Serengeti

by J. B. Rockwell

“The stars,” Tig blurted, pointing to one side. “A signal. Something’s coming.”

  “Where?”

  “There.” He pointed again, eyes locking on a distant, twinkling star.

  Serengeti stared in confusion. Stars don’t twinkle. Not out here.

  “A ship,” she breathed. “It’s a ship, not a star. After all these years…” Serengeti trailed off, daring to hope, knowing she should fear.

  That ship could be anyone: Meridian Alliance, Dark Star Revolution, some nameless, faceless trader or black market profiteer.

  She measured the distance from herself to that ship, guessing mostly since she couldn’t access her scans. Guesswork. That’s what I’ve come to. If Brutus could only see me now, Serengeti thought ruefully. Self-righteous son-of-a-bitch would laugh his ass off.

  Serengeti ran some quick calculations, despising the inaccuracy of it all, knowing it was the best she could do under the circumstances. “Long way out,” she murmured. “Long way from anything approximating civilization.” Which meant that the ship was either searching, or up to no good. “How did you ever find it?”

  Tig beeped—strange how nervousness made him fall back on those nonsensical sounds—and turned the other way, pointing to the rounded crest of her hull. “Comms array.”

  “Comms.” Serengeti felt a thrill of excitement. They’d had no comms at all the last time she’d gone to sleep. “Show me.”

  The robots set off, scampering across her hull, making for a tower sticking up from the center of her back. A tower that most definitely hadn’t been there the last time Tig took her on a tour of the hull and the stars. Tig rolled to a stop at its base and let Serengeti take a good, long look.

  The scaffolding appeared to be constructed from salvaged girders. Tig tilted her head back showing her the improvised communications array clinging like a spider to the tower’s top—an odd collection of antennae and curved disks, flaring panels and signal filters they’d fitted together and trained on the stars.

  Kusikov would call it ugly and primitive, but Serengeti thought it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. “You built this.”

  Tig nodded, reaching for Tilli beside him. She seldom spoke, shy thing that she was, but she watched and listened, hanging on every word that passed between Tig and Serengeti. “We’ve been listening,” Tig said, waving at the stars. “We work and work and work, and then we come here and listen to the dark, thinking something might come. That’s how we found it.” He turned and pointed at the distant, twinkling spot of light.

  “My, my, my. Aren’t you the clever ones?” Serengeti smiled to herself, amazed at the ingenuity of these lonely little robots. “So tell me: what has our friend out there got to say?”

  Tig thought a moment, face lights flashing and swirling. “Show you,” he said, with a wink and a smile.

  He pulled Tilli close, touching his cheek to hers. Cobalt lights sparked and flared, arcing between the two robots as Tig wrapped one leg around the tower and Tilli did the same.

  A hum and burst of static—that’s what came through first. Tig tweaked his filters, adjusting a few of internal settings to clean the signal up as best he could. The comms channel was primitive and glitchy, the transmissions it processed grainy and muddled, cutting in and out, but data came through—a flow of electronic information that ran for a while, stopped and looped backward before starting over again.

  Serengeti listened closely, letting that loop run three full rounds. “Enough,” she said, signaling to Tig and Tilli to cut it off. “I’ve heard enough. Break the connection. No need to let that ship know we’re here.”

  It likely did already, but Serengeti didn’t tell Tig and Tilli that. Even half dead, the energy inside her would be visible, especially since her power source was the only thing other than starlight and moondust for light years in any direction. A good thing if that ship out there was part of the Meridian Alliance fleet, but it wasn’t. She knew that for sure. The fleet never employed a make and model like that ship out there. In fact, from the little she’d picked up, the distant ship appeared to be ancient—first generation AI if she had to bet. Little more than an automaton, just half a step above that DSR Golem that took out half the fleet.

  “Could be DSR, I suppose.” But she doubted it. No reason for a DSR ship to be all the way out here, especially on its own. “Scavengers, more likely. Opportunists. Smugglers, maybe. Rumrunners or pirates.”

  Scum, in other words. The scum of humanity living on the fringes of settled space, skulking through the empty places in their ancient, thin-hulled ships. Serengeti almost wished it was DSR out there. They’d actually be a better option than the vultures in that ship.

  “Not good. Not good at all.” Serengeti sighed wearily. “We’re in trouble, Tig.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  “So what do we do?” Tig asked, reaching for Tilli as she trilled anxiously and crowded close to his side.

  “Good question,” Serengeti muttered, wracking her AI brain, trying to come up with a plan. “I don’t know, Tig. I just don’t know yet.”

  Not the most inspiring answer, but the best she had right now. Tig’s face lights ticked worriedly, eyes locked onto the ship’s distant, twinkling light.

  “They’re coming for us, aren’t they?” Tig asked, using the robot comms channel to communicate with Serengeti inside him.

  “I fear so, Tig. My guess is they’re looking for salvage. They’ll send a boarding party across once they’re close enough, but...”

  Serengeti trailed off, turning Tig’s head toward the long line of her hull. Not much left here that the scavengers would be interested in. Just two dented robots and a couple of hard-used power cells keeping each other company inside a wreck warship.

  And me, she thought. Body’s scrap, but a Valkyrie class AI would be quite the score. And there’s Cryo, of course.

  That worried her—bothered even more than the thought of being ripped out and transplanted somewhere. Cryo was worth a small fortune, and a lifeboat—non-AI, registered only to the ship it came from—would be much easier to sell on the black market than a tenth generation combat AI.

  They’ll cut Cryo from me if they can, force it open and strip it bare if they can’t, taking everything with them but my crew.

  After all, humans—even frozen ones—were a liability. And they weren’t worth squat on the black market. Not soldiers like Henricksen, anyway. But Finlay, the other female crew…Serengeti shuddered, remembering stories of colony ships stolen—raided as they transited the stars. Colonists sold into slavery. And worse.

  No, she thought, anger building inside her. I won’t let that happen. I won’t let those scavengers lay one finger on my crew.

  But how to protect them? They couldn’t run. Couldn’t jump away to safety. Which meant the only option left was to stand and fight.

  “Fight.” Serengeti laughed bitterly. “With what? My guns are silent, my crew all gone.” She had Tig and Tilli but they were just two, and hardly fighters at all.

  How? she wondered, thinking of Henricksen frozen below, wishing he was here. How do I stop them? What do I do?

  Henricksen would know. He was nothing if not inventive. Reckless at times. Bold and confident, almost to a fault. But then, he was a Valkyrie captain, and that sort of came with the territory. If Henricksen were here, he’d come up with some half-baked, outlandish idea that only someone desperate or crazy would even think to attempt.

  Henricksen. I could use your boldness right now.

  Serengeti’s designers hadn’t programmed in outlandish and crazy. And inventiveness only went so far.

  Her gaze drifted, taking in the holes and tears, the shredded mess Osage’s destruction had left. They’d board her through those gaps—an uncertain path, to be sure, filled with gaps and pitfalls leading down and down and down into the dark, but quicker, easier than to trying to pry one of her cargo bays or airlocks open. She could trap them there she supposed. Lure the scavenger ship’s boarding party to one of
the gaps and booby trap it to prevent them getting inside.

  But even if that worked—and that was a big ‘if’—they’d only send more people over. A crippled Valkyrie was too tempting of a target for a scavenger ship to give up just because they lost a few crew.

  “Something else. I’ve got to come up with something else.”

  Tig beeped in question as Tilli danced nervously beside him. Serengeti shushed them both and kept looking. Kept thinking, trying to bypass AI logic and come at things from Henricksen’s view. To devise some crazy, improvised plan that just might get them out of this mess.

  She turned Tig’s head a bit further and stopped, staring through his eyes at the lumpen shapes of batteries protruding from her side. Batteries gone silent now—their last shots fired when Osage exploded and Serengeti raced into jump. Silent, but the last she remembered, the firing system behind those guns still worked.

  “They just need power.”

  Serengeti had that, though admittedly in short supply. Enough to charge one, perhaps two of those batteries for a short time. But even if her aim was true, it would take more than a few shots to scare that approaching ship off for good.

  Show my teeth—broken as they are—and I may scare it off. But if it comes back, it’ll all be over.

  “Then I’ll just have to make sure it doesn’t,” she murmured, considering those guns, thinking of the munitions inside her.

  Guns and ammunition and a scavenger ship on approach. What was that saying Henricksen had? Something about necessity being the kickass, kill ‘em all mother of invention?

  “Necessity I’ve got in spades, and as for invention…” Serengeti smiled to herself as the seeds of a preposterous, Henricksen-worthy plan took root. “It’s a doozy, but it could work. Or I might blow us all to kingdom come.”

  Tig burbled worriedly. He most definitely did not like the idea of being blown up.

  “I said ‘or’, Tig. It’s not like I want to blow us up.”

  Oddly, that didn’t seem to make Tig feel any better. Nor Tilli either. They huddled together, legs entwined, face lights flittering in anxious patterns.

  Tig started to ask questions but Serengeti quieted him with a touch at his brain. “A moment, Tig. I’m thinking.”

  So many details to be considered, so many places for things to go wrong. Her AI mind calculated madly, considering her options, filling in gaps and details, adding flesh to the bare bones framework of her plan.

  It’s risky—hugely risky. But riskier still to do nothing at all, Serengeti acknowledged that. Henricksen would chance it, she told herself. Henricksen who was human and reckless. Who never factored in the odds of failure, because failure simply wasn’t an option he accepted. I can’t believe I’m even considering this.

  Henricksen would be so proud.

  Tig coughed to get her attention.

  Serengeti sighed, irritated by the interruption. “What, Tig?” she asked shortly.

  “The ship?” He pointed to one side as Tilli danced beside him, metal legs moving up and down, face lights blinking and swirling in urgent, worried patterns.

  “I know.” Serengeti glanced at the stars, calculating the distance to that slow approaching twinkle, guessing how long it would take a ship under power to cross it. “I know what we need to do,” she said firmly. “Back inside, Tig. Quickly now. You and Tilli both.” She sent a tiny shock of electricity through the robot’s body to get him going. “Hurry, Tig, hurry! We don’t have much time.”

  Tig took off like a shot but Tilli hesitated, dancing in an uncertain circle beneath the communications tower before abandoning it and scurrying after Tig and Serengeti.

  “So what’s the plan?” Tig asked.

  “You’re not going to like it,” Serengeti warned.

  “When do I ever?”

  Serengeti laughed—she couldn’t help it, Tig sounded so much like Henricksen in that moment—and then filled them both in, making Tig and Tilli complicit in her chancy, all or nothing, last-stand plan.

  #

  Tig rolled through the hill and into the ship’s icy-cold corridors, following Serengeti’s instructions as he headed for the nearest ladderway and went down and down and down, all the way to Level 9. Level 9 and the hallway from Serengeti’s nightmares.

  “Stop,” Serengeti said softly, touching at Tig’s brain.

  Tig rolled to a halt, beeping uncertainly, wondering at the delay.

  Why? Serengeti wondered, staring down that blackened hallway with its half-melted robots sticking up from the floor. A dozen different ways we could have gone, so why did I send them here? Why do I keep coming back to this corridor? This corridor and no other?

  Tig fidgeted, dancing in place. “There’s not much time, Serengeti. We should really get going.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course,” she murmured.

  Tilli crept forward and Tig followed, legs tippy-tapping against the deck plates as the two robots picked their way through the melted robots and continued on. They turned right at the next crossing and ducked down a side corridor, leaving that place of nightmares mercifully behind. More corridors, more twists and turns, Tig and Tilli dodging this way and that until they rounded a corner and found the way ahead blocked—roof caved-in, walls collapsed, loose cables dangling from the ceiling. And scattered across the floor, dozens upon dozens of unstable plasma rounds.

  This too Serengeti remembered. She’d turned Henricksen and Finlay away from this corridor to save their lives. Now she brought Tig and Tilli here in the hopes she could save those lives again.

  “Munitions storage.” Serengeti pointed at a half-collapsed doorway to one side. “There should be a cart, or sling—something we can use to transport the shells.”

  Tilli scrambled inside, stepping carefully over the loose rounds in the hallway, easing her way through the sagging doorway. Serengeti watched her from the hall, staring through Tig’s eyes as Tilli picked through the debris inside the munitions storage room, retrieving two hammock-shaped nets from an emergency locker on one wall and holding them up.

  During combat, they relied on an automated feeder system to shuck the ammunition from the storage areas scattered across the ship to the turret guns nearby. But humans, being humans, always insisted on a backup—a manual mode of transportation should the ship’s loading system fail. Serengeti used to scoff at the idea. After all, a ship flew or didn’t—‘manual’ wasn’t a consideration. She never imagined a scenario where she’d appreciate something as archaic as those hammock-shaped slings. Never imagined she’d need a way to manually schlep plasma rounds from her innards to her guns.

  “Good. Bring them,” Serengeti ordered.

  Tig stepped backward, making room for Tilli as she worked her way back into the hall, handing one of the hammock nets to Tig, keeping the other for herself. Strong, those nets. Woven from braided lengths of a carbon and aluminum mixture, reinforced with titanium and steel. The same mixture used for decking and hull plating, for components all over her ship’s body, making her lightweight but durable, able to move quickly and yet still resist a sustained barrage of fire. Strong and flexible, when braided like this. Able to carry ten times the hundredweight of shells Tig and Tilli gathered up.

  Not that weight mattered right now. One bonus of being so beat up: With no atmosphere inside, and no artificial gravity to weigh things down, moving heavy objects became far less tricky.

  “Whole shells only,” Serengeti warned, as Tilli reached for a round with a long crack down its side. “Too risky trying to use the damaged ones.”

  A trickle of plasma leaked through that seam, staining the deck plates a noxious green. Others around them had drained entirely, voiding their innards across the floor, pitting metal decking, leaving a blackened crust behind.

  “Make sure you don’t grab any empties either.”

  Tilli nodded and moved on, filling her sling with a dozen good shells before squatting down on her tank treads and hoisting the load onto her back, using the legs on either si
de of her body to keep the balky load in place. She waited until Tig was ready—bulging sling perched precariously on his back, slipping to this side and that despite the legs that held it—and then worked her way back the way they’d come.

  The trip back was nothing like the frantic rush that brought them to the munitions storage, nor the cheerful zip-zip-zip of the robots’ usual mode of transportation. Instead, they made a slow, methodical slog back to the nearest ladderway, hampered by the awkward loads the robots carried, bulging, ammunition-filled slings slipping and sliding and trying to get away. Tig and Tilli debated a moment when they reached the ladder and then decided to leave one sling at the bottom and carry the other up between the two of them—Tilli pushing from behind while Tig pulled from above. And when they reached the top—the very last level, riding just beneath the hull—they set the loaded sling down and went back for the other.

  A quick stop to readjust loads and Tig and Tilli took off, rolling down one hallway and another until they reached the outer corridor that ran along Serengeti’s side, and a gaping rent close by the port side Number 13 Cannon.

  The robots emptied the slings there, removing the plasma shells one at a time, wedging them in among the debris so they wouldn’t roll around or drift away. And then it was back down to the munitions storage to fill back up again, making two trips in quick succession, adding more rounds to the stockpile just inside the hull.

  Serengeti studied the pile of shells a moment, wondering if they shouldn’t get more. Most of them would go into the Number 13 Cannon while the rest…well, she had plans for the rest. One gun wasn’t really enough to destroy a starship after all.

  Speaking of which…

  Serengeti prodded Tig forward and took a quick look outside. The scavenger ship was definitely closer—still far out, little more than a distant, twinkling light, but larger, brighter than before. “Slow down, you bastard. I’m not ready yet. You come for tea, you give the lady some time to get the kettle on.” She glared a moment longer and then spun Tig back around. “Engineering,” she ordered, pointing at Tilli, waving her ahead.