Serengeti

by J. B. Rockwell

  Tilli took off without a word, taking the two empty slings with her, glancing backward as she reached the inside corridor to make sure Tig followed. They raced each other down that hallway, moving flat out now that the encumbrance of the shells was gone, zipping left and right and right again before abandoning that level entirely. Down and down and down they went, following one ladderway after another as they worked their way toward Level 4, trundling along corridors until they reached Engineering’s rounded, cavernous space.

  Serengeti started to have misgivings as soon as Tig stepped inside. Almost called the whole thing off as he grabbed the closest robot carcass and started tearing out its insides. But she couldn’t. Not if she was to save Henricksen and the others. Not if the crew inside Cryo were to have any chance at survival.

  “I’m sorry,” Serengeti whispered as Tig finished coring the little robot. He stripped off its legs and head and set the empty shell of its carapace aside before reaching for another. “I’m so sorry, but there’s no other way.”

  She didn’t want to watch, would have given anything to not be witness to the defilement undertaken in Engineering that day. But it was her plan, her idea to use the robot dead in the first place, and the logical part of her knew the dearly departed wouldn’t care. Still, it bothered her. Bothered her more than she could say. Felt like a desecration. A violation of the dead. Of the trust they’d put in her.

  So Serengeti watched in silence as Tig and Tilli butchered a half dozen robots and loaded their empty bodies up—three to each sling, adding to them a couple of welding rigs stored nearby. Tilli zipped off to gather up some tools and stuff them into the recesses of her carapace while Tig rolled over to the fuel cells to check the power levels.

  Ninety-eight percent—just about full. Serengeti paused a moment, wondering if it would be enough, or if the pathways between here and the Number 13 Cannon were as damaged as those connected to the docking clamps around Cryo.

  “We’ll know soon enough, now won’t we?” Fatalistic thought, entirely unlike her. But then, Serengeti hadn’t been herself for quite some time now. Not since she dropped out of hyperspace trailing a cloud of debris behind her. “Tilli!” she called, shaking off her melancholy mood, putting the defeatist thoughts aside for another day. “Let’s go!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Tilli tucked a wrench set and rivet gun inside her and slipped her storage panel closed before scuttling over to join them. And then she grabbed her sling and followed Tig out of Engineering, and into the hall, down the network of corridors to the ladderway where they repeated the process of shimmying their loads up.

  #

  Tig welded a last seam and then shut the rig off. Tilli’s torch flared a second or two longer and then it too cut off, plunging their little workspace inside the hull into darkness.

  “Let me see,” Serengeti said.

  “You doubt our skills?” Tig looked a bit offended. Tilli stared at him in horror, head moving from side to side.

  “You’re getting cheeky, you know that?”

  Tig shrugged and rolled to one side of the rig, letting Serengeti take a look. Tilli glanced across the rig at him, waiting for his nod before flipping on the little light in her chest. It flickered and then steadied as Tig’s own light came to life, the two tiny beacons shining on the contraption between them. A construction of Serengeti’s own design.

  “Well? What do you think?” Tig asked her.

  It was ugly, if she were honest. A hastily put together construct that looked exactly like the collection of spare parts it was. Speed was the order of the day and Tig and Tilli had hurried, punching holes in the salvaged carapaces, using screws and rivets to bring the rounded bodies together in a stacked hexagonal shape that somewhat resembled an oversize molecule with six compressed nitrogen fire extinguishers welded on the outside.

  Ugly but functional, Serengeti thought.

  “It’s perfect, Tig. Exactly what we need. Load it up and get it into place.”

  “You heard the lady.” Tig nodded to Tilli and she turned around, lifting plasma shells from the pile behind her, handing them to Tig one at time.

  Two shells went into each of the six carapaces, and when the last shells was loaded, Tig sealed them all up, using a rivet gun this time—bad idea using a welding rig that close to plasma rounds.

  Serengeti paused as Tig popped off a last rivet and stared at the awful, murderous thing she’d created.

  How did it ever come to this? she wondered. A homemade bomb built from scrap parts and salvaged munitions—how did I ever sink so low?

  Desperate times call for desperate measures, Henricksen’s voice said.

  Blah-blah-blah. You’re so full of shit.

  She thought she heard him laugh, but she knew that was crazy. Henricksen was frozen below. It was just her up here. Just her and the two robots, plotting and scheming as the scavenger ship drew near.

  Enough daydreaming. There’s work to do.

  “Take the rest outside.” Serengeti lifted one of Tig’s legs, waving vaguely at her hull. “Load them in the magazine of the Number 13 Cannon.”

  “Ummm…” Tig blushed brightly, glanced over at Tilli. “See, here’s the thing. We kinda, sorta…don’t know how.”

  “Idiot,” Serengeti muttered, berating herself. She should have remembered. The guns had an automated feed and manually loading the magazine…well, that particular operation wasn’t in the TIGs’ programming. “Just try,” Serengeti told them. “It can’t be that hard.”

  Tilli coughed loudly, flashed Tig a skeptical look.

  “Look. It’s not like we have a whole lot of options here. The magazine’s set in the hull just behind the gun. Take some tools and pry the damn thing open if you have to. I’ll help you,” she added, when Tig continued to object.

  “Fine,” Tig huffed, waving to Tilli. He helped her gather up the remainder of the salvaged ammunition before stepping outside. “But don’t blame me if we screw this up.”

  “You screw this up, Tig, and I won’t be around to blame you for anything.”

  Tig stopped short. “Oh. Right.” He scuffed at the decking, face lights swirling in shamefaced patterns. “Sorry. Forgot.” He shrugged and got going again, leading Tilli to the gun high above.

  As it turned out, it was easier to get into the magazine than Serengeti thought. A section of hull plating just behind the battery had torn away during the fighting, or maybe afterward during jump. And with a little effort and a lot of elbow grease, the two robots managed to loosen the decking above the magazine and lever it up so they could wrestle the canister-shaped magazine beneath open.

  To Serengeti’s surprise, the magazine was already half full. Look at that. Something went right for a change.

  Tig dropped another two dozen shells inside, bringing the count inside the oversized magazine to an even hundred.

  A hundred rounds. That should give those bastards out there something to think about.

  Serengeti turned Tig’s head toward the stars. She could see the bastards now, their ship no longer a twinkling, far-off light. Instead, a shadow stalked off her port side, showing grey against the blackness, slipping stealthily from the depths of space, hiding the stars behind it.

  “I see you,” Serengeti said, flipping from Tig’s eyes to a recessed camera set inside her hull. “I see you out there. I know what you are.” The shape of it was clearer with the camera’s magnification focused in tight. Serengeti studied and recognized the design from her inventory—a sort of history of interstellar ships. “Proteus,” she murmured. “Never actually seen one in the flesh.” Just pictures, images captured in the yearbook each interstellar ship carried. “Hey there, old timer.” She zoomed the camera in to its maximum extent, trying to get a better look.

  Not much to see yet, just that long, thin shape reminiscent of the Aphelion, but smaller, wider. The shape of a short-haul cargo pusher—that’s what the Proteus class ships were designed for, she’d heard some of them were still out there doing just t
hat: trucking ore and scrap metal and other bulk commodities from one in-system planet to another. But this one…

  “What’s your story, I wonder? How the hell does a relic like you end up all the way out here?”

  Doubtful she’d ever know—if things went right she certainly wouldn’t—but Serengeti suspected the ship had been retrofitted at some point. Probably outfitted with one of those leaky, half-assed jumped drives the chop-shops offered up. After all, no in-system drive would get them out here. And scavengers, bootleggers—that class of humanity pretty much ran everything on the cheap.

  “I’m sorry you got dragged into this, old timer, but I didn’t invite you out here. And I’m pretty sure whoever’s inside you is up to no good.”

  Tig sealed up the magazine on the Number 13 Cannon and scuttled back inside where Tilli waited, legs wrapped around one side of the awkward contraption she’d helped Tig build. Tig flashed a quick communication as he took his place on the other side of the bomb, copying Tilli’s stance, grasping the edges tightly as they lifted the contraction together and dragged it onto her outer hull. A few scuttling steps and they dropped it again, setting the odd-looking construction down with its front end facing outward toward space, and the muzzles of the extinguishers welded to it pointed toward Serengeti’s insides.

  Tig signaled to her, letting Serengeti know their little surprise was ready, grabbed Tilli by the leg and scuttled to where their weapons waited—two pulse rifles and a few hundred rounds of ammunition salvaged from the small arms locker on Level 3. Serengeti watched the two robots arm themselves and then take up position just inside her hull, looking bold and yet somewhat silly—almost ridiculous with those oversized blasters clutched by their jointed, insectile legs.

  My brave little robots, Serengeti thought fondly, eyes turning back to the approaching ship.

  If the scavenger crew boarded her, the robots’ resistance would likely do little good. They were TIGs after all, not battle droids, and not programmed for combat. Serengeti felt fiercely proud of them, just the same. Her plan might not work, but if they went go down, they’d go down fighting—she and Tig and Tilli, all of them together.

  Serengeti took a last look through the camera before flipping back to Tig’s eyes. “I know you’re coming, you bastards,” she said, staring at the scavenger ship. “We may not win this, but we’re not going down easy.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Serengeti and the robots waited and waited as the Proteus approached. It drifted near, looming large and somehow ominous, despite that it was nowhere near the size of Serengeti herself, and took up position just a couple of kilometers off her port side. And there it sat for nearly an hour—floating along beside her while Serengeti watched its cargo doors, waiting for one to open.

  “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” she muttered. “What’s taking them so long? What are they doing over there?”

  She checked the power levels on the fuel cells for the hundredth time, found they’d dipped down a bit further, hovering just above ninety percent.

  Not good. Not good at all.

  She threw a worried look at the Number 13 battery, wondering how many shots ninety percent would get them.

  I only need one, she thought.

  Granted, it had to be the right one, planted in just the right place, but she was AI, with an AI’s targeting skills, and really, how many times could she miss?

  Plenty, a voice whispered in a sour, glowering tone.

  Henricksen again. He always chided her for being overconfident.

  She missed Henricksen dearly. Desperately. Would have given just about anything to have him standing here beside Tig and Tilli.

  “Focus, Serengeti.”

  Her voice this time, not Henricksen’s. Her voice inside Tig’s body, talking to herself.

  Tilli gave her a strange look.

  Probably thinks I’ve lost it.

  “Not yet. Not quite yet,” Serengeti murmured, studying the ancient, oh-so-suspicious Proteus drifting by her side. The ship was closer now, the shape of it a bit clearer, but as she watched it, something began to bother her. “It’s gone quiet.”

  Tig blipped worriedly. “That can’t be good,” he said, speaking over the internal channel.

  “No. It can’t.” Serengeti dialed up Tig’s comms channel, listening in the dark.

  This close, the Proteus—ancient as it was, comms package lacking the baffles and filters the newer ships employed—should have fairly radiated data that any antennae, any scan dish, any sensory equipment at all would pick it up. But when Serengeti tapped into Tig’s brain, she found nothing—not one communication, not a single errant sound.

  Not good. Not good at all.

  Serengeti shut Tig’s comms system down on the odd chance someone on that ship was listening for her. “They’re coming,” she warned, touching at Tig’s brain, passing those words from her mind to his.

  She reached for Tilli and passed the same message, bypassing the robot’s internal communications channel entirely, fearing that ship out there might pick up anything they passed down that line.

  “Is everything ready?” Serengeti pulled Tilli close, touching Tig’s cheek to hers so she could speak to both robots at once.

  “Ready,” Tig nodded.

  “You’re sure?” She wanted to believe him, but there was too much riding on this for them to inadvertently miss something.

  Tig nodded again, careful of attracting attention by making too much noise. He pointed to the robot carapace sculpture with its welded on fire extinguishers to prove his point.

  “The gun. The Number 13 Cannon. Did you prime the chamber?”

  Tig nodded automatically and then froze, eyes widening, spots of light flaring and dying in his face.

  “Tig?”

  “Forgot,” he admitted, flush deepening. “Tilli?” he asked hopefully.

  Tilli squeaked and quickly shook her head.

  “Rats.” Heavy sigh. “Tilli didn’t either. Sorry, Serengeti. We missed it. With all the rushing around, we just forgot to prime the gun.”

  “Dammit, Tig! How could you forget that?”

  Serengeti’s anger came through clearly. Tig ducked his head, offering a soft sound of apology that cut at her heart and made her regret her sharp words.

  Not fair. Not fair blaming him when she was just as much at fault. Tig wasn’t a weapons expert, nor Tilli either. The TIGs weren’t designed for combat—she had the TSDs for that. She could have reconfigured them, of course—the TIGs were infinitely adaptable—but that would take time. Time she didn’t have.

  My fault, Serengeti thought, berating herself for the oversight. Should have asked earlier. Should have spent less time obsessing over the power levels in the fuel cells and more watching what the robots were doing.

  Nothing to be done about it now. She’d just have to trust in Tig and Tilli to put things to rights.

  “Tig—”

  Movement out there, among the stars. A crack appeared on the Proteus’ starboard side, a door splitting open and sliding slowly to either side.

  Serengeti did some quick calculations, estimating how long it would take for the doors to fully open, to fire up the shuttle that must be inside that ship and navigate it across the gap between them.

  It’s going to be close. Damn close.

  “The gun. Go, Tilli. Hurry!”

  “On it!” Tilli tossed her rifle to Tig and stripped the bandoliers of ammunition from her body, chucking them after the rifle, not even waiting to see if Tig caught them as she grabbed up her welding rig and took off like a scalded rat.

  They couldn’t see her—not from their shelter inside the hull—so Tig rolled forward a bit and stuck his head outside, risked exposing that little bit of himself so he could follow Tilli with his eyes.

  Tilli looked tiny out there, all by her lonesome. Tiny and vulnerable—a scuttling silver shape showing bright against Serengeti’s scorched and broken side. She raced for the huge gun and the cover it provided while behind
her the Proteus’ cargo bay door kept grinding open.

  Tig whistled worriedly, front legs rubbing together like a giant, anxious cricket. “They’ll see her. If that shuttle comes out—”

  “It’s alright,” Serengeti told him. “She’ll make it, Tig. There’s still time.”

  “How do you know?” he asked her, voice filled with worry. “How can you be sure?”

  She didn’t, but what else was she going to say. “She’ll make it, Tig.” She had to. Serengeti couldn’t lose Tilli. Not after all the others. “Hurry, Tilli. Hurry,” she whispered, willing the little robot to go faster.

  She split her consciousness, watching Tilli through Tig’s eyes while simultaneously looking behind them, keeping track of the Proteus’ doors. Halfway open now, a yawning darkness showing inside the ancient ship.

  A minute, maybe two—that’s all we’ve got before the transport craft comes out.

  Serengeti hoped it was enough.

  Tilli reached the gun and scuttled behind it, all but disappearing from view. A flare of light erupted when she ignited her welding torch, using a super-heated rod to melt through composite metal turret and get at the Number 13 Cannon’s firing mechanism. Not the most inconspicuous means of access, but there wasn’t really any other choice. The gun’s firing mechanism was in the back of the battery, right above the recessed magazine, but it had never been designed for manual operation. The ship’s design never even considered such a daft idea. After all, what engineer in their right mind would ever think an AI and two beat-up robots would need to cold cock a gun to fight off interstellar pirates?

  Another check of the Proteus showed the cargo doors were almost two thirds of the way open, the space behind them growing wider and wider with each passing second.

  A last flare of light and Tilli’s torch cut out. A flash of metal legs as the little robot leaned from behind the battery and set a square of metal down, edges glowing brightly for a second or two before cooling to the dull, silver-grey color of the rest of the ship. The square of metal floated free, joining the cloud of debris drifting around Serengeti’s body.