The Immortal Game (Rook's Song)

by Chad Huskins

  “I see. So, the defense stations, the derelict ship, even our comrades’ corpses—they would all be cogs in your Turk?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this Turk of yours, where is it?”

  Rook waves his hands. “It’s all around us. It’s Kali.”

  “Fascinating. And, you believe it could genuinely demoralize them, and give us an edge.”

  “Even machines can be psyched out. And the Cerebs are still part organic, and organic things have fears.”

  Bishop nods. “And you really don’t think the Cerebs would be able to see past your ruse? They are the most highly-advanced computers ever to cross the stars, after all. You don’t think they’ll be able to figure out that you have me to help you, or that you’re behind all of…well, whatever it is you wish to build?”

  “Maybe. But a smart guy on my planet once said that there’s nothing so deceptive as an obvious fact. When something’s too obvious, it makes it harder to believe, especially in tense situations with aggressive and intelligent opponents.”

  “You have a lot of confidence in this ploy.”

  “Had confidence,” Rook corrects, now suddenly deflated by the realization of reality. “We’re missing an important cog in the machine now.” He looks at the derelict ship. “If we can’t get this thing into orbit, then the plan’s efficiency is cut in half, maybe more. Hell, it might not even be worth doing without—”

  “What if I told you I could give you this cog?”

  Rook looks at him. “What do you mean?”

  “What if I knew of a way to get this derelict ship into orbit, but that it meant doing something exceedingly dangerous?”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “There is something I believe could help us, but it means going to a planet not too far from here. A very dangerous planet.”

  “There are no other planets around here. The only readings we got when we entered the system were of space debris, that heat wave bouncing off or wake, and a…” Rook trails off.

  The gravitic distortion, he thinks. He suddenly recalls it, the strange reading that caught his attention upon approach to Kali, the one coming from beyond the dying star. He also recalls telling Bishop about it, and that Bishop dismissed it outright. He lied to me again.

  For a moment, all of Kali goes silent, even Thor’s Anvil simmers down, and all we can hear is the silence between the two of them. Finally, Rook says, “What have you been hiding?”

  “It didn’t register as a planet because it’s gravitational field isn’t…functioning properly.”

  “Bishop,” he says slowly, “what have you been hiding from me?”

  The alien says nothing for a moment, undoubtedly looking for the right words. “You were concerned I might get captured and confess, and perhaps I had similar concerns about you. I’m telling you now because you’ve trusted me with your plan,” Bishop says.

  It takes a little mulling over, but eventually Rook decides he’s willing to accept that. “Alright, then. Out with it. What’s the deal with it?”

  “The planet was one of only three planned fortress worlds—used during times of war with our own kind, the project scale was amplified when the Cerebs appeared, and it was hoped that, along with Kali, such places could provide a lasting refuge in the darkness. It was a place where we hoped to go and repel the rest of the galaxy.” He emphasizes, “And I do mean repel.”

  Rook wonders what he means by that. He’s just about to ask when an alarm goes off. A signal from the Sidewinder. He and Bishop exchange brief glances before they both consult with their HUDs and start running for the ship. Bishop moves with insectile speed and is up the cargo ramp and gone, calling to him over the radio, “Do you see it?”

  “I see it!” Top-right corner of his HUD. Proximity alert, coming from one of their drones a thousand miles above. A reading coming from a disturbance twelve light-minutes away. A spatial distortion at the quantum level. Something tunneling through a slipstream. Size unknown.

  Oh, God, they’re here. God, no. No, no, no, no, no. We’re not ready. No, no, no, no!

  7

  They race past transonic speeds, a vapor cone rippling out from the Sidewinder as she breaks through Kali’s atmosphere at 6.7 miles per second. At Mach 28, it’s a little more than what’s needed for the Sidewinder to escape orbit. Rook has the pilot’s seat, of course, and Bishop is at the firing station, running through a brief systems check and prepping the principle of four protocols. In the weeks before they came to Kali, they drilled this scenario two dozen times.

  “All right, I’m picking up spacetime warp,” says Rook into his headset. “You reading me, Bishop?”

  “Copy that. Reading you five-by-five.” Though they were in the cockpit together, the Sidewinder’s drives can get awfully loud, and if the fighting got heavy, the turret and the sounds of particle beams smashing into their hull could make it difficult to hear commands.

  “Now remember, if we get close enough out here, I may wanna take a few licks on our hull before we retreat. We could use the power.” We may recall that the Sidewinder has endoergic armor, which works in tandem with photovoltaic solar cells to convert the energy of particle weapon impacts, electromagnetic attacks, and energy from any nearby ambient starlight to fuel other systems.

  “Affirmative, friend.”

  “Activating sensor shroud.” The OPG engages, activating plasma stealth. The DERP activates a second later, soaking up energy at long range. “Sensor shroud engaged. Moving on a parabola to Turk Two.”

  “Copy parabola.”

  For the sake of ease, Rook took to naming each of the stations. The two at the north pole are Turks 1 and 2; the stations at the south pole are Turks 3 and 4; the four covering the eastern and western hemispheres are 5 and 6, and 7 and 8, respectively; and finally those covering the “split line” between hemispheres are 9 through 12.

  Moving in close to the station, Rook breaks their speed dramatically, and the inertial dampers make it so they feel almost no deceleration at all. He cues up orbital protocol, and the Sidewinder’s AI highlights an area in space where he can begin a natural orbit around Turk 2, and recommends a speed for comfortably hitting this pocket.

  Now in the sweet spot for orbit, Rook cuts some of the nonessential systems and puts all thrusters on standby mode. Now, they slowly orbit the supermassive space station and wait for more data. When it comes, it’s from another drone, this one hiding behind Turk 5 in the western hemisphere. “We’ve got a spatial distortion happening at one part in twenty, no, ten million.”

  “Any tachyonic distortions?” asks Bishop.

  Rook checks his sensors for noticeable disturbances. Tachyons are particles that travel forward, backwards, and even sideways through time, if you can wrap your head around that. In order to travel safely past light-speed, ships need to be able to shed off relativistic effects. If they didn’t, the effect would be like bouncing too close to a black hole, where time slows down. If a ship suffered that, they could very well emerge from the slipstream only to discover that a thousand years has passed, or ten thousand, or a million. “Affirmative. We have tachyonic shedding in our vicinity.”

  “That’s definitely a Bleed wake, then,” Bishop says, using the Cereb’s term for the slipstream. “What’s the location?”

  “Finishing calculations now…it’s coming from Sector thirty-one.” Rook doesn’t have to divvy up the space surrounding Kali all by himself as he did the asteroid field before the battle. No, the Sidewinder is programmed for interstellar cartography and Kali is a familiar enough planetoid that it has overlaid a three-dimensional map on its own. “Sending exact coords now.”

  On Bishop’s display, the coordinates scroll up: S31 – SQ701 – SB97 – D03 – P01 – H006. The section of space is pinpointed on his sectorboard.

  “Got it,” the alien says.

  “It’s definitely getting closer, coming right towards us.” Rook runs over a few more numbers. His mind racing with possibilitie
s, he thinks, This could be it. The end of humanity. The end of Ianethity. This is when it all ends. Rook looks at the date on his HUD, memorizes it. The last historical date that matters.

  But he hasn’t completely surrendered yet. Marking the date is only a matter of habit in times like these. In fact, he experiences a heartening moment when he sees the readings coming from the drones, marking a relatively small spacetime anomaly. Rook lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “I’m reading a low spatial expansion. The contraction matches…it’s not a fleet.”

  “A survey team, then.”

  “Most likely.” But neither one of them held any illusions. There was nothing out here for the resource-obsessed Cerebral Empire. If they were out here, they were looking for prey. “I’m going to try and bring up visual.”

  “Be careful, friend. If they spot the drone—”

  “The jig is up. Right.” Rook taps a few keys, sending the order for the drone at Turk 5 to peek just over the station’s horizon. It does so, and sends back a holographic image. Rook looks at the squadron of four skirmishers, led by the large Bleed Driver. They have just entered Kali space, and are hovering about 120,000 miles away. “There they are. Damn it, how did they find us? I thought we scattered our trail pretty good this time.”

  “Any number of ways. They could’ve followed our ice trail, detected ionic disturbances, or radiation bursts, probably a bit of all those.”

  “I was hoping there would still be enough CMB to mask all energy trails,” Rook says, referring to the cosmic microwave background, the thermal radiation detectable almost uniformly throughout the observable universe. “That’s what I get for hopin’.”

  “We may still have a chance. They are a small number, and I notice they aren’t retreating back to the Bleed.”

  Rook nods. “Yeah. That means they haven’t detected us yet, or they’d go and get the fleet, or just attack us outright. Their speed and trajectory indicate they’re still scanning.” His eyes range over the display, gauging their position and that of their drones. “If they tracked us this far, then they’ll be on us within the hour.”

  “Agreed.”

  “We could try and run, but…”

  “We don’t have anywhere to go.”

  Rook nods, his tongue running over his teeth, deep in thought. “What about this fortress world of yours?”

  “It’s not safe for staying, I can assure you. And since it’s not too far away, they’ll only track us to there once we activate our drives and head into the slipstream, and then we’ll be in the same position, only here we have the element of surprise.”

  “Right. Okay. So that’s it, then. We take them here and now.”

  “Affirmative, friend.”

  A chime goes off, telling him that the skirmishers have moved to sub-light speeds, and performed a micro-jump closer to the planet. They now hover about 10,000 miles away from the Sidewinder, and they are flying roughly fifty miles abreast at around a thousand miles per hour.

  “We don’t have much time. They might follow the energy trails down to the surface, but eventually they’ll read us, or pick up on one of our drones. These spheres will certainly warrant close inspection.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Let’s sit here a moment, see what they do.”

  The cockpit goes silent for a time. They watch the squadron complete two more micro-jumps, now just two thousand miles away and approaching Kali’s western hemisphere. As the squadron gets closer, Rook makes a small adjustment to their orbital position and speed. The Bleed Driver, he notices, lags behind a couple thousand miles or so. Leaving room for a strategic escape, he thinks. If the squadron gets jumped, it can turn and run, and live to tell the tale.

  But that’s not gonna happen.

  Eyes riveted to the display, Rook licks his lips. He doesn’t know it, but he’s started to grin. Like an animal licking its chops, getting ready to pounce.

  The squadron first inspects both spheres hovering above the planet’s western hemisphere, which takes about an hour. Then, they move south, away from the Sidewinder. Two hours later, they move on to Turks 5 and 6 above the eastern hemisphere. Anticipating this, Rook already has the drone that was hiding there moving slowly away, drifting down towards the planet. It’s covered in the same mimetic clay as those he used in the asteroid field. The shape-shifting polymer should make it look like nothing else besides a tumbling meteorite. Rook commands it to shut off all systems, going to sleep, so as to produce the smallest EM and IR signatures possible.

  When the skirmishers reach the eastern hemisphere, Rook watches them closely for any sign that they’ve detected the drone or any of its siblings. They don’t believe in stealth, so if they had noticed anything they wouldn’t play dumb, they’d just bag it and continue on their search-and-destroy mission. At least, that was how they operated before.

  Behind Rook, Bishop is moving quickly. The Ianeth runs his hands over his controls, fast as an adder, making the most minor and exact adjustments—rotating the targeting axis point-three microns, filtering ambient noise so that it wouldn’t hamper targeting, adjusting particle flow in the accelerators, checking and rechecking the heat sinks.

  Now, as was inevitable, the skirmishers leave Turks 5 and 6 and are now headed north, towards Turks 1 and 2, directly towards Rook and Bishop.

  “Okay,” he says, letting out another breath he didn’t know he was holding. “You ready?”

  “Affirmative, friend.”

  Still ensconced behind the massive sphere, Rook activates OMS systems and again adjusts their orbit and speed. Within five minutes, they have just started cresting the “top” of the sphere and are coasting along, coming within targeting range of the Bleed Driver. “Activate forward active jammer on my mark.” Bishop begins targeting sequence, and seconds later a chime lets Rook know his partner has found it. “Three, two, one…activate!”

  The Sidewinder’s most powerful active jammer is a full-spectrum and -quantum distortion projector, which not only scrambles incoming signals, but also “paints” a target and then jams its outgoing transmissions. The Bleed Driver is hit by this all at once.

  “Target is painted. Transmissions jammed,” Rook says.

  “Copy that. Standby to target-lock, eight seconds.” Bishop couldn’t have targeted the Bleed Driver earlier because, by doing so, he would’ve set off alarms inside the ship, and they would’ve been able to communicate their dilemma to the skirmisher squadron. “Target locked.”

  “Engage.”

  The blue-green beam cuts silently through the vacuum, traveling nearly the speed of light and collides with the Bleed Driver before it can muster a defense. Bishop’s aim is true. The particle beam hits the ship’s lower drives and superheats them. Five terajoules of energy pulse through it and seconds later, it explodes, and with enough brightness that they can see it nearly two thousand miles away.

  “Target is neutralized,” says Bishop.

  “Copy! Moving to engage squadron!” Rook rolls thirty degrees to port and starts checking target trajectories.

  The skirmishers could perform sub-light jumps, but without the Bleed Drivers they will be more or less stranded here. However, whereas it might take them years to physically travel anywhere beyond Kali, they really didn’t need to since they also possess quantum-entanglement communicators, and could ask for reinforcements from across interstellar distances, unless Rook is in time to paint them, as well.

  That’s why he waited for them to get so close. They were well within range now, just about forty klicks off, and there are no Turks to interfere with the Sidewinder’s jammer beam.

  “Status.”

  “I have all four targets locked,” Bishop replies.

  “Activate forward jammer.”

  “Copy.” A beat, then, “Jammer engaged. But I had to widen the beam a great deal to include all four of them, which means it won’t reach as far. We have to keep them all close.”

  “Copy! Moving to engage! Begin
targeting protocols—”

  “I already have two of them locked on—”

  “Then what’re you talkin’ to me for? You are weapons-free, friend!”

  “Copy. Engaging.”

  The Sidewinder races towards the closest of the skirmishers, Rook flying in such a way to show their broadside to the other skirmishers, hoping to absorb some of their firepower through the EA systems. The Sidewinder comes within a mile of the first skirmisher, and, much to Rook’s surprise, it banks sharply away and shoots for cover, trying for the far side of Turk 2.

  “Strange,” Bishop says. “They’re running.”

  Rook says nothing, stays focused on the chase.

  A low whine comes from the targeting station. “I’ve got tone,” says Bishop. “Firing.”

  Seconds later, the first skirmisher is blown to pieces. The principle of four gives it almost no chance. The next skirmisher Bishop targets banks away sharply, too, turning down and rocketing for the surface. “What the hell?” Rook mumbles. The others turn and flee in opposite directions. They send low-yield fire back at him, and attempt to jam his targeting systems, but other than that they do not actively engage.

  “They’re only using low-yield particle beams,” Bishop notes. His hands move across the controls, filtering through jamming radiation, clarifying his targets, and readjusting his aim. “I’m reading no real targeting measures coming from the enemy. They’re only trying to jam us.”

  Rook still gives no comment. He races for the skirmisher headed towards the planet. The skirmisher increases its speed, but, facing the planet, it cannot safely cut to sub-light speed to outrun the Sidewinder. Its lightness and fusion-powered rockets make it a match for the Sidewinder, though, built for speed and stealth as she is. They race past Mach 12 and Mach 13 as the skirmisher vainly attempts to hit a trajectory that will use the planet’s gravity to zip it around and give it an increase in speed. The chase reaches Mach 24, and they haven’t yet breached atmosphere when the cockpit is filled with another whine.