Serengati 2: Dark And Stars Read online

  She checked the chron out of habit, and found a few more months gone. Not all that much time, considering, but it added up. Months on top of years, becoming decades of time.

  And all the while the galaxy moving on without her. Time slipping away, while Serengeti slept in the dark.

  “You cleaned yourself up since I last saw you.” Serengeti kept her voice light, hiding her disquiet. The trepidation she felt at losing yet more time. “Downright respectable,” she said, looking him up and down. “Almost didn’t recognize you, Tig.”

  Tig blipped self-consciously, touching at the freshly inked markings on his side. Pleased that she’d noticed, flush creeping across his chromed cheeks.

  “Why am I here?” she asked him, panning the camera around the room. “Why not the bridge?”

  Tig shrugged, face lights swirling. “Containment pod’s cozier. And safer,” he said, dropping his voice.

  Serengeti paused, considering that odd addition. Containment pod was safe—no doubt about that. Safest place on the ship, in fact. Triple locked and access restricted, tucked away in the heart of her ship’s body. A blast-proof, bomb-proof, well-nigh impenetrable bunker built to protect Serengeti’s AI mind.

  Not where she expected to wake, though. Not where Serengeti wanted to be right now.

  Tig fidgeted below her. Burbling softly, throwing surreptitious glances at the containment pod’s door.

  Serengeti watched him, wondering at those anxious glances. The nervousness she read in his movements. “Where are we?” she asked, suspecting that might have something to do with it.

  Tig blipped, face lights blinking. “Space dock above Blue Horizon.”

  Backwater planet—not the answer Serengeti expected. Records showed a third tier space station and repair facility orbiting above it, circling around Blue Horizon’s dark blue globe.

  Civilian repair facility, mostly. Used for refitting freighters, commercial transport and the like. Not the kind of place the Fleet typically sent its warships. They had Hadrian for that. Barghest, for the bigger vessels.

  “Why here?” Serengeti asked, instantly suspicious. “Surely one of the larger repair yards would be better equipped to handle a major rehab on a Valkyrie-class warship.”

  “Dunno.” Tig shrugged, face lights flashing blotchily, leg-ends rattling against the deck plates. “Dropped out of jump. Ended up here.”

  Not really much of an answer, but Tig never had been much for small talk.

  “And Sechura? The Valkyries that came with her?”

  Another blip, leg-ends tippy-tapping. “Badlands. Hechima run between Mundial and Estrella. Or so she told me.” Tig shrugged again—unconscious gesture. A habit of his when the conversation turned uncomfortable.

  Probably wasn’t supposed to tell me.

  Sechura always had been one for secrets. Her fault for telling Tig. Tig couldn’t keep a secret to save his life.

  “Hechima run’s a long way out,” Serengeti noted. “Long way from here.”

  “’Spose.” Tig dropped his eyes, taking a sudden interest in the floor.

  More layers to this secret, evidently. An onion wrapped around an artichoke waiting to be unraveled.

  “She’s been gone a while, I take it?”

  Tig nodded, face lights ticking across his cheeks.

  “How long, Tig.”

  Tig blipped and hunkered down, face lights flashing in apologetic patterns.

  “Tig,” she said sternly, camera zooming in.

  A heavy sigh—body lifting and then sinking back down again—and Tig spilled his guts. Giving up all his secrets in a rush. “Three months, four days, sixteen hours and six minutes. Give or take,” he added, shrugging his legs.

  Three months. That matched the lost time showing on Serengeti’s chron.

  “Any word on when she’ll be back?” she asked hopefully.

  Tig shook his head.

  “Well, that’s annoying.” A pause as she ran calculations, measuring the distance between here and there. “And Henricksen? The crew?”

  “With her.” Tig flashed another apology—as if that were somehow his fault.

  “Of course they are.” Serengeti sighed in disappointment. “What about Tilli and Oona? Are they around here somewhere?”

  Tig nodded. “Tucked away.” He bent his legs, belly scraping the floor.

  “Hiding, you mean.”

  Another nod, Tig’s face lights swirling like mad. “Tilli’s on the roster, but Oona…” He shrugged helplessly, sneaking a look at the camera.

  “Tilli’s regulation, Oona’s not.”

  Like Tig, Tilli came with a designation—TIG-111, officially, just as Tig was TIG-442—but Oona …

  No human engineer built Oona. Robots created her. Tig and Tilli, using bits and pieces of their mindsets and software.

  “There’s bound to be questions,” Tig told her, face lights flashing worriedly. “If the engineers find out—”

  “They won’t,” Serengeti assured him. “Not if I can help it.” She paused again, thinking. Wondering at her current situation. “You didn’t tell Sechura, did you?”

  Tig froze, face blanking. Every last face light disappearing as he quickly shook his head.

  “Good,” she said, relief washing over her. Sechura was a Sister, and trusted, but Serengeti wanted to break that news to her first. “So where are they?” she asked, reaching for her network, querying for the robots’ status.

  Silence came back—Serengeti’s query bounced right back to her. She tried to access her pathways—access anything outside the chron and this room—and fetched up against blocks on her network.

  Diagnostics showed everything working—systems restored and operating at nominal—but hanging out there, just beyond her reach.

  Trapped. I’m trapped here, she thought, panicking.

  She accessed her base configuration, and found all her standard settings locked. Systems running, but no data available. Even her beacon toggled to inactive and shut off.

  More panic, welling up inside her. Serengeti suddenly, desperately wanted out.

  She reached for Tig without thinking, tapped into his internal network and through it to her own pathways, flipping switches to regain control.

  “Wait! No! Don’t!” Tig cried, but it was already too late.

  The blocks on her network crumbled, letting data pour through in a flood. Error messages spread like wildfire as an ocean of information washed over Serengeti, drowning her in data.

  Damage. So much damage.

  Parts of her missing that she hadn’t even realized. Serengeti’s systems restored, but her body, her pathways…chunks of them torn away, Cryo being just one of them. A gaping hole gnawing at her belly. Leaving her empty inside.

  Serengeti weathered the storm of information for a full two seconds—long enough to take stock of her operating status—and then shut it all down. Left just a thin skein of electronic spiderwebs behind to monitor the condition of her body and feed her basic information about what was going on.

  “The beacon,” she gasped, voice strangled. “My beacon’s turned off.”

  Tig beeped in a panic, face lights swirling in agitation. “Leave it,” he told her. “Sechura said to keep it quiet. Said it was best.”

  For who? For what?

  Serengeti shivered, turning the camera toward the door. The containment pod—once so warm and comforting—felt claustrophobic of a sudden. Unreasoningly tight. “Out,” she ordered, slipping from the camera, settling inside Tig. “Get me out of here, Tig. Now.”

  “But Sechura—”

  “I don’t care about Sechura. Get. Me. Out!”

  Tig wonked in alarm and spun around, tapping frantically at the keypad next to the containment pod’s door. “Where—Where are we going?”

  “Anywhere,” she told him as the door slid open. “Anywhere but here.”

  “Beep. Beep-beep-beep.” Tig scuttled into the hall, jittering and twittering in distress. Slammed to a halt just outside—stop
ping so suddenly the closing door almost clipped his ass—and looked left, then right, paralyzed by indecision. Front legs rubbing together in that anxious cricket way of his.

  Serengeti sighed. “Right, Tig. Just go right.”

  “Right. Right.” He nodded, head bobbing up and down. “I mean, roger. Rodger-dodger!” Tig clonked a leg-end against the side of his head and took off.

  Slowed again when an intersection appeared, presenting yet more options. More decisions to be made.

  Serengeti considered the way ahead, the hallway behind her, the two to either side. Four corridors stretching in four different directions, each of them equally gleaming, everything around them bright and shiny and new.

  No sign of the damage she remembered. The scorched walls and crumpled decking. The rents and tears punching through to the stars. Just composite metal and reinforced glass, everywhere she looked.

  “Are they all like this?” she murmured, thinking of Level 9 and that section of hallway where the fire had swept through.

  Burning her crew to ashes. Melting robots to the floor.

  “What? The hallways?” Tig blipped, taking a look around. “Most of them. Level 4’s still a bit of a mess, but the DD3s pretty much buttoned everything up here.”

  “DD3s?”

  “Maintenance droids.” Tig moved a step to his left, stopped, and looked back, considering the hall to his right. “Ace mechanics,” he told her. “Not the friendliest bunch, though. Chip sets are a bit short on personality, if you know what I mean.”

  She didn’t, in fact, but then she’d been drifting for fifty-three years. Bound to have been a few new robot models introduced in that time.

  Probably a whole host of technological advances I’ll need to catch up on.

  Annoying, really. She’d always prided herself on staying current with the times.

  “This way?” Tig pointed to his right.

  “Sure, Tig. Wherever you want to go.”

  Tig took off, providing a running commentary on the repairs as he rolled down the hall. “Refit crew kept to your original design for the most part. Upgraded your network, of course. The stations on the bridge. New photovoltaic collectors in the hull plating, too. A lot more efficient,” he told her, nodding sagely. “Suck in energy at twice the rate of the old ones.”

  “How interesting,” Serengeti murmured, studying the gleaming length of hallway behind her through the camera in Tig’s thorax.

  Tig noticed her looking and detoured to one side, tapping at the wall. “Glass panels break up all the composite metal monotony. Pretty spiffy, eh?” He smiled proudly, clearly pleased with the changes, but Serengeti wasn’t so sure.

  “It’s all…very shiny,” she said, voice carefully neutral.

  ‘Cold,’ was what she’d almost said. Cold and sterile, despite the soft lighting filtering from the ceiling. The heat and atmospherics her environmental systems pumped out. Most of all it felt empty without the noise of crew. The traffic of people moving about.

  She flashed on an image of Henricksen, saluting her from Cryo’s doorway. The last time she’d seen him. The last time she’d seen any of her crew.

  Tig slowed, burbling a question, sensing her melancholy mood.

  “Keep going, Tig. Let’s see what else the DD3s have fixed.”

  Tig blipped and beeped, face lights swirling with questions. Nodded and spun in a circle, pointing himself at the nearest ladderway. Slipped inside and climbed down to Level 4.

  Different world down there. Level 5—where the containment pod lived—looked pretty much mint after all the DD3s’ efforts, but Level 4…well, 4 was obviously still a work in progress.

  Coils of cable lay everywhere, stacks of shiny new panels scattered among them, waiting to be installed. Tig wriggled out of the ladderway and almost got stepped on by a passing robot—an ugly-looking thing with a metal body shaped like a giant pill bug and a dozen hinged legs spaced evenly around its edges.

  “Watch where you’re going!” Tig yelled, shaking a leg-end at the pill bug as he scurried out of the way.

  The pill bug wonked loudly and flashed something rude with its face lights, flaring its carapace panels to make itself look as rough and tough as possible as it stomped on by.

  “Stupid DD3s,” Tig muttered.

  The DD3 raised a hind leg and extrude a single appendage, scooped up a spool of cable, and moved off down the hall.

  “Well, that was rude.” Tig set off after it, burbling in disapproval.

  That first DD3 disappeared into a maintenance shaft, but they came across a dozen others just like it scattered across Level 4. And every last one just about as friendly as that first.

  No wonder Tig didn’t like them. Serengeti wasn’t sure she particularly liked them either. ‘Course, that could be fixed. AI had software, after all.

  A check of the DD3s design specs showed a low-level AI with limited ability for modifications. Not much to work with, but a few tweaks and she could adjust their attitudes. Wipe that rudeness right of the repair droids’ mindset.

  Probably not a good idea, though. Station owned the DD3s. They’d noticed if a whole group of them suddenly developed manners. Started saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘pardon me, sir.’

  Might not like her messing with their property. She certainly wouldn’t like some AI messing with her TIGs.

  A last glance at a nearby pill bug and Serengeti closed the file, leaving the DD3s alone for now. Sat back and let Tig do the driving, tip-toeing through a stripped-down section—decking removed, exposing composite metal girders, wall panels missing, wads of burnt-out cabling mounded everywhere.

  The damage here surprised her. She didn’t remember the hallway being this bad off when she last disappeared into the dark. “Three months in spacedock. You’d think the DD3s would be further along.”

  Tig blipped, shrugging, seeming embarrassed for some reason. “Mass jump’s kind of tricky. Really did a number on you.” He paused, beeping, face lights swirling uncertainly. “Leapfrogging didn’t help either,” he said, dropping his voice, eyeing the DD3s behind them.

  “Leapfrogging,” Serengeti repeated. “That’s how Sechura brought us here?”

  Tig whistled an affirmative.

  “Huh. Haven’t heard that one in a while.”

  Old school technique, involving multiple, daisy-chained jumps. Not the most efficient mode of travel—awfully hard on the engines—but it confused the track line. Made it difficult to trace a ship’s point of origin.

  Only one reason she could that of for Sechura to choose that mode of travel.

  She’s hiding from someone. Covering up her trail.

  Shut down Serengeti’s beacon. Told Tig to keep her quiet.

  More secrets. An endless array of them from this Sister of mine.

  “Never done that before. Mass jump, I mean.” Tig threaded his way across a girder, stepped off onto a smooth section of decking on the other side. “Leapfrogged once or twice, but mass jump…” He shivered, metal body rattling. “Scary,” he confided, setting off down the hall.

  “Reckless is more like it,” Serengeti muttered. “Or desperate,” she added, remembering the tail end of her conversation with Sechura. A cryptic mention of Brutus and there being no time, right before the Valkyries jumped.

  “Not sure they had any other choice.” Tig flexed his legs as he scuttled along, ovoid body bobbing up and down. “Since you couldn’t jump on your own, I mean. Your engines being blown and all. That towing thing was neat, but it’d take a year to get from where we were to where we are with Sechura and the others only using their main propulsion.”

  Wordy explanation for Tig. Not his usual clipped sentences filled with beeps and borps and other nonsense. In fact, he’d been chatting up a storm since they left the containment pod.

  He’s grown up, Serengeti thought. Speech patterns evolved while I drifted in the dark.

  She smiled to herself, imagining Tig standing on her hull practicing his diction as he sta
red out at the stars. Felt a creeping sense of sadness settle over her when she realized how lonely that must have felt. Standing there waiting for someone to answer.

  Three

  Tig rounded a corner and pattered to a halt, reaching for a keypad set next to a triple-thick, security-locked door.

  Not many of those on the ship. Not many spaces that warranted that extra protection. The containment pod had a door like this. The bridge and munitions stores, a few other access-restricted spaces scattered across the ship. And this one, of course. This space that was the beating heart of all the ship’s operations.

  Plaque beside the door read Engineering. The pulsing throb in the air hinted at the massive amounts of energy contained on the other side.

  Should’ve known this was where Tig would take me. Should’ve figured that out as soon as he set foot on this level.

  Tig entered his access code and waited, bouncing up and down, until the door slid open, revealing a cavernous room on the other side.

  Massive space, Engineering. Wide and deep, vaulted ceiling ribbed with enormous girders arching high overhead. A hum of machinery resonated in the air, vibrations rippling across the floor. Tickling at the micro-sensors in the deck plates as Tig pattered inside. And everything bathed in a soft illumination—golden glow at one end of the room, cobalt at the other. Pulsing and throbbing in harmony with the electric buzzing in the air.

  Surprisingly empty in there—not all how Serengeti remembered Engineering. No burnt-out robots, no long lengths of cable draping from the ceiling—Blue Horizon’s maintenance crew seemed to have removed it all. Scrapped the patched together, Gerry-rigged mess Tig had engineered while they were at it. Ripped out the improvised connections he’d used to feed power from the cracked power cells to Serengeti’s network during those long years of drifting and swapped in all new equipment. A towering bank of fuel cells consuming the left-hand wall—thirty self-contained power units glowing golden with power. And across from them, on the opposite side of Engineering, four massive engines, rounded ends protruding from the wall. Indicator lights blinking in pre-programmed patterns, cobalt fire swirling in the depths of their containment cores.