Serengati 2: Dark And Stars

by J. B. Rockwell

  “See. Told ya. Blind as a bat,” Henricksen said—voice hushed, eyes locked on the ships outside. “Bastard has no idea—”

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Brutus crooned, laughing again. A horrid, creeping sound.

  Crew shifted—nervous, worried, conscious of the Bastion’s eyes. Aoki stared, frozen at her station. Finlay kept turning around, sneaking glances over her shoulder, as if expecting Henricksen to have all the answers. Even Samara, normally so calm, cool and collected, looked a bit rattled now. In fact, the only one who didn’t seem to give a shit was Bosch, who just methodically worked his way through the Artillery station’s targeting system. Checking and double-checking and triple checking everything to make sure it was in working order.

  “Henricksen,” Serengeti called.

  “I see it,” he said softly, glancing sidelong at the camera. He shrugged his shoulders, wincing a bit, folded his arms and took a long look around the bridge. “We’re alright,” he told them. “Brutus knows something’s out here, but he doesn’t know what, and he doesn’t know where. Help is on the way.” A quick look at the camera, tiny frown of worry. “So we just sit here all quiet-like until—”

  “Here I come to save the day!”

  Shriek emerged from the Pandoran Cloud singing—belting out those words at the top of his lungs.

  A jumbled collection of ships followed behind him—Titans and Auroras, Scimitars and Sunstorms, even another one of those damned Aphelions Serengeti could’ve sworn had been discontinued.

  “I found your ships, lady.” Sounded immensely proud about that too. “Now how’s about—”

  “Ah. There you are,” Brutus droned, targeting systems latching onto the stealth ship. The makeshift fleet behind him. “Bye-bye.” The Bastion fired everything he had—every last weapon on him, including that coiled particle array Sechura had warned them about.

  “Crap-crap-crap!” Shriek hauled over, slewing hard to one side. Dodged the twin beams from Brutus’s fancy new gun, screaming “Fire! Fire! Fire!” at the salvaged ships with him.

  “No! Wait!” Henricksen yelled, but it was already too late. Weapons charged, energy signatures building, and then Sechura’s salvaged ships unloaded. All of them in unison, including the elongated Aphelion—a ship that just happened to be a little too close to Serengeti for Henricksen’s comfort. “Evasive maneuvers!” he screamed as a crackling blue orb shot away from the Aphelion’s nose.

  Aoki stared a moment, eyes wide with disbelief. Unlocked when Finlay slugged her on the arm and hit the thrusters, everyone grabbing at panels and holding on tight as Serengeti hauled over, turning hard to starboard.

  The Aphelion’s round shot past—a sparking blue ball of electricity that skimmed along Serengeti’s hull, charge arcing wildly as it kissed the photovoltaic panels.

  Glancing blow, thankfully. Not enough to do any real damage. Just enough to overload the makeshift hardware powering the modified shimmer shield, though. Killing the system dead.

  Henricksen punched the panel in front of him. “Great. Just fucking great. Lost the damn camouflage.” He slapped at comms, opening a line to the stealth ship and his entourage. “Shriek! The rest of you, whoever you are. Get your asses up here before one of you accidentally blows a hole in Serengeti’s backside.”

  “Working on it!” Shriek jogged to one side, cloaking quickly, leaving just the wake from his engines to mark his location. The rest of the ships put on a burst of speed, fanning out around Serengeti as she moved forward, putting some distance between herself and the Cloud.

  Dangerous staying there. Couldn’t risk an unexpected solar flare messing up her targeting systems at an inopportune time.

  “Bosch,” Henricksen called. “Cover’s blown so you might as well fire up the Artillery systems and have at it. We’ve got the biggest gun in this sad excuse for a fleet, so you and the Aphelion there focus on Brutus and his damned coiled particle array while the rest of those scrap ships Shriek found deal with the Dreadnoughts and Titans.”

  “Forget the Titans,” Serengeti told him.

  Henricksen looked up, frowning. “You sure? They’re small and all but—”

  “They won’t be a problem. I’ll make sure of that.”

  The Titans were already drifting to the back of the pack—low on firepower, smart enough to leave the rough stuff to Brutus and his bruisers.

  Stay out of this, Serengeti sent, and then waited, receiving an acknowledgement several seconds later that came through on an encrypted channel.

  Titans slowed, drifting backward. Letting the battle move away from them while they tarried at the back.

  Henricksen looked up at the camera, tipped an invisible cap.

  “Bosch,” Serengeti called. “Giving you a little extra firepower.” She slaved the ancillary batteries on the bow to Bosch’s Artillery pod, keeping the rest of the weapons for herself.

  “Oh yeah. Now we’re talkin’.” Bosch toggled the settings on his targeting visor, gripped the two firing sticks tightly and opened up, pouring plasma rounds at the stars.

  “So,” Shriek said casually, wings waggling as he came alongside. “That who I think it is out there?”

  “Brutus himself,” Henricksen nodded. “In all his magnificent ugliness.” He lurched to one side, grabbing at panels as railgun fire scored across Serengeti’s nose. “Dammit! Where the hell are those Valkyries?”

  “One minute out,” Serengeti told him, and then scanned the ship’s signatures around her, trying to figure out who they had on their side.

  That was Negev—her Valkyrie Sister—in the Aphelion chassis, complaining bitterly about being shoved into that ancient relic. Wanderer and Nomad—two Titans who’d somehow ended up in Aurora chassis—Sprite and Spirit similarly displaced, the two Auroras now currently piloting Scimitars.

  The same pattern repeated again and again: AIs meant for one class of ship now forced into another. Figuring out their new chassis on the fly.

  “Salvaged ships driven by a bunch of mismatched AIs.” Henricksen grunted, stumbling for balance as a plasma cannon punched hard at Serengeti’s nose. “Not exactly the best way to go into battle.”

  “Not like we’ve got a lot of options.”

  Not anymore. Not once Shriek gave their position away.

  Henricksen looked up at her, opened his mouth.

  “Incoming!” Finlay yelled, and ducked down, holding tight to her panel as weapons’ fire lit up the windows.

  Bosch poured out more rounds, pounding away at the coiled particle array mounted above Brutus’s bridge pod. Shots hit, denting the Bastion’s hull plating, tearing chunks of his skin away, but that big gun stubbornly resisted. Kept blasting away behind its layers upon layers of armored plating.

  “Fuck!” he cried, redoubling his efforts, calling across the channel to Negev to coordinate their fire.

  The Aphelion’s nose gun activated, charge building, sliding downward along that protruding spike of metal before leaping away—a crackling blue orb speeding angrily across space. It plowed through ships, doing a hell of a lot of damaged, but—critically—missing Brutus by a mile.

  Hurried shot—released too far out, and without the benefit of a targeting system. Made a good show of herself, though. Split the difference between two Dreadnoughts, tearing the sides off of both.

  “Forgot how nasty that thing is.” Henricksen tracked the Aphelion’s missile, watching it move away. Energy dissipating as it disappeared into space. A flick of his eyes to Serengeti’s camera. “‘Course, it’s not really all that useful if Negev can’t figure out how to actually hit anything with it.”

  “Fuck you, bonzo,” Negev yelled back, charging the gun again. She swore at, spitting curses while she waited for the next round to be ready—three minutes between each shot, an eternity in AI time.

  “Cut her some slack,” Serengeti told him. “New chassis can be a bitch to figure out. Especially something as old as that.”

  Henricksen grunted, turning to Sc
an. “So we’ve got an Aphelion. How many other ships have we got with us, Finlay?”

  “Looks like…” Finlay bent over her panel, lips moving as she tallied up the ships around them. “Forty-eight. Plus us and the five Ravens.” She glanced up at the windows as a Sunstorm exploded, plasma fire from one of the Dreadnoughts ripping its bow wide open. “Make that forty-seven,” she said, sneaking an embarrassed look over her shoulder.

  A second Sunstorm went down—direct hit, sending it drifting off line.

  “Forty-six.” Finlay shrugged helplessly.

  “Forty-six mix and match ships against fifty-three Fleet battle cruisers.” Henricksen grunted, shaking his head. “Outgunned and outnumbered. Ain’t this a bitch.”

  “We’re screwed,” Aoki breathed as a Dreadnought cut a Titan in half. “We’re so screwed.”

  Thirty-Three

  Railgun fire from Jotunn tracked across Serengeti’s nose. Sparks erupting, bright spots of color skittering like wildfire across her hull plating before snuffing out in the dark.

  “Hard to starboard,” Henricksen ordered. “Get us out of that Dreadnought’s line of fire.”

  Aoki hauled the ship over, railgun fire chasing them, rattling along Serengeti’s side until she finally got clear.

  “Bosch!” Henricksen called. “Status of that coiled particle array.”

  A flare of light—yellow-orange like fire—as the weapon in question came to life, twin beams targeting Wanderer, carving off a piece of his tail.

  “Dammit, Bosch!”

  “I’m trying,” Bosch yelled, cursing roundly, gimbaled pod pivoting as he targeted the Bastion’s main gun. “Goddamn Dreadnoughts keep getting in my goddamn way.” He squeezed the triggers, throwing a long line of fire at Jotunn that caught the Dreadnought in the side, opening a breach in his rear quarter.

  A puff of smoke—atmospherics venting in a dense, white cloud—and the Dreadnought dropped back, systems failing, initiating emergency repairs on the fly.

  “That’s right,” Bosch growled. “You just stay back there, you bastard.”

  “Bosch! Focus!” Henricksen snapped.

  “On it, on it, on it.” Bosch pivoted, repositioning. Lining up his targeting array with Brutus’s coiled particle weapon as it carved off another piece of Wanderer’s chassis.

  Sechura was right. That weapon was a bitch. One touch and it sliced through Wanderer’s hull like a hot knife through butter. The Scimitar dodged and weaved, desperately trying to shake it, but the coiled particle array’s twin beams followed it everywhere, taking the ship apart in bits and pieces.

  “You’re wasting your time, you know,” Shriek’s voice called from the darkness.

  He’d been noticeably quiet since the battle started. Hiding behind the safety of his camouflage. He and the rest of his Raven buddies drifting on the edge of the battle, keeping tabs on things from a safe distance.

  Stealth ships, after all. Not meant for combat. Heroics weren’t really built into their mindset.

  “We’re screwed, Henricksen. Outgunned and outnumbered. Smartest thing we could do is get the hell out of here.”

  “Well aren’t you just a ray of sunshine,” Henricksen growled.

  “Just tellin’ it like it is, buddy.” Shriek sounded entirely unapologetic. “It’s suicide staying here. Serengeti’s got that whopping big cannon of hers, and the Aphelion’s no slouch, but the rest of these ships are one step up from scrap.”

  “Hey!” Negev objected. “I’m starting to like this piece of scrap.”

  “Like I said, your scrap ain’t half bad. Rest of ‘em don’t even come close to matching the firepower Brutus and his crew have to offer.”

  Negev fired off another round, disappearing from comms.

  Henricksen stared at the windows a while, watching the battle outside play out. “Take off if you want, Shriek. But we ain’t runnin’.” A nod to Serengeti’s camera and he cut the comms, looked over to Scan. “Finlay. Give me status—”

  Perimeter alarms cut in, klaxons sounding all across the bridge. The schematic on the front window shifted as new information appeared: dozens of hyperspace buckles forming, coming in less than five thousand kilometers off Serengeti’s starboard side.

  Henricksen leaned forward, staring hard at the new data. “Please tell me that’s our reinforcements.”

  Finlay worked frantically at her panel, pulling up every data feed at her disposal. “Ships inbound.” She scanned the information on the screen in front of her, hands gripping the edges to hold her in her seat as the ship rocked and rolled around her.

  “I can see they’re inbound, Finlay,” Henricksen growled. “What I wanna know is if they’re friend or foe.”

  Finlay shook her head hard, eyes never leaving the panel.

  “Finlay!”

  “Valkyries!” she called, whooping with joy. “Valkyries at three o’clock, five kilometers out.”

  Cheers erupted, filtering across comms, the ships around them celebrating as the first of the Valkyries slid free from the buckle’s darkness, sleek sides sparkling with blood-red droplets, photovoltaic panels reflecting the Eddington hypergiant’s crimson light.

  A dozen more followed after her, another dozen after that. Lights flashed everywhere as ships dropped out of jump. Nearly a hundred Valkyries—every last one Atacama could get her hands on—converging on that section of space outside the Pandoran Cloud. Coming in at an oblique angle with their guns blazing, strafing across Brutus and his collection of ships.

  Names and call signs cluttering up Serengeti’s displays, flooding Scan with information. She pored through the data, searching for Atacama, found her right at the center of it all—she and Marianas and Antigone cruising together.

  Just like old times. Got the old gang back together again just in time for everything to come apart.

  Took you long enough, Serengeti sent. Direct message, text only to Atacama.

  Sorry we’re late. Atacama fired a volley of plasma missiles at crippled Jotunn, finishing the Dreadnought off. See you started the party without us. Care to join forces?

  Absolutely.

  Serengeti opened a channel, jumping it through Shriek to speak to the ships he’d liberated from the Cloud. “Spread out. Link up with the Valkyries.”

  She moved forward, taking the lead, watching through her hull cameras as Negev and the other salvaged ships shucked around, fanning wide on either side. Atacama’s Valkyries formed up on them—a triple layer of sparkling vessels that merged with Serengeti’s comparatively tiny fleet. The lot of them circling around Brutus and his Dreadnoughts, covering them from just about every angle.

  “Heh-heh-heh. Finally got ‘em outnumbered.” Shriek actually sounded cheery, despite all the weapons being lobbed around. And then Wanderer exploded—Brutus’s coiled particle array finally catching up with him—and the cheer went right out of the Raven. “Shit! Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit!”

  Shrapnel from Wanderer peppered Serengeti’s flank, sprayed across the ships beside her. Brutus cut the particle array for a few seconds, reoriented, and fired it back up again, turning its twin beams on Nomad, chasing Wanderer’s partner across the stars.

  Scylla slid in beside him, targeting Ruby Road, pounding away at the Aurora until her starboard side caved in.

  Serengeti stared, hating. They had history, she and Scylla, and none of it good.

  She targeted the Dreadnought with her port side batteries, pouring out plasma fire that ate away at Scylla’s side. Kept firing as holes appeared, compartments venting, everything coming undone.

  “Bosch!” Henricksen yelled.

  “It wasn’t me!” the gunner objected as Scylla rolled over hard, slipping away. “I control the forward guns, see?” He spat a barrage of plasma fire at Cormoran and Caliban to prove it. “Port side’s Serengeti. You wanna blame someone, blame her.”

  Henricksen slid his eyes to the camera. “Thought we agreed Brutus was the priority.”

  “Yeah, well. I hate that bitch.”r />
  Henricksen grunted, eyes snapping back to the front windows. Curses falling from his lips as Nomad went under—carved neatly in two by Brutus’s big weapon. “Bosch!”

  “Whaddaya want me to do?” Bosch demanded. “Dreadnoughts are blocking him. I got two big-ass ships right in the way.” He pivoted one way and the other, trying to sneak shots around Cormoran and Caliban, but more ships slid in—Charybdis and Bannik, Kikimora and Menehune.

  The Dreadnoughts circled in tight, forming a protective wall around Brutus. The Bastion firing through them—carving chunks from his own ships as he aimed and fired, turning that coiled particle array on the Valkyries now.

  Ships peeled open, hull plating splitting beneath those beams of yellow-orange light. Henricksen flinched as Maatsuyker vented—a puff of air followed by a cloud of fire before the Valkyrie went dark. “That gun’s a monster,” he said, face grim now. Pale as death.

  “Can’t get it either.” Serengeti tried herself, with no better luck than Bosch—too many ships. Too much traffic in the way.

  A flare of cobalt light cleared out some of it—another of Negev’s missiles carving a path through to Brutus, missing by a hair’s breadth this time—but the Dreadnoughts closed in again as the sparking orb wobbled past. Turned their guns on the Aphelion for good measure, forcing her to dodge and weave, jogging path moving her precariously close to Serengeti’s position.

  “Watch it-watch it-watch it!” Henricksen warned.

  “Shit!” Aoki slapped at panels, slipping Serengeti to one side. Squeaked by the Aphelion as her forced ion cannon unloaded, throwing another pot-shot at Brutus. “Awful busy around here,” she yelled.

  “Yeah-yeah. Tryin’ to do something’ about that.” Henricksen clung to the panel in front of him as the ship shuddered and shook. “Shriek,” he called, keying a channel to the Ravens. “You still out there?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Need another favor.”

  Shriek sighed. “What now?”

  “Brutus’s particle array is tearin’ holy hell out of us. You think you and your boys can sneak in there and do something about it?”