Serengeti (19 page)

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 hall
s.

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, other 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.

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.

Bits and pieces of
Serengeti’s
innards floated around them, cluttering the room, constantly getting in Tig’s way. Cables floated freely, snaking as if alive, but what drew
Serengeti’s
eyes was the corpses scattered amongst those cables, and shoved up against walls. A flotsam and jetsam of burnt-out power cells and twisted components, empty shells and mounded piles of salvaged parts that used to be
Serengeti’s
robot crew.

Engineering was a graveyard. A place of broken robots and salvaged parts. The robot comms channel was silent because no one was talking. No one was
out
there to talk. They were all right here—every last one of them, every last TSD and TIG that had come through jump with her and not been blown out into space.

Tig and the others gathered up the robot dead and brought them here. And when the time came, the rest of them gathered here to die as well.

“Gone. All gone,”
Serengeti
whispered, voice filled with horror. “What happened, Tig? What happened to them all?”

She urged him forward, not even waiting for a response, rolling Tig around the room, taking in the stacks of bodies arranged in neat, orderly rows along the walls, others stuffed into storage spaces, still more scattered about the floor. Abandoned where they’d fallen, shoved to one side so they’d be out of the way. A few bodies floated freely, twisting amongst the cables, but most of them had been bundled together and dogged down, giving them some dignity in death. Some semblance of tranquility and peace.

Serengeti
scanned Tig’s eyes across the carnage, heart heavy with sadness, mind filled with rage. Tig made a last loop around Engineering and then slowed to a halt,
beeping
softly, front legs tapping together as he waited for her to say something. To pass judgment on what had happened here, deep inside Engineering.

To be honest,
Serengeti
didn’t know what to say to him. Not for a long while. She just stared at a nearby robot—a TIG identical to her own little Tig.

This one still has its numbers
,
though.

Idle thought, ridiculous thing to mention but that’s the first thing she noticed as she looked down at Tig’s broken-down brother.

The robot’s carapace yawned wide open, revealing an empty space inside.

It’s shell. Nothing but a shell.

They’d plundered it for parts—Tig, the others, somewhere along the way they’d the TIG’s motors, disassembled the rest of his sides, harvesting wires and circuits, draining its power core, leaving it a cold, dead heart.

The thin cable they’d used to kill it still snaked from the robot’s chest.
Serengeti
reached for it, unplugging it using a pincer extruded from the end of Tig’s leg. She touched at the robot’s face then, traced the figures stenciled on its side.

TIG-206.
The designation meant nothing to her. Nothing special, just another robot. Indistinguishable from any other in her crew.

But that means everything. They
are
my crew.

And it was her job to protect them, just as it was theirs to serve her.

In a rage,
Serengeti
left him, pulling away from Tig, flipping from one camera to another until she finally found one in Engineering that worked. And from its lofty height she stared downward, watching Tig fidget and shift.

“What have you done?”
Serengeti
thundered.

Anger, so much anger coursing through her, coloring her voice.

Tig froze, face a blank, cobalt eyes two brightly glowing circles in the rounded metal of his head.
“Beep
?” he asked, pointing at himself. A quick glance behind him, as if looking to see if someone was there. “
Beep-beep
?” he repeated.

“I told you to watch over them. I told you to keep them safe. What happened, Tig? How could you let this happen?”

Not fair to blame him, part of her knew that. After all, this—all this—was her fault as much as his. But he’d kept this from her. All those wakings, that guilty look on his face, that sneaking suspicion she’d had that Tig was keeping something from her.

I knew you were keeping secrets, Tig, but I never imagined…how could I ever have imagined you were hiding something as terrible as this?

“You cannibalized them. Stripped them down. Tore them apart.”

Tig
beeped
frantically, shaking his head.

“You
killed
them, Tig. And I want to know why. I want to know what happened that this,
this
was the only answer.”

Tig waved his legs wildly,
beeps
and
borps
spewing from his mouth in a panicked rush.

“
Why
?!”

Tig went silent, head drooping, body sagging to the floor.
Serengeti
waited, watching him from high above, and slowly, softly, Tig began to talk. To spin out a long tale that started when she drifted to sleep eight years ago and ended right here and now.

Seems things went south quickly after she left them, and Tig—being in charge— had been forced to improvise, modifying her designs again and again in order to build the power grid she’d envisioned. That grid was important—the key to everything—and without it, none of the rest of her plan would work. Tig knew it, the rest of the robots knew it as well. They’d been complicit in this most desperate of desperate plans—everyone agreed, all of them in it together.

Repair, refit, survive—those were her orders, and Tig and the others followed them as best they could, for as long as they could. But even with
Serengeti
sleeping—lost in limbo and the darkness of the dream—the power levels kept dropping. Leaking away little by little, until the robots feared they’d lose
Serengeti
forever. Because, the thing was, the robots themselves needed recharging—not often, just once in a while—and that coupled with
Serengeti’s
sipping draw put a severe strain on the fuel cells’ dwindling reserves.

That’s when they’d come up with their plan. A plan that changed everything, and ended up killing her crew. A plan that involved sacrifice, feeding the energy in the robots’ power units
back
into the fuel cells rather than tapping into its stores to charge themselves up.

In ones and twos the robots died, their insides pillaged, dismantled, salvaged for spare parts. But the rest of them kept going. Kept scurrying about, scrubbing burn marks from her starboard side, replacing panels where they were needed, stringing mile after mile of cable through
Serengeti’s
body to the fuel those precious power cells.

The hell of it was they’d succeeded, keeping her alive until they reached Tsu’s star. But it took all of them to get her here—the lives of every last robot save one to keep
Serengeti’s
power grid running for those eight long years. And now, having reached their destination, there was just her and Tig to see it. Just
Serengeti
and her last, loyal TIG to look upon her shining hull, and the makeshift engineering project that provided her with power.