Serengeti (25 page)

“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.

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.

Henricksen paused a second, head tilting, and then flipped a hand at the room around them. “Why here? Why hold the interviews on station rather than on your bridge?”

“Ship is for crew,” she told him. “Which you aren’t.”

“Yet.”

Serengeti
couldn’t help but laugh. Shumitsu would’ve appreciated that answer.

Henricksen’s lips quirked in a small smile of victory. “Why the TIG?” he asked her, nodding at the robot body
Serengeti
inhabited.

“You’d prefer something else? Something more…human, perhaps?”

Henricksen shrugged. “Don’t really care to be honest. Just curious. Last AI I served…” Henricksen trailed off, face softening, eyes drifting to one side.

“You don’t wear a patch,”
Serengeti
noted.

“No.”

One word, softly spoken. He caught her eyes—well, the TIG’s eyes with
Serengeti
inside, looking through them—and then slid his gaze away, nodding meaningfully at the camera on the wall.

“No one but the Valkyries watching. Trust me on that.”

Henricksen thought a moment, head cocked to one side.

“Tell me,”
Serengeti
said softly—as softly as Henricksen had before.

He frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s in my rec—”

Serengeti
shook the TIG’s head. “Records are just that: full of truths that are just as often false.
Tell me,
Henricksen. In your own words, not that company speak some officer put down.”

A last look at the camera. “Alright. What the hell. Black Ops.” He brushed his fingertips across the blank material on his shoulder. “No patch because no ship. At least in theory.”

“Black Ops. You’re a Raven.” Not the answer
Serengeti
expected. Not the type of Captain she expected the board to send her. “And before that?”

“Two Titans and an Aurora.”

“Which—”

“Gone,” he said, cutting her off. “Dead. Crew—” Henricksen grimaced and touched his fingers to the scar on his face. “It’s a terrible thing to lose crew,” he told her. “But far more terrible to lose an AI.”

Yet another unexpected answer. Humanity had mixed feelings about the AI they’d created—AI that now created themselves, using human-based specifications as the building blocks.
Serengeti
marked another tick in the good column.

“Black Ops, then.”

Henricksen nodded tightly. “After the Aurora. Thought to make a go at a Valkyrie command but…” He shrugged. “Black Ops were the badasses, right? And I figured I had a better chance at a Valkyrie with the added time under my belt.”

Smart. So many surprises in this one. So many layers
Serengeti
never would have expected. But she had to be sure. Had to be absolutely certain he was the one to sit her chair.

“So why did you leave?”

Shrug of Henricksen’s shoulders. “Got tired of not being in it.”

“What do you mean?”

Henricksen rubbed his chin, thinking a moment. “Well, it’s like this. We run recon, right? Slip in, sniff around the edges, send info back to the fleet, but then we just sit back and watch while everyone dies. Not why I got in it,” he said, anger creasing his brow. “Got tired of it. Tired of being witness to all the dying.” He drew a breath, touching that scar on his face. Unconscious gesture. Likely didn’t even realize he was doing it. “’Sides. Citadel started moving away from human crews for the Ravens. All drones, all the way—wave of the future, or some such.” Henricksen laughed bitterly. “They wanted me to leave and I wanted out. Everyone wins.” He spread his hands, smiling ruefully, but the anger lingered, lurking deep within his hawkish grey eyes.

“So you chose the Valkyries, knowing we’re out there, fighting on the front lines.”

Henricksen shook his head. “I didn’t
choose
the Valkyries.” He folded his arms, moving a step closer to the TIG. “I chose
you, Serengeti.
”

“The AI chooses her captain,”
Serengeti
said coldly. “Not the other way ‘round.”

“Aye,” he said, dipping his head in acknowledgement. “And I came here hoping you’d have me, shoddy record and all.” The smile twisted, becoming a colder, angrier version of that cocky grin he’d shown her before.

“Why?” she demanded. “Why me above my Sisters?”

He flicked his eyes to the camera, choosing his words carefully. “Saw you at Terinassis.”

“Terinassis? Terinassis was a disaster. I lost nearly a third of my crew there.”

“And you
saved
the rest,” Henricksen said quietly. “Blew holy hell outta your chassis, gaping wounds up and down your sides, but you got your crew
out, Serengeti.
” Henricksen paused, nodding slowly. “That’s when I knew for certain. That’s when I set my eyes on your captain’s chair.”

Serengeti
stared in amazement, honestly not knowing what to say. “And what if I won’t have you?” she finally asked.

“What are you doing?”
Seychelles
whispered urgently.

Serengeti
felt her friend stirring, pushing to the fore, but she shoved her away and focused on Henricksen. “What if I deem you unworthy and choose another to sit my captain’s chair?”

“Honestly hadn’t thought about it,” Henricksen admitted. “Try for another Valkyrie I suppose.”