by Chad Huskins
Rook counts to three, then, he steps through the doorway and into the large room, rifle up and aiming around. He is met by more alien structures. Tall tubes of bizarre color and with more of the alien alphabet strewn across them. There are also robots, working feverishly to repair some kind of tank that has ruptured. He slides right by them, and nearly bumps into a pair of Engineers rushing around the corner up ahead. He fires two short bursts at them, the particle beam hewing them in half before they can utter a yelp.
But Cerebs don’t need to yelp. Their natural-user interface is never disconnected from the stream of information pouring upwards, upwards, upwards into the Conductor’s brains. We can follow this datafeed all the way to the Conductor himself, who now stands on the bridge, and is jolted to his core by what he sees. Something else unaccounted for, he thinks, as impossible as that seems. But then, this has been a day for impossibilities.
The Conductor examines the datafeed closely, and moves his consciousness down to the lower levels. Still not believing his eyes, or the eyes of the Engineers he’s now peering through, he watches as the last human in the universe leaps in front of three more Engineers and one Repairer, ending them quickly with a few spats of his particle beam rifle. The Phantom has made it into one of the main wings of the engine rooms.
But…we had him. The last human’s corpse is freshly dead in the Researchers’ area. They have him even now, examining his body…
Instantly, the Conductor knows what he missed. Two of them. There were two Phantoms out here in the Deep. The other was a decoy. Somehow, he knew this. Somewhere in his seventh brain, he suspected all along. It is another deplorable ruse by a human, and probably the last, also. For a lone human cannot expect to survive very long. The Conductor’s fury creates enough heat that we must stand back. We pass through his datafeed, several floors beneath him, and are handed off to the consciousness of the next victim to fall to the Phantom.
Rook has progressed farther into the room. He’s come to two enormous cylinders that stretch up through the ceiling and pass into the floor. Incredibly high radiation levels are emanating from it, and the last few Cerebs he killed were all wearing protective gear. Doubtless, they were suffering unusual contamination in here.
Rook doesn’t understand the level of tech he’s looking at here—it’s probably thousands of years ahead of what mankind wrought before its end—but then, a pitbull doesn’t need to know the mechanics of its prey’s throat to know that if you bite down on it, and shake it, the prey dies.
He has four charges left (Four! How ironic!), two plasma and two thermite. He makes a quick decision. First, he places the thermite charges on the surface of one of the massive power conduits, sets them to go off seconds before the plasma charges, which he sets up on a wall across from them. That way, hopefully, the thermite charges will cause initial damage, and the subsequent melting of the alloys will leave the structure weakened enough so that the plasma detonations can penetrate more deeply.
No sooner has Rook set this up than a door opens up somewhere at the far end of the room. His micropad has the readings: Cereb operatives, sixteen of them, four groups of four.
Rook checks his micropad, and the timer he set on the explosives in the hall. Might just have enough time. He turns and runs. Particle beams aren’t immediately fired, which tells him that this area truly is as volatile as he suspects. They don’t want to risk a missed shot. But these are Cerebs, and if they get a clean shot, they likely will not miss. He has to remember that.
A pair of Cereb operatives fire at him from his right. They hit him dead center, but the particle beams wash over his Tango armor’s magnetic shielding. Two more shots start to overheat the suit’s batteries, so he ducks behind a large metal support for cover. He fires shots around the corner, and as he does, a Cereb operative rounds the same steel support and is about to fire point-blank. Rook slaps his barrel away, sending the particle beam firing wide. They collide, and go through a furious few seconds of CQB, during which Rook headbutts his enemy with his helmet, sweeps his legs out from underneath him, and delivers a punch that, thanks to the Stacksuit underlay, has enough power to break his jaw and send him to the floor, unconscious.
Two more shots fired on him from the catwalk up above. The particle beams are poured on him, and once again his Tango armor saves his life. Rook runs from his cover. He can’t stay here, and he can’t keep taking this much heat. His Tango armor can’t last much longer.
He collides with a group of four Cerebs coming out of a doorway to his left. He fires on two of them, killing them instantly, then enters into close-quarters combat again, all of them using the barrels of their rifles to smack the other barrels away, even as they headbutt, stomp, elbow, and hammerfist one another. One of them pins Rook’s rifle to his side, while the other operative reaches around his neck, squeezing so tight it feels like his eyes will pop out. Rook flash-forges another tactical knife in his right palm, stabs backwards, directly into the eyes of the operative holding him, then slashes the throat of the one in front of him
A dozen or so particle beams lance out against him, washing off the Tango armor’s deflectors, bringing the armor closer to overheating.
Leaping over a console, Rook ducks and takes cover behind it as he fires a shot to cover his retreat. It does only a little good. One team halts, securing the exit at the far end of the room. The other three teams fan out, attempting to pin him down. Rook stands, bolts for the exit. The first blue-green particle beam is fired in front of him, but Rook’s instincts tells him it was coming. He leaps for cover behind another computer station a second before the beam is fired, and it smacks on the metal floor beside him, superheating it until it glows.
The teams start closing in even tighter, trying to catch him in a bottleneck.
Rook checks his timer. Three, two, one…
The multiple explosions go off in the hall he entered from, and it shakes the floor and walls. All of the Cereb operatives take cover, unsure of this new ploy, but Rook stands and runs for it. As he does, he is firing over his shoulder, taking shots across his back. He moves desperately for the doorway…
The Tango armor finally overheats, and fails. A particle beam slices right through his left leg, sending him spinning to the ground. The armor’s self-healing capabilities has it close off the hole in his suit. The searing hot pain takes over his mind for a moment, consuming his world for a moment. I almost made it, is his last thought before he hits the ground. He lands in the doorway’s threshold, slides a little ways beyond it, into the temporary safety of the corridor outside. He won’t be able to stand on his own. He won’t be able to retreat. They’ll be on him in seconds.
It is over for him.
Now, as ghosts, we must watch what is certainly the end of our worthy race. We must watch as Rook crawls, unwilling to give up. We must watch as he gives a show of our legendary tenacity, our legendary stubbornness. Behind him, the four teams of four are closing in. Rook can see the airflow moving past him, indicating that his escape plan would have worked—the explosives he arranged farther down the corridor opened up a sizable hole where Doc, Grumpy and the warbot started one. It almost worked, he thinks, laughing madly and still crawling. It was all an insane plan, but it almost worked. I guess something like this was bound to happen. Like the Leader said, an anomaly…an anomaly to show them they don’t know everything about us.
Rook tries to stand. But he can’t. He just can’t. No matter how much he wants to, he won’t be able to stand on his own. He looks at us. Directly at us. Rook now sees us, or at least, it seems that he can. He looks at us beseechingly. We want to help him, but we can’t. He sees Badger, either out of madness or because he’s close to the end himself. “Badge…”
“Get up, pilot!”
“Badge…I’m sorry…I can’t—”
“Can’t ain’t in your vocabulary! Can’t ain’t no word I ever taught you! Now get up!”
“Badge…I can’t stand up…”
He’s right.
He cannot stand on his own.
And, as it turns it out, he won’t have to. Because it seems the universe does indeed sometimes take an underdog for a pet.
There is one other, a phantom in his own right, a creature that has long been waiting for this moment. Waiting in hibernation, with the fury of an entire race burning inside of him. Awoken by the systemic damage caused by the King’s destruction, he is free to unleash his wrath.
As the Cereb operatives close in on Rook, a blue-green particle beam lances out from across the room. It burns through armor and bone alike, neatly slicing through the Cereb commandos with deadly accuracy. They do not even have time to turn as the last of the Ianeth cuts them down.
The massive being also stands alone, but he is intact, and as skilled and volatile as his race ever was. He emerges from the other side of the engine room, searching for a way out, instinctively following the airflow escaping out the gap that Rook has created down the hall.
The Cerebs who remain take cover, look for higher vantage points in the engine room, and fire down upon the Ianeth. The creature shrugs off their assault, a great deal of the energy washing off of his natural, chitin-like armor like water off a duck’s back. Some of it, though, penetrates, and wounds. But the Ianeth are a single-minded people, very much like the Cerebs in that way, and he plunges ahead, diving through the open doorway, and noting the human lying on the ground. Though the Ianeth has never met Man, he knows an ally when he sees one, and knows he must be formidable if the Cereb operatives are all working together to hem him in.
Without thought, the Ianeth lifts Rook off the floor, throws an arm around his back, and runs with him. Because the Ianeth understands another axiom of Earth: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
And the Ianeth understands something else. If this enemy to the Cerebs got on board this ship, and he is attempting a retreat, then he must have a plan of escape.
They run, the last representatives of their species, and us ghosts trying to keep up.
Particle beams are fired uselessly down the corridor behind them. The Ianeth follows the escaping air currents through the halls, and Rook tries to help by pointing. He’s ready to faint, and also ready to believe he’s dreaming all of this. Then, they come to it. The hall where Rook set up his escape. It is a twisted mess of melted and charred debris, a hallway with a floor, a ceiling, but only one wall. The one on their left has been completely blown away, and even though the vacuum of space is trying to suck them out, the Ianeth’s feet are able to grip the metal floor.
Several floors above, the Conductor watches all of this is bewilderment. None of it fits the tally. Too many variables to consider. This isn’t the way it was all supposed to go.
Meanwhile, the Ianeth searches for a way out. It appears there is no way, just a giant gap in the corridor…and then Rook points it out to him. A blank piece of space, but not quite as blank as it appears. The Sidewinder, parked about fifty feet away amid the asteroids, turns off its cloak, revealing itself, angling its rear end towards the warship and opening its cargo bay doors. The Ianeth, now emboldened, takes the human in its powerful arms and flings him out into space. The alien’s aim is perfect. Rook zips across the open void and into the Sidewinder’s open pocket. The Ianeth is being fired upon by numerous operatives as he sails clearly across the void, and clings to a wall inside the cargo bay.
Rook, still believing he is in a dream, taps a few keys on the micropad and seals the cargo bay doors. Artificial gravity is initiated, dropping both he and the Ianeth to the floor. Rook stands awkwardly, and remembers to reactivate the Sidewinder’s cloak. He gives one look to the large alien that saved his life, as it staggers to its feet and clings to the walls for support. It is large, say about eight feet tall, with a wide head atop a long, muscular neck, and with beady black eyes and a wide mouth that appears to be in a permanent, and devious, grin. It is covered in plates, kind of like turtle shells, all over its legs, arms, and chest, each one a very dark orange, and injured terribly in the escape.
Rook has no time to issue thanks. He hopes it goes without saying. He stands, and limps down to the cockpit and takes his seat. It takes him just six seconds to get the Sidewinder angled for escape. Then, he’s off. From behind, he can hear heavy footsteps approaching. The Ianeth tries to step through the door into the cockpit, fights against the shape of the door, and stands behind Rook as he angles the ship up and out of the asteroid field.
“I don’t know if you can understand me,” he says to the alien. “But, pal, you wanna strap in.” He points to the copilot’s seat next to him, and the Ianeth seems to catch on very quickly, even figuring out the safety straps.
Rook looks down at his micropad. Thirty seconds until the thermite and plasma charges detonate.
Not too far away, the Conductor watches on his own screens as the Sidewinder attempts to make good its escape. He knows it’s not possible. It cannot be. For all the anomalies he’s witnessed today, surely one more cannot be possible. He sets the ship’s small guns to fire, and is just about to send out the order for skirmishers to follow when the door to the bridge opens behind him.
The Conductor turns, assuming it is a team of Repairers he’s sent for to help restore the bridge to its former capacity, but is stunned when he stands there looking at clones of himself. The Usurped are in various stages of dissection, looking like corpses given gruesome and cruel reanimation. “What is this?” he has time to say before they attack him. Like mad dogs, they have no real plan or form to their attack. It’s hideous, brutal, and worst of all, inefficient.
The last thing the Conductor thinks before they attack is, dubiously, I never got to feel silk again.
What they do to him in the thirty seconds before the engine room explodes is…something we don’t need to see.
Down below, it goes off exactly as Rook planned. First, the thermite charges detonate, wreaking a deal of havoc on the initial explosion, but it is the melting aspects of the chemicals that really soften the reactors for the plasma charges, which are set up on the adjacent walls. When they go off, they start a chain reaction, one that takes out several levels of the luminal ship.
It is nowhere near the explosion that the King was. Indeed, it isn’t even enough to obliterate the entire ship. But, as Rook sails away, it is evident that the explosion has taken out nearly half of the ship, making it almost certain that it is now a defenseless husk, drifting in space, unable to defend itself from the asteroids that will surely pulverize it in the weeks to come as it sits inert.
It may not be much, but it is the first win the human race has ever had against its enemies. Hopefully the first of many, Rook thinks, knowing it is an insane thought. He smiles. But maybe not as insane as it was two days ago.
Then, he winces. He leans back in his seat, leaving the Sidewinder on autopilot. He looks over at the Ianeth, who also sits slumped in its chair, breathing heavily. “Hey, big guy. You got a name?” The creature doesn’t stir, doesn’t even look at him. Rook smiles. “I got one for ya. A call sign.” He laughs. “Bishop. Know why? ’Cause you came outta nowhere at the last second, and I never saw it coming. I don’t think anybody did.” He laughs even louder, and finally the Ianeth—Bishop—turns to look at him.
The laughter carries them well beyond the asteroid field, out towards Shiva Prime, and further into the Deep.
Epilogue
A week later, the Sidewinder sits on the surface of Shiva 154e. The planet is mostly a charred mess, the atmosphere still filled with ash, the waters too polluted to drink from without a filter.
Rook limps about in an environmental suit, loading up the last of the resources he’s deemed salvageable. Some scarce caches of canned foods and MREs, some basic materials he can feed into his omni-kit and the ship’s fabricator, and a few electronics at a destroyed military base, all of it covered in dust, mud, and soot from the planet’s doom.
Bishop picks through some of it with him. The big alien doesn’t appear to need any sort of suit to surviv
e. Upon scanning him with the micropad and omni-kit, which he’s finally getting used to, Rook determines that Bishop’s people somehow worked out a way to merge favorable aspects with their genetic structure, making it so that they are their own environmental suits, and the shells on their bodies are their own shields. The chitin-like shells all over his body are as tightly sealed as the hermetic seals of Rook’s spacesuit. Essentially, the alien is walking around naked, though every effort has been made to make his body naturally strong enough to survive in most all conditions, so that he doesn’t have to “wear” any armor or suits at all.
Bishop is also incredibly strong, and moves with great speed as he lifts large compristeel cases filled with fresh supplies and loads them into the Sidewinder. He does this without question. Indeed, he does it without even waiting for Rook’s prompt. They are both soldiers and survivors, and the language of self-preservation seems as universal as math.
Speaking of languages, it appears that Bishop is also possessed of many bio-electrical-interface qualities. Meaning many billions of neural connections throughout his brain, and a billion micro-nodes throughout its body, allow him to assimilate data fast. This permits him to learn at breakneck speeds. Many times, Rook has caught the alien with his eyes closed, hands hovering over his computer consoles, and somehow activating the diagnostics screens and holo-displays, ostensibly with pure thought. He’s also caught Bishop walking slowly down the corridors of the ship, analyzing the walls and the repair bot, and sometimes just standing and staring at the circuit boards in the circuitry bay.
Is he working it all out? Rook wonders.
Yesterday, the alien even surprised Rook by doing some design changes to the translator box left behind by the Leader. Perhaps he recognized it from his past dealings with the Cerebrals? In any case, he used Rook’s omni-kit to flash-forge some items he needed, and, after just a day of fiddling with it, Bishop modified it so that it picked up his own harmonics instead of Cerebral harmonics, and translated those according to the translator’s built-in human vocabulary index. He spoke his first shaky words to Rook this morning. “Is devices this you sufficiently working?”
