creeping into his voice.

“In-bound? What the hell does he think he’s doing? Kusikov—forget it.” Henricksen mashed at the comms panel attached to his Command Post, opening a ship-to-ship channel to
Brutus.
“
Brutus,
this is
Serengeti.
Maintain position. Repeat. Maintain position until we know what’s coming in.” Henricksen closed the channel and turned to Finlay. “Anything?”

“Not yet, sir. Breach is still forming. Chatter coming through but it’s indecipherable at this point.”

“Recall the probes.”

“But they’re not done—”

“
I said recall the goddamn probes, Finlay!
”

“Yes, sir.” Finlay tapped furiously at her panel, sending recall instructions to the probes outside.

“Sikuuku! Bring the forward artillery stations back online.”

“Already did. Forward stations are hot, sir. Port and starboard in stand-by.”

“Good.” Henricksen looked to the aft feed, swore softly when he saw
Brutus
and the rest of the armada still moving. “
Serengeti.
Any chance you can use your AI wiles to talk some sense into that bastard?”

“I’ll try.”

Brutus
and the rest of the armada were just two minutes out now.
Serengeti
sent a coded request directly to the Bastion using a private channel, received a squeal of static in response.

Prick.

“Any luck?” Henricksen asked her. He didn’t sound all that hopeful. He could see for himself that the fleet was still moving toward them.

“None. Apparently
Brutus
isn’t in the mood for AI wiles.”

“Prick.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“Finlay—”

“Almost! Breach is forming.”

A flash outside, bathing the bridge in silver-white radiance. Finlay hunched forward, shading her eyes as she searched through the reams of information scrolling across her Scan station.

“It’s a ship,” she said slowly, frowning in concentration. “Signal’s garbled though. Not squawking like it should.” She fiddled with something, scrolled through a screen of data, fed it into a secondary panel. More fiddling and a muttered curse as she shook her head in frustration. “Can’t seem to get the call sign.”

Serengeti
slipped in behind her, parsing through the data, finding gaps and errors, mangled translations the Scan systems couldn’t deal with. “Something’s wrong.” She grabbed the Number Two probe and reversed its course, sending it out toward the breach.