Serengeti

by J. B. Rockwell

  What’s the problem? she asked.

  The sub-mind scrolled through a packet of data, highlighting Osage’s course and speed, both of which had drastically changed while Serengeti wasn’t looking.

  EIGHT

  “Henricksen.” Serengeti waited until he looked up at the camera. “Take a look at this.”

  She highlighted Osage’s position on the schematic, laying the ship’s current path alongside the one she’d charted before.

  Henricksen frowned darkly. “The trajectory’s changed. She’ll intercept us.” He considered the schematic a moment, watching Osage’s blip move closer. “What do you make of it?”

  Serengeti honestly wasn’t sure. Osage was a hulk and hardly seemed a threat, but it wouldn’t do to have the Titan running into her, and she couldn’t afford the distraction of dodging around an empty husk in the middle of a pitched battle.

  “Trouble?” Henricksen asked her, quirking an eyebrow.

  “Not sure. I’ll keep an eye her.”

  Serengeti sent her sub-mind back to watching, leaving instructions for it to alarm when Osage was two hundred kilometers out. If the ship’s course remained constant, they’d have to blow her. There was simply no other choice.

  She messaged Henricksen, telling him much the same.

  Henricksen grimaced, eyes drifting to the Number Two probe’s feed, all but forgotten on the far side of bridge’s windows. “Sikuuku.”

  “Aye, sir.” Sikuuku answered without looking, fingers squeezing the triggers of the main gun, chewing away at Trinidad’s hull.

  “Orders for the starboard-side batteries. When Serengeti sounds the alarm, you tell them to open fire.”

  The main gun went silent as Sikuuku consulted the instructions Henricksen sent him. He turned his head, lifting the targeting visor away from his face.

  Grim look on Sikuuku’s face, not happy with those orders.

  “Look to the living,” Henricksen told him.

  Shots from Trinidad found Serengeti’s hull, rocking her hard, sending Henricksen stumbling to one side.

  “Aye, sir,” Sikuuku said quietly. He slammed the visor down and pivoted, gripping the main gun’s triggers hard as he fired back at Trinidad.

  Less than fifty kilometers separated Brutus and the rest of his half-fleet from Trinidad and the DSR ships now. Fifty kilometers and closing—close enough that Henricksen and the others could finally see the Heliotrope with their own eyes, prickling bulk showing as a dark grey blob against the deep black of space.

  Serengeti tapped into the Number Four probe—still out there, faithfully relaying every last shot of this battle—and swiveled it around before zooming in on the Heliotrope to get a better look.

  He was a tough old thing, Trinidad, but the relentless pounding had taken its toll. The massive puffer fish didn’t look so prickly now. Most of the guns on the port side were gone, and the comms towers with them. Dark gaps showed in his hull where the metal composite skin had torn away, fires flaring beneath as inner compartments buckled and gave way.

  “Almost there,” Sikuuku muttered. “Just a few more minutes…”

  Another alert, this time from the sub-mind Serengeti had set to watching port side of the fleet.

  “Proximity alarm,” Serengeti said, voicing the sub-mind’s alert.

  “Osage?” Henricksen barked an order at Sikuuku, readying the starboard-side batteries to fire.

  “Port side,” Serengeti told, highlighting an errant blip on the schematic.

  “The Golem.” Henricksen leaned forward, frowning darkly at the Golem’s marker. “Sikuuku! Belay my last.”

  Sikuuku recalled the order, smacked a panel to one side so he could view the front screen’s data while continued to plug away with the main gun.

  Henricksen kept frowning at the schematic, obviously not liking what he saw. “Bastard’s up to something.” He tapped the panel in front of him and scrolled through the Golem’s data. The square-sided ship was dark and silent as ever, its course leading it far away from the other DSR vessels. “Not firing, though. Looks like he’s just lost.” He raised his eyes to the camera. “What’s the alarm about?”

  “Check its path. The Golem’s on a collision course with Antigone.”

  “God damn,” Henricksen breathed.

  Serengeti sent Antigone a warning, but she’d already seen the Golem. Her port batteries swiveled, targeting the Golem and then pounding away at its blunt face.

  The Golem bore the beating and gave nothing at all back. But it accelerated without warning, streaking toward Antigone—engines wide open, glowing bright blue against the darkness of space.

  Antigone diverted her aft batteries, adding their firepower to the others already in the mix, pouring round after round into the Golem’s square shape.

  That, as it turned, was a horrible mistake.

  A massive explosion erupted, lighting up the cameras, blotting out the feeds on the port side of Brutus’s half-fleet. Number Four’s video feed blanked out as they went offline—powered down, destroyed, Serengeti couldn’t tell which.

  “What’s happening?” Henricksen shouted. “Talk to me, Serengeti.”

  “Stand by,” she told him, because she was as blind as the rest, her port-side cameras overloaded by the blinding glare.

  The light banked and faded an eternity later, leaving bits of drifting metal in its wake. And a massive crater in the Meridian Alliance fleet—the Golem gone, Antigone gone, nearly a third of the fleet wiped out in an instant.

  “No,” Serengeti whispered, watching ships’ markers disappear, dropping one after another from the schematic on the front windows.

  “Serengeti!”

  Henricksen rarely shouted, never raised his voice to her. That he did so now was a measure of his distress.

  “Scanning.” She searched the sea of wreckage and found complex compounds, traces of metals and explosives none of the Meridian Alliance ships carried. And a radiation signature that really, truly did not belong.

  “Nuke,” she breathed in horror. “The Golem was carrying a nuke. They turned it into a bomb.”

  “So when Antigone fired…”

  “She set the bomb off.”

  “Damn. God damn,” Henricksen swore, rubbing at his eyes. “The crews. Did anyone make it out?”

  Serengeti checked and found a few lifeboat beacons squawking into space, but not many. Not surprisingly really. It all happened so fast. Most of the ships probably never realized what danger they were in until that nuke went off.

  A message came through—orders from Brutus, recalling Marianas, Atacama, the rest of the ships he’d split off.

  ‘Bout goddamn time.

  Serengeti flashing the message to Henricksen’s Command Post.

  “Smartest thing that bastard’s done all day,” he said, lips twisting sourly.

  Marianas and Atacama slowed and then stopped, guns firing steadily as the ships behind them came to a halt. A flare of engines as the Meridian Alliance vessels reversed en masse, maintaining fire as they initiated a tactical retreat.

  The second message from Brutus came not longer after. “Spool up hyperspace drives,” Brutus sent, broadcasting the command to both sections of the fleet at once. “Prepare for jump.”

  Henricksen barked a laugh. “I stand corrected. That is the smartest thing he’s said all day. Tsu!” he called, turning to Engineering. “You heard the man. Fire up the jump drives so we can get the hell out of here.”

  “Aye, sir!” Tsu bent over her station, almond-shaped eyes focused on the readouts, narrow face bathed in the panel’s multi-colored lights. “Three minutes,” she said, fingers flying across the keyboard, one hand lifting now and then to tap at the panels to either side.

  “Start the clock,” Henricksen told her.

  Tsu transferred the counter on her Engineering panel to the front windows, digital numbers showing blood-red against the darkness outside.

  Henricksen rubbed his chin, studying the schematic on the front window
s as Tsu spooled up Serengeti’s jump drives, filling the bridge with a low-pitched whine. “Three minutes for us,” Henricksen said, looking up at a camera. “That’s Valkyrie jump prep time. Titans and Auroras have smaller drives but proportionately less mass to haul through the buckle, so they’ll need about the same. Brutus is a bruiser, though. Needs closer to four, even with those big ass engines they dropped in his belly.”

  And Serengeti couldn’t leave the battle until Brutus transited through the buckle. That was the way of things—the order of departure the fleet strictly followed when executing hyperspace jump: Flagship first, Dreadnoughts second, Titans and Auroras after, Valkyries bringing up the rear.

  Serengeti shuddered as plasma fire scored her side, tearing at her hull plating, peeling a few panels away. Environmentals showed a small breach—the doors on one of the cargo bays ripped off, everything inside it thrown out into space. A check of her schematics showed it was Cargo Bay 4. Four where’d she left Barlow’s remains, along with Probe Six and balky old Ten.

  Damn. Pain in the ass he might be, but she’d miss that cranky old probe.

  Railgun rattled loudly, chipping away at her skin. Microphone pick-ups brought her ominous noises—the creaks and groans of metal composite straining to its limit before giving way.

  More holes appeared in Serengeti’s hull. Atmosphere vented in explosive puffs of frozen gases, fire suppression systems lit up, deploying port-side bow as crews rushed to close emergency hatches, blocking off compromised compartments in order to save the rest of the ship.

  “Come on, goddammit.” Henricksen leaned forward, hands braced against the panel in front of him as he watched the jump drive counter tick down. “Tsu!” he called, straightening up. “What’s the count on the Bastion?”

  “Minute thirty, Captain.”

  “Too long. Too damn long.”

  “Incoming!” Finlay screamed.

  Serengeti slewed sideways, taking a direct hit from one of Trinidad’s guns. Henricksen lurched forward, grabbing at panels with both hands to keep from falling as the rest of the bridge crew held on for dear life.

  A flare erupted outside, close enough to light up Serengeti’s bridge. She grabbed a camera and turned it that way, watching as an Aurora named Happenstance broke in half—one end drifting harmlessly away from the fleet, the other slamming into Wrath beside her.

  Henricksen punched the panel in front of him. “Dammit! They’re tearing this fleet apart. This is not time for protocol, Serengeti. Brutus should send the smaller ships ahead.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She tapped into comms to send a message and found Marianas had beaten her to it. The Valkyrie argued hotly with Brutus—growing angrier, more insistent with every ship they lost—and eventually he relented. With just thirty seconds left on the Bastion’s jump clock, the Auroras started jumping away. The Titans followed soon after, but barely twenty of them made it out before Brutus’s grating voice cut across fleet comms, announcing his intent to enter hyperspace.

  “All ships hold,” Brutus’s captain sent out.

  Too much mass behind Brutus for other ships to safely jump with him. Hyperspace transit created a distortion—a singularity of sorts they called ‘unstable space.’ Not a big deal when smaller ships like the Auroras traveled, but strange things happened when a ship Brutus’s size transited. Strange, bad things—hulls twisted, entire vessels sometimes turned inside out.

  The hold order was for the fleet’s protection. Only a fool would ignore it.

  A last few Titans jumped through anyway, transiting hyperspace in an instant. The rest—close to a hundred and fifty Titans plus Serengeti, the four other surviving Valkyries, Brutus’s Dreadnought bodyguard, minus shredded Gorgon—wisely held position and waited.

  Brutus spooled up his jump drives—a complicated, carefully choreographed operation requiring synchronization of all four hyperdrive engines at once. A swirl appeared ahead him as a buckle took shape, sucking space inward as Brutus advanced, aiming for the swirling void at its center.

  “Taking his time about it, isn’t he?” Henricksen growled. He looked up at the camera and then back to the windows.

  Brutus entered the buckle, front end disappearing into darkness, the void creeping along the Bastion’s prickling, porcupine shape like it was eating the ship alive.

  “Hurry it up, you oversized, wallowing bastard,” Henricksen muttered under his breath.

  An alarm sounded—perimeter alert from the sub-mind keeping tabs on Osage of Serengeti’s port side—drawing her eyes way from Brutus. She tapped into a few of her surviving cameras and turned them in Osage’s direction.

  The ship was in firing range now—just a two hundred kilometers out—but there was little chance of a collision. By the time the tattered Titan’s path intercepted hers, Serengeti would be long gone. She cancelled the perimeter alarm and detailed the sub-mind to another task.

  That’s when she remembered the Number Two probe.

  Damn. It’s still inside her.

  She hated to leave it, especially after losing Six and Ten, but Brutus had just about cleared the buckle and soon it would be her turn to jump. She checked the Chron, realized there was just enough time.

  Hang on, little buddy.

  Serengeti tapped into the Number Two probe and recalled it, telling it to hurry-hurry-hurry as the buckle consuming Brutus passed the ship’s midpoint and slowly consumed the remainder of his bulk.

  “Tsu. Status,” Henricksen called.

  “Jump drive is primed and ready. We can transit as soon as Brutus is gone.”

  “Good.” Henricksen stared hard at the window, arms folded over his chest, lopsided smile twisting his lips as the Number Two probe started to move. “Huh. Almost forgot about that little guy. No man left behind, eh?” He flashed a smile at Serengeti’s camera and stumbled to one side, cursing loudly as missile fire slammed into Serengeti’s bow. “Time!” he yelled.

  “Twenty seconds,” Tsu called back.

  “The probe? How long—”

  Henricksen frowned and leaned forward, studying Number Two’s feed as it worked its way back out of Osage’s frayed body, dodging melted girders and snarled nests of burnt out cables. Not much else left inside her, but as the probe passed by a blown cargo hold, Serengeti spotted a cluster of blinking red lights—signs of life, of power where nothing at all should be.

  Henricksen saw it too. “What was that? Back it up. Turn Two around and—”

  “Osage is accelerating!” Finlay warned.

  The wrecked ship halved the distance between herself and the fleet faster than Serengeti would have thought possible given her condition.

  “Blow it! Blow it!” Henricksen yelled.

  Serengeti tapped into the artillery system, taking the controls from Sikuuku. She turned the main gun on Osage and started blasting away, targeting the Titan’s engines to at least slow her down. “Jump. Jump now,” Serengeti ordered.

  Tsu checked the timer and then shook her head. “Ten seconds left on the clock.”

  “We’re out of time.”

  Serengeti initiated the jump sequence herself, and passed orders to Sechura and the other ships to do the same.

  Henricksen threw a worried look at the camera, obviously wanting an explanation. “What’s going on?”

  “Osage. She’s booby-trapped. Just like the Golem.”

  “Shit.”

  “Initiating jump.”

  Serengeti’s engaged her hyperspace drive, shuddering violently as the fabric of space around bent and twisted and the buckle took form. Ships winked out around her, disappearing in silver-white bursts as they jumped away. Antigone went, and Marianas and Atacama after, leaving just Serengeti and Sechura, and sixty or so Titans.

  “Time!” Tsu yelled.

  Serengeti moved forward with Sechura at her side, but as the hyperspace void sucked inward, Osage exploded.

  After that there was nothing—nothing but smoke and fire, darkness and chaos and
death.

  NINE

  Alarms shrieked everywhere, filling the bridge with a cacophony of noise. Comms filled with shouts and screams coming from every compartment, every corridor along the length and breadth of her body. And beneath it all, the sounds of Serengeti’s destruction—the screech and groan of internal structures twisting, failing as a bottomless vacuum sucked at her torn hull.

  Henricksen picked himself up off the floor, wiping blood from his cheek. “Damage report!” he barked, pressing a hand to the gash in his temple. Blood poured down his face, staining his jet black uniform, turning the silver stars of command a deep shade of crimson. “Damage report!” he repeated, but Tsu didn’t seem to hear him. She just sat at her station, staring wide-eyed at the windows wrapping the front of the bridge.

  He reached over, killing the klaxons shrieking at him like angry ghosts. No need for the sirens now—they already knew they were well and truly fucked.

  “Tsu!” Henricksen slammed a hand against the panel in front of him. “Wake up!”

  Tsu jumped and turned, cheeks pale, eyes wide as dinner plates.

  Lost look on Tus’s face, a hint of terror showing deep in her eyes. Henricksen saw it, and lowered his voice, using his calmest, most patient tone.

  “Damage report. Now, Tsu.”

  “Damage report.” She wobbled back around, brow furrowed, staring at her panel like she didn’t know what to do with it.

  Henricksen tapped the panel in front of him with a finger and then looked up at the camera. Serengeti sent a data package to his Command Post and then waited while he scanned through it.

  He already knew the worst of it—the buckle collapsed, jump drives knocked offline, most of Serengeti’s starboard-side aft torn away. The rest made a decidedly grim read. When Osage exploded, she carved a huge hole in the Meridian Alliance fleet, taking out twenty-six ships. Those that survived the explosion drifted aimlessly—damaged, dying. Brutus was long gone, and the Dreadnoughts with him, Sechura…she didn’t know about Sechura, but Serengeti hoped she’d escaped in time and wasn’t drifting out there, mixed in with the other debris.