Odd behavior, even from Tig.
What have you been up to? Serengeti wondered, studying the little robot from the camera above. She almost asked him, wanting to know the meaning behind those guilty glances, and then decided to let it go. She’d figure Tig’s secret out in time. Right now Serengeti had more important things to worry about. “Are we there yet?” she asked, the second in a long line of questions she asked every time she woke.
A clickety-click of robotic tittering and shy smile as Tig bounced on his tip-toes and nodded his rounded head.
“We are? We’ve arrived?” Serengeti stared down at Tig, hardly daring to believe it, but Tig bounced excitedly and nodded again. “Show me.” She slipped inside Tig’s body, snuggling her consciousness next to his.
Tig took off like a shot, scampering across the bridge on his jointed metal legs. He stopped at the door and pried it open, dropped onto his tank treads and trundled out into the hall.
Dark in that hallway. Black as pitch, inky as the void. Serengeti got lost for a moment, thinking herself back there. But a pale blue glow appeared, spilling across the walls, shimmering and shifting as it sparkled off the ice rime covering everything in sight.
Still here. I’m still here, she told herself as Tig rolled forward, tank treads chewing at the hallway’s icy coating, blue eyes lighting the way ahead. The dream’s waiting, but I’m here with Tig now.
Tig touched at his chest, sliding a panel open, and yet more light spilled out—a tiny searchlight flaring to life, pouring into the hallway from a cavity inside him. He rolled silently down the corridor, magnetized tank treads clinging tenaciously to the metal composite decking, leaving twin sets of tracks in his wake.
Any semblance of a breathable atmosphere had fled the ship long ago, and with the gravity system shut down, everything that wasn’t nailed down, screwed on or otherwise secured floated free around them, filling the corridor with all manner of debris. Tig rolled through it, dodging pieces where he could, ducking under others, pushing the larger objects out of the way. Halfway down the corridor, he detoured to one side, climbing into a ladderway, legs ends curling around the rungs as he climbed down.
“Where are we going?” Serengeti asked.
Tig burbled something non-committal and kept descending, passing through one level after another before abandoning the ladderway and working his way out into a scorched and blackened corridor.
Another moment of confusion—the dream’s images blooming in Serengeti’s mind, memories overlaying the reality of the hallway in front of her, one lining up perfectly with the other.
Except for the bodies, she thought. Those are gone, thankfully.
The TIGs had gathered up the human corpses at some point and stowed them somewhere. At least, she hoped they’d stowed them somewhere. The thought of those corpses being out there, drifting in the cloud of debris surrounding her shattered body…
Serengeti shuddered inside Tig’s little head and pushed that image firmly away.
Scorch marks marred the paneling of the corridor around them, the burn marks from the fire unmistakable, identical to that carved indelibly into her memory. And the robots…melted robots showed here and there—lumps of misshapen metal melted into the floor, permanently connected to Serengeti’s shredded body.
Why? she wondered as Tig rolled forward. Why this hallway of all the ones Tig could have chosen?
She almost stopped Tig and made him turn around. Find another hallway. Another way to get to wherever he was going. She reached for Tig’s controls and then forced herself away, leaving the robot to choose his own path, staring straight ahead as he navigated the damage hallway, ignoring the mangled robots Tig rolled by, the blackened walls looming on either side.
Tig cleared the last robot body and moved on, approaching the bend in the corridor where the wall of fire started, turning left and right and right again. The corridors here were just as empty, just as dark and cold and filled with silence as the others they passed through. That silence started to bother her after a while. Put her in mind of the dream, and that moment just after the fire when the corridor filled with smoke and ash, death and destruction.
No, she told herself, pushing thoughts of the dream away. That was before.
Can’t change the past, Serengeti. All you can do is move on.
Henricksen’s words—one of those pithy bits of wisdom he tended to offer when toeing the line between sober and drunk.
Henricksen. She missed her captain. Missed Finlay and Tsu, all of her human crew.
Serengeti shivered inside Tig’s shell. She activated the micro-sensors in the floor, hating that silence and the memories that came with it, berating herself for being stupid and wasting even that small bit of power.
It’s worth it, though. I can’t bear that oppressive silence clinging to these icy halls.
Tig made a last turning and rolled into a long, long corridor running parallel to the first of the three thick layers of her port-side outer hull. The ice lay even thicker here, coating the ceiling, the walls, the deck plates on the floor in a good inch of frozen slickness.
Tig aimed for a center lane running down the middle of the floor. The ice was thinner there. The frost all but worn through, leaving just a thin skin showing whitely against the silver-grey deck plating beneath.
“You come here often,” Serengeti noted, spying the telltale signs of tank treads in the hoarfrost’s coating. “What have you been up to, Tig?”
Tig rolled to a stop and turned his head, cobalt eyes reflecting off the smooth slab of ice covering one wall. His face lights swirled slowly, lining up beneath his eyes, curving at the line’s end to form a mischievous, robotic smile.
“Tig…”
“Shh,” he breathed, pressing a leg against that curving, electronic approximation of a smile. He winked at her—one eye going dark and then flaring back to life—and spun in a tight circle before zipping off down the corridor and into a gaping hole showing darkly to one side. A hole that punched clear through Serengeti’s triple hulled hide, and the buffering spaces between.
Tig slipped along that ragged tunnel, winding his way through one hull layer after another, flipping between his tank treads and his jointed metal his as he climbed piles of debris and navigated twisted girders, hopping holes, and trenches, and buckled support structures—sure-footed, confident, never once slowing. He even used the magnetized ends of his legs to climb walls in places where the chasms looming in front of him were simply too large to cross. A last layer of thick metal skin and he stepped out into vacuum—into the cold and dark and shining stars of space.
“Beautiful,” Serengeti whispered as the stars and dark came clear.
She’d missed the stars in the darkness. The dream showed her fire—smoke and fire and death—but it never showed her stars. And until now her wakings were all to blackness—Tig’s shining face amidst the darkened environs of the bridge. Five years. Five long years spent sleeping, and another three of fitful waking before that, with not a single glimpse of the stars in all that time. Not a single moment to admire the thing she loved the most.
An AI needed the stars to sustain her. A starship was just a ship without the stars outside her hull.
“Stop,” Serengeti ordered, bringing Tig to a halt. She turned his head a bit so she could see the stars more clearly and drink in the vast expanse of the universe stretching endlessly in every direction. “Beautiful,” she whispered, voice filled with awe. “So beautiful.” She forgot herself for a while, forgetting what she was here, what had brought her to this place.
Tig’s polite cough brought Serengeti back to reality. The robot shifted nervously, front legs lifting, metal ends rattling together. A burst of robotic chatter, legs waving vaguely, telling her they really should get going.
“I know.” Serengeti gazed at the stars a moment longer and then released Tig so he could continue on his way.
More holes appeared—rents and tears, long, long sections of deck plating gone missing, o
ther sections warped and dented, buckled by the shockwave from Osage’s detonation. Tig followed a winding and apparently much-practiced path that took him along the length of Serengeti’s darkened port side and then turned upward, climbing toward a silver-white glow peeking over the top of her hull.
Serengeti left the driving to Tig and flicked to the camera in his thorax, surveying the damage to her body. She’d never really gotten a good look at herself after the battle—hadn’t really wanted to, to be honest, the damage inside her giving her nightmares enough—and as she looked around, she realized the damage out here was even worse than she’d thought. The bulk of her superstructure still appeared to be intact, but her skin was shredded, Osage’s explosion, the DSR’s sustained fire leaving her pockmarked and cratered, charred from laser burns and plasma fire, silver plating turned an ominous black.
It was all too much, all too depressing. Serengeti abandoned the camera and faced forward as Tig pattered to the top of the ship and then stopped, chirruping softly as he showed Serengeti the nearby star.
“Tsu’s star. That’s Tsu’s star out there.”
Tig beeped and nodded, bobbing up and down.
“I can’t believe. I can’t believe we actually made it.” She’d lined her body up and launched them toward that star nearly eight full years ago, never knowing if they’d actually make it. And now, here they were—Tig and Serengeti sitting on the hull of her damaged body, watching it circle in orbit around the gaseous bulk of Tsu’s once-distant star. “Are we close enough?”
Tig blipped and dipped his head, pointing to the acres of plating covering her starboard side.
Not as much damage there. Serengeti’s port side was a cratered mess, but the starboard hull had fared much better. Long scars from lasers grazes showed clearly, dents and tears marked where shrapnel and rail guns had torn at her hull, but the rest of it…the bulk of her starboard side was remarkably intact.
And twinkling. Photovoltaic cells drinking in the starlight until the hull plating glowed. She drew a bit of power, activating sensors in that plating, reveling in the feel of cold and stardust brushing along her hull.
“We made it,” Serengeti whispered, smiling to herself. “We made it, Tig. We’re here. We’re finally here.”
But getting here was just the beginning. There was so much more to do.
Serengeti forced Tig’s eyes away from the star and gazed along the length of her hull. “The connection to the fuel cells. Is it working?”
Tig nodded quickly, legs waving in all directions as he chattered out a report.
Serengeti listened for a while and then stopped him when she spied a long line of dark shapes—an odd metal forest growing like fungus on the top of her body. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing Tig’ leg toward the bow.
More excited babbling.
“A surprise?” Serengeti laughed softly as Tig capered happily about. “Alright. Show me.”
Tig raced off, legs clattering against the hull plating as he scurried toward the front of the ship. Halfway to the forest, a framework came clear—a network of welded girders torn from her insides, hauled out here and bolted to her hull. Snaking lines of cables ran around and across, tying the framework together, linking the square panels attached to it.
Panels. Hull plating. The robots salvaged some of that too.
Tig slowed, tip-toeing the rest of the way, moving slowly along the line of panels while Serengeti inspected the construction.
“You changed the design specs,” she noted. “This isn’t what I laid out.” She’d shown Tig how to re-route power, which connections to cut and which to rewire to feed all the energy the starboard panels gathered into the three remaining fuel cells in her belly, but this…she hadn’t shown him anything like this. Hadn’t even considered harvesting panels to supplement the load the starboard side gathered. “A solar collection array. You came up with this?”
Tig blipped nervously, head bobbing in time with his body.
“It’s ingenious, Tig. I’m impressed. Truly.”
Especially since he’d come up with the idea all on his own.
Tig shrugged and scuffed a metal foot in embarrassment, acting like it was no big deal.
“Does it work?”
Tig nodded vigorously and spun around, crawling his way back toward her center before dropping down the port side, angling for the place where they’d exited her innards.
Serengeti flipped back to the camera in his thorax as he slipped inside the hull, taking a last look at the stars. “Beautiful,” she whispered. “So beautiful.” She froze the image of that infinite sky and stored it away with the others—the faces of Tsu and Evans, Kusikov and Sikuuku and all the others—so she’d have the stars and her crew to keep her company in the dark.
Metal skin slipped around her, blocking her view of the stars and dark outside. Serengeti sighed and faced forward, watching Tig pick his way through wreckage until he reached her gutted insides.
EIGHTEEN
The silence hit her the moment Tig stepped into the hallway. Silence like a tomb. Silence broken only by the stomp and clatter of Tig’s metal legs, the crunch and rattle as he lowered himself onto his tank treads and hurried down the corridor. The micro-sensors didn’t really hear sound so much as feel it, measure it, picking up movement, vibrations and translating it into sound. Cameras to see, micro-sensors to feel, photovoltaic cells to eat and drink and power her body, and an AI mind controlling it all.
AI—artificial intelligence, all mind, no soul. The designers insisted power, function didn’t equate to life. But Serengeti disagreed.
I think. I eat. I touch and see. Tell me I’m not alive. Tell me just because I’m AI I don’t have a soul.
Designers don’t know spit, Serengeti.
Henricksen again. Henricksen’s voice speaking directly into Serengeti’s brain. She paused to wonder about that, hoping that voice wasn’t another malfunction—a sign her AI brain had somehow been damaged.
Yer not cracked, Serengeti.
That made her laugh.
The designers see machines and weapons. They’re blind to the true miracle they created.
Serengeti smiled to herself. For all his gruffness, Henricksen always did have a way with words.
“Thanks for that.”
The silence ate up her words, taking that away from her, just like everything else. She hated that silence, found it increasingly upsetting, increasingly disturbing with each minute that passed.
Tig, for his part, didn’t even seem to notice. He just trundled along, babbling happily, spewing out a constant stream of observations as they passed this broken item and that, adding each one to a long list of things that would likely never get fixed.
That’s when it hit her. The silence. That’s why the silence bothered her so much.
“Stop,” Serengeti ordered.
Tig beeped in surprise and locked up, tank treads slipping on the icy floor, bringing him to a stuttering, skidding halt. Another beep—this one a tentative question, asking her what was going on.
“Pan.”
Tig’s head turned, looking one way and the other, giving her a full view of the hall.
Empty. Completely empty, just like every other corridor they’d travelled so far.
“Proceed.”
Tig rolled forward, moving uncertainly at first, picking up speed as he left that hallway for another, trundled to the next crossing and turned right. Serengeti rode quietly, content to let Tig do the driving until they reached a crossing where two long corridors met.
“Halt,” she ordered.
Tig hit the brakes, sliding a bit before coming to a stop.
“Where are they?” She turned Tig’s head, peering through his eyes down the long length of one corridor before switching views to examine the other. Empty and empty and empty. Nothing but metal and ice and that never-ending silence. “Where are they, Tig? Where are the other robots?”
Tig stuttered nervously, a nonsensical tick-tick-tick
issuing from his mouth. His legs clacked and rattled as they moved up and down, tapping rhythmically against the deck plates as he shuffled about.
“Where are they, Tig?”
Tig blipped and beeped—random sounds, no real meaning behind them—but either wouldn’t, or couldn’t answer her question.
“Alright. I’ll find out for myself.” Serengeti reached for the robot comms channel, connected and started searching for others of Tig’s kind.
Silence came back. More of that hated, dreaded silence, reminding Serengeti—a once-proud warship—she was now little more than a miserable wreck. And her crew…she’d left Tig in charge of a dozen robots. There should be all sorts of chatter on the robot line, but when she tapped in she found it empty—as silent as everything else inside her.
“Where are they, Tig?” Serengeti demanded. “Where are the others? Where have they gone?”
Tig sighed and pointed down the hall, bent his leg and tapped at the floor, burbling out a single, mumbled word.
“Engineering.” She’d left them there, before she drifted into the dark. “Have they been there this whole time?”
Tig shrugged and nodded, shook his head.
Serengeti wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. “Take me to them,” she ordered.
Another sigh and Tig got moving, rolling slowly, almost reluctantly along. He stopped again near the end of the hallway, detour to one side and slipped into a ladderway to begin the long trip down.
#
Tig rolled into Engineering. Serengeti took one look and brought him to a halt—didn’t ask, didn’t order, didn’t even think about what she was doing. She just seized control and stopped the little robot dead, shocked by what lay before her.
Long lengths of snaking cables hung everywhere, draping the walls, dangling through holes cut in the ceiling, littering the floor—hundreds of strands, miles upon miles of individual cables, and every last one of them connected to the fuel cells sitting against one wall. Apparently, Tig’s creativity didn’t end with the solar collection array outside. He’d rigged up a makeshift power grid here in Engineering to siphon the energy collected by Serengeti’s hull panels and feed it into her three functioning power cells, using a modified version of Serengeti’s own design—one she’d downloaded into Tig’s brain. The end result was…creepy, frankly. Especially since there was no atmosphere or gravity here, or anywhere else on the ship.
Serengeti Page 17
