Serengati 2: Dark And Stars

by J. B. Rockwell

  Taking the long way each time to cover their trail: propulsion engines to the shipping lanes, jump from there to the station, jump back and use the propulsion engines to return to the ass-end of nowhere where Serengeti and the other Ravens waited.

  Two weeks of that—a long time to sit around with essentially nothing to do. Plenty of time for a bored captain to stitch together a new uniform from scratch. Except, the last time she checked, Henricksen didn’t know how to sew. Couldn’t even fix a loose button as far as she knew.

  “You had the TSGs help you, didn’t you?” Serengeti accused.

  “Nope. Well, okay. A little. Bosch is a big boy, after all. Had the TSGs cut a bit here and trim a little there so it didn’t look like I was wearing a damned clown suit around.”

  “Bosch,” Serengeti repeated. “So that’s one of Sechura’s uniforms?”

  “Uh-huh. Turns out they’re reversible. Not half ugly on the inside. Patch wasn’t right, of course.” Henricksen turned a bit, touching a finger to the patch on his shoulder: a human form in miniature suspended inside a glass bottle. “I had the TSGs whip up a few counterfeits so we’d look the part. Can’t have us going around telling everyone we’re Homunculus crew and still wear Sechura’s patch. Details,” he said, tapping a finger to his nose. “You always gotta pay attention to the details.”

  Serengeti smiled inwardly. “More pithy words of wisdom from the eminent Captain Henricksen.”

  “Thought it was sagacious?”

  “That, too.”

  Henricksen smiled ruefully, eyes flicking from the camera to the stars outside. “More like lessons learned from a guy who fucked up a whole lotta things in his life and doesn’t particularly want to fuck this one up as well.” He touched at the scar on his face. Dropped his voice, brow wrinkling with worry. “Whole lotta things could go wrong with this, Serengeti. You sure—”

  “No,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure. And if I said I was, you’d call me a liar.”

  “Probably right.” He turned away and stared through the windows—quiet now, but no less worried. She read that in the set of his shoulders. The lines of his face.

  “Atacama’s in place.”

  He stiffened, hands clenching at his sides.

  “Everything’s ready,” Serengeti said quietly. “We do this now, or we don’t do it all.”

  Henricksen looked at her. Sucked in a breath and blew it back out. “Yeah,” he said, nodding, looking at over Scan.

  Scowled like a thunderhead when he caught Finlay looking at him. Giggling like schoolgirl as she whispered something in Aoki’s ear.

  “There a problem, Finlay?”

  “Yes, sir. I mean no, sir.” Finlay snickered. “You just look kinda silly is all.”

  Henricksen glanced down at himself, adjusting his gun belt yet again. “Not my fault this generation’s into god-awful uniforms.”

  “Hey!” Bosch leaned out of the Artillery pod. “Watch what you’re calling ugly!”

  “Spade’s a spade, Bosch. And these uniforms sure ain’t pretty.” Henricksen wrinkled his nose, picking at a knot of gold thread. “Blue’s better than that shiny silver shit you guys usually wear, but still…” He turned his hand over, eyeing the gold braid circling his jacket’s cuff with distaste. “Gaudy as all get-out. Gimme Serengeti’s black-on-black any day.”

  “Damn straight.” Finlay tugged at the dark lapels of her uniform jacket, chin lifting proudly. Caught a glimpse of Henricksen in his spiffy blue-and-gold outfit and she lost it. Started giggling all over again. “Sorry, sir.” Finlay wiped tears from her eyes, shoulders hitching. “It’s just—It’s just—You look like the leader of a marching band!”

  Finlay burst out laughing, clutching at her belly as she fell out of her chair. Rolled around on the floor in fits of giggles while Henricksen glowered from the Command Post, looking anything but amused.

  “Like my new uniform, do you?”

  Finlay laughed harder, curling up in a ball.

  A glance at the camera and Henricksen stepped down from the Command Post, sauntering over to Scan. Stopped there and smiled down at Finlay as she giggled and wiped tears from her face. “Off the floor, Finlay. Deck’s no place for an officer.”

  “Yes, sir.” She sucked in a breath to still the last of her laughter, staggered to her feet with a toothy grin stretching across her freckled face.

  “I’m glad you like my new uniform. Real glad,” he added when Finlay started losing it again. “Know why?”

  Finlay shook her head—eyes bulging, shoulders shaking with barely suppressed laughter.

  Henricksen leaned forward, smile curving his lips. “‘Cause I got another made just for you, Finlay. One just. Like. This.”

  Finlay paled, smile slipping from her face. “But—But I like this one,” she whimpered, clutching at her dark on dark jacket.

  “Too bad.” Henricksen’s face turned stony, smile disappearing. “You wanna come with me to Faraday, you gotta dress the part. Which means wearing this stupid-ass uniform so no one gives you a second look.”

  “But I—” Finlay froze, mouth hanging open, eyes gone round as dinner plates. “Go with you? I’m—I’m going with you to Faraday?”

  Henricksen shrugged his shoulders, acting all casual. “Thought had occurred to me. Captain can’t show up with a load of AIs for archiving without a proper escort, after all. ‘Course, if you don’t want to—”

  “I want! I want!” Finlay bounced up and down, clapping her hands. “Do I get a gun?”

  “You’re my escort, Finlay. Gotta have a gun.”

  “Aw, hell yeah!” Finlay pumped her fist, slapped Aoki a high-five.

  Henricksen smiled, letting her have her moment. Checked the time and decided to shut it down. “Alright, people.” He raised his voice, looking around. “You’ve all had a good laugh at my expense. Some more than others.” He shot an accusatory look at Finlay, shaking his head at her entirely unapologetic smile. “Now it’s time to focus, and get serious. Faraday’s a Meridian Alliance station, but we’re not exactly going in under the most honest of circumstances.” He walked back to the Command Post and slipped into his Captain’s Chair, tapped at its panels, opening data windows on each of its six displays—one each for the bridge’s five stations, a mash-up window that brought all that information together. “You’ve got the jump coordinates, Samara?”

  “Aye, sir.” Samara pulled up the navigation data, threw the course and their destination up on the bridge’s windows. “Calculations are all set. We can jump whenever you’re ready.”

  “Right.” Henricksen nodded, opening a channel to the Ravens outside. “You and your boys got that, Shriek?”

  “Yes, Mother.” Shriek sounded annoyed. “Believe it or not, we actually can follow a star chart without getting lost.”

  “Smartass,” Henricksen muttered. “Alright, Aoki. Fire up the hyperspace engines. Jump clock to the front window. Shriek—”

  “Yeah, yeah. We’re on it.” Shriek cut the comms and moved ahead of Serengeti, taking the other Ravens with him. They formed a ring in front of her, shielding her with their cloaking devices as a buckle formed, darkness swirling as it expanded.

  “Three. Two. One. Burn.” Aoki hit the engines, shoving Serengeti forward.

  The Ravens moved with her, maintaining their distance from Serengeti’s nose. They synchronized their speed, matching the output from their engines, and then all of them—Serengeti and Shriek, Swift, and Sharp and Snicker-snack—approached the hyperspace buckle together.

  Mass jump, to hide the Ravens’ engines. So no one would know anyone but Serengeti was there.

  Mass jump again. Serengeti sighed, consulting the clock, watching it tick down. When did I become so reckless?

  Her nose touched the leading edge of the buckle and it wrapped around her, sucking Serengeti in. Normal space disappeared as the jump trough slipped around her—a place of cold and calm and infinite silence.

  Thirty seconds—just thirty seconds of normal
time to move from their far out location in deep space to the drop point at the edge of Faraday’s security perimeter. But in hyperspace—for her at least, she’d never asked other AIs if they experienced the same thing—those thirty seconds felt like days. Weeks. Months of nothing but peace and tranquility. Nothing to do but watch the stars slide by.

  The jump clock hit zero, and Serengeti’s hyperspace drives wound down, dropping her out of the trough. Scan kicked in as normal space materialized around her—sensors drinking in every bit of data they could find.

  “Talk to me, Finlay,” Henricksen called from his Command Post.

  “Gimme a minute.” Finlay bowed her head, working furiously at her station, swapping one data window for another as she cycled through the information the sensors sent back. “Clear! We’re clear, sir. Nothing out of the ordinary. No other ships showing in the area.” She raised her head, nodding to the display on the front windows. “Just Faraday and us, sir. And our little friends, of course.”

  “Watch who you’re calling ‘little,’ pipsqueak,” Shriek warned.

  “Eep.” Finlay’s cheeks colored. She shrugged her shoulders, throwing an apologetic look Henricksen’s way. “Sorry, sir. Didn’t know they were listening. Someone didn’t tell me comms was open,” she added, giving Delacroix a good glare.

  “Someone should check before they start flapping their gums,” Delacroix murmured in his distracted, dreaming voice.

  Not such a moonbeam after all. Apparently, there was some kind of normal brain function going on behind that visor.

  Finlay scowled, twisting in her seat. “And just why would I—?”

  “Cram it!” Henricksen snapped, fist slamming against a panel. “Last thing I need right now is a bunch of snide comments and bickering. You shut it down—the both of you,” he added, looking from Delacroix to Finlay, “or you get the hell off my bridge.”

  Finlay glared a moment longer, huffed loudly, and turned back to her station, hunching over the panels.

  Delacroix…well, Delacroix kept being Delacroix. But he stopped talking, so that was an improvement.

  “Good,” Henricksen grunted. “Anyone else got a beef?” he asked, looking around the bridge.

  The crew ducked their heads, wisely avoiding his eyes.

  “Even better. You got that bastard ready?” he asked, looking up at a camera.

  “And waiting,” Serengeti told him, waking their captive AI. As a precaution, she checked the security seals on Homunculus’s prison, found him wandering around the edges, testing her defenses. “He’s contained, but I’ll need to crack the security seal so we can squawk his credentials to the station.”

  “That really a good idea?” Henricksen frowned.

  “I’ve got several layers of firewalls in place,” she assured him. “He won’t get out.”

  “Better not,” Henricksen muttered. “Last thing we need is a pissed off, raggedy-ass AI running amok on your network.”

  “Have a little faith, Henricksen,” Serengeti chided.

  “Faith I got.” Henricksen stuck out his chin, folded his arms over his chest. “Also got a healthy dose of concern about one super-powered AI toting around another who severely doesn’t like his current situation.”

  “If it comes down to a wrestling match, I’m pretty sure I’ll win.”

  “You better,” Henricksen grunted, pointing a finger at the camera. “Delacroix,” he called, eyes flicking to Comms.

  Delacroix’s head wobbled around, dead eyes staring sightless from behind his visor. “Sir?” he said faintly.

  “I’m counting on you to help her.” A nod to the nearest camera, eyes locked onto Delacroix’s face. “Serengeti’s gonna have her hands full maintaining a strangle hold on Homunculus while her consciousness is split between the ship and the station. Shriek and his boys’ll hang back all cloaked and silent, doing what stealth ships do best—”

  Watching and listening, jamming any transmissions that might cause them trouble.

  “—but you, Delacroix, need to do two things.” Henricksen flipped up a finger. “One. Keep your ear to our comms.” He tapped the tiny communications device plugged into his ear. “Two.” A second finger lifted, joining the first. “Keep your eyes, or your brain, or whatever the hell you use focused on our buddy Homunculus here. Serengeti woke him, and sure as shootin’ he’s gonna wanna start talkin’. He’s only got about half a brain left at this point, but he’s still Brutus’s boy.” A glance at Serengeti’s camera, worry showing in the wrinkling of his brow. “He gets access to the main comms grid, he won’t do us any favors. So you keep a tight rein on him.” A nod to the camera as he turned his eyes back to Comms. “You hear me, Delacroix. Think you can handle that?”

  “Aye, sir,” he said in his odd, distracted way. He flicked his wrists, fingers moving, plucking at invisible wires.

  Henricksen frowned doubtfully, eyes sliding to Serengeti’s camera. “Shoulda replaced him,” he said, mouthing the words.

  Serengeti flashed a message to the Command Post’s mash-up panel. “Too late now. No one else qualified on board even if it wasn’t.”

  Henricksen wiped the message, barking a bitter laugh. “You sure Atacama’s ready?”

  “We send word to her once we’re out, and she’ll pop the emergency beacon on that ship she’s captured. After that, we just wait for Brutus to arrive.”

  “If he arrives.” Henricksen chewed his lip, obviously not at all certain about that. “Ya know, I should be worried about this part of the plan.” He waved a hand at Faraday showing in the distance. “Pretty much insane what we’re about to do.” He started to say something else, changed his mind, and just shook his head.

  “She’ll do her part, Henricksen. Atacama will come through.”

  “She better.” Henricksen spared a hard look for the camera, straightened and scanned his eyes across the bridge, addressing the crew. “We’ll be squawking Homunculus’s credentials the whole way in and out. That puts him just a little too close to comms for my comfort.” A flick of his eyes to Serengeti’s camera. “Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do about that since we need those credentials for our cover. So it’s a shit sandwich either way and we all gotta take a big bite.”

  “Eww.” Aoki wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  “Shriek,” Henricksen called, ignoring Aoki’s comment. “I’m trusting you to watch our backs for a while.”

  “I suppose,” Shriek said, clearly put out. “Boring, though. Just sitting here while you guys get to have all the fun.”

  “Fun. Right,” Henricksen snorted, cutting the comms. He stared out the windows, considering the distortion ahead of them marking where the stealth ships hid.

  Doubtful look. As if second-guessing their decision to bring Shriek and the others along.

  “What’s that phrase?” Serengeti asked him. “Something about horses carrying gifts around in their mouths?”

  “They do that?” Aoki asked, eyes wide and round.

  “No,” Henricksen told her, rolling his eyes. “It’s just a figure of speech. And you look them in the—never mind,” he said, waving a hand. “Just take us in, Aoki. It’s time we got this thing started.”

  Aoki looked at him, and at Serengeti’s camera, shrugged her shoulders and faced around, scratching at her head. Fired up the main engines and pointed Serengeti toward the station, leaving Shriek and the other Ravens at the edge of Faraday’s security perimeter.

  On a whim, Serengeti activated her new shimmer shield, wrapping it around the long length of her body.

  “That the new tech?” Henricksen asked, spotting the telltale signs through the front windows, looking a question at the camera.

  “Mm-hmm. Made a few adjustments to the shimmer shield from Blue Horizon based on the design of the Ravens’ cloaking system. It won’t make us invisible, but it should confuse Faraday’s scanners and targeting systems. Make it difficult for them to lock onto us in case we need to exit in a hurry. Mask my outline,” she added, dropping he
r voice. “Make me look more like the Dreadnought I’m pretending to be.”

  “Just fly like an asshole,” Henricksen told her. “That’ll convince ‘em.”

  Serengeti laughed softly. “Not sure I can pull that off, but I can do this.” A touch at the prison inside her and Serengeti cracked the seal on Homunculus’s cage. A trickle of data slipped through—controlled, selected—streaming the Dreadnought’s credentials to Faraday as they came in on approach.

  The station picked up on her immediately, sucking in Serengeti’s false data, examining everything she threw out at the stars. Collected it all and packaged it up, feeding the sum total of her information to its central system for analysis and verification. Ran a few checks before sending a response back.

  Query from the station, demanding to know Serengeti’s last location. Wanting a copy of her ships logs for the last six months.

  “Log check? Seriously?” Henricksen looked indignant. “That’s what the Meridian Alliance has come to? Stations require six months’ worth of fucking information as a cross-check?”

  “Prison station, remember. Even Fleet ships aren’t automatically cleared to dock.”

  “Still.” Henricksen scowled at the windows, completely disgusted. “Ridiculous. Fucking ridiculous,” he muttered as Serengeti packaged up the requested data ready—most of it stolen, skimmed from Homunculus’s brain—and sent it over. Made a few adjustments before she sent it, swapping dates and locations around. Creating a false history of patrols and port visits stretching back six months and then some.

  More data than Faraday requested—a huge data package she triple-encrypted out of spite.

  Hope they choke on it, she thought, squirting the requested files out.

  A pause as Faraday received and decrypted, the station ominously silent on the line.

  Serengeti slid closer, the prison looming large in front of her, perimeter defenses active, guns targeting her elongated shape.

  A crackle of static and a voice finally, mercifully came through. “Homunculus, this is Faraday station. You are cleared to dock.”