Serengeti (6 page)

Silence from
Brutus
. Nothing at all in response.

A surreptitious communication to the other Valkyries then. A quick back and forth between the half dozen ships, all of whom advised the same caution.

But
Brutus
wasn’t listening—not to any of them—and
Serengeti
was pretty sure she knew why. AIs had their pride, after all, and
Brutus’
pride was hurting. After weeks of chasing the DSR, he finally had them in sight—had them outnumbered and outgunned to boot—and nothing she or the other Valkyries said was going to convince him to back down.

Mutiny was out of the question—Henricksen would never ask it of her and
Serengeti
would never turn on her own. Besides, she couldn’t abandon the fleet. Not to save herself.

“If he’d held position like he was supposed to, none of us would be in this mess,” Henricksen growled.

“And yet, here we are,”
Serengeti
said simply.

“Yeah. Here we are.” Henricksen glared a moment longer, watching the dark voids outside suck inward and then spit dull-skinned vessels out. “Sikuuku,” he called, turning toward the Artillery station. “I want all batteries online. Target the closest breach and take out whatever comes through.”

“And
Osage
?” Sikuuku asked.

Henricksen glanced out the windows, then to Number Two’s feed. The probe was stuck inside
Osage’s
damaged hull—dragged along as the wrecked ship advanced—but it was far out. Still a good nine hundred kilometers from
Serengeti’s
location and moving slow as a turtle. The DSR ships were closer—a hell of a lot closer—and a much more immediate problem. Henricksen grimaced, eyes flicking to the forward camera and then back to Sikuuku. “Forget her for now. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

“Roger!” Sikuuku opened a channel to the artillery stations and relayed the captain’s orders to the other batteries.

Henricksen stared at the schematic on the front windows, watching the jump breaches form, throwing worried glances at Number Two’s feed now and then. An anguished, agonized look on Henricksen’s face as he considered the probe’s feed.
Osage
was a companion once. An ally. And now…

What happened to you, sister?

Serengeti
opened a channel, tried to make contact with
Osage
one last time. But there was nothing there. Just that electronic voice screaming out the ship’s name.

Damn. Time the others knew.

“
Osage
is gone,” she said, speaking to Henricksen, knowing the rest of the crew listened in. “The AI is gone and the crew with her from the looks of that hull.”

“You don’t know for sure—”

“The ship is a ghost, Captain.”

Henricksen flinched as if she’d hit him.
Serengeti
never called him captain. It was Henricksen, always Henricksen when it was just she and the crew.

“
Osage
is gone, Henricksen,”
Serengeti
said more softly.

Henricksen stared out the window a moment, lips pressed tightly together. “Sikuuku.”

“Aye, sir?”

“If she comes in range, blow her.”

“Aye, sir.” Sikuuku’s eyes drifted to
Osage’s
blinking dot. He laid his hands on the firing mechanism for the main gun, flexing his fingers as he prepared to fire.

“
Brutus
reports all batteries, online. Fleet is primed and ready, Captain,” Kusikov said.

“Good.”

“Last of the breaches are resolving, sir. Weapons signatures detected.” Movement at the front of the DSR fleet, an oversized object at the crescent’s center pushing forward, bringing the rest of the line with it. “They’re coming in!” Finlay called.

“God help us,” Henricksen whispered.

Serengeti
sucked in the feeds from all the ships out there, taking an inventory of the force they were up against. The DSR fleet was close enough for her scans to detect each ship and mark them on the perimeter for display, but distant still—far enough away that her hull cameras showed little more than a spreading sea of dark blobs. A bit of fiddling and
Serengeti
zoomed in, enhancing the magnification of her electronic eyes until the shapes of individual ships became clear, but she still wanted more—more input, more data, more details about those vessels out there. So she cancelled the Number Four probe’s recall and turned it around, sending its electronic eyes back out into the dark.

The probe sped away—invisible on her screens but for the video feed it sent back, tiny in comparison to the mass of ships out there.
Serengeti
slowed Number Four once it was close enough and zoomed in, using the probe’s eyes to get a close-up view of the enemy that had come among them.

A hulking bruiser led the DSR fleet—a wallowing, zeppelin-shaped cruiser bristling with turret guns and comms towers, with something massive and deadly-looking bolted to its front end.
Serengeti
stared at it, studying the ship’s design, trying to figure out what it was, but the class and designation eluded her at the moment.

“Interesting,” she murmured.

“Interesting?” Henricksen grunted. “Weird’s more like it. Looks like a god damn puffer fish. What is that anyway? Some kinda hack job?”

“Not sure,”
Serengeti
admitted. “But I know how I can find out.”

She tapped into Comms and Scan, drinking in the wealth of data the vessel poured out, found a name—
Trinidad—
and a ream of information about the ship’s pedigree and construction, every planet and space station it had visited in the decades since its AI was born. And all that information came to her in the clear, trickling across an unsecured line.

Unencrypted data—that told her something.
Old
ship out there. Fourth generation at best. Anything newer came equipped with data protection—encryption and decryption, keys and permissions required to access the more sensitive areas of a ship’s history. After all, the days of open data sharing were over. A smart AI learned to protect its past, and only divulge the information she absolutely
had
to provide.

So what are you?
Serengeti
wondered, digging deeper.

Lots of information in
Trinidad’s
archive.
Serengeti
bypassed most of it and burrowed down to the ship’s root directory where its commissioning information was stored.

“Heliotrope,”
Serengeti
announced to the bridge crew. “Beacon names it
Trinidad
and its records mark it as Heliotrope. Older class of vessel. Haven’t run across one of them in years.”

And the last one she’d seen hadn’t looked anything like the monster outside.

“Heliotrope?” Henricksen stared at Number Four’s feed, arms folded, one finger tapping at his lips. “That’s a science vessel, right? What the hell’s a science vessel doing with a bunch of plasma cannons and rail guns strapped to its hull?”

She’d been wondering that herself.
Serengeti
set a sub-mind to do a bit more digging and figure that out while the bulk of her consciousness focused on the rest of the DSR fleet.

“Scan shows twenty-three ships through breach, sir,” Finlay called out. “Twenty-eight. Thirty-two.”

“Captain.” Kusikov. Voice dreaming, body rigid as he sorted through the chaos of communications flying through space. “
Brutus
has ordered the fleet forward.”

“Well, bully for him,” Henricksen growled.

He leaned forward, staring out the forward windows as
Serengeti
turned with rest of the Meridian Alliance fleet, the spearhead of vessels turning until the tip pointed at the arc of DSR ships, and
Trinidad’s
huge shape sitting at its center.

Brutus
ordered the advance, and
Serengeti
went with them

“We’re going through?” Sikuuku turned his head, eyes hidden behind the targeting advisor covering the top half of his face.

Henricksen nodded shortly. “Looks that way. Punch through, come about, form up so we’re in a better position to take them on. Not the best plan,” he said, looking pointedly at the camera, “but it’s better than sitting here getting pounded from all sides.”

“If you say so, boss.” Sikuuku shrugged his shoulders and then cracked his fingers. “Just tell me what to shoot.”

Henricksen grimaced, staring hard at the front windows, pouring over the schematic showing the arc of DSR ships on one side, and the Meridian Alliance wedge on the other, two fleets slowly converging, the space between them growing thinner and thinner.

“Alright!” Henricksen raised his voice, addressing the entire bridge crew. “That’s our way out.” He tapped at one of the panels in front of him, highlighting the center of the DSR crescent, and
Trinidad’s
prickling shape at its middle, pushing it to the front windows for everyone to see. “Looks like
Brutus
is sending our boys after the mutated Heliotrope. Let’s see if we can’t help them out a bit. Sikuuku—I want you to focus the main gun on that spiny ship out there. Have the forward batteries do the same while the port and starboard cannons pound away at the smaller vessels to either side.”

“Aye, sir!” Sikuuku touched two fingers to the side of his visor, opening a channel to the other Artillery stations and pass Henricksen’s orders to the gunner crews. “All stations ready, Captain.” He reached for the panel in front of him, throwing a series of switches that brought targeting displays to life, pivoted the gimbaled pod to reorient the main gun and set the Heliotrope in its crosshairs. “We’ll be in firing range in…four minutes, fifty-three seconds,” he said, sinking into the combat system’s virtual world.

“Right. Tsu! Evans!” Henricksen barked, turning to the dark-haired, almond-eyed beauty sitting station at Engineering, the dark-skinned, earnest-looking young man manning Navigation beside her. “Maintain course and speed. I don’t want us drifting out of line.” He hooked a thumb toward Kusikov. “Hot-shot over there will monitor communications, let you know if
Brutus
changes tactics. Until then you keep her straight and steady, you hear?”

“Aye, sir!” they answered in unison, Tsu’s voice crisp and clean, Evans’ response softer, more muted.

Interesting duo there. Tsu was solid as they came: level-headed, dependable, cool under pressure. Not entirely surprising considering her upbringing—the Hideo-Nippon colony on Sosholo had a first rate military academy and Tsu had graduated top of her class. Not the friendliest person, despite her looks, or perhaps because of it, but Henricksen thought highly of her. Thought she had command potential. In fact, he’d already forwarded her package to the captain’s board for consideration, though Tsu didn’t know it. Nor the rest of the crew either. Certainly not Finlay.

Finlay. She’d be gutted if she knew
.

Serengeti
tapped into Finlay’s screen, watching the private messages flash back and forth between Finlay at Scan and Tsu at Engineering. They were close, those two. Close as sisters. Close as lovers. That’s what Finlay wanted—
Serengeti
read that in the messages Finlay sent from Scan—but Tsu already had a lover. Anoosheh—that name kept repeating in the messages Tsu received from home. Finlay knew about her, of course—how could she not when she and Tsu had grown so close—but that didn’t stop her from dreaming. The heart wanted what it wants, after all.

Poor Finlay. Serengeti
backed out of the text-based conversation passing between Scan and Engineering.
All your longing will only end in heartache
.

She considered Tsu a moment, studying her profile, the long line of her nose, the tilted brown eyes, and turned the camera a bit, taking a long look at Evans at Navigation.

Tsu was good—damn good—but Evans…
Serengeti
honestly wasn’t quite sure about Evans. He’d trained in Nav and done well in the position—not great, not horrible, just…well. ‘Competent,’ was how Henricksen described him, and that fit too. Fit everything about Evans, in fact. Truth was,
Serengeti
didn’t really have a good read on Evans. He was new to her crew—a recent replacement for Santiago who’d been killed in an unfortunate accident in one of her cargo bays—and he mostly kept to himself.

Need to fix that,
she thought.
When this is over, I need to look into the mystery that is Evans. Make sure he gets integrated with the rest of the crew.

Because crew was family while the ship was underway. And family didn’t stomach outsiders. Either Evans integrated or he’d been transferred. Or demoted. Either way, he’d be on his way out, and
Serengeti
didn’t want that. Not for
any
of her crew, even the ones she hardly knew.

She pulled back a bit, casting the camera’s lens wide,
watching the crewmen go about their various tasks on the bridge with one sliver of her consciousness—dipping into their consoles now and then to monitoring their activity—while another sub-mind looked outward, measuring the ever-diminishing gap between the Meridian Alliance armada and the DSR fleet. And in the background, a third sub-mind kept processing, chugging its way through
Trinidad’s
records.

Something about that ship bothered her. Something just wasn’t right.

The sub-mind flashed a message to get
Serengeti’s
attention, and then pointed to a single—the ship’s original design specs, and a series of addendums detailing changes and upgrades, a long list of modifications made over the course of the last twenty years.

“He’s a refit.”

“What is?” Henricksen asked distractedly.

“
Trinidad.
”
Serengeti
highlighted the Heliotrope’s marker on the front viewing screen.

“Well, obviously. I mean,
look
at him!” Henricksen waved at hand at the porcupine-shaped vessel showing in Number Four’s feed.

“Not that. Well, yes, that too, but I was talking about the AI. The AI is a refit. They ripped the advanced sciences AI out and replaced it with a combat model. Second generation.”

Henricksen stared at the camera in disbelief. “
Second
? That’s a fucking Neanderthal compared to the AI that was in there. Why the hell would they do that? Why would the AI
agree
to that?”

“I’m betting he didn’t. No AI would.
Trinidad—
the original
Trinidad—
probably objected to the vessel changes so they ripped him out and threw him away. A science ship would never allow itself to be converted to a ship of war. Just as a combat AI would never concede to being turned into a miner ship, or hospice vessel, or any other, non-military refit.”

Henricksen eyed the Heliotrope darkly and then looked back to the camera. “The AI swap. That in the logs?” he asked softly.

“Some of it. Some of its guesswork. But one thing’s for sure—the AI in that Heliotrope is
not
the original.”

Henricksen chewed his lip, watching the DSR fleet inch closer, studying the Heliotrope’s shape at its center. “Second generation. That’s pretty desperate.”

“Indeed,”
Serengeti
murmured. “Indeed it is.”

But they’d seen that, hadn’t they? The DSR was every bit the outsider, rebel-resistance force its name implied. Which meant shoestring budgets and salvaged equipment—retrofits of older models rather than shiny new designs. Even their damned name was a retread, the original Dark Star Revolution having died out centuries ago. Henricksen called them a bunch of terrorists—a bunch of up-jumped opportunists with a grandiose name—and, in truth, that’s how things started out.

The second coming of the DSR spawned from unrest on just a single planet—a backwater named Isikatamaharu—and from there it spread like wildfire. Like a plague hopping from one planet to another, infecting hundreds of colonies along the way, pulling in the people at the fringes—the angry and disenfranchised, the desperate and destitute. There’d been a point to it all once, way back when. A dream of separation, of an independent planet, separate from Meridian Alliance rule that the DSR could call home. But that dream got lost along the way—forgotten or just given up long ago. Now the DSR was all about guerrilla warfare and quasi-terrorist tactics. About surgical strikes to secure resources and keep themselves going.

Anything they captured—ships included—got pressed into service. That’s what happened to
Trinidad.
That much was in his records. And as for the other ships out there…

Serengeti
ran a quick analysis of the data she’d gathered, found other ships of
Trinidad’s
vintage, some newer models, others that were even older than the Heliotrope.
Desperate,
she thought, reading the signs, knowing the ancient fleet out there meant DSR was almost at an end. This fleet, this cobbled together collection of ships driven far out into unsettled space…it felt like a last stand. A last suicidal act of defiance.