“I’ll guide you,” Serengeti promised. “I’ll help you all I can.”
She slapped the camera data onto a hastily constructed schematic, noting the compartments she knew to be depressurized, the blind spots where her burnt-out electronic eyes prevented her from seeing.
She hated those blind spots and instinctively tried to correct them.
Errors popped up everywhere, warning her of new failures—systems not functioning, others on the brink of shutdown. Power at critical levels, dropping precipitously as she herself consumed it.
Not much time.
Serengeti acknowledged the errors and then pointedly cleared them away. “You need to hurry, Henricksen. There isn’t much time.”
“Right. C’mon, Finlay. Time we got going.”
Finlay blinked slowly. “What about Tsu?”
“She’s dead, Finlay. We can’t take the dead with us. Not this time.”
“No. I guess not,” she sighed. Finlay touched Tsu’s fingers, leaned in smoothed her hair before kissing her softly on the brow. She climbed to her feet, looked up at the camera. “Will you look after her, Serengeti? I don’t want—” Finlay swallowed hard, lips trembling. “I don’t want Tsu and the others to be alone.”
“They’re crew, Finlay. I will never abandon them.”
“Thank you, Serengeti.” Finlay nodded to the camera, clutching Tsu’s data recorder to her breast.
“Take these.” Henricksen dropped the bridge crew’s nameplates and insignia into Finlay’s upturned palm. “Keep them for me while we’re travelling.”
Finlay poked at the metal plates with a finger. “Alright,” she said softly. She folded her fingers over the bridge crew’s badges and shoved them into her pants pocket, carefully knotting it closed.
An ominous groaning filled the air, drowning out the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the fans. A sharp crack and Henricksen looked upward, as if expecting the bridge to peel wide open. “Time to go, Finlay.”
Henricksen turned around, striding quickly across the bridge with Finlay following on his heels.
“Comms are down, so I can’t guide you by voice,” Serengeti said. “But I’ve got a few eyes left inside me, and the link to the robots is still functioning. We’ll show you the way to the lifeboat. We’ll help you find the compartments where the rest of the crew are hiding.”
“Got it.” Henricksen yanked the bridge door open and pushed Finlay out into the hallway.
“Henricksen.”
He stopped dead—one foot in the hallway, the other inside the bridge—and looked back at the camera.
“If I should lose you…” She trailed off, not even wanting to think about that. “Some of the cameras aren’t working. If I should lose you, keep to the central corridor. That way and nowhere else. Get to the lifeboat as quick as you can.”
Henricksen nodded to show he understood and then stepped into the hall, exiting Serengeti’s bridge for the very last time.
TWELVE
Serengeti shut down everything on the bridge once Henricksen and Finlay left, and sealed it up after them, leaving it dark and still—a cold, lifeless place entombing the corpses of Tsu and Evans, Kusikov and Sikuuku. A last look around before she abandoned the bridge, trading the cameras inside for one outside, just above the bridge door, from there to another further down the hall, tracking Henricksen and Finlay as they set off down the corridor.
Dark in that hallway—everything black and silver, carbon fiber and composite metal, industrial grade, reinforced plastics like the kind used everywhere else on the ship. Black and silver, like the uniforms of Serengeti’s crew, the dark and stars outside the ship, all of it stained blood-red by the emergency lights spaced evenly along the walls.
Henricksen hurried through that bloody light with Finlay trailing behind him like a ghostly shadow. Intersections appeared—corridors splitting off, leading to yet more corridors, dozens of internal spaces, one nearly indistinguishable from the next except, nothing but the numbers stenciled on doorways and wall panels to give any sense of location. Confusing design for new recruits, especially those unfamiliar with the layout of a military ship, but Henricksen was an old hand and knew this ship like the back of his hand. He moved swiftly, purposefully along the corridor, glancing at the markers out of habit mostly, not really needing them to navigate Serengeti’s spaces.
Serengeti moved ahead of her two charges, exchanging one camera for another as she scouted the way ahead, using microphone pick-ups where she found them, processing that data along with the video feeds coming from her electronic eyes. The klaxons lay sleeping—their job done now, nothing more they could to help her—and even the screams of her abused hull had quieted to little more than cracks and creaks, the occasional anguished, low groan. Eerie, that quiet. Unsettling. A ship on the move was always a noisy thing, full of voices and electronic chatter, thumps and bangs, the trundling tread of robots, the pit-patter of human crew moving about.
The pulse and throb of propulsion systems. The deep-throated roar of engines pushing Serengeti between the stars. Gone now. All gone. No hum of machinery, no voices to one another, just the chuff and wheeze of the failing air handlers. The puff and blow of a system slowly coming undone.
And when that’s gone, there’ll be nothing at all, Serengeti thought. Crew will leave, and the life support system will fail, and all that’ll be left are the robots.
Some company at least. A battered, decimated force of mechanical servants trundling about her spaces, quiet as mice.
“The crew,” Henricksen said, glancing up at a camera as he strode along. “You said there were survivors. Where?”
Internal monitoring systems were down making it impossible to look for life signs, but the schematic she’d built from the camera data told her which compartments were pressurized and which open to space. That gave her something to work off of anyway.
“Level 9, Space 26,” she said, picking out the closest compartment to their current location.
“Nine’s a level down. Twenty-Six puts us near the center of the ship. Long way from here,” Henricksen noted, noting the numbers on the doorways down the hall. “You sure there’s no one on this level?”
“Yes,” she said, risking the lie. There shouldn’t be anyone else on this level—Ten held the bridge and captain’s quarters, some conference rooms and a formal dining hall, that’s it—but Serengeti couldn’t see into those rooms to make certain they were empty. And they didn’t have time to stop and check every one. “Ten is clear. Go, Henricksen. Go!”
“Right.” Henricksen moved on, trusting her without question.
“Take the ladderway. It’s quicker.” Serengeti jumped ahead to a camera, turned it until it pointed at a panel with red markings.
Emergency access point. Ladderway behind leading to the levels above and below.
Henricksen diverted to one side, grabbed the panel with both hands and tore it away, revealing a vertical shaft with a metal ladder attached the far wall. “With me, Finlay,” he said, glancing over his shoulder.
Finlay nodded vaguely, running on instinct mostly, responding to gestures and commands but seeming only half-aware of what was going on. Along for the ride because there was nothing else to do, and failing to move would leave her alone. Finlay moved in behind Henricksen, waiting patiently as he stepped into the shaft and grabbed the ladder with one hand, pressing his broken arm tight to his stomach as he made his slow, awkward, one-armed way down to the next level.
No working cameras in the ladderway, which meant Serengeti lost Henricksen and Finlay for a while. And when she found them again—just past compartments 9-3 and 9-4, approaching the next two down the line—she spied Henricksen drifting to one side, hand reaching for the sealed door protecting compartment 9-6. A quick touch at the metal panel and he snatched his hand back, rubbing his fingertips together.
“Cold,” he said, grimacing at the pain of frost-burnt fingertips. “This one’s blown.”
He moved on to the next, holding
his palm just above the panel this time, feeling the cold inside seep out. Finlay copied him, moving to the opposite side of the hall, checking each doorway they passed until, partway down, in front of a door marked 9-12, Henricksen finally stopped—palm pressed flat against the door’s metal and carbon-weave panels, brow furrowed in concentration.
“It’s warm,” he said, accusation in his voice, in the look he threw at the nearest camera. “9-26, you said, but this one’s intact.”
“Yes,” Serengeti said. That and nothing else.
Henricksen waited, obviously wanting more.
“The compartment depressurized when we came out of jump. I managed to stabilize it but…they’re gone, Henricksen. You have to move on.”
“No.” Just that. And an angry glare.
Henricksen punched the panel beside the door, grabbed the emergency access wheel and cranked it over.
“There’s no time, Henricksen.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He turned the wheel until the door stood halfway open, signaled for Finlay to stay put as he slipped inside.
Henricksen reappeared less than a minute later looking even more grim-faced than before. He handed Finlay another four name tags, pressing them into her hand, watching as she carefully put them away with the others before continuing on.
Finlay stared at the half-open door for a few seconds, took a tentative step toward the compartment and then turned aside, following after her captain.
Serengeti lost them again at the next bend in the corridor, and several tense, frantic seconds passed before she found another camera that worked. She flipped to it and peered anxiously through its electronic eye, searching for Henricksen, for Finlay, for any signs of life. But all she found was devastation and ruin—a scorched and blackened hallway, air heavy with smoke. Foam residue covered the walls, the floor, even parts of the ceiling, the fire suppression systems having kicked in at some point to extinguish the blaze running rampant through her middle.
The systems did their job, and put the flames out, but not before the smoke and fire took their toll—damaging her metal plating, snuffing out the lives of the crew fighting the blaze. Half a dozen charred bodies lay slumped against one wall, with a cluster of melted robots scattered among them, chassis reduced to lumps of slag and charred electronics puddled on the composite metal floor.
Poor little things. They tried to help.
But repair droids weren’t meant to be firefighters. Their electronics just couldn’t stand up to the fire.
Serengeti zoomed the camera in, peering closely at the robot’s corpses, making note of their numerical designations, listing them as ‘non-operational’ on her roster. A check of the human corpses around them showed most burnt beyond recognition, but she spied a couple of name tags and marked those down as well.
She pulled back, searching the long length of the hallways. Still no sign of Henricksen. Serengeti started to worry. She’d jumped ahead, far down the route Henricksen and Finlay traveled but they should be here by now.
She flicked to another camera and found it burned out, backtracked, checking all of the cameras between the bridge and this section of hallway but every last one of them was dead.
Huge blind spot. Gaping hole in her surveillance grid, and Henricksen and Finlay right in the middle of it.
Not good. Not good at all.
Dammit, Henricksen. Where are you?
She flicked back to that last camera and waited, willing Henricksen to appear.
Air handlers pumped sluggishly, wheezing, coughing, trying vainly to clear the grey-black smog drifting in the corridor. Serengeti panned the camera, turning it as far left as she could, watching the Chron, counting the seconds. And then, finally,
“Henricksen.”
She called to him from a speaker as he rounded a corner. Henricksen’s head lifted, searching until he spied the working camera far down the hall. He nodded to Serengeti, coughing in the smoke-filled air, rubbing at irritated eyes. Finlay choked behind and started waving a hand in front of her face, trying to dispel the smoke.
Not going to help, Finlay. It’ll take a lot more than your delicate little hand to clean this mess out of the air.
Henricksen coughed again and squatted down where the air was a bit cleaner, pulling Finlay down with him when she just stood there, trying to breathe the dirty atmosphere. Together they crept forward, sticking to the center of the corridor, using their eyes and their hands both to navigate the sooty, smoke-filled space.
That’s how they found the first body.
Henricksen’s hand landed on leg, with a foot clad in a half-charred boot still attached, and he stopped short. His head swiveled, eyes flicking left and right, picking out the bodies lying crumpled in the corridor. He glanced behind him, motioning for Finlay to stay as he crept forward and started, picking through the dead, removing name tags—even the melted ones—salvaging usable pieces of kit: a face mask from one corpse, a square of cloth from another, a canteen from a third.
The mask went to Finlay—a filtered breather with a small bottle of oxygen attached—but Henricksen kept the cloth and canteen for himself. “Here ya go, Finlay.”
Finlay coughed and wiped at her eyes, grabbing greedily at the mask Henricksen pressed to her face. A few deep breaths and she tried to offer the mask to her captain but Henricksen waved it away, dousing the square of cloth he held with water from the canteen and pressing that to his face instead.
Improvised filter. Smart, Henricksen. Very smart.
Henricksen held out a hand, passing the scorched name tags to Finlay, waiting while she tucked them away before continuing down the hall.
The next camera was burnt out. And the one after that. And the one after that. Serengeti skipped ahead two turnings before finding one that was operational, and when she looked through its lens, she found the way ahead blocked—roof caved-in, walls collapsed, sparking cables snaking wildly, unstable plasma rounds spilling from a nearby munitions store.
Huge rounds, those, each shell easily the size of a cantaloupe. Most were still intact but Serengeti noted a few with cracked casings, their contents leaking into the corridor.
Dangerous, she thought, eyeing those leaking shells. I can’t send them through here.
She’d have to find another route, another way for Henricksen and Finlay to get through.
Damn.
Serengeti checked her schematic, considering her options, mapping out a series of detours that should get Henricksen and Finlay to the lifeboat.
Long way there. Long, circuitous route, with many a pitfall along the way. She’d have to guide him—even Henricksen wouldn’t be able to follow that route on his own—but a quick check showed her she’d have to pass three more turnings before reaching a camera that worked.
This isn’t working, she thought, marking out the twisting route, layering over it all the compartments Henricksen still needed to check. Too long. Life support will fail long before he can collect the remaining crew.
Serengeti considered a moment and then tapped into comms. Not ship’s comm—those pathways—an internal comms path built into her AI network. A line that gave her access to the robots charged with the care of the ship.
A ping went unanswered, second ping the same. Serengeti ran through half the ship’s roster before one finally responded. Not a good sign. She ran through the rest of the ship’s roster, noting which robots responded, which remained silent.
The results weren’t good: two thirds of her robot crew gone—shutdown or lost, dead either way—leaving her just a hundred and twelve helpers. And half of them damaged. Some so badly they’d likely have to be scrapped.
Serengeti allowed herself a moment to mourn—someone needed to, someone had to remember—and then she reached for the robot comms system and sent out a message: orders that had a dozen robots scurrying about the ship, winding their way through maintenance tunnels and ventilation corridors, in search of the surviving members of Serengeti’s human crew.
Henricks
en meant to save them all—every last crewmember that survived that disastrous exit from hyperspace—but Henricksen didn’t have time. Not before life support failed. So Serengeti sent her robots, trusting them to lead the other humans to the lifeboat.
A flash of communication—robots chatting back and forth, querying to make sure they understood their orders. Serengeti listened in for a bit, making sure everything was under control before sending a soft summons across the robot comms channel.
“TIG,” she called, not knowing who would answer, never once doubting that one of her TIGs would.
A maintenance hatch popped open just a few seconds later and a spherical chromed head appeared. The TIG glanced looked around then, raised a metal leg when it spotted the light on the active camera and waved cheerfully.
“To me, TIG.”
The leg stopped waving, dropped back to the ground. The TIG dropped onto its belly tread and rolled out into the hallway, trundled over to the camera and came to a screeching halt.
“Beep,” the TIG announced, tapping a metal leg end against its temple.
A dent showed on the side of the robot’s head. Fresh scratches marred the gleaming metal of his carapace.
“Bumpy ride, eh?”
“Beep-beep.” A blink of cobalt eyes in agreement, accompanied by a swirl of bright blue face lights. The TIG dipped its head, rubbing its front legs nervously together. “Beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep,” it chattered in its electronic voice.
Odd vocalizations, that robot chatter, and something Serengeti normally paid little attention to. But her translation routines—like everything else inside her—glitched and threw errors.
Dammit.
Serengeti ran a quick patch, cobbling a few things together, and then waited an eternity—nearly a tenth of second—while her sluggish translation routines parsed the robot pidgin in real time.
“No big deal, eh? Well, let’s make sure you’re okay anyway.”
Serengeti reached for him, touching gently at the robot’s lesser AI brain, querying his status. Not too shabby, actually. Some cosmetic damage, but otherwise the little TIG was in proper working order.
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