Houseman flinched and dropped back, looking surprisingly hurt.
“Hold up.” Henricksen shuffled to a stop at the cargo bay door, slapped a bloodied hand against the comms panel beside it and called up to the bridge. “Aoki.” He winced and closed his eyes, swaying on his feet. Sucked in a breath and tried again. “Shove off, Aoki.”
“But, sir. The station.”
“I know, Aoki.” Soft voice. Patient voice. Henricksen too tired and hurting to yell anymore. “But those perimeter systems are gonna go live any minute—”
Klaxons blared, cutting him off, proving him right.
Serengeti shook as cannon fire rattled against her body. This close, the prison’s defense grid could hardly miss her, even with the modified shimmer shield to confuse their targeting systems.
Henricksen leaned against the wall, eyes closed, speaking right into the comms panel. “Shove off, Aoki, before those cannons tear us apart. And spool up the jump drives. We’re kind of in a rush.”
“Aye, sir.”
Henricksen closed the channel and braced himself as Aoki hit the thrusters, shoving them away from Faraday.
Serengeti flipped to an external camera, looking outside.
The magnetic locks let go, but the airlock coupling remained attached to her side, stretching to its limit before ripping violently from the station’s wall.
Atmosphere erupted as the berthing area hallway depressurized, environmentals venting, killing everyone inside.
Serengeti stared in horror, watching bodies drift free, heading for the stars.
Not what she wanted. Not the end to this mission she’d envisioned. But it was Faraday’s crew or hers, and that was no choice at all.
She watched a moment, tracking one body in particular for a long, long time. Abandoned the camera when it bumped into others, flipping back to the cargo bay, following Finlay and Henricksen into the corridor outside. Stayed with them as they rode the elevator up to the med bay on Level 6, belatedly remembering she’d detailed all the TSGs to Shriek.
Dammit.
She sent a message to the DD3s, calling two of them up to the med bay to sub in. Downloaded a basic medical program to their mindset and ran the installation routine as they made their way to Level 6.
Not the best solution, but the best she had at the moment. None of her human crew were medics, and she needed the TSGs who actually were designed for that purpose to take care of the second part of her plan.
“Sorry, Henricksen.”
He looked up at the camera as the elevator doors slid open. “Not your fault.” He grimaced, clutching at his stomach. “You tell Aoki to jump just as soon as the hyperspace drives are ready.”
“Done,” Serengeti agreed.
Henricksen nodded and let Finlay guide him into the hall, the two of them limping down to the med bay together—Finlay looking increasingly worried, Henricksen looking increasingly unsteady. Leaving a trail of bloody droplets behind him as he threaded his way down the hall.
He stopped when they reached the med bay, looking up at the camera above the door. “Get outta here, Serengeti. More important things to do than watch me bleed.” He flipped a hand, holding tight to Finlay as she opened the door and half-carried him inside.
Houseman hesitated for a few seconds, staring through the open door, still looking like he had no idea what he should do. Clenched his fist, glancing down at his bloodied arm—minor wound really, not nearly as bad as that hole in Henricksen’s stomach—considering the med bay door again before hurriedly slipping inside.
Serengeti flipped to the bridge once the med bay door closed. Settled into a camera as Aoki fired the main engines.
A blast from the station’s perimeter defenses and Serengeti shuddered. A second blast—cannons pounding away at her hull—sent tremors running up and down her hull. She opened a secure channel, calling to the stealth ships hiding in the darkness. “Shriek. Drop back and come alongside.”
“Why?” he demanded.
Serengeti sighed, tired of his penchant for asking questions at inopportune times. “Change of plans. In case you hadn’t noticed, everything’s gone to shit.” Third blast from the station, this one slamming hard against her aft panels. “Drop back and come alongside,” she ordered, completely out of patience. “I’m opening the main cargo bay so you can come in.”
Shriek complied, grumbling the entire way. “Getting pretty sick and tired of you ordering me around all the time, lady.”
“Yeah, well, we’re all pretty sick and tired these days, Shriek.”
Serengeti closed the channel and sent a message to the TSGs, ordering all of the robots on board to the main cargo bay. Powered up the RPD once they’d acknowledged and had it move the sled and its load of AIs over there too.
More cannon fire, coming fast and furious now, making the ship shudder and shake. Aoki ratcheted up the engines, speeding their exit from the station, perimeter defense system chasing after them, lobbing more fire their way.
Lucky for them, they had Serengeti’s modified shimmer shield to confuse Faraday’s targeting system. Make it harder for the defense system to actually lock onto them the further they moved away. A last hit, and then misses for a long, long time—nothing but plasma fire flying harmlessly by, drifting out to space.
That’s better.
Serengeti killed Homunculus’s beacon, robbing the station’s systems of that bit of information as well. Leaving them just her engine signature to latch onto—not much she could do about that, seeing as how she kinda, sorta needed her engines if she was going to get out of here.
A check of her list—shield, beacons, engines—and Serengeti realized there was one thing she’d missed. “Shriek. Have you got any jammers on board?”
“Yeah. Why?” he asked suspiciously.
“We came in under false credentials and busted a bunch of rogue AIs out of prison. I’d rather no one knew we were here. Drop the jammers and you screw up inbound and outbound communications.”
Jammers were pretty low-tech—just a canister with a power pack and comms package stuffed inside them, screaming out garbage. But they were noisy as hell and had a decent broadcasting range. And at just half the size of a TIG, they were difficult to find. Damn near impossible to target and destroy.
Simple things, but they should buy them some time. Enough of a head start to get those ships from the Pandoran Cloud before Brutus caught onto Atacama’s ruse.
Or so she hoped.
“You do realize they’ll jam our comms, too,” Shriek told her. “At least until we move out of range.”
“I am aware.”
Shriek sighed. “Okay, then. Jammers away.”
Comms cut out, a shrieking, dissonant noise taking over all the channels.
Annoying, since she had to listen to it, but worth it. Besides, they wouldn’t be here all that long.
“Aoki—”
The bridge door opened and Finlay stepped inside. Finlay looking pale and shaken, covered in Henricksen’s blood. Hole in her hand she hadn’t even noticed, spilling yet more blood onto Scan’s panels as she slid into her seat.
Vacant station, until Finlay filled it. Evidently, Samara hadn’t found a suitable replacement to cover for her. Hopefully, Henricksen wouldn’t find out about that.
“Finlay. Med kit.” Serengeti flashed the light above the bridge’s tiny first-aid station.
Finlay frowned in confusion, wiping blood from the panel in front of her. Turned her hand over and stared at the bullet wound cutting clean through her palm, brow furrowing like she had no idea what it was, much less how it had gotten there to begin with.
Aoki looked at her, and at the med kit on the wall. Bounced to her feet and grabbed it, hurrying back to Scan, dousing Finlay’s the wound with an anti-bacterial sealant before binding it up with bandages. “Take you down to the med bay later. Get it fixed up proper.”
Finlay flexed her fingers, staring at the bandage. “Thanks,” she said faintly, and then bowed her head over
her panel, poring through the data on Scan.
Serengeti watched her for a while, panned the camera around the rest of the bridge. Stopped when she reached the Command Post and stared at the empty Captain’s Chair.
Silence there. A silence she felt like a gaping wound. A hole inside her where her captain should be.
She shivered, reaching for a camera in the med bay.
“Alright, boss lady.”
Shriek’s voice snapped Serengeti back to the bridge.
Internal channel. Jammer couldn’t touch those. Unfortunately.
“I’m on board, now what do you—?”
“Helloooo!” she heard in the background.
“Hang on a sec.” Shriek went quiet a moment. “Why is your RPD and a hoard of TSGs trying to get on board? And what the hell is in that—oh no. No-no-no-no-no. I’ve done a lot of things for you, Serengeti, but this—”
“Shut up, Shriek. They’re part of the plan.” She closed the internal channel, realized she’d forgotten something, and opened it again. “If you like your crew, you might want to have them stay with me for a while.”
“What? Why?”
“Safer that way.”
“You stuff me full of metal skins and now you want my crew?”
“Don’t want them particularly. Just rather not see them die. Cloud’s full of radiation,” she reminded him. “Doesn’t tend to agree with humans.”
Samara cleared her throat loudly to get Serengeti’s attention. “There might be another way. We came up with this thing in science club at the Academy—”
“Geek,” Finlay muttered, Aoki snickering beside her.
Samara turned her head, favoring the two of them with a flat-eyed stare. “It’s not all that hard really.” She bent over her panel and searched through the database, pulled up information on the Raven, and ran calculations on the fly.
Serengeti snuck in and peeked at what she was doing. “Modifications to his cloaking shield?”
“Exactly. We introduce an electrostatic field to the crew area and charge the hull with a magnetic field to neutralize the…” Samara trailed off, face flushing as Finlay tilted her head. “What?” she asked, suddenly self-conscious.
“You are, without a doubt, the nerdiest nerd in all nerddom,” Finlay told her.
Samara’s face darkened.
“She’s also brilliant.” Serengeti checked the calculations, making a few adjustments to minimize the possibility of error before passing the design on to Shriek.
“This’ll compromise my camouflage,” he complained.
Serengeti sighed. “Barely. And it’s better than your crew ending up dead from extreme radiation poisoning. So unless you want to give them up to me—”
“Nope. Nope. This looks great.” Shriek implemented the changes in a hurry, yelling, “Hey!” when Serengeti sealed the cargo bay up. “I’m still in here, you know.”
“Yes,” she said patiently. “I’ll let you out on the other side. ‘Til then, just keep it quiet.”
“Bossy-pants AI telling me what to do.”
“Shut up, Shriek.” Serengeti closed the channel, cutting him off. “Aoki. Status of the hyperspace engines.”
“Spooled up and ready.”
“Good. Send word to the Ravens.”
“Uhh…” Aoki flicked her eyes to the windows. “The jammers?” she reminded her, shrugging apologetically.
Right. Damn.
“Oh well. Shriek and his boys will figure out what we’re up to soon enough. Thirty seconds to jump,” she said, sending the message over ship-wide comms.
Aoki threw a panicked look at the camera. “We haven’t reached minimum safe distance! The station—”
“I know what will happen to the station,” Serengeti said quietly.
Couldn’t be helped. They had to leave. And they didn’t have time to do it the safe and legal way this time.
“Hyperspace signatures detected,” Finlay called from Scan. “Looks like…” Her fingers flew across the station, brow wrinkling as she examined the data the sensors sent back. “A dozen at least.”
“Brutus?”
“Maybe,” Finlay said doubtfully. “I think…” She frowned, scrolling through the data, trying to make sense of it. “Hard to tell since the jammers are messing with the signal, but it looks like they’re squawking Meridian Alliance signatures.”
Serengeti checked herself and found twelve fully-fledged jump signatures—no names yet, just the generic codes that preceded Meridian Alliance ships. Another four or five more forming as she examined the data from that first batch.
Could be Brutus and his cronies. Could just as easily be Atacama and her Valkyrie Sisters. Tempting to stay, and hope it was the latter. But they couldn’t afford the risk of waiting here to find out.
“Jump,” Serengeti ordered, not even checking the clock. “Jump to the rally point.”
A glance at Scan showed four hyperspace buckles forming around hers—apparently, the Ravens had gotten the message and were bailing out, too.
Serengeti shoved hard for the displacement ahead of her, slipping into the hyperspace trough. Exited on the other side, bringing part of the station with her—most of the Vault from what she could tell. A good chunk of the rock beneath it.
Oops.
Perimeter alarms sounded, warning her of ships arriving. Bosch targeted them, pointing the rearward-facing batteries behind them as the buckles resolved and the stealth ships came through.
Weapons wound down as artillery systems secured. A perimeter alert popped up, warning Serengeti of an imminent collision as a chunk of Faraday’s infrastructure drifted perilously close.
Swift swore loudly, dodging and weaving to get out of the Vault’s way. Contacted Serengeti, wanting an explanation as Shriek kicked and screamed, demanding to be released from her cargo bay.
“Yeah-yeah-yeah. Just wait your turn.” Serengeti muted Swift’s channel, checking to make sure her cargo was on board. Opened the cargo bay doors and released Shriek to the stars, the Raven mumbling something about nerdy humans and broken promises as he exited in a hurry, rejoining his stealth ship brethren.
“Alright, Aoki. Fire the hyperspace engines back up,” Serengeti ordered. “We’re skimming from here to the Pandoran Cloud.”
Aoki frowned, sharing a look with Samara. “Not sure that’s such a good idea.” Skimming was like leapfrogging, except with less time between each stop. Less time for the jump drives to cool down and recover. Less time for pursuing vessels to track a ship’s course, too. “Burn out the engines if we’re not careful,” Aoki warned.
“I know,” Serengeti told her. “But it’s worth the risk. We’re kind of in a hurry.”
Thanks to Homunculus, Brutus had to have heard the damaged AI’s cry for help.
She severed the connection to the Dreadnought’s data and locked him up tight, leaving Homunculus to scream himself silly in his quarantined section of her network.
“Three hops and we reach the Pandoran Cloud. After that…” Serengeti trailed off, not knowing what to say. Not knowing what they’d want to hear.
“After that, shit gets serious,” Finlay said in her best impression of Henricksen.
“That’s one way to put it.” Serengeti sent a smiley face to Finlay’s station, passed the coordinates for the Pandoran Cloud to Samara, marking the three stops she planned to make along the way. “Pass that to the Ravens.”
The objections were immediate. Serengeti ignored them and focused on her scans, making sure everything was clear before they headed to the next jump point.
No ships in the area, but there was that chunk of Faraday to consider. She stared at it, wondering what to do. No sense destroying it—anyone tracking them here would already know they’d come from Faraday—and there were still AIs in there. Kin, as much as she had any.
On a whim, she fired off a marker, tagging the remains of the Vault for retrieval. If they were lucky, they might be able to come back for it when all this was over.
Assuming there was anything left in there to come back for. And there’s anything left of me to come back for it.
Sobering thought, that. She flipped to a camera in the med bay, sneaking a look at Henricksen.
Her captain had definitely seen better days. Henricksen lay in a spreading pool of blood on a surgical table while two DD3s worked away at him—one pumping him full of fluids while the other probed at the hole punched through his side.
He twitched, groaning as the robots poked and prodded—pale as death, obviously in a lot of pain.
His own damn fault, no doubt. The fact that he was awake meant he’d either ordered the DD3s to dial back the pain meds or refused them outright.
Serengeti shivered, watching them. Saw Henricksen’s head turn, eyes locking onto the telltale light of her active camera.
Haunted eyes, face ashen. She’d never seen Henricksen look so broken. So vulnerable and exposed.
“Get outta here, Serengeti,” he rasped. “Go. Get. See to the crew.”
She lingered a moment anyway, watching, worrying, abandoning the camera only when he waved her away. Returned to the bridge and that empty chair. Finlay’s blood staining Scan. “Finlay,” she called, camera pivoting pointing at her freckled face. “What’s going on out there?”
“Quiet,” she said, cycling through the data windows on her station. “Just us right now from what I can tell.”
“Good. Aoki. Start the jump clock. Three minutes and we’re out.”
“Aye.” Aoki cycled the jump drives to active, throwing the clock on the windows so they could all watch it count down.
“Comms,” Serengeti called, turning her camera to Delacroix’s station.
Empty station. Delacroix in the med bay. Samara obviously hadn’t found a replacement for him either.
Samara shrugged her shoulders, glancing guiltily at the camera. “No one qualified. No one even close to qualified on board.”
“Except Houseman.” Finlay snorted. “If you believe him. You ask me, guy’s dumb as a stump.”
Serengeti started to defend him—Houseman had tried back there, after all, and that meant something—but unfortunately she happened to agree with Finlay’s assessment.
Serengati 2: Dark And Stars Page 33
