The Immortal Game (Rook's Song)

by Chad Huskins

  “Tell the skirmishers to move above and below the Sidewinder. Tell the ones above to target that reverse-field generator—if they hit nothing else, make sure they destroy the beam emitter. As for the ones below and behind, have them target main thrusters and exhaust ports.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Once the Sidewinder is crippled, concentrate all fire on the—” The datafeed interrupts him.

  Whatever it is, it’s rising, and rising fast.

  “Sir! We have incoming!”

  He starts to ask where, but it’s obvious that it’s everywhere. Everywhere, that is, along the surface. The planet’s surface is buckling, and something is fighting to get out, stretching its limbs all at once. Something that has been dormant for so long, merely tossing and turning in its hibernation. The dark planet is now aglow with not only the residual light from the twin super-explosions, but it is now etched in bright red and orange lines where seas of magma race outwards.

  The Supreme Conductor has time to start sending frenzied orders to evade, but it seems all of space is completely cut off. Wherever there aren’t space stations or debris, there is something massive, like an unraveling tentacle coming up from the planet’s surface, moving at breakneck speeds.

  Leaving him to his commands, we find Rook and Bishop both staring—not at the multiple screens, but directly out the viewport. Angry dark clouds are being pushed beyond Kali’s atmosphere. The planet seems to be silently expanding, pushing for the reaches of space, ready to devour the stars. It uncoils so fast, with light echoing through the great limbs. Each are three or four times the size of the Turks, with ghostly white skin common to most all troglofaunal life. But they are slightly translucent, and within them soft blooms of light radiate upwards through each massive appendage, casting shadows the size of mountains across the surface as they race upwards into space. It is something straight from a nightmare and bled into consciousness, something unholy that even we ghosts may have need to fear, for it expands further still, perhaps ready to devour everything, every dimension.

  Rook swallows. “Your Colossus theory was wrong. It’s not some race’s last attempts to salvage a bit of home.” He shakes his head. “It’s a doomsday machine.”

  But machine isn’t quite the right word, is it? Even as we watch the first great tentacle try and ensnare the luminal at the rear and watch it get blasted in half, spewing viscera and mucus, we know that this is no clunky construct. It has vicious fluidity and terrible grace, winding and unwinding from every end, every pole.

  Rook checks his scanners even as he starts to back the Sidewinder away from the luminal in front of him. “Jesus. What the hell have we done?”

  “We woke something up. Something that’s been thinking and marinating down there a long time.” The alien’s hands are moving to target the supermassive tentacles—almost every skirmisher is abandoning their vigilant watch over the Sidewinder and is streaking back towards the luminals, sending out beam after beam of energy at the titanic limbs, most of which seems wasteful.

  The space around Kali is now supremely covered—two starships as large as cities fill the view in front of the Sidewinder, and now with the planet coming unraveled in front of them, Rook finds that they’ve been boxed in by their own machinations. Turks 1 and 9 cover up almost every angle behind them, and the debris from the other ten Turks has space choked. Seekers and skirmisher latecomers are only making things worse.

  “Open targeting parameters to freeform!” Rook shouts, banking hard to port. “Shoot anything that gets in our way! We’re getting the hell outta here!”

  “Copy.”

  “And give me a heads up about any debris our shields can’t realistically deflect!”

  “Compliance,” Bishop says calmly, blasting a small shard of Turk 8 out of their way. “Should I fire the graviton gun at the luminal before we leave it?”

  Rook takes a second to think. “Are they targeting us?”

  A brief check. “Not anymore. It looks like they’ve got the same idea we do to start blasting anything that might collide with them.”

  Rook cackles madly, shaking his head. “Then it’s every man for himself. Save the graviton gun in case we need to push debris out of our way fast.”

  “Affirmative, friend.”

  After the Sidewinder rushes past the half-sphere remains of Turk 6, Rook gets a brief glimpse through all the debris at the rogue planet. Kali is no more. The planet has been pulled apart and all its solids and gases are being pushed out into the battlefield in a porridge of detritus, even as nightmare tendrils swim within the multicolored clouds and occasionally lick out, tasting the vacuum, moving around as if feeling for something, anything. It looks like it’s searching for somethin’, all right, he thinks. Like it knows the person who woke it up must still be around. Scans show that Kali’s core, hidden deep within the cloud, is coming completely undone. Another scan reveals that the tentacles are indeed giving off biological signatures, and that they’re all connected to a main body deeper inside. Whatever the Colossus is, Rook has no doubts that it is doing what it was made to do.

  Seek and destroy.

  Space is now overpopulated by incalculable debris of every size. The Sidewinder streaks past the destroyed husk of a dozen skirmishers, then gets rocked when a boulder-sized piece of Turk debris smacks up against them, penetrating the shield a smidgen.

  “What the hell, man?”

  “Sorry, friend,” Bishop responds. “We’re running low on power. I have to conserve energy for the major targets, and it wasn’t so big we needed to use the graviton—”

  “Just a little heads up next time!”

  “Heads up.”

  “Exactly, just give me a—” He’s interrupted by another heavy impact, which knocks them off-kilter, forcing Rook to fight with their momentum to correct both yaw and pitch. “What the hell, man?”

  “I said heads up.” Before Rook can curse him out, the alien says, “Incoming! Colossus tentacle is—”

  “I see it!”

  The very tip of one tentacle suddenly cuts a wave through the debris field, reaching for something to devour, and inadvertently knocking a good swath of obstacles out of their way. That is, if Rook can correct in time and predict its movements. Rook pulls up, then turns hard to starboard, then rolls hard to port and kicks in extra speed. The tentacle suddenly jumps, coils, the miles-wide tip curling back at them, as if it senses them. It might just do it. He rolls hard back to starboard and outruns the tip, flying along the length of the tentacle, back towards the nightmare cloud that was once Kali. Finally gaining enough ground on it, Rook rolls back to port and shoots back into the debris field, just as Bishop blasts a lost skirmisher coming up on them.

  “Nothing that big should be able to move that fast,” he says, looking at the 3D image of the tentacle’s tip giving up the chase behind them.

  “I’m detecting large amounts of tritium and small-scale fusion reactions happening all along its stalk.”

  “My readings say it’s biological!”

  The Ianeth conducts himself over a few more screens, correcting targeting parameters. “I’m getting the same.”

  “Biological life forms can’t just produce fusion reactions on their own,” Rook argues.

  “The fact remains, it’s producing fusion reactions to power its musculature. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  No sooner are the words out of Bishop’s translator box than all of space lights up, as a rippling blue-white light stems from a tentacle miles off on their starboard side, the light traveling first from the core of the planet to the tentacle’s very tip, before bouncing all the way back down.

  “What the hell am I seeing?”

  “An energy burst from the core, one or two exajoules’ worth,” Bishop says. “It’s either breathing or thinking or both.”

  The Sidewinder fares well enough through the debris field, and for a moment it looks like they might just get clear. The two luminals have become embroiled with the C
olossus and have huddled relatively close together, about ten miles abreast, and while the flagship does all the work of fighting off two separate fusion-induced bioluminescent arms, the other luminal is struggling to keep the debris from the Turks and the planet from colliding with them.

  Rook sees this, and smiles, thinking, Couldn’t have happened to nicer people. Now comes a surge in energy readings from where the planet core is still ripping itself apart, somewhere deep, deep in that boiling cloud. A glance to his right viewport shows that two new arms are lashing out like whips made of blue flame, so bright is the energy pulsating from within. The Sidewinder’s AI gives off a size estimate: 424.3 miles long, 62.7 miles wide. As long as the state of Nebraska, as wide as New Jersey. Even at that size, it’s quickly rushing towards the viewport. Estimated speed…God, twenty-seven miles per second.

  As the nightmare cloud continues to expand, the debris cloud begins to disappear, all the shrapnel being swallowed by the…organism? It’s like it’s breathing it all in. Rook doesn’t struggle too hard trying to figure whether or not it’s truly alive, all that matters is getting clear, but whereas the tentacles have no concern for cutting straight through the remaining Turks, the Sidewinder cannot be so indiscriminate. Even the smallest of remaining bits randomly launch themselves in front of Rook and Bishop’s field, disallowing them from being able to hit top speeds. The two new tentacles are gaining, the Sidewinder is busy wading.

  Then, Rook watches half in wonder, half in horror as one of the tentacles grabs hold of half of a Turk, coils around it, crushes it like a beer can and suddenly hurls it across the debris field directly at them, seemingly with purpose.

  “Uh, Bishop—”

  “Graviton gun locking on. Granularity of quanta is being rerouted—”

  “Don’t care! How long to fire?”

  “Locking in six, five, four, three, two…”

  The loud hum. The walls trembling. The usual signs of the graviton gun cuing up. A second later, the Sidewinder feels like it might shake apart.

  “Locked. Intensifying reverse-field to maximum g’s.”

  “Engage when ready!”

  “I have to wait.”

  “Wait? For what?!”

  “We need to let it get closer—”

  “Closer?”

  Bishop doesn’t respond.

  The twisted piece of organisteel is hurtling at them at speeds nearing forty miles per second. Five seconds go by. It’s growing larger, the debris moving silently towards them, spinning end over end, now filling up the entire viewport. The massive hunk is smashing to pieces all other debris in its wake, a juggernaut that won’t be stopped…

  “Uh, Bishop?”

  “Engaging beam,” he says casually.

  The Sidewinder shudders like a car with its wheels out of alignment, and gun’s beam doesn’t appear to have an immediate effect. The miles-long hunk is coming at them. Then, its speed decreases noticeably. It’s still coming forward, though.

  “I’ve slowed it down, but it has a lot of momentum, so you’re going to have to kick some speed to—”

  “I can’t! There’s too much debris! It’s all small but we have to go around, we can’t go through! We can’t get a straight enough line to get that much speed!”

  “Any open lines above or below us?”

  Rook does a brief scan. “None that I can see, buddy. This is the best line with the least debris—”

  “Hang on.” A few seconds later, the whole ship hums, and a whirling noise can be heard coming from the rear. “You’re good to go.”

  Rook looks around at his diagnostics screens. Deflector shields are back. He wants to ask Bishop how he did it, but he doesn’t have time. Now able to shoot ahead unafraid, Rook has the ship’s AI plot a quick course, taking into account their new capabilities. It tells him if he rolls to port eighteen degrees and then stabilizes on a preset line of coordinates, he can scream ahead for sixty miles before he has to slow and correct for a portion of debris too large to deflect. He follows the directions exactly, and breathes a sigh of relief as he sees the huge chunk pass by them by a scant half-mile.

  Scanning the debris field for his next best course, Rook has time to call back, “What did you do?”

  “I rerouted every last bit of power to from the particle-beam turret to boost the shields.”

  Rook wants to curse, but he knows it was smart thinking. Anything else, and they’d be pulverized now, the last human and Ianeth destroyed by space junk. “Graviton gun’s still charging, I take it?”

  “Fifteen minutes, thirty-three seconds before it’s available again.”

  “And no quality stealth systems online. We’re in defensive mode now—” Alarms! They’re blaring on all screens! Data is showing a terrific disturbance in the debris field behind them. It only takes a glance at the holo-display to his right to know what it is. The photogrammetric sensor on the Sidewinder’s belly sends him a 3D image of the flagship, now blasting through the debris field, coming right at them, using its small-turret particle beams and solenoid gun to remove debris from its path, but ultimately taking what licks it has to in order to bare down on them.

  And there is no mistake, it is coming for them. “Jesus, they must’ve detected us firing the gun. They know we can’t hit ’em with a reverse-field now.” Which means they’re not pinned with their backs to Kali anymore.

  “Correct,” says Bishop. “Skirmishers and seekers are closing in fast. Last data I’ve got has the other luminal in pieces. I believe the Colossus claimed it.”

  “Ha-ha! I’ll chalk that up to teamwork! Don’t we make some beautiful music together?”

  “Affirmative, friend.”

  “Three down, one to go.”

  “Affirmative. But now that we have no particle beam, we’ve only got one weapon available to us, but we still have to give it time to recharge.”

  Rook glares at his display, not seeing a way out. “I don’t see any safe lines. You?”

  “No. But the flagship obviously has no qualms about taking nominal damage to close the distance on us. But there is one thing its Conductor does appear to be afraid of,” Bishop says suggestively.

  Rook takes a deep breath, and looks out his right viewport. “I was hoping you had a better idea.”

  “Unfortunately, I do not. It is our best chance, as far as I can see. We need to turn hard to starboard and push fast for the Colossus. Either the ship will let us go for fear of facing the creature, or else they’ll follow and bear down on us.” He turns to Rook. “Either way, friend, it means facing our deaths very soon, but at least with the Colossus we can hope they get taken out with us.”

  “Bishop,” Rook says, setting the coordinates one last time before rolling the Sidewinder. “Where I’m from, we have a saying: ‘Great minds think alike.’ ”

  14

  There is nothing left for the Supreme Conductor except final subtraction of the human race. Witnessing the other ship being grappled and crushed was not unlike watching a small lizard being squeezed in someone’s fist until the guts are pushed out of its face. It was traumatic to watch, and it has put him over the edge.

  The Conductor knows it now. He knows that this is what it feels like to go insane. It’s undoubtedly the fastest any Conductor has ever had to face obsolescence. But he can’t stop it. Like levies giving way one right after the other, the overflow is too much to bear. The failure to compute all the ways this battle could have been won giving the available data—it shouldn’t have been a battle in the first place—causes a weakness in his knees. He can feel the eyes on him, can sense that they sense his end. The programming errors begin to compound on his psyche, cascading down from one brain-tier to the next, coming up with one final conclusion:

  ERROR.

  At times of such critical failure, a Conductor will find himself on the brink of Mass Error, falling inexorably into it as light does a black hole.

  But I will have him, he thinks, ignoring advice from the Phantom File to back off,
even as he sends the last records of this battle to Four Point. I will have him, and then they will see that he was nothing but an anomalous fluke. There is nothing he has to teach us, nothing to learn from these examples. They are not systemic errors in us. The only error would be to grant him more weight than he’s worth.

  “Sir, the Sidewinder has turned hard to starboard and is on a hard heading for the collapsing planet,” an Observer reports.

  He’s headed straight into the heart of that thing.

  The Old Ones knew what they were doing. They constructed something that even the Cerebrals had not noted the significance of. They were not skilled warriors, they were not even aggressive enough to conduct a proper war, but they were an ancient and long-lived species, with near infinite patience. They played a long game against us. How many worlds were seeded like this? How many other such booby traps litter the galaxy, awaiting our discovery? Also aiding his Mass Error is this knowledge, that his people haven’t just been duped by a single human, but by a race long extinct.

  “Change our heading to match the Phantom’s,” he commands. “Do not let him get away.”

  A brief pause. Then, “Sir, we narrowly escaped the creature’s—”

  “It is not your place to remind me of anything!”

  Only it is. At times of Mass Error, it is every Observer’s duty to watch carefully for the time when the Conductor must be relieved of duty. But now, in this moment, no one questions. Perhaps they suffer a kind of madness, too? A systemic error sprouting from his own? It was known to happen, such a corruption of the shared datafeed…of course, it happened only once before, its own Anomaly.

  “Do as I say.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The exchange was a tense 2.829 seconds long, and now they are correcting their yaw and rolling ever so slightly. The ship has incredible mass, and will take longer to turn than the Sidewinder, but it doesn’t matter. Their weapons have greater range, and the skirmishers and seekers will cut off any other avenues of escape.

  Into the darkness, then. Into the gullet.

  That’s where we go, as well. Away from the bridge, straight through the flagship’s hull and into the gullet, racing a hundred miles ahead, past skirmishers and seekers hot on the Sidewinder’s tail. Once rejoined with her crew in the cockpit, we see that Rook and Bishop are involved in quick exchanges.