Serengeti (9 page)

Twelve ships, Serengeti
thought dully, watching a last bright spot of cobalt fire flicker and die.
My calculations were right.

“Fuck-fuck-
fuck!
” Henricksen slammed both hands against the panel in front of him, screaming in pure rage. “
Brutus,
” he yelled, opening ship-to-ship comms. “What
the hell—”

“Proximity alert.”
Serengeti
flashed a warning as she reached for Finlay’s station, toggling the display to the expanse of empty space behind them.

“Captain!” Finlay called. “Buckle forming!”

“Where, goddammit? Where?”

“Aft. Two hundred kilometers.”

“Two hundred kilometers. That’s within firing range.” Henricksen swore softly. “How many?” he asked, staring at the back of Finlay’s head.

“Just the one, sir. I think,” she added.

“Think? I need a whole lot better than that, Finlay. Is it one or not?”

“It’s—I’m not—
Serengeti
?” Finlay raised her head and stared pleadingly into the camera in front of her, gesturing helplessly at Scan’s display.

Unfortunately,
Serengeti
didn’t have an answer for her. The data her scans collected was…odd, to say the least. Anomalous. Confusing. Nothing at all like the jump signatures she was used to seeing. “There’s a single buckle forming, but it’s…unstable,”
Serengeti
said.

Not quite the right word, but the best she could come up with to describe her scans readings. Breaches varied depending on the size of the ship transiting through—the larger the ship, the larger the breach, and the more energy that passed through with it. That breach out there…well, based on the readings
Serengeti
was getting, a small
moon
was about to come through that buckle.

Can’t be,
she thought, combing through the data, trying to make sense of it.
Nothing’s that large. Not even
Cerberus.

A sub-mind sent a warning as tracer fire tracked through space, intercepting
Serengeti’s
path. Her body shook violently, rail gun fire rattling along one side as bright red flashes appeared ahead of them—
Trinidad’s
big gun firing, pounding away at the armada’s leading edge. The two fleets were just a hundred kilometers apart now, and pounding away at each other, filling the dark vacuum of space with broken hulls and clouds of composite metal particles. The Heliotrope took out three more ships in as many seconds, hulls dissolving beneath the
Trinidad’s
chemical fire.
Brutus
fired back, lobbing plasma rounds into the DSR fleet that tore ships apart, igniting the oxygen and ammunitions stores inside them, creating explosions that flared like short-lived fireworks before the DSR ships died.

Serengeti
focused the bulk of her consciousness on the conflict ahead of her, using the electronic eyes built into her hull and the four small cameras mounted on the Number Four probe to view the battle from multiple angles. But she kept one eye trained on the emptiness behind her, detailing a sub-mind to watch the buckle, and analyze the data coming through as the breach slowly formed. That sub-mind pinged, wanting her attention, but another anomaly appeared—a single DSR ship, that blocky, ancient Golem drifting away from the rest of the fleet—and she waved the sub-mind off while she took a moment to investigate.

The Golem drifted further off line, completely detaching itself from the DSR’s main force to follow a wide, arcing course that brought it into a flanking position off the Meridian Alliance’s starboard side.

What’s it doing? Serengeti
wondered, not liking this change. Not liking anything about this pitched battle
Brutus
had drawn them into.

She calculated the trajectory of the Golem’s new path and realized it would take it straight to
Marianas
. Worrisome, unsettling enough that she sent a warning to her sister ship, and yet, strangely, the Golem’s guns were silent—had been since the entire time, not a shot fired since the ship first appeared. Were it not for the repeating strings of data, and the energy signature of its engines, she’d have thought the Golem derelict—dead and drifting on momentum alone.

Probably malfunctioned, Serengeti
thought.

But somehow that didn’t feel right
.
She
poured through the Golem’s broken data stream looking for something to validate the disquiet she felt, but there was nothing. Nothing incriminating anyway. No smoking gun. Just that silent, cruising Golem making its wayward course.

I still don’t like it.

She almost said something to Henricksen, but he had enough to deal with right now.
Serengeti
considered a moment and then set a sub-mind to watching the Golem, and sent a message to
Marianas
asking her to do the same so they could keep tabs on the ancient vessel together.

Two Valkyries with powerful AI minds—surely that was enough.

Serengeti
pondered the Golem and the buckle forming behind them, flicked her main consciousness back to the battle raging ahead of her, and just as quickly turned her eyes aft as yet
more
bad news arrived.

A new buckle appeared, sucking inward, condensed darkness swirling at its center, and then boiling outward as the jump breach finally formed.

“Multiple contacts. Aft. Two hundred meters.”
Serengeti
added a second schematic to the front windows. The diagram lit up like a Christmas tree—dozens of ships’ signatures appearing as the DSR’s missing vessels poured through.

Klaxons blared all over the ship. Henricksen opened ship-wide comms, warning the crew of the new arrivals, ordering aft batteries to commence firing as the vessels around them did the same. Plasma fire lit up the stars outside, the Meridian Alliance fleet splitting its firing, pouring out rounds at the DSR ships ahead, and the reinforcements moving in behind them.

“Finlay! Where the hell did those bastards come from?” Henricksen demanded. “Why didn’t our scans pick them up?”

Finlay was busy trying to make sense of all the new ships’ signatures and didn’t hear him, so
Serengeti
stepped in to help her out. “Mass jump,” she offered.

Had to be. Only explanation she could think of that made any sense.

“Those crazy-ass bastards,” Kusikov breathed.

“Tricky maneuver.” Henricksen looking grudgingly impressed.

Mass jump required a group of vessels to cluster together, tight enough that the spheres from their jump drives overlapped, creating an oversized singularity that sucked all the ships through at once. As a military tactic, it was brilliant: The ships on the far side of the buckle had no way of knowing what size force was coming until the breach resolved and the vessels transited through.

It was also incredibly stupid—less than a fifty-fifty chance the maneuver would work at all, and when mass jump went bad, it went very,
very
bad. As in entire fleets wiped out. Nothing but twisted metal bits coming out the other side. A rough ride, to say the least, and not
the way
Serengeti
would choose to travel. Not the way
any
sane AI would choose to transit hyperspace.

“Dammit. I knew those bastards were still out there somewhere.” Henricksen looked straight into a camera. “Should’ve jumped away from here when we had the chance.”

“
Brutus—
”

An alert interrupted her—scans detecting a massive energy signature somewhere inside the group of DSR ships behind them.

“They’ve brought another.”

“Another what?” Henricksen asked her.

“Aphelion.”
Serengeti
panned a camera around, searching the ships behind her until she spied the Aphelion’s long, thin shape, forking metal rod protruding from his nose, cobalt blue energy crackling wildly. She zoomed in and threw the image up on the front screen.

“Damn. God damn,” Henricksen breathed.

“Aphelion is firing,”
Serengeti
warned as a sparking blue orb separated from the Aphelion’s nose.

“Shit. Warn—”

“Captain!
Parallax
is firing!” Finlay shouted.

Two massive balls of cobalt blue fire showed on the screens projected on the front windows, approaching the Meridian Alliance fleet from opposite directions.

“Trapped,” Henricksen breathed in horror. He slammed a hand on a panel opening ship-wide comms. “
Brace! Brace! Brace!
”

Serengeti
flashed a warning to
Brutus,
who sent it across all channels. Not much help really, but it gave the fleet a few precious seconds of maneuvering before the Aphelion’s orbs slammed into them—one after the other, carving their way through the Meridian Alliance fleet.

Ships exploded, disintegrating left and right. The orbs chewed through the fleets’ ranks, carving up metal, energy dissipating with each vessel they came in contact with.
Parallax’s
missile destroyed a dozen vessels before it finally fizzled out. The second orb—the one shot from the newly-arrived Aphelion—had a bit more staying power and kept going long after its partner died. So much energy, in fact, that it likely would have reached
Brutus
at the fleet’s center if it’d been better aimed. But the shot was hurried—sent off as soon as the DSR ships appeared—and fired at an angle that sliced through the fleet’s aft corner, taking out a handful of Titans and Auroras before wobbling off into empty space.

“Sikuuku!” Henricksen called. “I want you and every other forward gun we have focused on
Parallax.
I want it gone, understand me? The gun, the ship, everything.”

“On it!”

Sikuuku pivoted, breathing a few words into his comms unit as he reoriented and started blasting away.
Seychelles,
on the far side of the fleet, added her fire and together the two Valkyries pounded away, slicing through the ships protecting
Parallax,
chewing them to bits. A few minutes of concentrated fire and the screening disappeared entirely, leaving the Aphelion wide open.

“Gotcha, ya bastard.” Sikuuku hunkered down and blasted away at the Aphelion’s fork-nosed shape.

Progress. Finally.

But a quick check behind showed things weren’t going quite as well aft. After dumping its load, the second Aphelion slowed and drifted backward, hiding at the far edge of the newly arrived DSR fleet. And there it waited, recharging that murderous forced-ion gun, waiting patiently for a chance to kill more ships.

Serengeti
passed the news to Henricksen—he was
not
pleased—and then diverted her attention to a message from
Brutus
. A message containing a roster of ships, and orders Henricksen
definitely
wasn’t going to like.

I don’t like ‘em either, Serengeti
thought, and started to reply.

Seychelles
beat her to it.
Don’t be an idiot, Brutus
, the Valkyrie sent.

Serengeti
winced. Not the most tactful approach, but then, that was Seychelles—loud-mouthed and opinionated, blunt and direct but seldom diplomatic.
Serengeti
loved her to death.

The landscape’s changed, Serengeti
sent.
We should be cautious in this. If we fall back—

Stay on course,
he sent back, tone curt and imperious, almost rude.
Follow orders. Do it now.

Fool. Seychelles
wisely kept that opinion between
Serengeti
and herself.
Watch yourself, sister.

Seychelles
closed the line as
Marianas
and
Atacama
acknowledged and came about, relaying instructions to the ships on
Brutus’s
roster.

Serengeti
passed the bad news to Henricksen and the bridge crew. “
Marianas
and
Atacama
are splitting off.”

“What? Why? Where the hell are they going?” Henricksen demanded.

Serengeti
moved the fleet’s schematic to the center window and highlighted the two blips marking
Marianas
and
Atacama
before panning the display a bit to show the trailing edge of the Meridian Alliance fleet. And then she waited, knowing Henricksen would see it in time. To her surprise, Finlay beat him to it.

“Rear guard’s slowing.” Finlay’s fingers tapped against the panel in front of her, eyes flicking up and down, left and right, interpreting the data
Serengeti
fed her. “They’re coming about.” Pause and a frown, head lifting staring at the schematic in disbelief. “Sir. They’re leaving us. Moving off with those two Valkyries.”

“He’s splitting the fleet?” Henricksen stared hard at the forward camera, wanting answers. “Where the hell did he come up with
that
idea?” he asked her, throwing his arms wide. “Punch through, form up, and come about—
that
was the plan.”

“A plan that changed when the rest of the DSR fleet showed up.”

“Agreed,” Henricksen nodded. “Plan’s gone all to hell. But splitting our forces and fighting a battle on two fronts is lunacy,
Serengeti.
You
know
that.”

Of course she did, but
Brutus
was in charge. And technically the odds were still in their favor. That’s what the numbers said anyway, and
Brutus—
twelfth generation AI, the most advanced mind among them—was all about the numbers. The Bastion engineers purposely eliminated concepts like doubt, and fear, sympathy, and empathy from the flagship’s design, viewing them as failures—faults in the earlier AI models like
Serengeti
and her fellow Valkyries. The Bastions,
Brutus
includes, were
all about cold, hard facts—odds and numbers, because that made for better decisions. Or so the AI designers said.

“Can you talk to him?” Henricksen asked her. “
Reason
with him. Try to get him to see how abominably
stupid
this is?”

Marianas
and
Atacama
had already moved off, committing themselves to this ill-advised plan—and it was doubtful
Brutus
would listen, but
Serengeti
tried anyway. She sent a dozen different messages, but none of them received a response.

The Bastion had gone dark. Guess he was tired of her objections.

“
Brutus
is no longer responding to my hails.”

And
Marianas
and
Atacama
were still moving, the gap between the divided Meridian Alliance fleet widening as the two Valkyries advanced on the DSR ships behind them. Too late to stop it now—all
Serengeti
could do was keep on firing and hope they somehow manage to get themselves out of this mess.

She focused her attention ahead just as
Trinidad
lost his main gun. “’Bout fucking time!” Sikuuku yelled, and then pivoted sharply as
Trinidad
fired back, bringing its other guns to bear, focusing them all in on
Brutus
as the other DSR ships went silent.

That’s odd.

Serengeti
panned her cameras around, trying to figure out what was going on. The snaking lines of
Trinidad’s
plasma cannons threaded their way through space, chewing their way toward
Brutus,
but for the space of five seconds, none of the ships around him fired. And then it all started back up again, missiles pouring out faster, more furious than before, the DSR ships targeting the Valkyries—
Seychelles
and
Antigone
on one side as
Sechura
took up
Marianas’
vacated position behind
Serengeti.

Chatter erupted on the comms, messages flying back and forth between the Valkyries, other ships in the fleet querying
Brutus,
wondering what was going on. But
Brutus
just kept pounding away, stubbornly maintaining his silence as he lobbed missile after missile at
Trinidad
, giving back every shot he took.

Ships exploded everywhere, flaring and dying on both sides. Casualty reports rolled in, detailing losses on both sides—crews vented, ships crippled or dead. Damage reports flooded the channels, wounded ships firing away while their crews worked to contain breaches and fires.
Serengeti
herself had taken damage—holes punched through her triple-thick hull, a fire started in a forward compartment that the suppression units quickly put out—but
Seychelles
and
Antigone
took the worst of it.
Seychelles
was in the lead position on the port side of the fleet, her body half-blocking, half-protecting
Antigone
behind her. Plasma shots peppered her nose and sides, composite metal plating dented and buckled before finally giving way.
Seychelles
kept fighting anyway, ignoring the damage to her body as she threw railgun and plasma cannon fire back. In fact, she fired as long as she could, never slowing until her systems started to fail. She ejected her crew at the last moment, launching her emergency pods out into the chaos of battle in a last ditch effort to save their lives.

Desperate maneuver, that. One an AI would only risk if there were no other option.

Seychelles
fired up her engines and broke formation, shooting ahead of the Titans and Auroras, putting herself at the front of the spearhead of ships in the main fleet.

Suicide run.

“No, sister,”
Serengeti
whispered, sending a desperate plea via sub-space message.

“Goodbye,
Serengeti,
” she
sent back. And then
Seychelles
surged forward, engines wide open, every last gun trained on
Parallax,
chewing through the ships protecting him to get at the Aphelion.