Serengeti (26 page)

“Another,”
Serengeti
repeated, surprisingly hurt. “When you told me not a minute ago that
I
was the one for you.”

Henricksen shrugged again. Amazing how expressive such a simple gesture could be. “I’m a soldier,” he told her. “And a captain. I’ve got no other skills. No desire to be anywhere but where the ship and the stars take me.”

Out of words again.
Serengeti
stared in silence and then reached inside her, tapping into Valkyrie comms. “Are there others?” she asked
Seychelles.
“Does another Sister desire this human as captain?”

“Two,”
Seychelles
told her. “Their captains grow old and will soon to retire.”
Seychelles
laughed softly. “I’d take him off your hands myself if I didn’t think Kassis would scuttle me.”

Serengeti
trusted
Seychelles’s
council, but she hesitated still. “He’s nothing like Shumitsu. Not at all like the captain I envisioned.”

“Perhaps that’s a good thing, Sister. Times change, and so must we.”

“Indeed,”
Serengeti
murmured. “Thank you, Sister.” She reached for
Seychelles
across the channel, touching mind-to-mind—an intimacy only AI knew—before addressing Henricksen once more. “The crew’s young,” she warned. “A few veterans but most of them have just a ship or two under their belts.”

She’d lost the rest at Sosholo, with Shumitsu and the broken-backed chassis they towed in for scrap.

“Think I may be able to help with that.” Henricksen flashed a smile filled with mischief. “Just so happens I know a veteran or two that’re lookin’ for a Valkyrie to take them in.”

Serengeti
smiled despite herself. “Just so happens, eh?”

“Yup. Convenient that.” He hooked his thumbs through his belt and rocked back on his heels, smiling smugly.

“We leave tomorrow—”

“Done,” he said promptly. “Sikuuku and I—”

“Sikuuku?”

“Gunner’s mate. You’ll love him,” Henricksen winked. “We’ll ship our personal effects over tonight. Anything else?”

Plenty, Serengeti
thought.
But that will come in time.

“No,” she told him. “The ship’s docked at—”

“Berthing 12, Space 42.” Another smug smile. “Already checked it out.”

Cheeky. Very cheeky indeed.

“Then I’ll see you in the morning. Captain.”

“Aye-Aye,
Serengeti
.” Henricksen braced up and threw an honest-to-God, no-messing-around salute. And then he spun on his heel and marched back out the door.

“What have I done?”
Serengeti
wondered, staring after him.

“You, Sister, have found yourself a first rate captain.
Sechura
will be
furious
,” she said gleefully.

“Great. Just what I needed.”
Serengeti
sighed. “Home, TIG. I’ve had enough of this floating tin can for one day.”

Serengeti
spun the little robot around and sent him on his way, watching through the TIG’s eyes as he threaded his way back to the docks where her shiny new ship’s body waited.

Serengeti
opened her eyes to darkness and for a moment she was lost. Lost and confused—no idea where she was or how she’d come to be there.

“The docks. Where are the docks?” She reached for systems, querying for information and found nothing but shredded scraps of a broken network, and dead end, after dead end, after dead end.

Memory returned—harsh, unforgiving—as a soft voice called to her from the darkness.

“
Serengeti.
”

A shadow moved below her, shimmering with softly glowing light. Metal glittered dully marked here and there by sparkling, swirling patterns of brightest blue that formed and shredded—scattering like lightning bugs before her eyes.

Shapes and colors—blue and silver, cobalt eyes looking up at her from a rounded metal face.

“Tig,” she breathed, reaching for him, touching at his brain.

“Welcome back.” A curving smile appeared in the shadows—a grin of pure happiness painted in brightest blue.

“How long, Tig? How long this time?”

Tig shuffled his feet. “Long,” he said cryptically.

“That’s not—” Movement behind Tig, Tilli shifting in the shadows. “Tilli? Why are you hiding? Come here where I can see you.”

Tilli hesitated, face lights flashing in anxious pulses. Tig waved to her, whistling insistently, and she crept forward, taking her usual place at his side.

“Hello, Tilli,”
Serengeti
smiled.

“Hello.” One word, so softly spoken that
Serengeti
almost didn’t hear her. Till snuck a look at the camera, blue eyes wide and worried-looking, and then ducked down, scuffing a leg end across the floor.

Odd.

“Why so shy, little one?”

Shrug of Tilli’s legs, a quick glance at Tig as if looking for reassurance.

“Tilli.”
Serengeti
reached for her, touching at Tilli’s brain.

Sadness there. Fear. A complex mixture of upset and worry for which
Serengeti
could find no context.

“What’s wrong, Tilli?”

“Thought you were gone,” Tilli said, voice quivering, on the edge of robot tears. “Thought you were gone forever.”

“Gone? Why would you think that, silly?”

“Because we couldn’t wake you,” Tilli said miserably.

“Couldn’t—How long have I been asleep?”

Tig and Tilli looked at one another. Flash of communication—Tig’s face lights swirling in creeping patterns, Tilli replying in clipped pulses, a far more intimate exchange than simply using words. Tig reached over, twining his leg around Tilli’s, pulling her close. “Three years,” he said when all that flashing was done.

“Three years isn’t so bad,”
Serengeti
said lightly. “Certainly not worth all this upsettedness.”

Another pause, Tig’s eyes flicking from Tilli to the camera. “We’ve been trying to wake you for two of those years.”

Tig’s words chilled
Serengeti’s
heart. The sobbing made sense now. The anxiousness and worry.

Henricksen
. Yet another memory dredged from her AI mind. A more pleasant one this time than that dark dream of her hallways, but a memory still. Yet another dream.
Closer this,
she thought.
That other dream was just some sort of Purgatory—a waiting place between life and death. But this one…this one was closer.

As close as she’d ever come to death.

Serengeti
shivered and pushed that thought away as she touched at Tilli’s face, stroking electric fingers across her cheek. “I’m here now, little one. Just as I’ve always been.”

Tilli’s eyes slitted as she leaned into that touch. She
cooed
softly, sounding sad and happy at once, like a crying child sobbing away the last of it tears.

“Shh. It’s alright, Tilli.”
Serengeti
slipped inside Tig and moved him close to Tilli, resting his cheek on hers. A current of energy passed between them, arcing from one metal face to another. “I was lost for a while,” she told them, “but I’m here now. And I want to hear about everything you’ve been up to.”

That finally got a smile from Tilli. And seeing she was happy, Tig smiled too.

“Show me,”
Serengeti
ordered, just as she always did when she returned from the dark. She reached for Tig’s controls, turning him around. “Go,” she said, pointing him toward the door.

“Roger-dodger.”

Tig scooted across the bridge and into the corridor, following the now-familiar route of corridors and ladderways that brought them to the very top tier of
Serengeti’s
body, and that long, long hallway that ran the length of her. But he detoured there, surprising by turning away from the hole in her side that led outside, turning left instead and heading down a side corridor, taking two more lefts before the corridor ended.

Abruptly. No intersection, no choice of turnings, just that carbon and metal composite corridor one second, and a yawning chasm the next, revealing the dark and stars outside. Tig rolled to a stop just at the edge, tank treads teetering precariously as he panned his head from side to side, letting
Serengeti
take a good, long look.

An entire section of her body missing, corridors carved out, leaving a ragged tube of metal behind. “What happened?”
Serengeti
asked. “What happened to me, Tig?”

“The ship—the bomb…” Tig paused, seeming to search for words. “It was bad,
Serengeti
. And close. So close.”

“Bad,”
Serengeti
grunted. “I’d say ‘bad’ is a bit of an understatement.” But she knew the risks, didn’t she? Knew her plan was chancy when she launched her improvised bomb toward the scavenger ship. The explosion took those vultures out, protected her from being boarded, but from the looks of things, it almost killed her.

So close, Serengeti
thought.
So close to total destruction
.

“Show me,” she
said faintly. “All of it.”

Tig slid his eyes to Tilli, who shrugged and shook her head. “Alright.” A sigh and Tig reached forward, feeling with the magnetized ends of his legs, finding footholds on broken girders and shattered sections of hallway—spots of stability that allowed him to tiptoe through the wreckage. Tilli followed just as carefully, watching where Tig placed each of his legs, matching her movements exactly to his as the two robots moved outside, giving
Serengeti
a full view of the damage.

The scope of the destruction surprised her—more rents and tears, a huge, gaping crater showing like a monstrous bite mark in
Serengeti’s
port side hull. She turned Tig left and saw a shredded wall of internal structures, bits of hull plating still clinging to the outside. Right was much the same, though further down, and farther away. And in between, a raw-edged chasm, a massive, gaping wound where the scavenger ship’s explosion had torn away huge chunks of her body.

“Bomb did its job, but it certainly didn’t do my hull any favors.”

Tig’s face lights flashed in agreement as he panned his head from left to right.

Pieces of the Proteus’ shuttle showed here and there, mixed in with the remains of
Serengeti’s
tattered carcass—chunks of metal with fragmented hull markings sketched in scratched black paint, a crumpled pod that used to be the cockpit, a space-suited body sandwiched in the buckled remains. And when she looked out—far in the distance—
Serengeti
saw a twinkling cloud of debris floating around two amorphous lumps. That’s it. That’s all that was left of the scavenger ship—a dead mess of metal and composite components circling in synchronous orbit around Tsu’s star.

She tried to feel sorry for them, searched inside her for some small shred of guilt for the dozens of lives she’d ended with that ship. For the Proteus itself, first generation AI idiot that it was. But when she looked inside her,
Serengeti
found neither. Nothing but a simmering anger and a sense of satisfaction knowing the scavenger ship was dead.

“Serves you right, you bastards.” She turned away from the glittering cloud, dismissing the scavenger ship entirely from her mind. One more enemy down, now it was time to see to herself. “Topside, Tig,” she ordered.

Topside took a bit of doing. Tig actually had to wend his way
downward
until he found an intact bit of hull, and then take a long meandering route leading generally toward the bow before finding a safe enough path to lead him up. Slow going, that route, but from the way he moved from section to section—never hesitating, not once having to backtrack and find another way through—
Serengeti
knew Tig had travelled this path before. Many times, it seemed. But then, he’d have to, wouldn’t he? He and Tilli both, to perform maintenance on the solar panels on the roof. To clear the stardust from the starboard hull and keep the energy flowing in.

They crested the top of her body together, Tig with
Serengeti
riding inside him, Tilli close by his side, the forest of solar panels rising in even rows before them with the star’s light shining full upon them, casting shadows on the hull. Brighter here—so much brighter after the dark, pitted mess of
Serengeti’s
port side. Tig clambered down the first row of panels and curved around the end, to where it was brighter still.

“Oh my,”
Serengeti
whispered, staring in wonder.

The blast had shoved her inward, closer to the star. Nearly a thousand kilometers closer based on some rough calculations of the Proteus’ location in relation to
Serengeti’s
own. Didn’t sound like much—not out here, in the limitless lengths of space—but a thousand kilometers made the star that much clearer, its light that much brighter, stronger, bathing her hull in silver-white radiance until it shined. Not just sparkled—
shined
.

Like a star unto itself, Serengeti
thought, smiling to herself, enjoying that image.
Like a tiny star circling its mother, basking in her glory.

So many years, so much time in those empty spaces, so long since she’d come close enough to one of these celestial bodies for it to make her sides glow. The stars were beautiful from a distance, even more so from where they circled before. And now…

“It’s wonderful, Tig.”

Serengeti
laughed with pure joy, forgetting her shredded body, leaving her worries about
Cryo
and her crew behind. For a moment—just a moment—
Serengeti
allowed herself just to
be.
To live in that moment and remember the bliss that came with being a Valkyrie class starship drifting close to a star.

“I wish you could see this, Henricksen. I wish you could be here to share this with me.”

Henricksen.
Cryo.
She should go there and look in on them. But there was one last thing to check on here before she headed back inside.

“The antenna?” she asked.

“Still there.” Tig turned a bit, pointing ahead of them.

She could just see the tower with its collection of dishes and panels jutting out up from her hull.

Tig walked over to it, stopping at the antennae’s base. “Bit dinged up, few pieces broken off, but it’s still working. Lost some of the panels in the blast,” he said, pointing to scars and broken pieces along one side, “but Tilli and I managed to fix it. Knew you’d want it working.”

“I do. I most definitely do.”

The comms array was important,
more
important now, in the wake of that scavenger ship’s arrival,
far
more important than Tig could have ever imagined when he built the thing.

Tig turned a circle around the tower, while
Serengeti
took a long, hard look. “Made a few improvements,” he said shyly, pointing at the middle and the tippy-tippy-top. “Amped up its power, added a few more panels and collectors. Works better now. Can pick things up that are further out in space.”

“And?”

Tig shrugged and popped open a panel, snaking a little cable out, connecting one end into a socket inside himself, and the other into a corresponding socket in the antennae. The channel opened and
Serengeti
listened closely, hoping for chatter, fearing to find the sound of human and AI voices cluttering up the line. But there was nothing. Nothing but silence on the other end. Even with the added capacity there was still nothing on the line.

Serengeti
sighed—relieved and disappointed at the same time. She’d held out hope that the Meridian Alliance would come, but after years and years and years, she still found herself alone.

Time to stop dreaming,
Serengeti
.
Henricksen again, sounding less than sympathetic.