Serengeti Read online

  Serengeti checked the data, confirming the scan results and Finlay’s count. “Scans are empty. Perhaps they divided. Left this group to play rear guard while the rest slipped away.”

  “Or the rest of the DSR ships are waiting out there somewhere, just outside our scans’ range.”

  “Or that,” Serengeti acknowledged.

  “I don’t like this.” Henricksen stared at the camera a moment longer, then glanced out the windows, watching the gap between the Meridian Alliance fleet and the DSR vessels slowly close. And far out—port side and still several hundred kilometers distant—was the lonely blip of Osage, tracking ever so slowly toward the fleet that once claimed her. “I don’t like this at all,” he said, eyes flicking between the DSR ships and Osage’s beacon. “Something’s not right. Kusikov—send word to the fleet. Tell them to take up defensive positions and ready themselves for jump.”

  “Brutus won’t retreat,” Serengeti warned him. “Not now. Not after two weeks of fruitless chasing.”

  “A hundred and thirty ships against a force nearly three times that size. This is wrong and you know it,” Henricksen said quietly. “The DSR’s desperate but they’re not that desperate. And they’re certainly not that stupid.”

  He was right, of course, and from the objections pouring in—peppering Serengeti and the other Valkyries, bypassing the Dreadnoughts who they knew wouldn’t care—the Titans and Auroras weren’t liking Brutus’ orders any better.

  Serengeti sent a message to the Bastion and received a response in return reminding her of her place, ordering her to form up with the others and mind her own business.

  So much for that idea.

  “Brutus has ordered the fleet to come about.”

  Serengeti sent instructions to Nav and Engineering, fired up her maneuvering thrusters and turned her bulk hard to port. The rest of the fleet turned with her, forming a wedge shape with Brutus at its middle and the Dreadnoughts ringing him about. The Titans and Auroras shifted and drifted, some moving forward, others back, creating a spearhead in front of Brutus and the Dreadnoughts and a thick shield wall behind.

  Serengeti and the five other Valkyries moved to the outside of the wedge, spacing themselves widely so they could guard the armada’s edges and still bring all their guns to bear. Six Valkyries. Just six to watch over this armada, and twenty Dreadnought bruisers to guard Brutus himself. Not something to sneeze at normally, but deep down, Serengeti wondered if it was enough.

  Have to be. Cerberus himself has spoken. And in his AI wisdom, deemed six and twenty to be ‘sufficient’ for dealing with the DSR rabble that attacked Tissolo. Hope he’s right, Serengeti thought.

  She fired her maneuvering jets and assumed her assigned position on the starboard side of the fleet. Marianas and Atacama followed suit, maneuvering around the smaller ships so they could slot in behind her, while Antigone cruised over to the port side with Seychelles and Sechura in tow. And when it was all done—when the last ship was finally in place—the Meridian Alliance turned their eyes forward and waited for the DSR ships to come into range.

  “God I hate this part.” Henricksen stared at the bridge windows, lips twisting sourly as he studied the schematic showing the Meridian Alliance ships and the approaching DSR fleet. “So, this is his grand plan? We punch through the middle of their blockade and then circle around and hunt the remaining ships down?”

  “The theory is sound.” Serengeti hated that answer but it was the best she could offer.

  “Theory,” Henricksen snarled, hands slamming hard against the panel in front of him. “The theory is crap! Stupid, arrogant, son-of-a-bitch. He knows there’s more to this than meets the eye but he just won’t back down. Bastard shouldn’t even be here. Fleet shouldn’t be here. Smartest thing we could do is retreat and regroup. Come at them another time.”

  Serengeti thought a minute, recognizing the sense in what Henricksen said. She relayed a message to Brutus, urging caution, asking the Bastion to rethink this whole matter and consider pulling the fleet back.

  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.

  FIVE

  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 Seren
geti 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.”