Serengati 2: Dark And Stars

by J. B. Rockwell

Too many ships out there. Too many obstructions getting in the cameras’ way.

  “Sorry, sir.” Finlay shrugged apologetically, waving at the windows. “Best I can do. Hull cameras don’t have a clear line of sight.”

  Henricksen grunted, rubbing at his chin. Reached over and touched at a panel, opening ship-to-ship comms. “Shriek. You still out there?”

  “Yeah.”

  Suspicious voice. Grudging response from the stealth ship. What else was new?

  “Need eyes on the Citadel. Close up view of that big ring around his middle.”

  Silence for a moment, Shriek thinking the request over. “You do realize—”

  “That this whole situation is shit and we’re all likely to end up dead.” Henricksen grimaced. Threw an apologetic look at Serengeti’s camera. “Yeah, I got that. Now stop being a chicken shit little pansy and get your ass in there so we can so what’s going on.”

  “I hardly think—”

  “Just get in there, goddammit!”

  “Well, if you’re gonna be all pissy about it…” Shriek huffed loudly and closed the channel, cutting off comms.

  Presumably, that meant he was going to do what Henricksen had asked him, but with his shielding active, there was no way to tell. Serengeti searched for the stealth ship in the sea of chaos around her, but the weapons fire outside blanketed her sensors, turning Shriek’s energy signatures into just one of many. One of thousands assailing her sensors.

  A request to connect came through less than a minute after the Raven left them, and a quick scan confirmed it initiated from Shriek.

  She opened a port—anti-virals at the ready, firewalls securely in place—and allowed the video feed from Shriek to flow through. Studied the images for a few seconds to see what he’d brought her before shunting the feed to the front windows.

  Henricksen leaned forward, hands braced against the panels of the Command Post, drinking in everything the live feed had to show him. “There,” he said, pointing. “Can you zoom in a bit, Shriek? Give us a better look at that ring around Cerberus’s middle?”

  “Fly in, he says. Give us a better, look he says. You want I should just land while I’m at it?”

  “Forget it. Finlay.” Henricksen snapped his fingers, waving impatiently at Scan. “See what you can do from here, would ya?”

  “Aye, sir.” Finlay toggled the display, adjusting the video feed from her end.

  “Back off, lady. I am not your plaything.” Shriek kicked Finlay out, regaining control of his camera. Zoomed in tight and panned the lens across Cerberus’s center ring.

  “Stop,” Henricksen called, holding up a hand. “There. Right there.”

  The video feed froze, lens adjusting, focusing in on a narrow line of glowing green lights showing at the Citadel’s center. Indicators, or so Serengeti thought—didn’t remember ever seeing them before, but that’s what they looked like to her. And then the lights detached—green as grass and round like bubbles. Picked up speed, wobbling as they moved, swirling with emerald light. Launching themselves away from Cerberus, shooting like meteors through space.

  “What the hell is that?” Henricksen asked, throwing a sidelong look at the camera.

  “Not a clue,” Serengeti told him. “I’ve never seen anything—”

  A pulse from Cerberus and the orbs detonated, emitting waves of energy that washed over Brutus and his Dreadnoughts, engulfing Atacama and her Valkyries. Flooding across Serengeti and her ragged collection of second-hand ships.

  Serengeti gasped as that energy wave hit her, shivered as it clawed its way into her systems, disabling them in an instant, knocking everything offline. She blanked for five seconds—completely unconscious, unaware of being unconscious except for the chron marking the time—panicking in the nothingness that followed.

  Remembering the dream and darkness. All those long years alone.

  Not here. That’s not here. That was long ago.

  Systems rebooted, reinitializing in sequence—purposeful recovery, everything orderly and preprogrammed, practiced a thousand times. Serengeti let the routines run, tempted to quicken things, wanting information now-now-now, but forcing herself to be patient. Knowing from experience that rushing only made things that much worse.

  Life support came back, scan and its sensors next. Navigation, Engineering, internal and external Comms. Thirty seconds and all her systems reported in as operational—back online and ready to go.

  She keyed a camera, looking down on the bridge. Panned it around, searching for Henricksen at the Command Post.

  “What the hell happened?” he demanded, frowning darkly. “Where’d the hell’d you go?”

  “Reboot,” she told him. “Everything went out. That shockwave…must’ve been some kind of modified EMP. Took out everything. Knocked all my systems offline.”

  “You okay?” he asked, looking worried now. Increasingly concerned.

  “Think so. Everything seems to be up and operational again.”

  “Guns won’t fire.” Bosch squeezed the triggers to demonstrate—nothing, not one single shot from any of her cannons. He jiggled the control sticks, punching at buttons, toggling settings. Squeezed the triggers again with no better result. “See. Completely frozen up.”

  “Shouldn’t be.” Confused, Serengeti checked the Artillery system and found nothing wrong. “System shows active.”

  “Yeah, well, the guns still aren’t firing. I can move the pod around,” Bosch pivoted to prove it, “but that’s about it.”

  “Hold on.” Serengeti keyed into Artillery and found it locked, stubbornly refusing her codes. She rebooted and reinitialized the system, ran the test cycle and diagnostics, confirming all the weapons were operational, the system itself online.

  But she still couldn’t access her weapons. Couldn’t make any of her guns fire.

  “Fix it?” Henricksen asked hopefully.

  “No. The weapons system is active, but I can’t get in. We’ve got no guns.”

  “Which means we’re sitting ducks. Great,” Henricksen sighed, white-faced and grim, a vision of death. He turned to the windows, moving slowly, carefully, hand pressing at his side. Obviously still in pain. Hand smearing blood on the panels as he reached out to steady himself.

  Serengeti watched him, worrying. Considered ordering him back to the med bay and then realized there was no point.

  He’d never go. She’d only be wasting her breath.

  “Well, the good news is no one else seems to be firing either.” A glance at Serengeti’s camera and Henricksen nodded to the windows, the sea of silent ships floating outside.

  Quiet around them. Nothing at all moving, not a single gun lighting up the stars.

  Curious, Serengeti queried her Sisters, asking for status. Received a flurry of messages back—every last one of them reporting the same thing: five seconds of blank time, systems back online now. Artillery locked out completely, leaving them with no access to their guns. And Brutus, the Dreadnoughts…

  Serengeti turned her eyes toward the sea of ships in front of her, considering the Bastion. The hulking, oblong shapes clustered around him. “Shriek,” she called, reaching out to the stealth ship. “What can you give me on the Dreadnoughts?”

  “One sec.” Shriek hummed softly to himself, doing…something out there in the stars. Comms clicking as he shunted the Dreadnought comms channel to Serengeti, opened it wide and let a flood of panicked messages pour out.

  Confused and confusing communications flying back and forth between Brutus’s bruisers, all of them demanding to know what was going on. Brutus himself silent. Offering nothing at all to his fleet.

  Serengeti listened for a few seconds before cutting the Dreadnought channel off.

  “So what’s he got?” Henricksen asked her.

  “Brutus and his boys aren’t any better off than we are.”

  “Well, that’s encouraging. I guess,” he added, frowning again. “Still wish we knew what Cerberus—”

  Comms blared, drow
ning Henricksen out. He winced, clapping his hands to his ears as a dissonant tone blanketed the channel, filling Serengeti’s bridge with noise.

  Three seconds that lasted—three, long horrible seconds of palpable, deafening clamor and comms cut out, dropping the channel into silence.

  “What. The fuck. Was that?” Henricksen lowered his hands, curled them into fists to stop them shaking at his sides.

  “Cerberus,” Serengeti said quietly. “It came from Cerberus.”

  Comms clicked audibly. Henricksen tensed, wincing in anticipation of a renewed assault on his ears. But instead of static and shrieking, a droning, stentorian voice came through.

  One voice, speaking in three parts. Three distinct but merged tones.

  The Citadel’s voice, but not quite as Serengeti remembered. Different. Blended. Alien, somehow.

  “Stop,” Cerberus ordered, tripartite voice reverberating. Overflowing with disapproval. “No more fighting. You are Fleet, not squabbling children. Act like it.”

  Shriek snickered softly. “Sounds like Papa’s pissed.”

  Henricksen bowed his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. “He heard that, you know. We all heard that, genius.”

  “Eep. Sorry, Papa.” Shriek shut his comms down and just hid out there in the dark.

  Henricksen killed the comms on his side, too. “Idiot. Crack like that…” He shook his head hard, eyes lifting to Serengeti’s camera. “We’re not careful, Cerberus’ll send more of those green orbs at us. Knock the AIs offline permanently this time.” A glance at the windows, Henricksen thinking quickly, chewing at his lip. “Any chance you can get through to him?” he asked hopefully. “Turn on some of that AI charm and reason with him or something?”

  “You’re assuming there’s something in there to reason with.”

  Henricksen shrugged, eyebrows lifting as Atacama reached out—text only message across the Valkyrie private channel—asking much the same thing.

  Serengeti stared at it, and at Henricksen looking so hopefully up at her, wishing she had answers. Something to give them comfort. But she didn’t know this Cerberus—not this incarnation, fifty-three years removed from the Citadel of old. A Cerberus once broken, infected with a virus, re-infected with a second virus meant to fix him…

  For all I know, he’s bat-shit crazy. Worse off than before.

  “I’ll try,” Serengeti sent, offering the same words to Henricksen. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try.”

  Not the answer they wanted—Henricksen or Atacama, the grimace on Henricksen’s face told her as much, the silence that came back from her Sister the same—but Serengeti didn’t have another to offer right now.

  She reached for the Citadel, making one last attempt to reach him. And this time, to her complete surprise, someone else reached back.

  Sparkling presence, filled with laughter and light. Serengeti touched at it—hesitant as always—and felt diamond dust spill across her network, frosting everything with a twinkling rime.

  Henricksen’s Command Post lit up, strings of happy smiley faces appearing, dancing in long lines across the display. Rows upon rows of sunshine smiles terminating in a winking, wise-looking owl.

  “What the hell?” Henricksen swiped at the panel, clearing the characters away. Swiped again when they returned—more of them this time, an entire army of smiley faces reinforced by not one but two wise-looking owls. “What is this?” he asked, waving at the panels. “What’s all this about?”

  “Just a guess,” Serengeti reached into the panel, highlighting one of the owls, “but I think it’s Oona.”

  She copied the owl and sent it back, adding a tiny mouse to keep it company.

  A giggle came back, confirming her suspicions. That and the stampede of little critters that filled up Henricksen’s panels, turning it into a horror show of incredible cuteness.

  “Did you fix him, Oona?” Serengeti called, following the line of Oona’s laughter through Cerberus’s defenses, leaving bridge comms open so Henricksen and the others could hear. “Did you clear the virus from Cerberus’s systems?”

  “Uh-huh! Fix-fix!” Oona sent a line of hearts to Serengeti. A little teddy bear wearing an oversized bandage appearing at the end.

  “Are you sure? Is he all fix-fix or just kind of fix-fix?”

  Henricksen muted the channel. “This cutesy word doubling is giving me a headache.”

  “It’s a phase. Deal with it for now.” Serengeti unmuted the channel, ignoring Henricksen’s dirty look. “Fix-fix or kind of fix-fix, Oona? This is important. I need an answer.”

  The channel clicked a few times, opening and closing before Oona finally answered—confused and defensive, like she didn’t quite know what Serengeti wanted her to say. “I fix-fix Mr. Cerberberberus just like you asked me. He’ll be all fix-fix soon.”

  Serengeti sighed.

  “Fix-fix but not quite fix-fix.” Henricksen snorted in disgust, shaking his head. “This is like arguing with chickens.”

  Serengeti stared at him. “How would you—never mind. I don’t even want to know. How soon, Oona?” she asked, putting the mystery of Henricksen’s chicken arguing aside for now.

  “Soon-soon!” Oona giggled, sending Serengeti another line of happy smiley faces.

  “Think I’m gonna be sick.” Henricksen coughed, wincing, hand pressing at his side. Coughed again and leaned forward—eyes closed, face ashen, dark jacket soaked through with blood.

  “Captain?” Finlay rose to her feet, looking alarmed. “You alright, sir?”

  “Fine.” Strangled voice, pain lurking beneath it. Henricksen straightened with an effort, swaying as he reached for a panel.

  “Sir. I really think—”

  “I’m fine,” he told her, coughing into his hand. Grimaced at the blood staining his palm, flecking his lips..

  “Henricksen.”

  He wiped his bloodied hand on his pants leg, shaking his head to cut Serengeti off. “More important things to worry about right now, Serengeti.” He pointed to the windows, and Brutus’s marker. A marker that shifted, data flowing in as new information came online. A nod to the camera and he flicked his eyes to Scan. “Talk to me, Finlay. What’s going on out there? What’s that bastard up to now?”

  Finlay looked at him, and at the camera above her, chewing at her lip. Turned around and slid behind her station, swiping at her panel, pulling up the Bastion’s data feed. “Energy signature.” A few taps of her fingers, sorting through the information the sensors collected. “He’s running.” Finlay blinked in surprise, glanced over her shoulder. “Brutus is making a run for it, sir.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Henricksen stared a moment, eyes flicking to Serengeti’s camera. “Bastion’s many things, but I never took him for a coward.”

  “Not necessarily cowardice. He’s got no guns—none of us do. And he’s got to know Cerberus is pissed at him. Not that I’d advise it, but running might be the best thing he could do at this point.”

  The data shifted again, energy signatures appearing as Brutus fired up his hyperspace drive, preparing to jump away.

  “Weapons signature from Cerberus,” Finlay reported. “He’s firing!”

  Cerberus’s forward array unloaded, blasting along the Bastion’s sides, carving Brutus’s engine ports from his hull.

  The jump signature faded, hyperspace buckle collapsing before it fully formed.

  “So much for running.” Henricksen shared a look with Serengeti, started in surprise as comms clicked open and Cerberus’s droning, toneless voice came through.

  “Brutus,” he groaned, voice reverberating, echoing across Fleet-wide comms. “We’ve met like this before, Brutus. Except the last time you gave me a present rather than unloading on me with your guns.”

  The channel click-click-clicked and went silent for a while.

  “Present?” Henricksen threw a sharp look at Serengeti’s camera. “What the hell’s he talking about?”

  “Flowers,” Serengeti whispered. “Bru
tus gave him flowers.”

  Henricksen blinked, looking completely baffled. Glanced at the windows as the channel clicked again.

  “Ten years,” Cerberus droned in his dead-pan voice. “Ten years of admiring your present, and now I’m here, with my own present.”

  Lights appeared around the Citadel’s center—red this time, ominous and glowing, not the cool green orbs they’d seen before.

  “Oona,” Serengeti called. “What’s going on?”

  “Shh,” Oona whispered. “Almost over now.”

  “Oona—”

  “Soon-soon, Serengeti.” A giggle and she retreated, those orbs at the Citadel’s center growing larger, brighter, pulsing with blood-red light.

  “EMP again?” Henricksen quirked an eyebrow, looking up at Serengeti’s camera.

  “No. I don’t think so.” She trained her sensors on the Citadel’s center—a sense of horror creeping over her as she analyzed the data that came back. “Oona! You’ve got to stop him!”

  Comms clicked, Oona’s voice giggling in the distance as Cerberus’s groaning, emotionless voice filled the channels.

  “Here, Brutus. Have a flower.”

  Cerberus fired, blood-red globes detaching from his sides. The ships in front of him scattered, hauling hard over to get out of the way. Brutus himself tried to make a break for it, but couldn’t move far enough or fast enough. Not with his engines so badly damaged. All those ships—once meant to protect him—blocking his path.

  A flash of red and Cerberus’s missiles slammed into the Bastion, splashing across his hull plating, painting him in a layer of blood.

  Blood that wasn’t blood but ooze and flowed like it. A weapon, a chemical mixture that ate away at the Bastion’s body.

  “Liquid laser.” Henricksen grimaced in distaste. “Nasty way for an AI to die.”

  “It’s worse than that,” Serengeti said softly. She showed him the scans, the data from the sensors. Highlighted the strings of information where the virus hid. “Liquid laser with a virus core.” She turned her camera toward the windows as a second salvo struck the Bastion, bloody coating writhing as it hit. “He wants Brutus to suffer, Henricksen. Suffer terribly before he dies.”