Serengati 2: Dark And Stars Read online

  He scooped up the bottle and filled the glass again.

  “Henricksen—”

  “Don’t,” he said coldly, eyes locking onto the camera.

  Anger there, but not directed at her. Anger trying to mask a load of pain Henricksen carried around inside him.

  Serengeti understood it on some level. Fifty-three years she’d had to come to terms with her losses, but to Henricksen, it all happened yesterday. The intervening years just a blip between sleeping and waking—no time at all to mourn the loss of friends and lovers, crewmates and companions.

  So she let Henricksen be for a while, leaving him to his brooding silence. Watching the Scotch bottle slowly empty as her captain drank away his sorrow.

  Twelve

  An hour passed—Serengeti watching, Henricksen drinking, pondering the stars outside. An hour of brooding silence before Serengeti quietly, carefully intruded on her captain’s thoughts.

  “Where’d they find you?” she asked, and saw Henricksen’s eyes shift, sliding her way.

  “Shipping lanes. Way out.” He waved vaguely. “Somewhere around Shi-San or Sotolo. One of those half-settled fringe planets.”

  She consulted the star charts, flagging the two planets he’d mentioned, marking the place where Sechura had found her, calculating the distance between. “One hundred and eighty-two light years.” She shunted the star chart to the windows, highlighting the three points. “Long way out. Not much in between any of it.”

  “Ass end of the universe, just like I said.” Henricksen eyes the star charts, half-full glass dangling from his fingertips. “Miracle we didn’t get holed along the way. Qaisrani wouldn’t tell me shit-all until you showed up, but Finlay and me got to know some of Sechura’s crew.” He paused, looking at her. “Not a bad bunch, by the way. They’ll do right by us when the time comes.”

  No idea what that meant, and Henricksen turned away before Serengeti could ask.

  “Story I got from the crew was they picked us up and downloaded everything in Cryo’s data banks. Used its path to track back to you.”

  “Took you long enough.”

  “Tell me about.” Henricksen bowed his head, staring into the bottom of his glass.

  Serengeti watched him, thinking, took another look at that star chart, and realized something didn’t quite add up.

  System contained Cryo’s data—a gift from Sechura, along with Homunculus’s data file—so she downloaded it, analyzing the lifeboat’s course and speed, the route Cryo had travelled before reaching the shipping lanes where Sechura picked it up.

  The path checked out—nothing wrong there. But when Serengeti calculated the distance and factored in Cryo’s rate of travel, everything fell apart.

  “Math doesn’t work,” she murmured.

  Henricksen raised his head, giving her a baffled look. “Math? What math? What the hell does math have to do with any of this?”

  “Everything.”

  She checked the lifeboat’s path again, reran all her calculations, but the results came out the same: even assuming variations in course and speed, Cryo still should have made it back to the shipping lanes a good five years ahead of what Sechura claimed.

  “She lied,” Serengeti breathed, hardly believing it.

  “Who?” Henricksen turned around, brow wrinkled in confusion.

  “Sechura.”

  Henricksen’s face darkened, fingers tightening around his glass. “Explain,” he rasped, angry now. Face turning cold.

  “She left me out there. Five years Sechura had you, but she never came looking for me. Not once.”

  “Not until she needed you.” He turned away, staring grimly at the glass. “Not until she came up with this insane plan of hers.”

  Faraday, and the Vault. The AI inside. Serengeti wished she could deny it and tell Henricksen he was wrong, but the truth was right there. The cold, hard facts laid bare in Cryo’s data.

  Math again. All her objections undone by the immutable proofs of math.

  “She must have had her reasons,” Serengeti reasoned, wanting it to be true.

  She found me and fixed me. Surely that means something.

  “I’m sure she did,” Henricksen said cryptically, turning his head, showing her one grey eye. “And her own interests.”

  Serengeti was quiet a moment, watching him from above. “She’s Valkyrie, Henricksen. She wouldn’t turn on one of her own.”

  “Maybe.”

  His frown said otherwise. Said he doubted the motivations of this Sister of hers.

  “Guess we’ll never know for sure. Her being gone and all.” He grimaced again, looking way. Sighed and closed his eyes, rubbing at his face. “Sorry. That was a dick thing to say. It’s just…” He shrugged his shoulders, looking up. “Lotta changes in this fleet, Serengeti. Fifty-three years of change.”

  More math. Everything was math, and none of good, it seemed.

  “Some things don’t change,” she said softly. “There’s you. And Finlay. And, well, some of me is still original.”

  Henricksen grunted, acknowledging the weak attempt at a joke. Looked away again, swirling the Scotch in his glass. “Thirty-nine crew left, by the way. Plus me, of course.” He raised the glass, lowered it without drinking. “Lost six along the away. Thought I’d lost Finlay, too.” His lips curled in a soft smile, but it quickly disappeared. “’Course Finlay doesn’t make up for Sikuuku. Kusikov. Tsu—”

  “Don’t, Henricksen,” Serengeti rebuked gently. “Don’t do that to yourself.”

  “Can’t crew a warship with just thirty-nine soldiers,” he told her—angry, hurting, blaming himself. He gulped at his glass, slammed it down on the table. “Probably should have told you earlier, but I borrowed a few crew from Qaisrani.”

  “How many?” she asked sharply, wary of strangers. Of changes made without her consent.

  “Twenty-seven. That puts us at sixty-seven total. Skeleton crew.” Henricksen smiled bitterly, shrugging his shoulders—helpless gesture, apologetic at the same time. “Bare minimum needed to run a warship. Even one with all the high-tech super advanced doo-dads and hoo-has you got these days.”

  “Skeleton crew. I like that.” The irony of it. The idea of a skeleton crew running a ghost ship felt strangely fitting somehow.

  “Understand you’ve got some new robots on board.” Henricksen quirked an eyebrow, looking a question at the camera.

  “Seventy-five shiny new TSGs. New model,” she explained at Henricksen’s blank look. “Cheeky like Tig, but more configurable.” She hesitated before telling him the rest. “I’ve got three TIGs on board, too. Tig you know about. And there’s another he salvaged after… after…” She trailed off, thinking of those long years in the dark.

  “And the third?” Henricksen prompted.

  She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “Not an original.”

  “Meaning?” Henricksen folded his arms, staring at the camera.

  “Tig and his partner, they sort of… made the third.”

  “Made?” Henricksen’s eyebrows lifted. “So it’s a drone? Robot with no AI?”

  “No. She’s got an AI.”

  “She.” He tilted his head, eyeing the camera with interest.

  “Oona.”

  “And now she’s got a name.” Henricksen threw his hands in the air, laughing aloud. “Of course she’s got a name. And Tig made her.”

  “With Tilli’s help.”

  “Tilli.” Henricksen winked, pointing a finger pistol at the camera. Cocked it and fired. “Another ‘she,’ I assume.”

  “She. Yes.”

  “And this third…” He looked a question at the camera.

  “Oona.

  “Right. Oona. How exactly did she come about?”

  Serengeti hesitated, wondering how much truth to share. Threw caution to the wind because this was Henricksen—if she couldn’t trust him, who could she trust?—spilling the rest in a breathless rush. “Tig harvested one of the burnt-out AIs and reconfigured it using
chip sets and programming routines from himself and Tilli to build out Oona’s mindset.”

  Henricksen blinked, mouth sagging open. “He—They—What?”

  She drew a deep breath and started all over again. “Tig harvested one of—”

  “Yeah-yeah-yeah. I got all that,” he said, waving impatiently. “The thing I don’t get is how two robots made a new AI all on their very own.”

  “Chip sets,” she said. “And programming routines.”

  Henricksen frowned. “And a burnt-out AI.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Great.” Henricksen bowed his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. “So, is she…functional? I mean, not, like, the robot equivalent of a drooling idiot?”

  “No,” Serengeti said, laughing softly. “Not a drooling idiot. Just the opposite. She’s quite special.” She reached for Oona across the robot network, searching for the tiny robot’s sparkling, rainbows and glitter presence.

  “Special,” Henricksen repeated, giving the camera a look. “Engineers’ll have a shit fit about this. AI procreation—it’ll revolutionize the industry. No programming and chip-set restrictions. No more purpose-built models for specific applications. This—This is…” Henricksen trailed off, eyes troubled, face worried.

  “It’s dangerous,” Serengeti softly.

  “Yeah.” Henricksen sighed heavily, looking more tired than ever. “Boffins’ll seize Oona in an instant if they find out about her. Lock her up in some lab and tear her down to her core. Dismantle her mind so they can study it.”

  “And when they’re done with her, they’ll destroy her.”

  “You don’t know that,” Henricksen said coldly.

  “Humans created AIs, Henricksen. They designed our crystal matrix minds and the programming behind them. But they still don’t trust us. They didn’t fifty-three years ago, and they sure as hell don’t now.”

  Henricksen looked at her, surprised at the bitterness in her voice.

  “You saw how they treated me on Blue Horizon. And that’s supposedly one of the better stations these days.”

  “Yeah, well.” Henricksen ducked his head, stared at his hands. “Brutus sure isn’t helping. That bombing back there. Booby-trapped ship or whatever it was.” He raised his head, shook it hard. “Can’t be a coincidence it was parked next to the only Valkyrie in port.”

  “The only one anyone knew about, anyway.”

  Henricksen looked at her, dipped his head in acknowledgement. “It’ll get worse before it gets better,” he said quietly, touching the stitches on the side of his head. “Fleet’s not doing its job. Without it…” His shoulders lifted, sagged in defeat. “Only a matter of time before the Meridian Alliance dies.”

  “So what do you want to do about it?”

  Henricksen blinked, frowning at the camera. “Whaddaya mean what do I—?”

  “Sechura. We owe her an answer.”

  “You mean her replacement,” he said carefully.

  “Of course,” she said quickly. Slip up on her part. Didn’t want Henricksen to think she’d lost her marbles. “It’ll be Atacama now, I suppose. Or Marianas.”

  Atacama, most likely. She was the stronger of the two.

  “One Valkyrie’s as good as another,” Henricksen told her, flipping a hand. “Unless that Valkyrie’s you, of course.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” she said, teasing. “And you’re avoiding the question, Henricksen. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

  Henricksen went very still, considering the camera. Turned away, putting his back to her now.

  “Henricksen.” She kept her voice light, chiding gently. “We should at least talk about it.”

  He shook his head, not even looking.

  “Henricksen.”

  “What?” He whirled around, face angry, stabbing a finger at the camera. “You wanna talk about it? Fine. Let’s talk about it. Everyone I know is dead, Serengeti. How about we start there. Do you have any idea—?” He broke off, jaw clenching, hands balled into fists at his sides. “We can’t return to the Fleet. Sechura made sure of that.”

  “That wasn’t her intent,” Serengeti told him, rising to her Sister’s defense. “At least we’re alive. We got out, Henricksen. Sechura didn’t. Don’t forget that.”

  “Oh, we’re alive alright. But that thing back there on Blue Horizon…” He twisted, pointing that accusatory finger at the stars outside. “That isn’t you.” He stepped away from the windows, moving closer to the camera. “We’re ghosts, Serengeti. Just like Sechura said. And ghosts stand at the fringes. They don’t get to go back home.”

  “You’re my home, Henricksen. You and the crew and the stars.”

  He stared a moment, caught completely off guard. Sighed, defeated, shoulders slumping beneath a weight of weariness. “Even if we could go back to the Fleet, I’m guessing they wouldn’t know what to do with us. Technically, I’m still a captain, but…” Another sigh, Henricksen ducking his head. “Fifty-three years I’ve been out of rotation. Shit, I’m close to a hundred goddamn years old!”

  “Don’t look a day over forty to me,” she said, risking the joke. Wanting desperately for this anger between them to end.

  To her surprise, it worked, coaxing a wan smile out of Henricksen. Unfortunately, it didn’t stay. Never quite stuck to his lips. “You shoulda seen the way Sechura’s crew looked at us. Half of ‘em scared to death, the rest…” He trailed off, considering the bottle of Scotch on the table. “Captain’s more than just rank, Serengeti. There’s a hierarchy to things in the military. A captain without contacts doesn’t quite fit in.”

  “Meaning?”

  He shrugged again, hand lifting, touching the scar near his temple. “Even if I could go back, they’d probably just shove me into retirement. Set me up on some backwater planet. Thank me for my service and offer me fifty-three years of back pay to stay the hell out of the way. ‘Course, if I was smart, I’d take it,” he admitted, with a rueful shake of his head.

  “But?” she asked, sensing one.

  “But,” Henricksen sighed, touching the stars pinned to his collar. Serengeti’s patch on his shoulder. “I’m a soldier. Told you that before. The stars are all I know. The Fleet and its ships are the only home I ever wanted. But we stepped away for a while and Brutus took all that away. Took the pride of being part of the Fleet along with the purpose behind it. Can’t have that,” he told her, shaking his head. “I can’t just sit by and let the Meridian Alliance go to hell. Not when I can do something to stop it.”

  Quiet then—an unsettled silence between them.

  “So which is it?” she asked when that silence stretched on, and on, and on. “Throw in with the Valkyries or go back to the Fleet?”

  She’d already made her choice, never mind Sechura’s deception. But Henricksen needed to make his—she respected him too much to make that decision for him.

  Serengeti watched him from her camera, waiting and waiting. But it was a long time before Henricksen finally answered.

  “Sechura lied to us.”

  Not a good start—Serengeti’s heart plummeted when those words came out of his mouth. But a flick of his eyes to the camera and he went back to brooding over the stars.

  “You’re probably right,” he said some time later. “She probably had a good reason for everything she did. But she still lied, Serengeti. And I’m not quite sure we can trust her. Or Atacama,” he added. “Hell, I hardly even know Atacama.”

  “I do,” Serengeti told him. “I know her very well.”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “I know you do, Serengeti.” Henricksen bowed his head, staring at his hands. “I think we should stand with the Valkyries. I think they’re our best hope. I think they’re the Fleet’s best hope.”

  “Just so happens I agree,” Serengeti told him, hoping she didn’t sound as smug as she felt.

  Henricksen snuck a look at her, lips twisting on one side. “’Course, that doesn’t change the fact that this plan of theirs is crap.”r />
  “Blunt as always,” Serengeti chuckled. “I have missed that, Henricksen.”

  The smile widened—still crooked and rueful, his smile always looked that way—but a true smile, like the old Henricksen used to wear.

  “And what specifically,” she asked him, “is crap about Sechura’s plan?”

  Sechura’s plan. It was still Sechura’s plan, even with Sechura herself now gone.

  Henricksen folded his arms, looking around the room, eyes eventually settling on that tiny silver spaceship sitting on the bookshelves. “Well, first there’s the fact that Sechura herself just got her ass kicked back at Blue Horizon. Not sure how we factor that into this plan of hers. Goddammit. There I go again.” He sighed wearily, scrubbing at his face. “I’m sorry, Serengeti. I shouldn’t—”

  “It’s alright,” she said quietly.

  It wasn’t—wasn’t alright at all—but what else was she going to tell him?

  “Atacama’s her second. She’ll take over now that Sechura’s gone.” Serengeti tried to sound confident, and keep the pain from her voice, but Henricksen saw right through it. She could tell from the look on his face. “What else?” she asked, hurrying him along. “What else is wrong with Sechura’s plan?”

  Henricksen tilted his head, considering the camera. Shrugged and walked over to the bookshelves, picking the little spaceship up. “Head to head, we’ll just tear each other apart.” He rubbed a thumb across the inscription carved into the spaceship’s belly, wiping the tarnish away.

  Name and date there: Harbinger, 2927. The ship was his—the first one Henricksen ever captained—and the date as well.

  2927: the day Harbinger died. Henricksen himself escaped with one hundred and twelve crew, but Harbinger went down in a blaze of glory. Rammed a DSR cruiser named Shylock, killing both AIs instantly.