Serengati 2: Dark And Stars

by J. B. Rockwell

  Not a one of them in there who knew where she’d come from—at least there was that. Crew just thought she was another TIG—on the smallish side and colorful, but nothing more than that.

  Still, she wished Sechura’s people hadn’t been there. Henricksen insisted they were a good bunch, but she still didn’t know them. Hadn’t quite come to trust them like her own.

  “I spoke to the newbies.” Henricksen nodded to the camera, reading her thoughts. “Told them Oona was experimental and they should keep their mouths shut. Spoke to the rest of the crew while I was at it—just in case, you know?” He smiled crookedly, eyes drifting to Tig and Tilli. “They’ll look out for her. Kid’s cute as a button. No one wants to see her get scrapped.”

  Tig hooted softly, bouncing up and down. Tilli just smiled—please and proud at once.

  “We should probably get going,” Serengeti told them, checking the time, realizing most of their hour had passed.

  “You sure I can’t talk to you out of this?” Henricksen asked hopefully.

  “You can try,” Serengeti told him, smile in her voice, “but Shriek’s starting to get impatient.” She keyed the comms, letting the Raven’s voice spill into the hall.

  “What’s the hold-up?” Shriek demanded. “I’m dying of boredom over here!”

  “Yeah-yeah, keep your shirt on,” Henricksen growled, flicking his fingers to have Serengeti cut the comms. “Raven’s always were a bit tetchy,” he admitted, eyeing the stealth ship on the monitor. A glance behind him as Tig shivered, Serengeti splitting her consciousness—leaving part of herself there in that camera looking down on the hallway while the another slipped inside the TIG. “Got that schematic?”

  Serengeti nodded, clonking the Tig’s leg-end against the side of his head. “Downloaded the Citadel’s design diagrams before I left the bridge.”

  “Good.” Henricksen grunted. “Hate for you to get lost.”

  “That could be embarrassing,” Serengeti admitted, chromed cheeks flushing with cobalt blue light.

  They stared at each other in silence, neither quite knowing what to say. That seemed to happen a lot lately, Serengeti honestly wasn’t sure why.

  “Good luck, Serengeti,” Henricksen said softly.

  “Thank you, Captain.” She smiled at him—a soft and tremulous thing—and waved Tilli toward the airlock as she scuttled over and punched in a code.

  “Twenty-four hours.” Henricksen stepped to the doorway, holding the airlock open as Tig and Tilli scurried inside. “If you’re not back in twenty-four hours, I’m coming in after you.”

  She tilted Tig’s head, blinking slowly. “Only part of me is going over there, you do remember that?”

  “Happens to be the part I like.” His lips twisted, lifting in a lopsided grin. “The part that does crazy-ass things like storm an oversized battleship just because she knows it’s the right thing to do.”

  “I’ll be back, Henricksen. I promise.”

  The grin slipped, Henricksen’s face turning solemn. “Signal us when you’re ready.”

  “Will do.” She managed a smile—a match to Henricksen’s patented crooked grin. “Just keep those drones off us until we get inside.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Henricksen tapped two fingers to his temple, stepping backward into the hall. “Be careful, Serengeti.”

  A nod and the airlock closed. Clicked and whirred, pumping the atmospherics out. Flashed green and popped open on the cargo bay side, releasing the robots into vacuum—a cold, weightless space that they high-stepped across, heading for the waiting Raven.

  Seventeen

  Fifty thousand kilometers out, and Serengeti and her entourage crossed over into the Citadel’s security perimeter—an invisible line separating them from the safety of deep space.

  Unknowns inside it—that massive ship ahead, sensors and weapons and every other thing bolted onto Cerberus’s body. Comms towers and laser arrays and other, less recognizable equipment jutting outward from his prickling shape. Pointing vaguely at the stars.

  Serengeti shivered, just looking at him. At Cerberus, that most wondrous and terrible of AI beings. A touch at her systems, accessing her hull cameras, and she zoomed in, looking him over. Shunted the camera feeds to the front windows and let the crew do the same.

  Study him. Dissect him. Take the measure of what they were up against. Look upon that double-sided, fortress-shaped edifice with its wide, flat central ring, three smaller rings stacked above and below.

  Weapons everywhere—cannons and rail guns, turret guns ringing the Citadel round—giving him a three hundred and sixty-degree range of fire. A forest of communications towers rising like spinnerets reaching for the stars.

  Didn’t quite look a vessel. At least, not in the conventional sense. Then again, there was nothing at all conventional about Cerberus, with his tri-partite mind and fortress of a body.

  “Look at the size of that thing,” Samara breathed, studying the feed on the front windows. “It’s almost as big as that station we just left.”

  “Largest vessel in the galaxy,” Henricksen told her. “Ain’t nuthin’ the DSR’s come up with that’s even close to the size of him. One of a kind, our admiral is. Ain’t that right, Serengeti.”

  “One of a kind,” she agreed, hoping she didn’t sound as worried as she felt.

  The admiral she knew was a marvel of human engineering—the most powerful AI mind in the universe. A pinnacle of scientific achievement. But now that mind was broken. Separated into three disparate parts.

  I hope this isn’t a mistake, she thought, remembering those babbling voices. The video Sechura had shown. I hope we’re doing the right thing and don’t end up making matters worse.

  “Prickly-looking thing, though.” Henricksen toggled the feeds, zooming in on an array. “Got enough firepower for ten Dreadnoughts from what I hear.”

  And yet it was rare for Cerberus to step into battle. Serengeti herself had only seen him in action once, and that was long before Henricksen came to her. Back when McAlister was still her captain.

  “Probably covered with all sorts of probes and sensors and every other kind of detection equipment.” Henricksen paused, brow wrinkling. Swapped the forward-facing cameras for a view of the stars behind them, searching for a swirl of darkness—the telltale sign of a Raven riding close to their behind

  Shriek out there. Shriek and his crew, Tig and Tilli riding shotgun in his bridge pod with a part of Serengeti. The tiniest fraction of her consciousness nestled in beside Tig’s AI mind.

  She connected to it and experienced an odd doubling—part of her mind looking out while another part stared back. Let go almost instantly, fearing that doubling would confuse her systems. Create an unexpected feedback loop.

  “It’s not too late.”

  Serengeti looked down and found Henricksen staring up at her.

  “We can still—”

  Klaxons kicked in, cutting Henricksen off, panels flashing for attention as Scan lit up.

  “Proximity alert,” Finlay yelled. “Weapons detected. We’re being scanned!”

  “Shit.” Henricksen slapped at his panel, killing the klaxons. Left the flashing red emergency lights on—those never seemed to bother him as much. “Guess we’ve been spotted.” He threw a look at the camera. “Stealth shield thing was kinda cool, but I’m honestly surprised it took him this long.”

  Likely wouldn’t have under different circumstances. Back when Cerberus three brains all worked together.

  A check of the sensors showed energy levels spiking up and down the Citadel’s form. Scanners bathing the area in waves of energy that washed over Serengeti and her Ravens screening, trying to figure them out.

  Comms flared to life, setting Delacroix to twitching, fingers adjusting and readjusting the settings of his visor. A sea of inane chatter drowned the channels—all the channels, every last one of them except the secure channel Serengeti maintained—and all of them filled with Cerberus’s babble. The Citadel’s three, squabblin
g voices battering at Delacroix’s brain, demanding to be let in.

  More energy spikes and proximity alerts appeared, popping up everywhere, new ones appearing so fast Finlay couldn’t address them all. Stopped bothering to try because every last one of them screamed Warning! Warning! Warning! and Weapons fire detected!

  Batteries came to life all across the Citadel’s shape. Plasma cannons pivoted, powered up, and fired, blood-red missiles tracking through space.

  “Evasive maneuvers!” Henricksen ordered, flinging a hand toward Samara at Nav. “Scatter!” he yelled, opening ship-to-ship comms to the Ravens.

  The stealth ships dropped their shielding, engines lighting as they moved ahead of Serengeti, fanning out to either side.

  Samara pulsed Serengeti’s engines, moving her along, pulling Shriek with her—the stealth ship hiding in her huge shadow, waiting for his moment.

  “In and out,” Henricksen said, speaking to the Ravens over tight-band comms. “No messing around. We deliver the package and we leave, understand me?”

  “Yeah-yeah. We know what we’re doing,” Swift said surlily.

  “You better,” Henricksen muttered, eyes flicking to the windows. “Finlay. Drop the repeaters. Throw out some chaff while you’re at it. Should help confuse things a bit.”

  “Aye, sir!” Finlay called, fingers flying across her station, silver-sided pods ejected from Serengeti’s flanks.

  Beacons lit just as soon as the repeaters cleared. False beacons screaming out fake information, making it look like a hundred Serengetis cruised toward the Citadel, rather than a single Valkyrie with a handful of Raven stealth ships for company.

  “Hard to port!” Henricksen yelled.

  Aoki hauled the ship over as the last repeater ejected, and Finlay hit a button, deploying a sparkling cloud of winking chaff. The debris spread, fanning out as Serengeti moved away, screening her from Cerberus’s fire. Exploding in dramatic fashion as the cannons’ plasma rounds intercepted them, detonating in blood-red showers.

  A squeal of static and Comms burst open—blanketing Serengeti’s channels, filtering through to the speakers scattered through her body.

  Terrible sound that. Awful and shrieking. More terrible still the chattering, electronic voice that followed after, screeching ‘Identify! Identify! Identify!’ over and over and over.

  Automated voice—low-level AI, not Cerberus himself. The perimeter defense system responding to Serengeti’s unexpected approach.

  Not a good sign.

  Automated systems meant Cerberus wasn’t fully in control. Then again, it also meant Cerberus wasn’t running the defenses which, considering they were under fire, was a huge stroke of luck.

  Automated systems weren’t all that smart, after all. Tended to run in repeating patterns, making their munitions spread predictable and relatively easy for an AI to elude.

  Serengeti smiled, sensing an opportunity. Tapped into Comms, weathering the flood of screaming from the perimeter defense system long enough to jam it with long strings of nonsense information squawking from the repeaters. “That should give it something to chew on for a while.”

  More fire from Cerberus, plasma cannons tracking Serengeti as she and the Ravens swooped in and circled once around the Citadel—wide path, tracking the response time from the Citadel’s guns. Searching for a chink in his armor. A weak point Shriek could exploit.

  Halfway round and Cerberus launched his Mosquitoes—drone fighters sent out in a swarm that split as it exited the Citadel, dividing and dividing again.

  A mass of droned ships targeted Serengeti, surrounding her on all sides. Others went after the Ravens, the repeaters squawking out false information, pretending to be ships themselves.

  Cannons fired, picking off Mosquitoes, chewing through the drones to get at Serengeti and the stealth ships circling round and round.

  Two loops around and the scanners showed empty—nothing but comms towers and gun turrets and barricaded, triple thick hull panels. Third pass and Scan finally found something, sent an alert to Finlay’s panel.

  “That’s it.” Finlay looked up, shunting an image to the front windows. “That’s our way in.”

  Serengeti zoomed in on a three-dimensional image of Cerberus, spinning it around until a landing bay appeared. The one that released the Mosquitoes. The one that remained open as a second cloud of drones gathered and started to spill out.

  A dead spot showed close by, cannons hanging limply, no lights glowing inside.

  “Good eyes, Finlay.” Henricksen passed the image to Shriek, ordering him to drop back while Serengeti moved ahead to draw the Citadel’s fire. Received the tiniest of acknowledgements in return—Shriek’s comms opening and immediately closing just as fast as he could squirt that message out. “Aoki. Take us in.”

  “Aye, sir.” Aoki throttled the engines, putting on a burst of speed. Shoving Serengeti around the Citadel and closer to that blank spot, and the cloud of Mosquitoes pouring from Cerberus’s landing bay.

  “Bosch! Have at it!” Henricksen yelled.

  “’Bout damn time.” Bosch tapped a finger to his visor, bringing the targeting system on-line. Gripped the Artillery pod’s firing mechanisms with both hands as he pivoted and opened fire.

  Mosquitoes exploded like fireworks, droned bodies disintegrating as Bosch drowned them in plasma rounds. The gunner yelled into his comms unit, calling down to the Artillery stations running up and down Serengeti’s body, adding fire from the rail guns and auxiliary cannons to the mix.

  “They’re still coming!” he warned, pounding away. The pod pivoted crazily, spinning left and right, up and down, system constantly adjusting as the drones swarmed around them.

  Mosquito fire snuck through, strafing along Serengeti’s side, making her shudder and shake. Bosch winged one, sending the Mosquito spinning out of control. It smashed into Serengeti, dying in a flare of light, taking out a portside cannon along the way.

  “Bosch!” Henricksen barked.

  “Sorry, sir. Lotta those bastards out there.”

  “Just keep ‘em off us.” Henricksen glanced at the windows, studying the data showing on the glass. “Aoki!”

  “Got it-got it-got it!” She jogged left, dodging rounds from three different cannons, winced as a line of railgun fire rattled across Serengeti’s hull.

  Finlay dropped more chaff to draw the cannons’ fire, giving them those bits to chew on while Serengeti fired back. Bosch and his Artillery pod gamely plugging away at the weapons lining Cerberus’s hull.

  A scan of the area showed most of the repeaters surrounded. Feeds disappearing as the Mosquitoes picked them off. Drone clouds reforming, scanning for new targets before taking off again, chasing Ravens around the Citadel’s shape.

  The Ravens, for their part, seemed to be having the time of their lives. Whooping and yelling and screaming taunts at Cerberus and his dumbed-down fighters.

  “C’mon, you bastards!” Swift screamed across the comms. “Come and get me you slow ass, dumb as shit, hunks of metal junk!”

  The Mosquitos responded, putting on speed, closing in on her tail. But Swift hauled around and hit the thrusters, firing every last gun he had, shredding a cloud of twenty or so drone fighters in seconds.

  Snicker-snack swooped in after him, feeding another cloud of drones to Swift’s guns. A laugh and the two Ravens disappeared, cloaking shields wrapping darkness around them as they took off, searching for more Mosquitoes to hunt.

  Serengeti lost them for a while, found Swift’s engine signature just a few seconds before he and Snicker-snack popped back into existence, tearing holy hell out of a dozen Mosquitoes harrying Stitch’s behind. Stitch turned sharply as Swift shot past, zigging and zagging, trying to shake the Mosquitoes as Snicker-snack sniped away, cloak flickering around him.

  More drones appeared, ignoring Swift, dodging past Snicker-snack’s scything defenses, targeting Stitch at their middle, peppering the Raven with rail gun rounds. Fire flared brightly, lighting up Stitch’s
backside, racing along his rear quarter. A flash and the Raven wobbled, drifting off-line—damaged but still fighting, refusing to give up.

  “He’s losing it.” Henricksen stared at the display on the front windows, watching more Mosquitoes converge. “C’mon. Get outta there.”

  Another hit—starboard side aft—and Stitch’s engines guttered out. Serengeti thought he was a goner—too many Mosquitoes around him, not enough guns on the stealth ship to address them all—and then Swift swooped in, screaming like a banshee, obliterating almost half the drones in one fell swoop.

  Snicker-snack followed after, chewing through most of the rest, giving Stitch just enough time to reignite his engines and get himself in the clear.

  “Yahoo!” Swift screamed, looping around. Pounding a last few Mosquitoes into oblivion before he and Snicker-snack shot away again, targeting a large group of drones on the Citadel’s far side.

  “Ravens seem to be having a good time.” Henricksen pulled a feed onto his panel, watching Stitch move away, engines stuttering a bit, then flaring brightly as he chased after Swift. “How’s Shriek doing back there?” He looked at her—looked right into Serengeti’s camera as she reached for that other part of her, watching the same battle through Tig’s eyes.

  Dark where he was. Cramped space on a tiny bridge. Four-man crew sitting in a square inside the shadowed confines of the stealth ship’s Command space. Visored helmets covering the crews’ heads, making them faceless, sexless, anonymous in the dark. Tig and Tilli huddle together in a corner, jointed legs wrapped around each other, cobalt eyes staring out the front windows, anxious messages passing in flashes of color between them.

  Serengeti touched at them, comforting the little robots as best she could. Watched through Tig’s eyes as Shriek crept along, hiding behind his shielding, threading his way through the comparative calm that followed in Serengeti’s wake.

  Automated defense system on the Citadel. Cannons only fired if there was a target in range. Bad for Cerberus, good for them—nothing firing if there were no targets around.