The Phantom in the Deep (Rook's Song)

by Chad Huskins

  Rook would not permit the Leader’s assessment of his people influence him now. Rook has dealt with enough despair and guilt, and he wouldn’t take on any more. We had as much of a right to be here as they do. We had our flaws, sure, but so does every living creature. The Cerebrals’ greatest flaw is that they see none in themselves that can’t be quantified in terms of “efficiency loss” or something of the like.

  Presently, Rook drifts back over to the first drive core. He alights like a leaf on a forest floor, and reaches into one of his suit’s pockets. He produces a scanner, checks the exo-matter mixture ratio of the drive core, which was once monitored by the computer still dying within it. Trace amounts are left, but even small amounts of that sort of mixture is highly explosive. Next, he checks the reaction sequences, which are still corresponding to specified norms—if they weren’t, detonation would be mere seconds away.

  From the satchel clipped to his side, Rook produces a dinner plate-sized octagonal device. It’s black, and coated in a shape-shifting polymer. A keypad on the top demands a ten-digit activation code before he can set the remote frequency. After delicately placing the first, he floats to the next spot he’s selected, and the next, and the next, setting them up all over the cavern, listening to the last bits of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables. When all the N3 explosives are set, he backs out, as careful as Jack not to wake the sleeping Giant, and just as anxious to climb back down the beanstalk. On his way back to the Sidewinder, Rook places a few radio frequency relay stations on the cave’s walls, their dishes opening like blooming flowers as he activates them. He makes certain they are indeed receiving a quality signal, and can bounce the signal onto the N3 explosives.

  Back inside the Sidewinder, he reactivates life support and artificial gravity throughout the ship, and removes his helmet. By the time he gets to his seat in the cockpit, the computer has already rendered four more possible approach vectors, should he make the changes to Dopey’s position if the Cerebral ship approaches from Sector 23 (coordinates: S23 – SQ615 – SB33 – D5 – P2 – H109, to be exact). The computer is also ready and waiting with an offer for another chess game.

  Rook cycles up the engines, releases the inertial clamps, and trusts the autopilot to give him liftoff. His eyes glance over to the two freezers at the far corner of the cockpit. They are the same freezers that once held Badger’s blood, as well as the spare heart meant for the old timer. Rook had to dump it, so that he could preserve something else. It won’t work, he tells himself.

  Immediately on the heels of that thought, he grins and thinks, It’ll work. Encouraging his own madness is all he’s got left. “Madness and genius are a hair’s breadth apart.” His father’s words again, but this time he was quoting some physicist from the twenty-third century.

  Now the Sidewinder climbs out of the catacombs. It must move slowly. The twisting tunnels aren’t the only danger. The collapsed passages and free-floating boulders we passed on our way down are a major concern. Magnetic shielding will deflect them from smacking against the Sidewinder’s hull, but there is only so much room inside these tunnels and pushing them too hard against the walls could cause further collapse.

  He checks the radiation levels, which are slowly declining. The Sidewinder’s electronics are made of radiation-hardened materials, but the radiation all around him was at unholy levels.

  The computer chimes. It anxiously awaits his next move. Rook eases the Sidewinder around a tight corner, and once he deems that it’s safe passage from here, he sets the course and puts the ship on autopilot. He tears open an MRE package, sucks down the same bland nutrient sludge he’s been devouring for years, then looks at the chessboard. He started up new game after leaving base. Now, he moves his king to H8. The computer moves its queen to G6, taking his last rook.

  Now, there are only three pieces left on the board. His king sits at H8, while the computer’s queen sits at G6 and its king is not too far away at F7. It is Rook’s turn and he has no remaining legal moves he can make.

  “Stalemate,” he mutters.

  That’s the first time that’s happened in a very long time. Usually, the computer is clever enough to win, it is a computer, after all, and on the rare occasions that Rook is able to defy its expectations of him, he comes out the victor. But here, after perhaps two years of solid endgames, he and the computer are finally at an impasse. A no-win situation.

  Rook now turns to the holo-display showing the three-dimensional sectorboard he’s constructed around Magnum Collectio. He reviews all the sectors of his battleground, and considers more movements that the Cereb mother ship can possibly make if all his other plays fail and it reaches Sector 1 without delay.

  He taps a few more keys on the display, integrating the likely trajectories of asteroids all around the Cereb ship once it begins pushing them out of the way:

  Select: Check Likely Approach Vectors

  Account for: Perimeter Asteroid Changes

  Account for: Enemy Primary Weapon

  Account for: Asteroid Destruction by Enemy Vessel

  Account for: Anomalous Asteroid Movements

  Extrapolating…

  >>>PRINCIPLE OF FOUR: APPLY

  All at once, the Sidewinder’s computer applies Rook’s mathematical concepts to the mock mother ship, and extrapolates numerous possible approaches and evasion vectors it might make once it reaches Magnum Collectio.

  By the time he returns to the campsite, Rook has gone over several possibilities. He cycles the ship down and switches off artificial gravity to save on power. He floats to the circuitry bay and begins doing some repairs to the repair bot—the omni-kit now allows him to make higher-quality, more specific parts, and if he can get this bot up and running, it’ll cut his repair time in half.

  While he works on fabricating the parts needed to fix the bot’s RDM (repair diagnosis module), Rook taps a few keys on his micropad, sending a command up to the Sidewinder’s main computer.

  SEARCH: CLASSIC BANDS: ERA/YEAR: 1967

  ARTIST NAME: OTIS REDDING

  ALBUM NAME: SINGLE

  SONG TITLE: (SITTIN’ ON) THE DOCK OF THE BAY

  “Whistle while you work, boy.” Advice from both his father and from Badger. His father, on a random day at the farm, bailing hay and working until sunset. Badger, on one of his last lucid days, some eight years ago, when advising Rook on how to keep his sanity.

  “Sittin’ in the mornin’ sun,

  I’ll be sittin’ when the evenin’ comes.

  Watchin’ the ships roll in,

  Then I’ll watch ’em roll away again.

  Yeah, I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay,

  Watchin’ the tide roll away.

  Ooh, I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay,

  Wastin’ time.”

  Rook did as he was told, and whistled. And there was no better song to whistle to. A great part of the song came when the lyrics just stopped, and here came the most nonchalant, devil-may-care whistle one could fathom, while in the background the ocean could be heard soughing. Images of home. The ocean. Sand. Beaches. Women wearing bikinis as thin as their smiles.

  Whistling works, but only so well, and only for so long. Despair comes more easily, and lasts much longer. And yet, like any madman with his back against the wall, he continues with his mad scheme.

  A chime goes off. At first he thinks it’s the computer again, requesting another game, perhaps even making the first move without his approval. But it’s not chess the computer wants. It wants his attention to an area a few hundred miles outside of Magnum Collectio, outside of his sectorboard. Most of the spy satellites he’s left scattered throughout the asteroid field have been scooped up or destroyed by skirmishers. They’ve located a lot of the satellites on the field’s perimeter, and one by one they are removing his ability to see beyond his home region.

  However, a few satellites remain, and they have detected the mother ship. It’s coming. Slowly but surely. He has perhaps thirty-six hours. The Cere
brals are moving at a careful pace now, deliberately destroying larger asteroids along the way. They’ve opted to sift through the haystack in search of a needle, and, as predictable, burn much of the haystack down.

  Rook feels his pulse quicken. Sweat begins to bead down his brow, and he wipes it away with an already filthy rag.

  It takes two hours to get the repair bot’s new pieces forged and in place, and another hour to make sure its programming hasn’t decayed so much that it can no longer recognize its primary functions. Finally, he switches it on to test it.

  “System scanning,” it says in a curt, self-important tone. “EEF protocols are present. Acknowledging systems scan for—wait…wait…wait…collating.” After a few seconds of Rook silently praying that the damn thing will work, it finally says, “Confirmed. Diagnostics check complete. System specs maintain. Thirteen-point-seven percent inoperable. Program decay nominal. Efficiency at acceptable levels. Command?”

  “I need you to work on the engine exhausts first,” Rook says. “Make that a priority. There are insulation problems around the valves, indicating an unacceptable Joule-Thomson effect. Check for throttling, then do a thorough diagnostics scan and get back with me.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Rook lets the waist-high thing crawl around, work on the valves, then watches it diagnose the Sidewinder’s many ailments and selecting the appropriate procedure to cure it. For the first half hour, he walks alongside the repair bot, watching it work, making sure it’s doing its job correctly before allowing it to go off on its own.

  Rook lets the repair bot work on the hardware, while he goes to the main computer outlets to work on the software. Every time the bot reports that it has insufficient tools or supplies to conduct a particular repair, Rook gathers the necessary resources into his glove’s mini-fabricator, flash-forges the required pieces in his palm, and hands them over to the bot. “That’s teamwork, little guy,” he says at one point, smiling down at it.

  “Teamwork,” it says shortly. “Acknowledged.” Then, it turns and is off once more.

  Rook watches the bot go. A long time ago, somewhere in some factory, an assembly team put that thing together. Just another repair bot, right off the assembly line like all the others. It has traveled thousands of light-years, changed hands, changed owners, and finally wound up here. A derelict piece on a derelict spacecraft. Just like the warbot. Just like Rook. Aren’t we a motley crew, he thinks, and is off to check the systems software. On his way back to the cockpit, he pauses in the main corridor to look at the engraving on the wall.

  Interplanetary Space Force

  Eternity

  Legacy

  Humanity

  It’s that middle word that gives him pause. Legacy. Another word for birthright, or inheritance, something left behind for posterity’s sake. The word knocks around inside his head for the next few hours, and will eventually spawn another idea.

  For the next ten hours, Rook consumes what’s left of his caffeine pills and the coffee, which he’s been saving for a rainy day, and sits in the cockpit staring at his holographic sectorboard, moving pieces and setting up triangulations and checks based on the assumption of four retreating vectors the skirmishers will likely use when—if—they retreat. Rook develops a series of discovered attacks—in chess, those are attacks revealed only when one piece moves out of the way of another. “It’ll force them to move,” he whispers to himself. “Like a king left exposed, it’s a forced move.” What sentient being wouldn’t move its most powerful piece out of harm’s way?

  For Rook, it can be downright maddening at times, trying to think how the enemy might think. Oftentimes, he finds himself forgetting a key component, such as applying the four-times-four principle to the possible retreat lines from each sector.

  But it becomes even more mind-sloshing when, after he believes he’s done all he can do on figuring on the mother ship’s main movements, he must now determine the movements of her skirmisher squadrons, her “pawns.” Rook already knows that the Cereb squadrons are invariably comprised of four groups of four. What he hasn’t seen is what they do when a primary luminal ship is heavily threatened, because it’s never happened before. But I’m willing to bet it’s the same reaction in all sentient species. Protect the main weapon.

  Rook is betting the pawns will do whatever they can to protect their king.

  “All right,” he says, pushing himself out of his chair, popping his neck and his knuckles, and beginning to pace back and forth. “So now, I need retreating lines for each and every squadron.” Rook considers it for a time, lobbing the idea from one side of his brain to the other. Then, it hits him. The idea’s simplicity almost makes him mistrust it. He wonders if he’s deceiving himself. “Can it be that simple?” he asks aloud. There is no one to answer. No one but us ghosts, and we cannot even be sure what he’s working on here.

  Rook takes his seat again, and uses the same principle-of-four algorithm he has taught the computer to use on the mother ship, and then asks it to apply it to all of the theoretical squadrons he tosses into the simulations. The first one works; the computer predicts how the squadrons will move based on the asteroids’ movements at any given time, and in relation to the movements of the mother ship.

  Lines start spreading out seamlessly from each of the fighters, showing convergences, or areas where they are likely to regroup (to reform their four groups of four in order to buffer their defenses), while also showing their sixteen most likely lines of retreat with the four most likely of those lines prioritized.

  The computer does it all. Rook just plugs in a random squadron of sixteen fighters, groups them in four groups of four, and lets the computer handle the rest. Rook has done all the legwork in teaching the computer the concepts of his strategy, and now he leaves the computer to the colossal calculations needed to map out various other strategies. If all goes well, he should be able to leave the Sidewinder on autopilot while in mid-battle, and trust it to maneuver according to those algorithms and changes to the battlefield.

  Another chime. The mother ship has cleared another cluttered region of the field. It’s getting closer. It’s heading is clear: it is coming for Magnum Collectio. It is coming for him.

  Crunch time.

  Rook takes the Sidewinder out for a spin, and spends the next four hours flying across the surface of King Henry VIII, setting up transmission relay stations, making sure they pick up the radio frequencies perfectly. Another two hours is spent on a brief trip over to Queen Anne, where he glides down into the massive hole where his caches are, and takes what supplies he can into his cargo hold, mainly food. It’s a shame he can’t take more. Just before he closes the cargo ramp, he turns to look at the Queen one last time, blows her a kiss, and takes off.

  Another hour is spent with the warbot, making sure it understands its orders, and then deciding which of the Seven Dwarfs he wants to offload the machine onto. Once he makes his decision, Rook smiles. It could be no other way. Grumpy. What is “grumpier” than a warbot?

  He spends another two hours sending orders over to the Seven Dwarfs with their hidden mid-space turrets, and the 107 Wild Cards with their tiny explosives. Have to set up the pieces. Each of the false asteroids responds well to his commands, flying over to different sectors, or to different sections of their sectors.

  Rook looks at the mother ship’s current approach vector. If his sensors are right, she’ll be coming from Sector 41. He moves Sneezy over to Sector 4 (exact coordinates S4 – SQ128 – SB23 – D5 – P8 – H101), and is glad to see that the computer recognizes what he is doing. It operates on its presets, moving the rest of the Dwarfs to their most advantageous positions. Dopey has the longest journey to make, moving from S8 all the way over to S2.

  Once this is done, he has all Seven Dwarfs situated between the King and the Queen, though their positions aren’t in a line, rather they are scattered in order to appear as nothing more than random asteroids. The Wild Cards he spreads out even further, like dust acro
ss Magnum Collectio.

  Rook makes a final return to camp. He stands there for a while, looking around at it. It will likely be the last time he sees it. He spends the next three hours deflating the habitat’s balloon and canopy, gathering up the air-exchangers and what computer systems he’s able to make room for in the cargo hold. Breaking down camp like this…it almost hurts.

  Like leaving home again, he thinks, recalling his last day on the farm.

  It comes back to him all at once. Walking out that creaking front door, stepping down the steps of the front porch (the top step was breaking, would need repairing soon), and his father waiting outside by the truck. He tossed his satchel full of pictures, novels, old chess strategy books, toothpaste, toothbrush, clothes and other essentials to his father, who stowed them in the back while he turned back to his mother. Teary-eyed, she held her arms out. “It’s all right, Ma,” he told her, taking her in his arms.

  “I used to hold you while you cried,” she said, sniffling. “Now look how big you are, and now I’m crying and you’re holding me.” She laughed nervously. He laughed with her, trying to ease the tension. “It’s not supposed to be this way. A mother holds her child, not the other way around.”

  He patted his mother on the back, kissed her cheek, and pulled away. “I told ya, it’s all right. I got this.”

  “You’re too much like your father. He always says, ‘I got this.’ I know you boys can do it, I just…I just don’t want you being alone up there.” She glanced up, indicating the infinite Deep that was beyond the blue sky, that perfect blue veil that kept all of humanity insulated in a bubble for thousands of years, trying to convince us that that’s all there was, only to fade at night to reveal the stars and suggest an ulterior motive to the universe. “I wish I could go with you.”