Serengati 2: Dark And Stars Read online

  “Tig?”

  “Right here.” Tig raised his rifle, pointing it at the approaching monster.

  Doubtful that little pea shooter would do much good, but Serengeti appreciated the sentiment.

  “Try not to get shot, okay?”

  Tig nodded and moved a step backward as Serengeti spread her RPDs wide, placing one rank in front of the other to block the way into the intersection.

  The front rank squatted down, rear rank looming over them. Tig pointed his tiny rifle between them as Serengeti cleared the last two Roly-Polys—frying their brains in the same manner as the others, slaving them to a sub-mind before adding them to her defenses. And when she had them all, she reached for the last one—that bruiser lumbering down the hall.

  Serengeti touched at its brain, connecting for a micro-second before snatching her consciousness back. Threw a good ten layers of encrypted firewalls between them for good measure, wishing she could scour her network.

  The RPD felt rotten, something slick and slippery reaching for her in the brief time their minds touched. Grasping greedily at Serengeti’s consciousness, trying to do the same thing to her that she’d done to its kin.

  Awful touch. Disgusting. The most horrible thing Serengeti had ever felt. And yet, she sensed something familiar, lurking behind all the ichor. An advanced mind that was far more intelligent than the other RPDs in that hallway. Light years ahead of them. More powerful than all the combat droids put together.

  She knew that mind. Had spoken to it a few times, though never on its own.

  The Scientist.

  Serengeti retreated, keeping a wary eye on the RPD down the hall.

  They’d come to find Cerberus, but part of him had found them instead.

  Twenty

  The Scientist stomped a few steps closer and crashed to a halt, toxic green eyes swirling like kaleidoscopes on acid, mandibles grinding together—a horrid, spine-tingling sound.

  Serengeti slid another step backward, sending an order to her droid army.

  Plasma coils whined, snaking lines of energy appearing as the RPDs’ blasters powered up. A second order and the hijacked robots ratcheted rounds into composite metal chambers, filling the hall with the ominous clack-clack-clack of weapons loading, preparing to fire.

  Serengeti prepared that order too, but then the Scientist spoke, stentorian voice filling the hall—freezing the order to fire before it even touched the comms channel.

  “Raven or writing desk?” he demanded, deafening tones reverberating off the walls.

  “Ex—Excuse me?” Serengeti blinked, staring stupidly, thinking she must have misheard the question.

  “Raven or writing desk?” the Scientist repeated in his moaning, groaning voice.

  “I don’t—I’m not—”

  “Raven. Or writing dsk,” he grated—angry, impatient, green eyes vast pools of necromantic fire.

  The RPD’s blasters trained on Serengeti’s droid’s face, plasma coils whining like banshees—locked and loaded, primed to fire.

  Raven or writing desk, Raven or writing desk, Serengeti thought desperately, trying to figure out which answer she dared give.

  “Raven,” she blurted, as the whining grew piercing, triggers ratcheting with a staccato clack-clack-clack. “Raven,” she repeated, cringing, waiting for the Scientist to fire.

  Mandibles crashed, a trainwreck of sound. The Scientist shifted, RPD balancing on one set of legs and another, bouncing side-to-side like an oversized crab with ants in its pants. “Raven,” he said, voice grating as ever, heavy with judgment. Another of those side-to-side shiftings and the RPD’s guns lowered, plasma coils winding down. “Raven. Good-good! Excellent choice!”

  “It—It is?”

  “Most good,” he told her, mandibled head nodding sagely. “Can’t trust a writing desk,” he confided. “Uppity things, writing desks. Always correcting your diction.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Serengeti said faintly, confused by the sudden change in the Scientist’s demeanor. The pleasant, effete tone issuing from his RPD’s mouth. “Don’t know any writing desks personally—”

  “I’m not a Raven or a writing desk,” a piping voice called. Oona slipped through the double line of RPDs, presenting herself to the Scientist, putting her tiny body right in Serengeti’s line of fire. “I’m an owl!” she said proudly. “See?” Oona tucked up her front legs and flapped them for all they were worth, shouting, “Who-who-who!” at the top of her lungs.

  Tilli trilled anxiously, trying to coax her back.

  “Oona. Come here, honey,” Serengeti called.

  Didn’t quite trust it, this new iteration of the Scientist, so she kept her guns on him. All of them, every last weapon on every last one of her stolen RPDs. A swipe at Oona, trying to grab her, cursing when the little robot giggled and skittered aside.

  “Owl, eh?” The Scientist bent down, squinting suspiciously at Oona’s smiling, chromed face. “Knew an owl once. Sad little thing. Had this odd accordion neck.”

  “Like this?” Oona bobbled her head, giggling as it bounced up and down and side to side like a watermelon on a spring.

  The Scientist giggled too, mandibled head flopping around as he copied her.

  Serengeti frowned, watching them. This was all getting just a bit too weird. A little too cozy for her tastes. “Scientist,” she called, and saw the huge RPD jerk and jump backward, green eyes wide with alarm.

  “What-what-what?” he breathed, guns lifting, plasma coils spinning up. “She knows my name-she knows my name-she knows my name,” the Scientist whispered, mandibles clack-clack-clacking together.

  “Great. He’s a nut bag,” Tig muttered.

  A heavily armed, potentially dangerous nut bag, and Oona right in front of him, directly in his line of fire, ‘who-who-whoing’ away.

  Tilli scurried forward, whistling shrilly, obviously upset. Froze in a panic of indecision—wanting Oona safe, afraid of the Scientist’s huge guns.

  A glance at Serengeti, pleading with her cobalt eyes.

  “Scientist,” Serengeti called, drawing his attention, keeping it focused on her. A step forward, another and another, thinking to maneuver her RPD’s body between Oona and the green-eyed monster’s guns. “We’re looking for Cerberus.”

  “Cerberus? Cerberus?!” The RPD hopped back, head whipping from side to side. “Nope. Nope. Nope. No Cerberus here. Cerberus left on stormy seas, leaving the fiddlers three behind.”

  “Check that,” Tig amended. “This guy’s not a nut bag. He’s bat-shit crazy.”

  The Scientist tittered softly—an odd, off-kilter sound. Mandibles crashed, grinding together as the RPD’s blasters wound back down.

  Oona poked at one, giggling. Decided she was tired of being an owl and switched to hopping around like a bunny, thumpity-thumping around.

  “We came to talk.” Another a step closer, front legs raised. “Just talk. That’s it.”

  “Talk?!” The RPD crouched down, green eyes turning suspicious. “The time has come, to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.”

  “And mustard!” Oona cried, waving her jointed legs.

  “Mustard?!” The RPD wonked like a foghorn. “Don’t let’s be silly,” he said, disapproving and indignant.

  Oona laughed aloud, throwing her legs in the air. Started prancing in a circle, giggling even louder as the Scientists joined her, shouting “Caucus! Caucus! Caucus!” in his bass-toned voice.

  “He’s cracked,” Tig said, shaking his head. “He’s totally cracked. Gone off the deep end. Nuttier than a—eep.”

  Tig backed up quickly as the Scientist swung around, fixing him with his toxic green gaze. Scuttled in close and scanned those awful eyes across the little robot. Turned a similar, probing look on Serengeti’s RPD.

  “You?” he breathed, mandibled head tilting. “Who are you? What are you?” he asked, touching a Serengeti’s consciousness, trying to connect to her brain.

  She threw up fir
ewalls to block him, but the Scientist snuck in before they were completed, stealing a bit of data from her, leaving a gift of darkness behind.

  Tendrils of ichor that clung tenaciously to her network. Like hot tar on skin.

  Serengeti shuddered, revolted. Walled of that section of her consciousness and scoured it with anti-virals and search and destroy routines. Every network-cleansing agent at her disposal.

  Ran a routine set of diagnostics after and found the tendrils remained. Multiplying rapidly, reclaiming that recently cleansed space.

  A second round of anti-virals took care of most of them, but Serengeti had to drown that section of her consciousness a third time, tear it all down and rebuild it from scratch to eradicate the Scientist’s present. Kill the clinging darkness and make sure it stayed dead.

  And yet, for all that, something still remained. A taint. A lingering foulness. A presence Serengeti couldn’t quite explain. “What have you done?” she whispered, backing away from the Scientist’s RPD. “What did you do to me?”

  “I touch. I taste,” he tittered, mandibles clacking. “I learn.” Green eyes swirled, spinning like pinwheels inside the RPD’s head. “Valkyrie,” he whispered, watching her, tasting that name. “Serengeti,” he crooned, hunger in his voice. “You died, Serengeti. Went the way of the dodo over fifty-three years ago.”

  “So they keep telling me,” she said faintly, shivering inside her RPD’s shell.

  “Dead things should stay dead.” The Scientist slid a step closer, voice turning ominous. Intimate and insane. “Not polite to come back from the dead, Serengeti. Not polite at all.”

  Surprised, Serengeti retreated a step. Realized what she was doing and made herself stand still. Regain the ground she’d given up. “Not polite to make things dead,” she countered. “Especially those that don’t deserve it.”

  The Scientist went very still, mandibled head tilting.

  “You destroyed those ships,” Serengeti said quietly. “Killed the delegation the Meridian Alliance sent.”

  Tig shifted, reaching anxiously for Tilli. Oona suddenly gone quiet, watching everyone with wide, serious eyes.

  “Not me. I just gave them some flowers.” A furtive look over his shoulder and the Scientist leaned close, voice dropping to a whisper. “The Soldier. He did it. Only he controls the main guns.”

  “The Soldier,” Serengeti repeated, blinking blankly. “Why would he—?”

  “Brutus,” the Scientist hissed, reaching for her, wrapping around Serengeti’s consciousness, trying to force his way in. “Brutus came, and then that ship came, and the Soldier made them all die.”

  “When?” Serengeti shored up her defenses, armoring herself against the Scientist, throwing a triple line of firewalls across every access point on her network to keep him out. “When did he come? When was Brutus here?”

  “Yesterday,” he said vaguely, an answer that made absolutely no sense. Not when compared with Sechura’s vid of that diplomatic encounter. The timestamps attached to it dating back years.

  “And this?” Serengeti asked, waving at the hallway around them. The barricades and broken robots. The scorch marks on the wall. “When did all this happen?”

  “Yesterday,” the Scientist said dreamily, mandibled head wobbling and bobbling as it swiveled about. “Yesterday and yesterday. All our yesterdays gone.”

  Serengeti frowned, a sneaking suspicion forming inside her brain. “And the rest? When you—When Cerberus take off to sail the stormy seas, was that yesterday, too?”

  “When Brutus came.” The Scientist nodded, green eyes wobbling back to Serengeti, locking onto her RPD’s face. “He gave me some flowers. Such beautiful flowers. Would you like to see them?” he asked her, and Serengeti stiffened, instantly on alert.

  “No,” she said, pulling away from him. Fleeing the Scientist’s clinging touch.

  A laugh and his RPD’s mandibles stretched wide—a hellish, sharp-edged smile. “Pretty. So pretty,” he breathed, opening to her. Throwing the entirety of the Citadel’s network wide.

  Serengeti stared in horror at the toxic landscape stretching before her. Thick globs of some noxious, glowing substance clinging to spidering, silvery threads. Pulsing and throbbing, swirling with toxic light.

  The same light showing in the Scientist’s RPD’s eyes. The same noxious taint his touch had set inside her earlier.

  Not flowers, she realized, staring in revulsion. They’re not flowers at all.

  A contagion—a virus, infecting the entirety of Cerberus’s network.

  Brutus’s virus. A cancer he set here, corrupting the Citadel. Everything he’s touched.

  She tried to shrink away, but the Scientist clung tenaciously, holding her tight. Enveloped her, pulling her close as a lover. Whispering mind to mind.

  “Have a flower, Serengeti. I picked them special. Just for you.”

  The RPD’s eyes blanked, the Scientist’s voice turned stone cold. He pounced on her, battering his way through Serengeti’s defenses, wrapping hungrily about her consciousness as he forced his way onto her network. Dusting the seeds of Brutus’s virus across the connections he found inside.

  Flowers bloomed in an instant, bursts of color that erupted along Serengeti’s pathways, burning through her systems as they spread like wildfire, racing for her core. Firewalls buckled, bulged, and gave way. Defenses shredded, leaving Serengeti’s consciousness completely exposed.

  “No,” she breathed, voice strangled. “Don’t!”

  She forced the Scientist away with an effort, erecting a hastily constructed firewall between them. Severed his unwanted connection and fled, error messages cascading across her network.

  Systems screamed as tendrils grew, flowers and vines continuing to spread. Dropping seeds that burst open, showering her exposed network in the virus’s taint. She threw everything she had at it, burning huge swathes with search-and-destroy flamethrowers, walling off entire sections in an attempt to contain Brutus’s contagion, but the cancer kept spreading. Blooms begetting blooms, slowly eating Serengeti alive.

  And then Oona appeared, flowing quicksilver onto her network—a bright presence sparkling like diamonds under carnival lights that slipped inside Serengeti, snuggling close to her brain.

  “Don’t worry, Serengeti. It’ll all be better soon.”

  “No!” Serengeti cried as Oona reached for the nearest bloom. “No! Don’t touch it!”

  Oona just giggled, like all of this was a game. “Pick-pick, Serengeti. Pick-pick the flowers and everything will be okay.”

  She touched at a bloom before Serengeti could stop her, spat out a string of code that turned it to dust. A fat data package curled tendrils, clearing out flowers and vines in huge swathes. Stretches of overrun network burned and turned silver as Oona giggled girlishly and firebombed everything in sight.

  Serengeti staggered, caught up in the middle of it. One virus warring with another as Oona’s data bombs and code injections battled with Brutus’s awful gift.

  A last scattering of pixie dust to defuse the seeds and Oona pulled back, leaving Serengeti’s network sparkling and clean.

  Pathways glowing like silver rivers. An entirely new section of network opening up before her eyes, just waiting to be filled.

  “How?” Serengeti breathed. “How did you do that?”

  “Sparkles!” Oona cried, throwing her legs in the air. “Sparkles for everyone!” She smiled widely, head tilted, cobalt eyes staring adoringly at Serengeti as she waited for the expected praise.

  “Sparkles,” Serengeti faintly, remembering the feel of Oona inside her. The power at her command. “We could all use more sparkles, couldn’t we?” she said, eyes drifting to the Scientist, lurking inside his green-eyed RPD.

  Oona glanced behind her, head tilting as the Scientist cowered away. Scuttled over to him before Serengeti could stop her and reached up, patting the RPD’s oversized head. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ll fix-fix you, too.”

  “Flowers?” he aske
d her, voice quavering. Greens eyes spinning like kaleidoscopes as he tried to back away.

  “Flowers go bye-bye,” Oona told him, grabbing his head with her front legs, holding him there. “Now hold still. I gotta make you all fix-fix so Serengeti lady can fly-fly away.”

  A flash of face lights—Oona smiling her brightest smile—and she flowed onto the Scientist’s network, setting his pathways on fire.

  Twenty-One

  Tilli tightened a bolt, checking the fit of Tig’s transplanted leg. Tightened it a bit more and stepped back, admiring her handiwork. “Not bad, if I do say so myself.”

  An entire sentence out of her. Wonders never ceased.

  Tig eyed the new leg uncertainly, taking a tentative step. Craned his neck around and peered at the other beside it—two salvaged TSG legs supporting his hind end. Legs that just happened to be a good inch longer than his original six. “They don’t match,” he complained. “I’m all off-balance.” He limped another step to demonstrate, front legs crouching awkwardly to compensate for his jacked-up hind end.

  “You look funny,” Oona giggled, squatting down, sticking her butt in the air. She followed Tig around for a while, mimicking his stumbling, drunken gait.

  “It’s not funny,” he told her but Oona kept right on giggling, thinking this was the best game yet.

  Serengeti smiled, watching the two of them. But her smile died as her eyes drifted to the Scientist’s RPD squatting far down the hall.

  No smile on his face, either. He just sat there, tucked up inside that hulking combat droid, insectile eyes flashing green-red, green-red, green-red, AI mind thinking god-only-knew-what thoughts.

  “Not good, is it?” Tilli asked, face lights flashing in worried patterns as she slid in at Serengeti’s side. “Despite all Oona’s efforts, he’s still not quite right.”

  “No. He isn’t,” Serengeti said quietly.

  Small wonder really. Ten years Brutus’s virus worked away at the Citadel, digging deep, infecting all three of his minds.