The Immortal Game (Rook's Song) (32 page)

Rook is slammed against his restraints when something huge smacks against the hull, but seconds after that, the Sidewinder is calm.
  The comm shorts, and Nazareth’s song about being a son of a bitch switches off.  The viewport lightens up.  Alarms are going off, and absently Rook switches them off.  The Sidewinder is suddenly very quiet.

Bishop’s face is calm as his fingers zip across holographic interfaces.  “We’re clear of the explosion.  Graviton gun is recharged and ready to fire.  I think I can have shields back online in half an hour.”
  He turns to Rook.  “I just want to say, I can scarcely believe what we’ve actually achieved.  It’s a marvel what you’ve worked out here.  Truly.”

Sweating, looking out the forward view,
agreeing with the alien that it was difficult to understand what they’d just done, Rook looks at the Turks up ahead being ripped apart.  It’s too far away to see details, but scanners show skirmishers swarming the Turks and trying to lend to the damage.  Only six Turks remain in near perfect working order—those are 1, 3, 7, 9, 10 and 12.

“It seems we’ve reached middlegame,” says Bishop.

Half dazed, Rook looks around at him.  “Huh?”

“Most of the major pieces have been destroyed, and now it’s time to start looking at endgame
strategies.”

Rook can’t help it.  He laughs.  He laughs long and hard, and sets a course for a position directly behind the relative safety of Turk 7.
  “Status on the Turks’ progress?” he says, still sniggering.

“They managed to cloud the space enough to hem in the flagship and its remaining vassal
ship.  When they destroyed Eleven, they made enough room to squeeze through and ensure they weren’t crushed, but not before a large chunk of Eleven collided with the underside of the flagship’s partner.”

“Result?”

Bishop takes a moment to consult with some of their probes that remain littered around space, the ones disguised inside of mimetic clay.  “It looks a little promising.  The primary weapon is located on the underside of all known Cereb warships, and there’s been extensive damage.  I see radiation spikes—it looks to me like their main power cells have ruptured.  If I had to guess, I’d say their primary weapon is down.”

“Any ideas about fixing the sensor shroud?”

“The repair bot is working on the OPG—”

“Any
other
ideas while it’s working?”

“No.  But, I will add that
we may go undetected a bit longer, for the massive waves of energy being displaced in this area of space at the moment will most likely distort their sensors.”

“Only for a while,” Rook says.  “They’re all occupied around the Turks, but they’ll be back on us soon enough.” 

“We could flee,” the alien offers.  “We’ve caused monumental damage, they won’t soon forget it.  We’ve made our point.”

Rook looks at their fuel, so low that they may as well forget going anywhere else at all.  Then, to the Ianeth, “You’re telling me you don’t want to finish it?”

Bishop doesn’t hesitate.  “Of course, I do.  However, we are running out of pieces to play.”

Looking out the forward view, Rook
thinks fast.  “I have an idea.”  He gives the Sidewinder an extra burst of speed.  “One last play that might give us the edge.  Prepare targeting axis, I imagine we’ll run into a few skirmishers on the way in.  And make sure the graviton gun is ready to fire.”

“
Affirmative, friend.  An inquiry, though, before our luck perhaps runs out.  How long were you planning all of that?”

“All
of what?”

“T
hat.  Everything that just happened on the surface.  It all demonstrates a rather prescient analysis.”

Rook
touches his right ribs, winces where he thinks he fractured one or two against the restraints.  “I didn’t plan for that
exactly
,” he says.  “I just wanted to destroy maybe
one
luminal.  If its core didn’t rupture when it crash-landed, then we would infiltrate and rupture it ourselves, just like we did.  I wasn’t sure that another luminal would come down to help search for survivors, but I had a feeling—I was actually hoping to keep them all hemmed in by the Turks.”

Bishop
runs his hands over a holo-display, speaks over his shoulder.  “But you had a contingency plan.”

“You told me a twelve-pointer would split the planet in half.  Given
the huge EMP of the explosion, and the tectonomagnetic and tectonoelectric pulses that were bound to come from a planet-splitting seismic shift, and combined with Kali’s chaotic atmosphere, I was hoping any ship that came down might be low enough that the explosion would frazzle their sensors, give us a chance to make away.  But they were much closer to the explosion than I expected.”  He looks at Bishop.  “Sometimes, some moves just present themselves, and you have to abort others.  Throttles,” he adds, indicating a reduction in power to reduce IR signature.

“Copy throttles,” says the alien.

The Sidewinder pushes relatively slowly for the final endgame awaiting them, but what neither the AI, nor Rook, nor Bishop knows is what chain reaction they’ve set off far behind them.  Once a possible component to his plan, it is now one of those aborted plans, and is therefore so far from Rook’s mind that it’s not even on his radar, figuratively speaking.

Over six exajoules of energy were released in an instant, and directly on top of the surface of Kali.  Miles below, the earth is moving, shifting.  Thor’s Anvil has been totally eradicated, and the magma vein beneath where it once stood has ruptured, tearing to pieces along the fault leading all the way to the other side of the planet.  Magma hits the massive glacier, turning the ice explosively into steam.  In the process, the magma is pulverized, causing a chain reaction that ripples throughout the planet.

Tectonic plates suddenly jump and shift with breakneck speeds.  The mantle ruptures, splits, exposing millions of tons of supercharged magnetized crystal rocks, all now repelling, repelling, repelling.  The core cracks, spilling its heated fluids into every new vein ripping open within the planet.

The egg has hatched. 
Titanic forces begin to brew.

On the opposite side of the planet, invisible fields of tectonomagnetism irradiate the surface, and tec
tonoelectricity pulses harshly outward, digging into the clouds and creating newer and angrier storms as the world splits along many veins.  Gravity keeps all the pieces together, but the pieces no less split, and churning seas of magma expand, launching with such force they make it into the thermosphere, blooming, a gorgeous red-orange umbrella that cools at the top and blackens like a quickly dying flower.

In the hateful darkness below, amid the churning lava and superheated gases, something swims.

Let us retreat before it finds us…

13

The
flagship’s primary particle weapon has been firing repeatedly, nearly to the point of overheating. 
That has never happened
.  The Supreme Conductor has had to carefully manage the time between cooldown phases and active engagement. 
That has never happened, either
.

Half of the defense stations are slag, and some of that slag is becoming part of the problem.  Despite the fact that the particle-beam cannon is powerful enough to ignite atmospheres, the energy shield surrounding each of these stations was designed to withstand at least a few of those hits
.  And when the shields finally do fail, the beams seem to only achieve partial penetration, tearing through the openings in the energy shields and ripping through random super-compartments of the defense stations.  While it annihilates anything it hits, what it doesn’t hit peels off like layers of an onion and goes careening off into space, much of it towards any sufficiently large object.  The solenoid guns are working overtime to deflect debris, but still some of it is getting through.

What’s worse, the collision between the second luminal ship and one of the stations has caused its particle-beam cannon’s reactor core to destabilize: it cannot fire now without starting a chain reaction that might mean blowing up a good portion of the luminal.

And then there’s the devastation away on the planet.

How did this happen?
The Conductor asks himself trillions of times, like a computer stuck in a loop caused by too much conflicting data, a column of numbers that just doesn’t add up.  As he watches the 3D models throughout the bridge, the energy dissipates across the planet and the irradiated atmosphere brings light to the rogue planet.

The Conductor stares.

The Phantom File is trying to reassert itself, and yet he is still defiant.  It urges him not to be too dismissive of the Phantom, not to discount his effectiveness in battle.  The File also says he should not believe everything his eyes see, for the Phantom is most cunning and favors illusions, and yet the Conductor must accept the reality being presented.

It is no illusion
, yet it cannot be happening
. 
We have superior numbers
. 
How did this happen?  How?

The maddening datafeed never stops feeding h
im the frustrating truth.  On and on it comes, telling him the story of excited gravitons, quantum gravity foam manipulations being detected moments before the first ship went down, the ignition of untold and barely contained energy from the drive cores, and the planet being ripped apart.  Never has he seen so much havoc wreaked.  Never.

The datafeed continues on and on.

Damage report: flagship’s hull is strong, secondary ship’s hull threatened.

Casualty report: exactly 24,213.

Wounded: exactly 27

Fleet operational efficiency: down by more than half.

Hull breaches: flagship 0, secondary ship 21.

Primary weapon: operable,
but overheating.

Solenoid gun: operable,
but being overheating.

The music
, he thinks. 
It has to be him
. 
There was music coming from the second Sidewinder
. 
But it cannot be him
…
he cannot possibly be controlling all of these Ianeth stations
.  The Conductor is almost lost in a catatonic state.  The Phantom File tries to remind him of the Phantom’s tendency to—

By a force of will and self-programming, the Conductor pushes it away. 
He is fed up with the File.  He won’t hear it.  He won’t hear anymore building up of the Phantom’s legend. 
He isn’t something to be given special treatment
. 
Even a special insect is still just an insect!

Within a split second, all of this internal strife is over with, and he is reassuming command and maneuvering both ships, reading the data coming in from the Conductor of the
secondary ship, coordinating their movements as ever, minimizing risk.  The secondary ship’s solenoid guns still work, and magnetically repel debris from the space surrounding them while the flagship continues its assault on the other stations.  The Supreme Conductor selects the choicest moments to fire.  After several minutes, he manages to create a gap between two of the stations, one big enough for both ships to pass through—

It’s him!

A new string of data races into him, and forces the return of the Phantom File, with alarms going off inside all seven brains, permeating every ounce of his augmentations.  There is a faint signature…something approaching…the data isn’t yet confirming it but the Phantom File confirms it for him.  Seekers tell the tale.  Signs of a plasma-stealth operations, and evidence of a unique ion trail.

Yes
. 
It’s him
.  It feels like a defeat just admitting it.

The space they are fighting in is so large—hundreds of miles across in every direction—and it is so cluttered by superheated slag and energy flares and skirmishers and seekers, that it’s difficult at first to pin the data signature down.  Then, the Supreme Conductor goes into a new tier of indignation when he realizes the Sidewinder is just a few miles ahead of the secondary ship, snea
king in between the gap created between two halves of the same space station and blasting away any skirmishers sent its way, almost carelessly.  It has come coasting into the debris field.  It is upside down relative to the luminal.  Scans show quantum foam excitement surrounding the large swell on its back, and graviton excitement:
The reverse-gravity field projector
. 
Ianeth design!  The size shows that it cannot project a large reverse-field from this far away, though
.

“Sir, we cannot fire on the Sidewinder because the secondary ship is in our way,” says one Observer, telling him something he already knows.

“It is by design.”  The Phantom File tells him that, and the knowledge trickles down to every Observer-Manager team.  Still, the Supreme Conductor has his own will.  “Nevertheless, tell the secondary ship’s Conductor to cue up all station turrets, and have all skirmishers in the vicinity surround it.  I see that the Sidewinder’s shields are almost entirely gone.  Three hits should completely annihilate it.”

“Yes, s—”

“This is Sidewinder x42, call sign ‘Rook.’  I repeat, this is your Phantom,” says a voice bleeding in through the datafeed.  The transmission is being picked up by seekers.  “If anybody is listening in there, I hope you speak English, ’cause you’re going to want to hear what I have to say.  I can see you’re cuing up the turrets along the outside o’ yer luminal out here.  By now I’m sure you’re aware how I did what I did down on the planet—an Ianeth reverse-field generator—and by now you’ll also see that it can’t reach your flagship from this distance, not with the secondary ship in my way.”

The datafeed supplies the bridge with a live 3D image of the very tip of the chevron-shaped luminal in front of the
Supreme Conductor’s ship, and at that tip, say half a mile off, is the Sidewinder, its nose and mounted generator aimed right at it.

“I cannot destroy the flagship
from here, but if you fire on me it will take five or six shots to destroy my ship.”

Three shots
, the Conductor estimates. 
No more
.

“In that time, I can emit a reverse-field to encapsula
te most of this ship in front of me.  You know what havoc I can wreak when that happens.  Maybe I can’t sling you all the way back to the planet’s surface from here, but there’s a strong possibility I might destabilize your drive core.  Also, the space here is covered up with skirmishers, most of them in hover mode—thank you for sending them over to me, by the way, it makes it all the more likely that as they get caught in the reverse-field, they’ll slam into the luminal ship.”

A pause.

As the Supreme Conductor absorbs the feed, the Phantom File is urging him on.  New programming insists that if he has the opportunity to take the Phantom alive, he must do it.  Also, it requires that if he gets the chance to make contact with the Phantom himself, then he must do so.

But it doesn’t tell me what to say
.  The Supreme Conductor beckons a Manager to open a channel, and speaks: “You are an insect.  You come from insects.  You will die like an insect.”

A pause.  Then,
the Phantom continues.  “If you don’t fire on me, I’ll sit right here, happy as you please.  If you
do
fire on me, though, I’ll shoot this reverse-field beam straight through this luminal and probably kill us all.”  A pause.  Then, “Your move.”

Everyone in the bridge looks at him.  Well, they don’t actually
look
at him, but the Conductor can feel their consciousness, can read their feedback, and knows that all focus is on him.  The Phantom File returns, and requires him to make a move…a tactical move that he feels is unbecoming a Conductor, or any of his species, for that matter.

Meanwhile, just outside, the battle stations are still moving—
limping
might be a better word—but one of them, Turk 7, is still moving along strong with all of its mass drivers working at near full capacity.

Farther beyond Turk 7, a hundred miles ahead, and just a mile off of the secondary luminal’s bow, there is the Sidewinder.  Coasting through this dangerous minefield as safely as we please, we have the illusion that we are just watchers on the wind, that we have no stake in this whatsoever.  It isn’t until we’re back inside the cockpit that we realize just how much we have invested in this one man, our final player in this game, the last representative of
us
.

Mind taut.  Hands gripping.  Eyes darting from one screen to the other.  A quick adjustment of their yaw, and a slight increase in speed to keep up with the
secondary luminal.  All around, what’s left of the once mighty Turks loom around the ship like disapproving parents, shattered but still loyal, still willing to see if the child can see its way out of this.

“You’re sure this will work?” says Bishop, monitoring multiple targets on his screen.
  He fires, but he’s only destroying a large piece of debris coming their way.

“It’s just a feeling,”
Rook responds, never taking his eyes off of the luminal’s bow.  “Sometimes that’s all you’re left with.  But we did figure that they’ve probably been trying to take me alive, right?  This gives them a chance, a convenient excuse to accept my offer to ceasefire, giving the rest o’ the Turks some time to reposition.  This ship here can’t move or else it exposes the flagship to the attack, and if it starts firing on us, we destroy each other.”

Bishop glances at him.  “A
pin
.”

Rook
tsk
s.  “Just good old-fashioned mutually assured destruction.  But, yeah, that’s the idea.”  He activates starboardside thrusters, moving to the left.  After a few seconds, the city-sized luminal changes its yaw to stay in front of him, protecting the flagship as it attempts to retreat through the debris field.  Rook smiles, takes his eyes off the swarms of skirmishers gathered in his viewport to take a quick look at his display.  “See if you can move Turk Twelve to Sector…let’s see…Sector Twenty-two, along these coords.  Try to use Turk Ten to cover.”

“Affirmative, friend.”

“That’ll cut off their right flank.  Turk Seven’s not lookin’ so good…see if you can shore him up with what’s left of Turk Three.  If that works out, it successfully cuts off their left flank.”

“But that leaves a major gap between them and Kali.”

“Then all that’s left is for them to retreat towards the planet.”

“You think they’ll take
the out?” inquires Bishop, making the necessary moves.

“I think it’s important for us to see if they’re
willing
to take it.  If they’re not, then that tells us something.”

“
Like what?”

Rook snorts.  “It tells us we’ll get one last
chance at destroying this luminal in front of us, and after that, they’ll probably annihilate us before the graviton gun is recharged or our shields are repaired enough to survive another attack.”

To this, the alien responds simply, “We’re ready to die, then.”

“It was always a long shot, anyway,” he says.  And, for the first time in a long, long time, he feels absolutely no regrets.  The war has been long, and he has been serving in it far past his natural tour of duty.  Considering all of that, he knows he’s done the best he could do. 
Hell, it’s the best anybody could do
, he reminds himself.  No need for false modesty here.  However, he is completely aware that the only reason he came this far is, strangely enough, because he was only one man.  His solitude and singleness has defied the Cereb scope and definition of what war can be.  It’s confounded them at every step.  They thought he was the last, and it was that uncertainty that’s been their undoing. 
They didn’t count on Badger, or Bishop
. 
Now they’re probably confused about who was in that other Sidewinder
.