by Chad Huskins
INTERPLANETARY SPACE FORCE
OFFICE OF DEPUTY DIRECTOR: PRIORITY ALPHA
11/3: By decree of the COLLEGIUM PLANETARUM and the UNITED NATIONS, you and your crew(s) are hereby ordered to stand down from Nelson 212b. The planet is designated “forfeit.” Cut your losses and retreat to The Kitchen.
The Kitchen. But where is that? Rook was forced to memorize lots of codes and codenames back in ASCA and in ISF, but none of these sound familiar. How hard must it have been to leave Nelson 212b to burn? Did they make it to The Farm or The Galley? Did they make it, hiding away like I did, or like the Tall Ones have? Or were they captured and tormented like Bishop?
Tortured by these questions, Rook spends several days poring over these files, and for a time his interest in it eclipses all other interests. He speaks less and less to Bishop, who he’s left in charge of speaking with the Tall Ones with total authority. But as the days go by, it becomes increasingly obvious that much of what he’s found is too encoded to discern meaningful intel. Most of it is just dates, ship manifests, supply runs, chronicling the mundane activities of life in space, the occasional rescue op, and the hopeless search for hope:
OPERATIONAL DATE (O.D.) 477:
Transitioned 5.21 ly to Seti System; rescued 3 Seti colonists set adrift in lifeboat; came upon M.S. Space Station, found no survivors; reprimanded one Seti survivor for lashing out against another; looking for safe harbor, have found none. Night cycle adjusted to start at 0900 hours. END
This is a typical entry, and whereas before Rook was excited to read about the motions of his fellow Sidewinders, he becomes disheartened by what appears to be the truth. Neither he nor his last comrades were able to find more of their own.
OPERATIONAL DATE (O.D.) 481:
Transitioned 171.37 ly to Chawkra Eta; no survivors found. It has been 23 days since receiving last orders from Command; spacetime warp signatures indicate Cerebs all around us; I am unable to reach DZ to release the Marines aboard my ship; sent out IFF signal today, dropped probe buoys, discovered no one. It’s quiet out here. END
That last sentence hangs with Rook, keeps him awake at nights. It’s quiet out here. You can say that again. Suddenly, he realizes how extremely lucky he was to even survive as long as he did in Magnum Collectio. When the pilot was making these records, all of his race was being wiped out, and somewhere Rook was finding the one nest in all the galaxy that proved a serviceable hiding spot.
The recordings don’t reveal any more promising details:
OPERATIONAL DATE (O.D.) 550:
Transitioned 84.4 ly to Benton 110c; no survivors found. It has been 69 days since receiving last orders from Command; sent out IFF signal today, dropped probe buoys, discovered no one; the Marines are getting restless; supplies are running low; we don’t have enough MREs to last another two months; morale is low. END
Rook finds other logs, one of them containing voice recordings. He becomes excited, but it takes time to decrypt them. He’s unhappy to find the files are mostly corrupted, but, good God, it feels good to hear another human’s voice again:
“Call sign Mama Bear,” says a female voice. It sounds bedraggled, like a person days without rest and having seen too much. Rook can empathize. “We’ve been running away from…not any signs of the fleet since we left Hawking. I think we…no signs of supplies leftover from Sundquist Station. It’s been totally destroyed, there’s nothing left th…Cerebs must’ve scooped up everything, leaving us nothing to eat. They’re starving us out of the universe, and doing a good job of it. I wouldn’t have believed…” The rest is barely audible, mostly static and random syllables.
The woman’s voice stays with him. He finds other recordings of hers, all of them of equal quality, and all of them reporting the same dire situation. No one responding to IFF signals, no one alive at any encountered colony, total desolation wherever they went.
Rook is coming to the conclusion that it is mere chance that he made it to Magnum Collectio. A thing as unlikely and as rare as life itself.
At one point during a night cycle on the Sidewinder, Rook finds himself unable to sleep. He walks the corridors of his ship, watches the repair bot trundle around and mostly dusting, sometimes stopping to adjust something. He runs into Bishop, working as fastidiously as always, this time on the engine core. “You know,” he says, “I never properly said thank you for helping me. For everything you’ve done, and not just with fixing things, or for your help at Kali, or coming back for me when I fell out of the building on the fortress world. For saving me back in Magnum Collectio. Everything.”
“No thanks are needed, friend,” the alien replies, extending his hand to give Rook a torsion spanner.
Rook bends down to help him make some adjustments. “You know, when I was falling and fighting with that husk, I kind of gave up hope.” He looks at Bishop. “But then I recalled everything you said about ‘two is a pattern.’ A lot of things went through my head, in fact. And then I remembered my parents, and my dad talking about COG. Continuity of government.”
“Oh?”
“It’s got me thinking.”
Bishop looks at him. “You’re starting to believe you may not be the last.”
“I guess that’s what I’m sayin’, yeah.”
Bishop finishes his adjustments, and closes the panel and seals it. “We’ve been blooded, so now your hope brings me hope. Your victories are my victories, and mine are yours. All things are shared between the blooded.” He gives Rook a companionable, and very human, clap on his shoulder. “I am glad we have elevated our alliance to this level. I feel there is very little that can stop us, as long as we remain focused.”
“You really believe we can do this, don’t you? You think we can defeat the Cereb Empire. I mean, for good.”
“Affirmative,” says Bishop, standing and walking away. “And so do you, friend.”
When the Sidewinder is mostly operational again, they take her out for a spin, getting a better look at the star, which he and Bishop have taken to calling Newborn. “Newborn’s lookin’ pretty today,” he says, pointing out the viewport. “Look at that spiral tail, it’s gotten bigger since just yesterday. Core density is intensifying steadily.” He shakes his head in awe. “Have you asked them why they’re making this thing? I mean, forget the how for a moment, why are they doing it?”
“I tried asking yesterday,” Bishop says, running a test on the particle-beam turret’s collimating lens. “It did not go over so well. Sees Far seemed willing to share, but Holds Steady and Knows Much cut him off prematurely.” He looks at Rook. “They have secrets of their own.”
Rook nods, and conducts a few test scans, searching for any signs of Cerebs. It will become their ritual to conduct such patrols in weeks to come. “Who doesn’t these days?” He eyes the alien. “Speaking of secrets, now that we’ve made it his far, are you going to tell me just how long you suspected we were being watched?”
Bishop shrugs. “It was only a thought.”
“A thought you neglected to share with me each time we detected their heat wake,” he says, shaking his head ruefully. Rook still isn’t sold on this whole Ianeth tradition. “Have you figured out yet what sort o’ stealth system they use?”
“They’re tightlipped about that, too.”
“It must be a damn good one, whatever it is, since neither we nor the Cerebs detected them.” Rook smacks his partner on the shoulder. “Your move, by the way.”
Bishop looks down at the holographic chessboard, and moves his knight to H3. “The work is coming along nicely, don’t you think?”
Rook makes a move. Pawn to C4. “We’ll see shortly what we can manage as a ‘fleet.’ I’ve been trying to think of a few ways to work it, but it’s difficult since none o’ them have weapons and their ships aren’t really ships at all, just the exo-suits.” Bishop makes a move, and Rook examines it a moment before making his own.
“Once,” says Bishop, “you and I were fighting separate wars. I was continuing my people’
s battle, and you were continuing yours. Now we have been blooded together and we have new compatriots. We are a new people, fighting a new war.”
“Yeah, I just hope the Tall Ones know how to listen when we start discussing battle formations.”
“I am sure they will do whatever is asked of them in order to make the Immortal happy.”
Rook glances over his shoulder. “The Immortal? Who’s that?”
“I’m sorry, I suppose I haven’t fully divulged that part. The Immortal is their name for you.”
His brow furrows. “You told them my call sign, right?”
“I did, but they have a longer name for you, and their shortened name is summed up as ‘Immortal.’ I was made to believe that that sort of title is reserved for only the greatest achievers—a bit like the title of ‘Dragon’ in China, I suppose? Though they are long-lived, the Tall Ones do eventually die, but they do appreciate things that struggle tenaciously to survive where others cannot, like weeds that ground in arid deserts. I told them how long you were in Magnum Collectio. They were beyond impressed.”
“Immortal.” The word sounds like it should be attached to anything else besides himself. Rook feels like the least immortal of all creatures. He feels like a creature with his time fast running out. Then, he smiles, and laughs.
“What’s funny?” asks the Ianeth suspiciously.
“The Immortal Game.”
“What’s that?”
“It was a game played in, oh, 1851, I think. It was between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky. It was at a world chess tournament in London, but the game actually took place between rounds of tournament play—an informal gentleman’s game. At that time, Kieseritzky had made a name for himself teaching other champions, playing for five francs an hour at the Café de la Régence in Paris, and handicapping himself by playing without a queen.” On the chessboard, Bishop makes another move, and so does Rook. “Nineteenth-century chess was a little different philosophically; if a player opened with a gambit, it was ungentlemanly to decline the gambit, and material such as queens, rooks, and bishops were held in contempt—a player was viewed best if he could gain checkmate by pawns and knights alone.”
“I see,” says Bishop, moving his bishop to C3.
“In quick succession, Anderssen sacrificed his bishop, both rooks, and the queen. Despite that, he won.” Rook moves a rook to B4. “Kieseritzky was so impressed he mailed the sequence of moves to his Parisian chess club. It was considered by most to be a game of genius unparalleled in chess literature. It was called the Immortal Game.” He shrugs, tests the port and starboard thruster response. “Ever since then, when a chess Grandmaster has a career-defining win, they call it his Immortal Game, and they say he became immortal when he finished the game, his name now solidified in history.” Bishop moves his knight to F7. Rook moves his queen to C8, and it is looking down at a king utterly pinned. “Checkmate.”
Bishop turns to look at him. “And what game did we play at Kali?” he asks. “Was that your Immortal? Was that your peak?”
Rook leans back in his seat, and lets the autopilot take them on a slow orbit around the Sphere. “I dunno,” he says, shrugging. “I think I got a few moves left in me.” He turns to Bishop and smiles. “Now, about that joke.”
“Joke?”
“Don’t give me that. We had a pact. If my Turk worked out, you’d tell me the joke you’ve been working on.”
“You really want to hear it?”
“C’mon, man. What are we even fighting for if we don’t stop and shoot the breeze and laugh every so often? Hit me with it.”
“All right. But I warn you, it isn’t very good.”
The Sidewinder moves slowly around the Sphere’s southern hemisphere, and they get a good look at Newborn. We recede from here. We’ve seen enough, and there are months of planning still ahead for the fledgling fleet.
We slip away, wraiths unseen. For a moment, everything appears to be in harmony. Light from the new star reflects off a shape in the cloud of debris swirling around it. The star’s first planet is slowly forming, bathed in Newborn’s light. Elsewhere, other material swarms, pulled in by Newborn’s gravitational pull, forming protoplanets and what will be gas giants a billion years from now. Such quiet, perfect harmony. Let’s leave it for the moment, so that we may remember it this way always.
There is more to see, and far more to do. You are a phantom too, after all, and this is your Deep.
Acknowledgements and Notes
Thanks to Will, my editor, and to my friends, Tom and Mary, for always giving my books a read-through and letting me know where they find inconsistencies.
Rogue planets are not only possible, we’ve discovered several of them. However, having an atmosphere, even one as tumultuous as Kali’s, is still only a theory, though several models exist for showing how it could be possible, and one of those models was used for this novel (as per Dorian Abbott, Professor David Stephenson, and Eric Switzer).
I write this series because of my wonder for many things. First of all, the universe. The more one studies of it, the more one realizes just how small and flimsy our little world is. Our solar system is currently in such a perfect balance, that if even one part were missing it could set the whole thing off—Jupiter, for example, either swats away or absorbs the impact of comets and asteroids that would annihilate us, and without our biggest gas giant brother, there would be a thousand times more impacts on Earth than there already are. Discovering little details like this often leaves one pondering the size of things, big and small, and the immensely powerful forces constantly controlling our destiny.
Another reason to write this series is, of course, the wonder I have for the game of chess. Everything written about the game in this book is true, there really are more possible games of chess you can play than there are atoms in the universe. To this day, programming a computer to defeat a human, especially a Grandmaster, and not have it eventually suffer from a “mental meltdown” is virtually impossible, and it has to do with this little fact, that humans can train themselves to calculate and imagine (that’s the key) what might happen next. It says something about us that we have this over computers, who we always give so much credit for being smarter than us.
As always, thanks to you, the reader, for following along. I hope to bring Rook, Bishop, the Tall Ones, and of course the Sidewinder back to you soon for another swim through the Deep…and more games of chess, of course.
Chad Huskins
November 4, 2013
Table of Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Epilogue
Acknowledgements and Notes
