Hope they didn’t see that, she thought.
She focused in on Tilli and saw her just standing there, staring back at them, legs wringing nervously. She shrugged in apology as the sheet of metal drifted away and scurried behind the cannon, crawling inside it to get at the firing controls.
“Tilli-Tilli-Tilli,” Tig whispered worriedly, front legs rubbing together like mad.
Hard to sit there waiting, not knowing what Tilli was up to. Serengeti debated a moment and then split her consciousness again, carving off yet another piece of her mind and reaching it toward Tilli.
But she couldn’t find her. Couldn’t reach Tilli, no matter what she did.
Panic—complete and utter panic for a moment, before Serengeti realized it was simply too far—not enough working connections between here and there for her mind to make the jump.
Damn. Damn and damn and damn.
She let go and fell backward, returning that bit of her mind to Tig’s body. And there she waited, keeping one eye on the Number 13 Cannon above while the other watched the Proteus’ cargo bay.
Three quarters of the way open now. It wouldn’t be long before the Proteus’ transport craft poked its nose out.
“Hurry, Tilli,” Serengeti whispered. “Please hurry.”
They waited in agony, she and Tig together, watching the gun and the cargo bay, looking for movement—a flash of metal, any telltale sign of life from either side. The cargo bay opened wide, doors sliding a last few feet and then stopping, but there was nothing—no shuttle, just that black hole in the Proteus’ hull. And then,
“Beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep-beep,” across Tig’s internal comms.
“Tilli!” Tig pointed excitedly, leg end twitching toward the gun above as a stalk of jointed legs appeared, poking from behind the Number 13 Cannon. A rounded head followed and two cobalt eyes looking down at Tig.
Tilli raised a leg, fingerlike appendages extruding from its end as she flashed a thumbs up—or giving them the finger, they both looked the same coming from a robot—and crept from her hiding place. Three quick steps she froze again, eyes locking onto the Proteus, and the shuttle exiting its cargo bay doors.
Tig turned his head, looking at the ship behind him. “Too close-too close-too close!” he babbled loudly, legs waving, teetering on the edge of panic. “They’ll see her! They’ll know!”
“Hush,” Serengeti whispered. “None of that now, Tig. They’ll hear you.”
Tig beeped and nodded, leg ends wringing worriedly.
“Good. Now face around and tell Tilli to run!”
Tig wheeled about and started flashing, throwing urgent, anguished communications to Tilli frozen above. She shook her head at first, conscious of the shuttle creeping from the Proteus’ hull, hunkering down like a scared rabbit, refusing to move. She looked behind her at one point, and seemed to consider scuttling back behind the Number 13 Cannon, but Tig was insistent, face lights flashing desperately, begging Tilli to come down because they needed her to maneuver their secret weapon into position. Because he knew there was nowhere safe out there.
“C’mon, Tilli,” Serengeti whispered.
Tilli stared at the ship, then flicked her eyes to Tig, face blank, eyes glowing like two tiny blue moons. A second passed, then two and she finally made her decision. She scuttled across the hull, metal legs moving a blur as she scurried to the gaping rent in Serengeti’s where Tig waited.
She grabbed at him and pulled Tig close, hugging him tight as she shivered and shook.
“Shh,” Serengeti breathed, reaching for Tilli, stroking at her AI brain. “It’s alright. It’s alright, Tilli. You made it. You’re safe.”
But they weren’t. Not yet. The Proteus’ shuttle fired its maneuvering jets firing, lining itself up with Serengeti’s side.
Not much time. Not much time left.
“Shh, Tilli. That’s enough now. I need you to focus.”
Tilli shivered and hugged Tig tighter, face lights flashing in random patterns. Serengeti waited, conscious of the little ship moving closer and closer, feeling the weight of each second ticking by.
“Tilli. Look at me,” she ordered.
The shivering stopped. Tilli heaved a sigh and gave Tig a last squeeze before disentangling herself and letting him go. Tig handed her rifle over, passed the bandoliers of ammunition back. Tilli accepted it all, gripping the pulse rifle tightly, draping the chains of spare ammunition around her body, and then she just stood there—head bowed, eyes staring at the ground—a sad, apologetic bandit waiting for the train to arrive.
“The gun. Is it ready? Is the firing mechanism primed?”
A quick nod, head moving up and down. “Yes, ma’am,” Tilli whispered without looking up.
“Good.” Serengeti touched at Tilli’s chin, pressing with Tig’s leg until her head lifted. “Good,” she repeated. That got a tremulous smile. “Now you and Tig grab our little surprise and move it further out.”
The scavengers would see them for sure—hard to miss a couple of insectile robots pushing a lumpen conglomeration of metal spheres around—but at this point it didn’t matter. One way or another, it would all be over soon.
The robots wrestled their homemade contraption-cum-art project out into the open, carrying between them, shimmying it a bit this way and a bit the other based on Serengeti’s instructions. Instructions that were equal parts guesswork and informed deduction based on what little she remembered of the Proteus’ internal design.
“Good enough. Now light the candle and let that birthday cake fly.”
“On three,” Tig said, looking across the contraption at Tilli. He pointed at himself, then her, and finally at the ugly sculpture between them.
“Three,” Tilli nodded.
“Ready?”
“Ready?” Another nod from Tilli, more certain this time.
Tig glanced to one side, checking the position of the shuttle before lifting a fourth leg and extruding one finger and another. The count hit three and Tig and Tilli fired, keying the ignition switch on all of the fire extinguishers at once. The rig shuddered and lurched and finally got on its way, zigging and zagging across the space between Serengeti and the Proteus, its crude, fire extinguisher engines expelling their loads at differing rates.
“Come on. Come on,” Serengeti whispered. The Proteus was a big target, and she doubted they’d miss, but still…
The canisters burned for thirty seconds—long enough to push the rig past the shuttle, not quite long enough for it to reach the scavenger ship itself—before cutting out. After that, the rig just drifted, gliding serenely toward to the Proteus’ hull.
“Back inside,” Serengeti ordered. “Now, Tig!” she yelled when the little robot hesitated.
Tig jumped and whirled around, grabbing Tilli by one leg and hauling her with him as he scuttled inside the hull, creeping over holes in the floor and mounded piles of debris until he reached the icy confines of the corridor inside.
“Keep going. All the way to Engineering. Don’t look back!”
“But—”
“No time to argue, Tig. Just go!” Serengeti shocked Tig to make him move faster and then fluttered away, splitting her consciousness in two, leaving one half behind to stare outside through one of her few working hull cameras, while the other raced along long dormant pathways, flitting from one section of her network to another until she finally reached the bridge. The bridge and the Artillery station where Sikuuku had died.
He was gone, mercifully, his body cleared away by the robots, but Sikuuku’s blood still showed as a red-brown stain on the floor. Serengeti paused there, staring at the crushed remains of the gimbaled Artillery station, remembering Sikuuku smiling, laughing, swearing as he pounded away, firing round after round from the forward main gun.
Gone. All of them gone now—Sikuuku, Kusikov, Evans, Tsu.
“No more,” Serengeti said firmly. “I’m done losing crew.”
She slipped inside the Artillery station and brought it back
to life. Everything was there, just as she knew it would be—damaged, to be sure, but most of the connections still intact. Including those to the Number 13 Cannon. She’d checked those before—you bet she had, in between bouts of worrying about the fuel cells in Engineering.
Serengeti drew a bit more power, bringing the Number 13 Cannon on-line, pointing the big gun toward the Proteus, lining up the crosshairs of its targeting mechanism with the shining stack of spheres Tig and Tilli had launched into space. Her eyes outside gave her an off-angle view, showing the metal rig just few hundred meters from the Proteus’ hull, the scavengers so close now she could see the crew in its cockpit making a last few adjustments as they came alongside and prepared to board.
Now. It has to be now. Before they leave that ship and make their way inside.
More power, a flood of energy draining from the fuel cells in her belly, channeled through the Artillery station to the Number 13 Cannon in one big slug. The gun came alive, spitting out unstable plasma rounds, spewing out globes of swirling fire and spinning death. Number 13 rattled away for ten glorious seconds, chewing through its load of shells and then spinning uselessly, trying to suck more up.
Power warnings everywhere, flashing, screeching, screaming at Serengeti as she shut Artillery down. Outside, she could see the shuttle doors opening, human shapes in space suits lining up, preparing to step off. Shots from the Number 13 battery slammed into the Proteus, cratering its decking, tearing holes in its hull, more shots slipped past it, tracking in a line that intercepted Tig and Tilli’s contraption as it drifted close to the Proteus’ tail.
A flare of light as the twelve rounds of ammunition inside the rig ignited. Serengeti’s bomb exploded, tearing the Proteus’ aft end away. A second explosion—this one inside the scavenger ship—followed by another and another.
The Proteus hauled over, burning, fracturing, huge cracks appearing everywhere, peeling open its sides. The boarding crew in the shuttle glanced backward as explosion after explosion shredded the Proteus’ hull. A last detonation—this one larger, more violent than the others—and the Proteus all but disappeared.
Debris flew everywhere, scattering across the empty darkness, slamming into the scavenger ship’s shuttle, smashing it against Serengeti’s side. The shockwave hit her, rocking her hard, pushing, tearing, ripping away more plating, clawing hungrily at the girders behind.
The camera went blank, Serengeti’s eyes on the stars gone suddenly, irrevocably blind. Warnings inside her, screaming stridently, flashing Failure-Failure-Failure in bloody red letters. Power levels dipped and dipped again, dropping precipitously. She was lost for a moment—part of her consciousness firmly anchored to the bridge, the other drifting, wandering along severed pathways, until it found its way home. The two parts of her mind reunited and Serengeti opened her eyes and looked down upon the bridge.
“Tig. Tilli.” She reached for a bit of power and finding nothing there—nothing but a thin skim of energy left inside her fuel cells. And that trickling between her fingers, running across the floor. “No.”
Darkness—immediate, instantaneous, closing in around her, thicker, deeper than ever before. Darkness and fear, washing over her, sucking her down.
“Tig. Tilli,” she called, fighting that darkness, suffocating in the black.
She could feel herself slipping, fading away, and the harder she struggled, the more tightly the darkness clung, wrapping around her like a straightjacket as it dragged her down and down and down.
“Henricksen!” she screamed, a last desperate call.
Silence, only silence, as unending as the dark.
“Henricksen,” Serengeti whispered, and then there was nothing. Nothing at all.
TWENTY-FOUR
The candidate saluted smartly, spun her heel and walked stiff-backed out the door. Serengeti stared after her, overwhelmed by disappointment. Fourteen candidates, fourteen utter failures—not a single one of them worthy of her captain’s chair.
Seychelles’ laughter floated across the Valkyries’ internal channel, linking directly into Serengeti’s mind. Just their two voices on that channel right now, but Serengeti knew all the Valkyries were listening. Less than five hundred of them in the fleet now, which made each new captain’s assignment something of an event. The choosing, though, was Serengeti’s and Serengeti’s alone. Even Seychelles—trusted companion, invited by Serengeti to sit in—had no say. Not that that stopped her from giving her opinion.
“She’s worthy, Sister,” Seychelles said. “You’re just picky.”
“Perhaps,” Serengeti acknowledged. But she’d earned that right. They all had. Every last Valkyrie that sailed the stars fighting for the Meridian Alliance. “How many are left?”
“Just one,” Seychelles told her. “After that…it’s choose from the candidates you’ve already rejected or wait another year until a fresh batch of captains rotates through. A gamble either way if this one doesn’t work out.”
“Then let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” Serengeti keyed the comms, calling to the invisible gatekeeper controlling access to the interview room. “Send him in.”
The plasmetal door sighed open revealing a Spartan sitting area—bare walls and hard plastic chairs, a gridded, plasmetal floor with a spinning fan circling endlessly above. Just a single occupant in that room, standing close by the door.
“Enter,” Serengeti called.
A dip of a close-shaved head and the last of the candidates advanced, stepping purposefully into the interview room, striding towards its center. No urgency in that approach, nothing stiff or jerky, no apparent nervousness like Serengeti observed in the others. This one was all grace and confidence, every movement smooth and efficient. And male, unlike the others.
“Interesting,” Seychelles murmured.
Serengeti grunted. “That’s one word for it.”
Females made far superior captains in Serengeti’s opinion. The selection board knew her preference—all four of her previous captains had been female, after all—and sent her female candidates to this point. But now came this one…
“Not quite sure I’m ready to break that tradition.”
“Tradition exists to be broken,” Seychelles told her.
Serengeti snorted. “Confucius tell you that?”
“Fortune cookie. Same thing really,” Seychelles said, smile in her voice.
Serengeti barked a laugh
Ten striding steps and the candidate stopped in front of Serengeti, raised a hand to his temple and tossed off a salute.
Casual, that salute. Nothing like the crisp formality the other candidates offered. He clasped his hands behind him, legs spread wide, eyes locked onto Serengeti’s borrowed face.
The TIG she inhabited burbled nervously, discomfited by the intensity of that grey-eyed gaze, but Serengeti just laughed softly.
Cocky, she thought, smiling to herself.
She liked cocky. Shumitsu was cocky, right up until the end.
Shumitsu.
Serengeti sobered, remembering blood and broken bodies, ship’s hull torn wide open, her backbone cracked, compartments bleeding environmentals into space.
“Peace, Sister,” Seychelles whispered.
Serengeti cleared the images, forcing them back into storage with all the others—every last memory of the four crews that came before.
Seychelles touched at her mind—a soft caress of commiseration and then retreated, watching in silence with the other Valkyries as Serengeti considered this, the fifteenth candidate for her empty captain’s chair.
Fifteen. The number felt important. For the life of her, Serengeti wasn’t sure why.
“Henricksen,” the candidate said, offering a nod.
“So I see.” Serengeti pointed one of the TIG’s legs at Henricksen’s name tag.
That earned a laugh. Henricksen’s scarred face twisted into a lopsided smile.
“Oh, I like him,” Seychelles murmured.
“Shush, you,” Serengeti growled over
the private channel.
“Just be open-minded, Serengeti. I’ve seen his record—”
“Not my style—you know that, Seychelles. Records are just facts and figures. They say nothing of the person themselves.”
“Just give him a chance, Serengeti. I think…just give him a chance.”
Seychelles retreated again, leaving Serengeti alone with Henricksen.
She studied the captain, letting the silence stretch between them to see how he’d react.
If the quiet bothered him, he didn’t show it. Henricksen just stood there, still as a statue, grey eyes blinking now and then, but otherwise looking entirely nonplussed by the situation.
Surprising—most humans hated long silences—but Serengeti found many things surprising about this man Henricksen. His choice of uniform not the least among them. The others came in their finest—dress uniforms starched and pressed until they were stiff as their owners, weighed down by a whole host of medals and ribbons and fancy gold braids, ceremonial swords, jangling loudly at their sides. But this one…Henricksen presented himself in simple ship’s uniform—black on black heavy canvas with silver stars of rank on the collar and his name picked out in silver thread, a very heavy, very utilitarian-looking matte black pistol strapped tight to one leg.
Silver stars and silver letters, that simple yet well-kept pistol, and nothing more. No medals proclaiming his bravery, no ribbons to mark a long line of bloody campaigns and feats of daring-do, not even so much as a patch on his shoulder. And that, in the end, is what sparked her interest.
No patch meant no ship’s assignment—either he hadn’t earned one, or he’d lost the one he’d been detailed to. One peek at his record and she’d have her answer, and know which it was.
Tempting, she thought, but no.
Serengeti considered Henricksen’s, serene, scarred face and decided to shake things up a bit to see how he reacted. “Do you have any questions?”
Most of the candidates went blank when she asked that and simply shook their head. A few hemmed and hawed and managed stammered out a question, usually about the other candidates—had a selection been made, was the position already filled, that kind of thing.
Serengeti Page 23
