Serengeti

by J. B. Rockwell

  She cast her eyes across the bridge, looking from Henricksen to the stations behind him, circling around to Finlay at Scan. Need was important—Serengeti learned that over the years. Next time she’d let Finlay run the scans and argue with Number Ten.

  Good luck with that one, sister.

  TWO

  “What’s the displacement variation for this one?” Henricksen glanced at the camera, nodded to the dark and stars showing outside the bridge’s windows. “Jump’s not exactly a precise operation. Could be Barlow and the others are here somewhere, just out of range of our scans.”

  “Possible,” Serengeti agreed. Though not likely.

  She kept that last part to herself.

  Jump coordinates approximated an area covering nearly a thousand square kilometers of space. They’d sent themselves to the same coordinates as the advance scouts and found nothing. But it was possible those three ships had jumped through to one extreme of the jump displacement and Serengeti and her crew to the other.

  A slim hope, but better than no hope at all. Hope was a different kind of need. Humans died when they ran out of hope.

  Serengeti ran the calculations, factoring in distance and the time that had elapsed since the three scouts left the fleet. “Forty-eight hundred.”

  Henricksen chewed at his lip, thinking that over. He leaned over, tapping at one of a half dozen consoles bolted to his chair—one panel for each of the bridge’s stations and a mash-up screen that showed everything at once—making the Captain’s Command Post look like some kind of mutated octopus. He worked at the Scan screen a minute, switched to the console for Nav, then transferred the data from both to the mashup-screen in front of him.

  “Damn,” he said softly. “Debris falls within the displacement zone.”

  Grim look on Henricksen’s face. Angry, weary tone in his voice.

  The bridge crew went silent, staring at their captain before quickly looking away.

  “It could be them. But it could just as easily be one of the DSR ships,” Serengeti told him. “Or nothing at all. Just ancient space junk transiting through the area.”

  “Maybe.” But from the way he shook his head, the way his hands gripped the edge of his console, knuckles showing white against the skin, Henricksen didn’t believe it. “Damn,” he growled, angry, frustrated. “Damn, damn, damn.”

  Believe it or not, she knew how he felt. Serengeti’s designers would be appalled if they knew the depths of the anger that seethed inside her. AIs were never meant to feel—not anything, just the concept of emotions—but AIs never stopped learning, and war…war taught Serengeti many things. Damn right she understood anger. She’d learned what true anger meant in her fifty-three years of service to the Meridian Alliance, fighting the DSA on the front lines. Fifty-three years, three lost crews, and two complete refits, Serengeti’s crystal-matrix mind transferred from one twisted, shredded metal shell to another, exchanging her battered form for a sparkling new Valkyrie skin, complete with an arsenal of the latest weapons, and a shiny new crew. Fifty-three years of brothers and sisters dying, their AI containment pods cracked, brilliant minds destroyed with the metal composite hull around them. Fifty-three years, and each loss still hurt. Each one added to the load of anger churning deep within her crystal-matrix mind. Serengeti was tenth generation AI, her body armed and armored, a carapace built for war, but the losses were hard to handle. Even for her.

  Too much dying. Too much loss, human and AI both.

  Stop being so melancholy, Serengeti.

  She pushed those thoughts away and focused on the mission at hand. “We need to clear the area before we send word back to the armada. I don’t want them coming through until I’m sure it’s safe.”

  Henricksen nodded and looked to the camera, waiting for her orders. For her orders, because Serengeti was ship, and ultimately in charge.

  “Probes are sitting idle,” she said, offering that much, let him work out the rest for himself.

  “Run ‘em in a grid pattern?” he suggested.

  “Makes sense.”

  “Right. Finlay. Get Ten and Six in there to investigate those debris clouds and find out what they are.”

  “Aye, sir.” Finlay set to work.

  Henricksen watched her for a moment and then turned his eyes to the front windows, brow creasing in a frown of worry.

  “Henricksen.” Serengeti waited until Henricksen looked up at the camera. “Osage and Veil of Tears came here. Barlow was right behind them. They’re not here now and I want to know why. I want to know where they went. I want to know what happened to them.”

  She dropped the calm, serene tones and let the anger show through in her voice. Henricksen cocked his head to one side, giving the camera a considering look. And then he nodded—just once—and looked away, barking orders at Comms.

  “Kusikov!”

  “Aye, sir!” Kusikov’s muffled response came from somewhere beneath the Comms station. He extracted himself and climbed to his feet, slipping a multi-tool surreptitiously into his pocket. He’d obviously been fiddling with something—he always was in his spare time, insisting Serengeti’s comms package and language routines needed improvement.

  Serengeti didn’t like people messing with her systems, and Henricksen knew it. “For the luvva god, Kusikov, stop messing with the equipment!”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  Automatic response accompanied by a mischievous, most-definitely-not-sorry smile.

  “Cut the shit, Kusikov.”

  Kusikov’s smile withered, sobering up quickly under Henricksen’s withering gaze. “Sorry, sir,” he said, doing his best to sound sincere.

  “You are that, Kusikov. Now if you’re done screwin’ with Serengeti’s systems, maybe you could actually do your fucking job.”

  Henricksen didn’t swear often—well, he used ‘damn’ a lot but that really didn’t count—so when he did it got the crew’s attention. Fast.

  “Aye, sir.” Kusikov saluted smartly, all business now. He reached for the cables dangling from his station, jacking relays into the ports in his wrists and neck, grabbing the comms visor from the panel where he’d set it and slipping it over his eyes.

  He was…interesting, this one. Arrogant. Cocky as hell. And yet, one of the brightest human minds Serengeti had come across in her travels. She wasn’t quite sure if she liked Kusikov, but she respected him. She just hoped he never figured it out. If he did, she’d never heard the end of it.

  “Send a comms buoy back to the fleet,” Henricksen ordered. “Tell them the scouts aren’t here. Advise them to hold back while we figure out what’s going on.”

  “Aye, sir.” Kusikov went still for a few seconds, fingers splayed out on the console in front of him, eyes flicking rapid-fire from one piece of data to another, drinking in the information the visor displayed. A twitch of his fingers sent instructions back out, delivering the orders as fast as his human brain could process them. “Buoy away, sir.”

  “Right.”

  Henricksen turned to one side, staring out the windows, waiting for the buoy to appear. It took a few seconds—the buoys were simple things and not equipped with the probes’ ion drives—but once it appeared, the buoy quickly moved away. Henricksen watched it, tracking the little buoy with his eyes until it flashed and jumped away, returning to the fleet of ships waiting light years away.

  “How we doing, Finlay?” he asked, staring at the back of Finlay’s red head.

  Finlay was having a tough time of it—the look on her face made that clear. Probes One through Five were in place and patiently working their way through the grid pattern she’d laid out, Six had reached the edge of the huge cloud of drifting debris and started sending data back, but she’d just barely gotten the others into place when good old Number Ten started to act up again.

  Serengeti had seen it coming, knew the warning signs that meant Ten was up to his old shenanigans but—true to her word—she’d left it for Finlay to figure out this time. In retrospect, that
might not have been such a good idea.

  “Probes are working their way through, Captain, but Ten’s being a bit balky again. I can’t—it won’t—” Finlay huffed in frustration, hands curling into fists on the console in front of her. “I’m sorry, sir. I know Serengeti—”

  “Finlay.”

  Finlay stiffened and then bowed her head.

  Serengeti watched her, flipping from one camera to another, cycling through the many views of the bridge her electronics eyes offered. Movement from Henricksen—a slight shake of his head, eyes locked onto the front camera as he stepped away from his Command Post and walked over to the Scan station.

  “Don’t take it personally.” Henricksen leaned close to Finlay, pitching his voice low so the other bridge crew wouldn’t hear.

  Serengeti zoomed in, studying the two of them together, enjoying the moment—this rare glimpse at was scarred, grizzled, oh-so-very-military Henricksen’s softer side. Dark and imposing—that was Henricksen. Tough as old leather and about as cuddly as a brick, everything planes and angles and muscles stretched taut across tendon and bone. In military fashion, he kept his dark hair clipped short and buzzed tight against his head, uniform crisp and clean, snugged close and fitted perfectly to his rangy frame. Henricksen loomed over tiny, red-haired Finlay, a dark shadow wrapped in a jet black uniform, the silver stars of Command flashing brightly at his throat while Finlay sat her station, looking tiny and girlish, her own dark uniform somehow making her look tinier still.

  Black and silver—those were Serengeti’s colors. All the uniforms were black here, the crew themselves thin shadows half-hidden in the sparse light of the ship’s bridge.

  “Can’t compete with an AI, Finlay. No one can. No person,” Henricksen amended, lips quirking in a rueful smile. His eyes lifted, looking directly into the camera in front of him.

  Henricksen knew she was watching. Serengeti’s eyes were everywhere, her mind split into a hundred sub-minds keeping tabs on everything and everyone in the ship, but unlike her other captains, Henricksen didn’t seem to mind. That was another reason Serengeti liked him. Trust, respect—not all humans felt them toward AI.

  A wink at the camera and Henricksen focused back on Finlay, hand settling on her shoulder, squeezing gently. “A mind like Serengeti’s…hell, even the other AIs feel inferior compared to a Valkyrie like her. Crystal matrix, Finlay. Hundred times the processing power of that piece-a grey matter you got in your head,” he said, giving her a playful tap on the temple. “Makes the likes of you and me look like idiots.” Another smile, this one for Finlay.

  She turned her head and looked up at her captain, face surprised, hopeful, infinitely grateful. “Yes, sir.” Finlay dipped her head. “Thank you, sir.”

  Henricksen straightened, returning to gruff Captain mode. “Alright. Eyes up front now, Finlay. Let’s see what those probes have to show us.”

  “Yes, sir.” Finlay faced around, sucked in a breath and then started tapping away at her console, adding a scrolling readout of data to each of the video feeds.

  Ten’s feed was garbled—Serengeti slipped in and fixed it when Finlay wasn’t looking—and the other feeds from most of the other probes were empty, just twinkles and black and line after line of data that basically said the universe was stardust and moonbeams and could Serengeti please keep it down a bit because she was ever so noisy.

  Cheeky, she sent.

  The probes sent protests and AI laughter back.

  Serengeti flipped to the probes’ cameras, tapping into them directly so she could gaze upon the stars through their electronic eyes. She loved the stars—not really surprising since she’d been born to the darkness and the distant, twinkling lights—and the freedom that came with floating in that endless black, jumping through hyperspace from one star cluster to another, witnessing the miracles the universe had to offer.

  Humans craved planets, fought endless wars over rock and dirt and vegetation, but Serengeti cared nothing for those balls of water and soil. All she’d ever wanted was the stars. All she wanted was to explore the universe and drink in the endless black.

  “Probes have reached the debris cloud.” Finlay nodded to the feeds from Ten and Six showing on the front windows, adjusted the probes’ cameras from her station and zoomed in.

  Ten and Six entered the collection of junk from opposite directions, working their way through the cloud, dodging this bit and that, sensor arrays reaching out, scanning everything in their path and sending it back to Serengeti. Their feeds—now that they were both working properly—were quite interesting.

  “Carbon, titanium, cadmium—that’s metal composite out there, alright. Maybe some plastics as well. Zoom in on that, would you?” Henricksen pointed to something at the edge of Number Ten’s video feed.

  Finlay nodded and sent instructions to the probe, turning it to one side and then moving it closer to one of the larger bits of debris. The space junk tumbled round and round, making it hard for the little probe to get a fix on it, so Finlay extruded a metal arm from the probe’s side, catching the hunk of scrap with grasping, finger-like appendages and then pulling it close to the camera so they could get a better look.

  “Huh,” Henricksen grunted. “Whatever it was, it’s been shredded.”

  “You think it’s one of the scouts, sir?” Finlay asked him.

  “Hard to tell. Could be. Could just be some old clunker got blown up decades ago,” he added with a nod to Serengeti’s forward-facing camera. “Only one way to be sure. Send the probe in to get a reading on the mass of that debris cloud. Collect some samples while it’s at it. See if that can’t tell us anything.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Finlay sent a stream of instructions to the probe, eyes focused on the screen, watching its movements, making adjustments on the fly. Scan picked up an incoming ship, but she was so busy with the probe that she didn’t notice. Serengeti nudged the data to the edge of Finlay’s screen, nudged it again when she brushed it aside. Oh well, no time to wait for her.

  Sorry, Finlay. Breaking my promise already.

  Serengeti sounded the proximity alarm, setting klaxons to screaming all over the ship.

  THREE

  “Perimeter alert.”

  Serengeti’s calm, clear voice cut clean through the sirens sounding on the bridge.

  Finlay’s panel lit up like a Christmas tree, warning lights flashing all over her screen. “Incoming vessel,” she cried, abandoning the probes outside to pour through the new data coming in.

  “Where?” Henricksen barked.

  “Dropping out of hyperspace.”

  “Obviously, but where, Finlay. Goddammit where?”

  “Aft. Starboard side,” Serengeti told him, throwing that feed onto the screen along with all the others. A cluttered mess of data streams and video feeds filled the front windows. She shoved the probes’ feeds to the side for now, letting this newest one take front and center. “Hundred and fifty kilometers, give or take.”

  “Too close,” Henricksen growled. “Way too close.” He stared at the feed for a moment, seeming to think something over, and then spun to the side, barking orders at the blocky specimen of humanity stuffed into the Artillery station. “Sikuuku! Fire up the aft turrets. Alert the port and starboard batteries we’ve got company.”

  “Aye, sir,” Sikuuku called back. He grabbed his targeting helmet and stuffed it over his head as he called down to the ancillary stations, telling them to bring all of Serengeti’s batteries on-line. Sikuuku was a veteran like his captain—a squat, square man with a swirling pattern of tattoos on his face and burn scars running up and down his arms. He ran the main gun from the Artillery station—a gimbaled pod set on the far side of the bridge—while simultaneously coordinating the preparations of the forty odd batteries sticking out of Serengeti’s hull. “Firing solution plotted. Armaments are primed and ready, Captain.”

  “Good. Finlay. Talk to me. What’s out there?”

  “Can’t tell. Still coming in.”
<
br />   “Is it ours?” Henricksen asked her, throwing Finlay’s screens onto the panel beside him.

  Serengeti tapped into the Scan feed and parsed the information looking for data tags, electronic signatures, anything to tell them what was coming in. But it was all just noise—shredded information distorted by hyperspace, impossible to interpret until the ship out there dropped in.

  “Finlay!”

  “Trying, sir.”

  “Is it ours, Finlay?” Henricksen demanded.

  “Not sure,” she said, fingers flying across the panel, eyes flicking everywhere, devouring the data it displayed.

  A wrinkle in space, starlight bending one side and the other revealing a gaping black hole that tunneled into hyperspace. A squirt of data hit them—names, call signs, beacon markers loudly proclaiming the identity of the vessels coming through. Serengeti drank it in and then waited, wasting precious seconds while Finlay’s slower human brain worked its way through that same data.

  “C’mon, Finlay,” Henricksen growled.

  “Brutus!” she cried. “Brutus in-bound, sir.”

  Serengeti killed the klaxons, sounded the all clear.

  “Artillery stations. Power down and stand by,” Sikuuku called, sending the message to all the batteries at once.

  Kusikov opened the ship-wide channel and sent a message to the rest of the crew. “Friendlies,” he said in his crisp, business-like, this-is-the-comms-officer-speaking voice. “Brutus in-bound. Family’s all here.”

  Okay. Maybe not so business-like.

  A sigh of relief spread across the bridge, crewmen smiling at one another, laughing nervously as they worked at screens with trembling, adrenaline-hyped fingers. Henricksen flicked his eyes across them and then glared out the front windows, looking completely pissed off as the dark void outside sucked inward, becoming negative light, not just black, and then seemed to pull the stars into it, eating them up. The void bent and swirled, an angry, writing, hungry beast, and then the darkness shredded, bathing the bridge in a blinding flash of silver-white light.