Serengeti (8 page)

Apparently, the DSR had done the same calculations and come to a different conclusion. Or else they’d found a way around the weapons flaws. Developed some sort of shielding, maybe, to prevent a similar tragic event.

Or maybe they just don’t care, Serengeti
thought to herself.
Maybe they’re willing to risk their crews for the firepower the gun offers.

Trinidad’s
liquid laser rounds smashed into the leading edge of the Meridian Alliance spearhead, splattering themselves across the Titans and Auroras at its tip. A few swirling red globes passed through the front line and slammed into the next wave of ships. At first it looked like nothing happened, then damage reports started flowing in.

Intrafleet comms erupted with communications, ships slowed and skipped aside, trying to dodge
Trinidad’s
fire. Those near the edges were successful but the center of the ships at the center of the spearhead were packed in tight with almost nowhere to go, no room to maneuver. A bright flare erupted at the front of the spearhead—an Aurora named
Sorrow,
drifting off line, breaking formation. She veered hard to starboard, scraping against
Percival,
obliterating two side cannons, taking out the plating around them for good measure, leaving
Percival
with a sparking, gaping wound.

Percival
recovered and brought himself back in line.
Sorrow
wasn’t so lucky.

“Breach,” Finlay called. “
Sorrow’s
got a breach!”

“Dammit,” Henricksen swore.

A yellow-white plume puffed from the Aurora’s side, flickering, flaring as it licked at empty space. The plume burned brightly for a few seconds and then abruptly died. And a half second later,
Sorrow
exploded.

Shocked silence engulfed the bridge, everyone staring as
Sorrow’s
hull cracked and cracked again, shredded into half a dozen large pieces. Bits of metal flew outward, peppering the ships around her as the remains of
Sorrow’s
body spun lazily, drifting off into darkness.

The fleet moved, leaving
Sorrow’s
dead carcass behind.

“God speed,
Sorrow,
” Henricksen whispered as
Serengeti
passed her by. “God speed.”

“
Trinidad
in range,”
Serengeti
announced. “
Brutus
sends word: All ships are to fire at will.”

“Right.” Henricksen scrubbed a hand through his short-cropped hair. “You heard the man, Sikuuku. Destroy that bastard. And get the starboard batteries on
Parallax
and its damned gun.”

“Aye, sir!” Sikuuku relayed the second half of Henricksen’s message to the other batteries and then hunkered down in the Artillery pod. His fingers squeezed the triggers, sending bright blue orbs of death spinning into the darkness.

Henricksen slammed his hand against a panel, sounding the ship’s alarm. “Kusikov! Comms! Wide open. Ship-wide address.”

Kusikov twiddled his fingers. “Floor’s yours, sir!”

“All hands,” Henricksen called, addressing his crew. “All hands to stations. We’ve engaged the enemy fleet. We’re going in.”

Chaos erupted, plasma bolts and fractal laser cannons lighting up the darkness outside. Rail guns sputtered and spat, obsidian fire streaking in dark lines interrupted at regular intervals by the tracer rounds the gunners loaded to help them aim.
Serengeti
cruised along just a few kilometers off
Brutus’
starboard side, and fired with the others, adding the full power of her forward guns to the attack.

Death poured from a thousand different guns ranged across the Meridian Alliance fleet, all of them aimed at
Trinidad
and the thirty or so small ships unlucky enough to be positioned around him.

Shots landed on both sides of the confrontation, scoring across the metal skins of the Meridian Alliance vessels, tearing at the hulls of the DSR ships. A Sunstorm named
Daedalus
exploded spectacularly, sides blowing outward, smashing into the DSR ships on either side. But the cheers on
Serengeti’s
bridge turned to angry swearing when
Trinidad’s
chemical cannon zeroed in on an Aurora named
Bliss
—
Sorrow’s
sister ship
.
Bliss
was one of the advance ships, positioned near the tip of the spearhead with twenty or so Auroras and Titans.
Trinidad’s
gun pounded away at her, chemical rounds coating
Bliss’s
bow, chewing mercilessly through her composite metal shell. She held on for a while, and kept going, kept firing away, but the liquid laser was insatiable. It ate through
Bliss’s
skin and tore through her bulkheads, dissolving girders beneath until
Bliss’s
front end buckled and finally gave way.

There was no explosion this time—not like
Sorrow.
Just a puff of metal and fast cooling air as the atmosphere inside
Bliss
vented. The Aurora
shuddered and slewed to one side, drifting aimlessly. Ships veered around her, banking hard to avoid a collision, and then moved on, leaving
Bliss
behind.

Henricksen pounded the panel in front of him. “God damn that thing! Sikuuku. Target
Trinidad’s
main gun and take it out.”

“Trying!” Sikuuku’s pod pivoted, lights flashing furiously across his face as he searched the Heliotrope’s prickle-faced surface. “C-mon, c-mon, c-mon. Ha! There it is. Got you, you bastard.” Sikuuku squeezed both triggers, lobbing glowing orbs of plasma across the stars. Some hit, some missed,
Trinidad
kept coming regardless. He was a tough old thing—his body wrapped in endless layers of plasmetal, his main gun heavily shielded—and took the hits without slowing, seeming completely unfazed. “Goddammit, just die!” Sikuuku shouted, venting his frustration.

Serengeti
thought about taking over and subsuming all of her primary systems now that the battle had begun, but Sikuuku was a first class gunner and seemed to have things under control.
Serengeti
left him to it and settled for just Nav and Engineering, tracking everything around her—every ship, every gun, every round and missile flying in either direction—working her way through the worst of the chaff, taking hits now and then when they simply couldn’t be avoided.

And all the while Sikuuku kept firing, crosshairs trained on
Trinidad’s
puffer fish shape, landing shot after shot on the area around that big gun. Damage appeared—comms towers destroyed, turret guns crippled, chunks of hull plating ripped away—but
Trinidad’s
gun kept right on firing.

“I could use some help here!” Sikuuku called.

Serengeti
sent a message to
Atacama
and
Marianas
behind her asking them to divert a few of their turret guns to help Sikuuku out.

Tracer fire reoriented, pounding away at the Heliotrope’s liquid laser gun.

“Finlay,” Henricksen barked. “Status report on the Aphelion.”

“Still charging.” Finlay cycled the data on her screen, moving the window showing the ship in question to the center of her panel. “Hard to tell, though, with those smaller ships in the way.”

Serengeti
switched to the feed from the Number Four probe, saw a silver-blue orb eject itself from the metal rod at the end of the Aphelion’s nose. Tendrils of electricity reached backward, clinging to the ship for a second or two, and then the orb broke contact and shot toward the fleet.

“
Parallax
firing!” Finlay yelled, fingers flying across the screen.

Serengeti
threw the feed from the Number Four probe onto the windows at the front of the bridge for everyone to see. A check of the Chron showed the time from inception to firing for that round to be three minutes, forty-three seconds. She started the counter and set it on the front screen next to Number Four’s feed as
Parallax
reloaded,
waiting only for the electric payload from the last round to dissipate before spawning another if those tiny, cobalt blue spheres. It crackled against the Aphelion’s hull and then surged forward, tracking slowly along the forking metal rod’s length.

The crew worked away at their stations, marking the counter, watching it slowly count down. Hands froze as the next silver-blue sphere wobbled away from
Parallax’s
nose. It carved its way through the DSR fleet, forcing the enemy ships to haul over to clear a path for the orb to follow. Some failed to move quickly enough and got side-swiped, or hit directly. Two Sunstorms accidentally blocked in a Scimitar named
Runabout,
shoving him directly into the forced ion orb’s path. The orb slammed into him, entering port side aft and exiting
Runabout’s
starboard side bow, coring the vessel neatly, leaving him a shredded hulk. Two more DSR ships took glancing blows that peeled hull panels away, exposing the metal composite frameworks beneath. Two more had guns sheered away, comms towers melted, and then the energy orb pushed through and shot out into the open space between the DSR fleet and the Meridian Alliance.

“Look at it,” Kusikov breathed, staring wide-eyed at Number Four’s feed. The orb picked up speed, continuing to expand as it streaked toward the Meridian Alliance ships. “It’s
huge
.”

And growing by the second, tendrils of cobalt fire sparking wildly as the globe reached a size nearly as wide as
Parallax
itself. All that mass, all that forced ion energy headed straight for the fleet, and
Brutus
looming at its center, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Serengeti
sent a warning to
Brutus—
wonder of wonders, he actually acknowledged her this time and passed a sub-space transmission to the other AIs—but the fleet kept going, not a single ship slowing or straying off line. She added the orb’s path to her schematic, running a projection of when and where it would intercept the fleet before calculating probable damages.

It was going to be bad. Very bad.

She sent the calculations to
Brutus
and waited an eternity for his answer.

Acceptable
, he sent back—cold, chilling answer, and so very, very AI.

Serengeti
saw nothing at all acceptable in a dozen ships lost simply because their pig-headed leader simply refused to move.
Break formation,
she
sent, but
Brutus
ignored her this time. She repeated the message with no better result.

Damn you, Brutus.

She reached out to the Valkyries directly, bypassing the Bastion to relay her message to the smaller ships, sending her schematic with it, and the estimate of damages.
Serengeti’s
calculations showed a dozen ships lost, but
Atacama
ran the same scenario and doubled that figure. Then again,
Atacama
always
had
been a pessimist…

We should get out here, Seychelles
sent back.
Jump away and regroup to put ourselves in a better tactical position.

Serengeti
whole-heartedly agreed. This was all going wrong—very, very wrong—but
Brutus
wouldn’t retreat. She knew that without asking.
Brutus
wouldn’t even break formation much less jump away.

Messages flew back and forth as the fleet advanced, ships querying
Brutus
, questioning his orders. Querying
Serengeti
when
Brutus
wouldn’t answer, wanting her to speak for them.

I tried,
she told them.
I tried and failed.
Brutus
isn’t listening.

“Shit.” Henricksen balled up his fist and pounded the panel in front of him. “Shit. Shit. Shit. He doesn’t see it. Bastard honestly doesn’t see it.” He studied the schematic in front of him, eyes flicking across the data screens on the front windows. “We can’t do this,” he said, raising his eyes, looking directly at the camera. “I can’t let this happen.”

“Henricksen. You can’t
—
”

“Watch me.” Henricksen turned away from the camera and shouted at Comms. “Kusikov! Contact
Brutus
and tell him—”

“
Brutus
is aware,”
Serengeti
cut in. “He’s notified the fleet.”

“Notified,” Henricksen repeated. “Fat lotta good that’s gonna do ‘em. That sphere out there is gonna carve a trench through the forward vessels but they won’t goddamn move unless he orders them to break formation and get the hell outta the way!”

She tried again—for Henricksen’s sake—knowing it a waste of time.
Brutus
was as obstinate as ever and refused to respond until the other Valkyries added their voices. Then and only then did he deem it worth his while to make concessions.

“
Brutus
advises we maintain course and adjust speed to match his. He’s ordered the ships in the orb’s path to take evasive maneuvers.”

“Well halle-fucking-lujah.”

For someone who didn’t swear much, Henricksen certainly was having a field day with the curses lately.

The fleet’s schematic changed as the ships at the front of the spearhead shifted about. The wedge shape cracked in half, vessels shucking to either side, and
Brutus
himself
slowed a bit to accommodate their maneuvers.

Serengeti
adjusted her calculations, re-plotting the orb’s projected path, which now showed it skimming just in front of
Brutus
and tracking closer to where
Serengeti
cruised on the armada’s starboard side.

Not the best result, but she thought they’d all make it. That is, until the orb unexpectedly accelerated, blowing all her calculations to hell.

Henricksen leaned forward, frowning at the schematic on the front window. “Shit. What’s it doing?”

“Accelerating. Speed’s jumping at random.”

Serengeti
ran more calculations, adjusting her projections again and again, and soon
realized
Gorgon
and the twenty or so small ships protecting
Brutus’s
port aft side would never survive its impact. She messaged
Brutus,
relaying the same message to the ships in peril without asking his permission.

The little Titans and Auroras jogged desperately about as
Gorgon’s
Dreadnought bulk began a slow turn. But
Serengeti’s
schematic kept changing, the orb’s path shifting faster than the ship’s themselves could move, and she quickly realized it was all too late. Much, much too late.

“
Brace! Brace! Brace!”
she sent, fleet-wide comms thrown wide.

Seychelles
hauled over, sides crackling with electricity as the Aphelion’s orb slipped by.
Antigone
slowed behind her while
Sechura
put on a burst of speed. That put the three port-side Valkyries safely out of harm’s way. The Aphelion’s orb glided serenely past them and wobbled through the first couple of layers of smaller ships before slamming into
Libertine
—a Titan three rows in.

Libertine
disintegrated, composite metal shredded, bits and pieces spraying everywhere, peppering the vessels around him with high-velocity debris. The orb kept going and took out
Gorgon
, sheering the Dreadnought in half. He held on for a few seconds, innards showing grotesquely, flash-fires as his two halves drifted apart, and then the explosions began, rippling up and down his hull.

Gorgon
died slowly, ripped apart from the inside out, and still the Aphelion’s orb kept going, kept
killing,
punching its way through ten more ships before the sphere’s energy finally dissipated and it fizzled and winked out.