The Phantom in the Deep (Rook's Song)

by Chad Huskins

  Such a volatile piece of technology often has problems. And like a car engine, if left inert and unused, if the FTL systems aren’t regularly fed pycno, and put to use, some systems actually fall apart faster than if they were being put to regular use. The engine’s artificial intelligence was informing him that more systems were failing, and that if he didn’t find repairs soon, it could cause systemic damage, which would mean losing the entire FTL system.

  Rook returns to the cockpit, and takes a seat and taps a button. “Begin log,” he says. “Call sign Rook. I’ve just had another encounter with Cereb skirmishers, and with one of their mother ships. I managed to survive with minimal damage, Sidewinder’s still kicking, but though the EA system did its thing, it still wasn’t enough to top her out on power. I’ve captured one operative alive, which I’ve never been able to do before. I plan to begin interrogation soon. At present, I am working out some of its tech, some of which I’m familiar with, such as the omni-kit and its fabrication systems. I am familiarizing myself with the interface now. Other than that, just another day out in the field.” He almost signs off, then adds, “I am approaching Magnum Collectio now. Hopefully I have enough of a head start on the mother ship so that the Sidewinder’s cryogenic coolers mask my ion trail. If not…I may have just roused one of their giants for the last time. I’m low on fuel, this asteroid field is just about tapped out of the deuterium I require to re-sequence into pycnodeuterium. My FTL system is also failing from lack of use. I have nowhere else to go. This…this could be my last day.” He swallows. “End log.”

  Rook’s glad he decided not to throw away a few frayed copper wires and fiber-optic cables. Using the plasma cutter, he breaks these items down to smaller piece, the mini-fabricator devours them, and the omni-kit flash-forges newer versions into the palm of his hand. It sometimes takes a dozen tries—scanning a good cable to let the fabricator know what he needs, then tearing it back apart and re-feeding the materials to get closer to perfection—but eventually he starts to get the hang of it. He is even able to produce a serviceable plasma coil for his luminal drive, guaranteeing safer passage into the Bleed by allowing him to stabilize magnetic plasma transference on his next jump.

  If there is a next jump. He’ll need more pycno for that, and the only source around was inside the Cereb mother ship. It appears that after a while, all species eventually happen upon this same key fuel for interstellar travel. At least, that was the last theory ASCA researchers came up with when faced with the question of why the fuel systems between humans and Cerebs were so similar.

  The warbot, which still sits inert in the engineering bay, may eventually live again because of the omni-kit. Rook is able to take some of its old parts, break them down, feed them into the mini-fabricator and process bits that he can piece together. Everything from basic nuts and bolts to complex fiber-optic cables and joint connectors.

  Another hour, and he’s finally made it safely through the field surrounding the Queen, and is now approaching the King itself. The asteroid looms ahead in terrible darkness—a great cloud of the cosmic dust and ice particles have coalesced on its “night” side, where they mostly stay. King Henry VIII is 87.661 miles at its longest, and 30.4 miles at its widest.

  Rook checks in on the Sidewinder’s progress when he hears the chime in the cockpit. After glancing out the viewport, he makes sure everything’s right with trajectory and collision-avoidance, then he’s back to work. He’s able to take old metal-oxide varistors from the main circuitry bay, feed them to the mini-fabricator, remove the impurities (be they rust or elsewise), and produce new ones that he plugs right back in. “Like new,” he says with a smile, watching the new parts fit like a charm.

  Another hour of messing around with the omni-kit, and he’s able to make a more than serviceable screwdriver, as well as a few transistors and surge protectors for the cold-plasma shield, which it seems was damaged following his most recent dogfight. If the cold-plasma shield ever fails, then the tiny sensors on the outside of the Sidewinder’s hull will be at risk of damage by intense radiation in space. It is a delicate little world Rook must keep running.

  The omni-kit is categorically a godsend. But of course, the ship can’t see major repair from this. The omni-kit can’t produce objects much bigger than a baseball or spoon. Still, it will greatly aid in the molehills around the Sidewinder, those that eventually turn into mountains.

  Another hour of playing chess with the computer. He goes ahead and makes three more moves relatively quick. He and the computer have been approaching endgame for a while, and here it is. Rook sees exactly where he made his mistake. He didn’t count on that damn bishop again!

  The prisoner’s limbs twitch, rattling the chains. In a few minutes, he will begin to wake.

  Rook sighs, starts another game. He decides to play this one fast and furiously, since he doesn’t have long before interrogation starts, and a game always clears his head.

  This time, he is White and the computer is Black. In chess, the White piece always moves first, and it is by this virtue that most players and chest theoreticians believed White started the game with a small advantage. It rarely ever helps Rook to be White. He can count on two hands the amount of times he’s beaten the computer, with fingers to spare.

  He starts by moving his knight to F3. The computer moves its pawn two spaces, which can only be done on the first move, up to D5. Rook does basically the same thing, moving his pawn to C4. It’s a classic Réti Opening, named after Richard Réti, an untitled chess Grandmaster from the 1900s. It was considered a “hypermodern chess movement” that the man championed, with the center being controlled by the wings rather than by direct occupation.

  Rook has read up on these strategies. His father had seen him take an interest when he was very young. At eight years of age, Guillain-Barré Syndrome randomly took away Rook’s ability to walk, and for two years while going through physical therapy to recover, he couldn’t do much else but sit around the house, play on the Ethernet, and read. His father encouraged one hour of chess a day. At first resistant—because what could be more fun than playing on the Ethernet?—the boy eventually became obsessed with the game. Even after his legs were fully recovered, he wanted to play. He started going to tournaments with his dad…

  Rook doesn’t want to think about that. He just wants to focus on the game.

  The next series of moves are done by the seat of his pants. He tries to give no more than ten seconds’ worth of thought to each. It was good to do this from time to time, so that the computer couldn’t get a bead on his methods. For the most part, Rook is always thoughtful with his moves, taking lots of time to work through his strategies, but he also understands he shouldn’t let the computer start to extrapolate a “player style” out of his methods. Gotta keep it guessing, he thinks, quickly moving his queen to B3. It was a rule his father taught him.

  A few more furious exchanges. The computer has taken one of his bishops. Rook has taken a knight and a rook. Then, Rook loses a pawn. Soon, the computer has pinned his knight—if he moves it from E6, then it will illegally expose his king to the computer’s bishop at F5. He takes the full ten seconds to think on it, and just when he’s about to sacrifice his other knight, he looks down at his first rank, and sees that he hasn’t moved either of his rooks, nor his king. Once per game, if neither a rook nor a king has moved, and if all spaces between them are empty, a player may perform a move known as castling. The king is brought closer to the rook, and the rook meets it halfway, and essentially they swap places, remaining side-by-side. It is the only move in chess where a player is able to move two pieces at the same time.

  Rook does this, and watches as the computer has to think for perhaps two full seconds longer than usual. “Haven’t used that one in a while, have I?” he asks the computer, knowing it can’t answer. When the computer finally makes its move, it stuns him. Once again, the bishop came rocketing diagonally from across the other side of the board, taking out the one rook still at its or
iginal starting position.

  “Damn.”

  Rook quickly performs a fianchetto, moving his remaining bishop to the second rank of the adjacent knight file. This is typically a great way to fortify the defenses of a castled king.

  Mumbling. His prisoner is finally awake.

  Rook shoots a look over at him. For a moment, for just one moment, he has decided to kill him. To torture the alien, to make him feel the pain he and his kind visited on an entire race. He smiles. He smiles wide. This is a good idea, he thinks. A really, really good idea. After all, Rook is the last of his people. What is there left for him to do? What is there left to serve?

  Then, all at once, he is struck by something his father once said. The mark of a person is measured by how he acts when no one is around to judge him, to reward or punish him.

  Then, something else occurs to him. It comes seemingly out of nowhere. It happens when Rook looks down at his holographic chessboard, then looks at his captive. Back at the chessboard, back at the alien.

  Rook slaps his legs, pushes himself out of his seat and away from his game. He ambles over to the Cereb operative, kneels about six feet away, and lets him catch his equilibrium. The alien jolts suddenly, struggles with his bonds, then relaxes and looks calmly over at Rook. He sees his situation. He did the math. Compristeel chains. No way out. Now he’ll listen to me. In a way, it is a refreshing way to deal with an enemy. No need to issue threats. Cerebs are as forthright with themselves as they are their enemies. “Your head’s bashed up pretty bad,” Rook says. “I did what I could to stop the bleeding, and to treat the burns on your neck with salve and gauze.”

  The Cereb blinks once, twice, and then just stares at him. No word of thanks, no indication that he even heard Rook.

  Rook holds up the small, cylindrical object he took from the Cereb’s hip: the OBET. “I switched off your emergency transmitter. We learned about them in ASCA. The Academy’s researchers took this thing apart, dissected every inch. Every cadet had to study their findings. It’s like your version of SOS, right? It sends out four short bursts of omnidirectional signals?”

  The Cereb says nothing. He doesn’t even blink now. Inside those deep black eyes, an extra pulse of blue light suddenly emerges. It expands and coils, like ink dropped into water. A sign that the Cereb was waking up fully, if Rook remembered correctly from his time at ASCA.

  “You got a name?”

  The Cereb looks around the room, surveying. After a few seconds, he looks back at Rook, and says nothing for a long while.

  It’s been years since Rook’s been this close to one of them, and all of those before were dead by the time he came upon their bodies. Their eyes are black, slightly bulbous, almost the size of a human fist. They are slightly translucent, with a network of red veins visible just beneath the surface, and a single dark orb floating somewhere in that sack of black liquid: the pupil, presumably. However, at times, there are slight pulses of blue light. From what Rook was made to understand in his studies, these are energetic jets of deep-seated neural implants, which expand the already considerable computational power of a Cereb’s brains.

  Rook has removed the alien’s helmet, but has left him the portion that he believes acts as translator wrapped around the Cereb’s neck. When the Cereb finally speaks, his strange, sing-song yet punctual speech is barely audible over the translation. He also speaks without hesitation, and with the sincerity of a friend. “You have neither the tympanic nerves required to hear the notes of my name, nor the vocal cords necessary to say it,” he asserts. “You might as well assign me any name that suits you, or else call me Leader.”

  “Why Leader?”

  “Because that is my designation in the hierarchy.”

  “Who do you lead?”

  “Operatives,” he says. “Specially trained.”

  “What about others who do the same job as you?” asks Rook, tapping a few keys on the omni-kit’s holographic display, which projects in front of him and hovers inches in front of his face. The colors are contradictory in terms of commands by human understanding, green usually means “go” or “accepted” or “confirmed”, but it isn’t so with Cereb tech. Of course, this is to be expected, for the holographic command board was made for eyes that favored other wavelengths along the light spectrum, and so associated all colors differently than humans.

  “Others that do the same job as me are also called Leaders,” says the alien. “You may consider it a title much like sergeant or lieutenant.”

  “I see.” Rook nods, plays with scanning a few smaller items on the floor. He tries scanning an MRE packet, and is happy when, on his first try, the omni-kit flash-forges an exact duplicate in the palm of his hand, complete with the lettering on the side that says GOOD UP TO 20 YEARS IF IN IDEAL STORAGE TEMPERATURES. “What’s the battery life on this thing?”

  The Leader remains silent.

  Rook smirks. They may not care much for deception, but they certainly know when to keep quiet. This one knows that if he tells Rook anything about their tech, it could help him survive that much longer. “How many uses do you typically get outta this thing before it finally stops working?” Predictably, the Leader remains silent. “How do you recharge it, once it’s empty?” And of course, the Cereb says nothing. Rook snorts. “Ya know, this will go much easier if you just answer my questions. If you don’t, it goes the other way.”

  “If you are suggesting torture, I would advise against it.”

  “Oh,” he laughs, “I’m sure you would.”

  “You no doubt understand that we are hyper-sensitive to environmental changes—”

  “I very much understand that.”

  “—and so you are probably considering how easy physical torture affects us—”

  “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  “—but you must also understand that we are very susceptible to sensory overload. Indeed, I am already experiencing some overload right now, what with my helmet being removed. Our neural implants stem some of this overload, but you will find very quickly that even those implants aren’t enough from driving us mad. Any damage you exact on my body will quickly push my mind to its limits, and the information you will receive will be a garbled mess. In short, I won’t even know what I’m saying, for the most part.”

  “But that’s only if I push you too hard,” Rook clarifies. “I understand that much. So, the question is, how far can I push you without pushing too far?”

  “Would you really risk causing irreparable damage to your only hostage?” the Cereb asks, quite conversationally, and without any of the desperation one might expect to hear in a captive’s voice. He is being purely reasonable, while at the same time moving towards the ultimate goal of all life: self-preservation. “Once I am damaged, and once my neural implants break down, there is nothing you can do to bring me back from insanity. I will be a screaming mess, nothing but trouble for you. Why would you do that?”

  Rook shrugs and smiles. “Ever heard the phrase ‘practice makes perfect’?”

  The Leader tilts his head to one side—either because it’s a shared sentient trait, or he is attempting to mimic human behavior so as to communicate better. Rook is unsure which it is, but we, the ghosts of humanity, know that it is the latter. “I had not considered that you might merely be using me as practice,” he says.

  Rook raises an eyebrow. “You mean, the thought never even occurred to you?”

  “No.”

  “How can that not have occurred to you?”

  “Because it makes no sense. Practicing on me suggests that you believe you are capable of catching more of my people and using the knowledge you glean from torturing me on them.”

  Rook’s eyebrow stays in its raised position. “And why is that so unbelievable?”

  “Because you must know by now that capturing another one of us is a statistical unlikelihood. In all of the War, your compatriots only managed to capture two of us alive, and only thirty-nine taken dead, out of seventeen billion of
us. And all of those killed were done in by warbots.”

  “I got you, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, but it is the statistical anomaly that proves the rarity of the event,” the Cereb says, in the utmost professorial tone. “How many others have you captured alive out here?” Rook doesn’t have to answer, the Cereb knows how many have been lost out here to the Phantom, and he knows how many corpses have been recovered. “As I thought. This is an anomalous event.”

  “Perhaps not,” Rook argues. “Maybe I’m getting better at working you guys over.”

  “That is a bold statement, considering your entire race could not ‘work us over.’ ”

  That sounded kind of interesting. Was it gloating, or mere mimicry that I heard in those last few words? Rook wonders. As ghosts, we can travel into any depths, be they of space or of the mind, and we know it is a little more than simple mimicry.

  “Yeah, well, my tactics are somewhat different than that of the entire human resistance, aren’t they?”

  “They are,” the Leader allows. “But only marginally.”

  “You monsters struck so fast—and, by the way, you did a damn good job, so kudos to you—that we didn’t have time to really work out your weaknesses. And by the time we did, we were too late to do anything about it.” Rook shrugs, as if it is nothing. “Too little, too late, is all. But now I know more.”

  “Yes, more. These weaknesses you spoke of. Might I ask what you think they are?”

  “You have no guile.”

  “Guile is a weakness. It tore apart your politicians and world leaders. It brought about endless deceptions that were counterproductive to creating a unified front. Had you had that, you would have been a far more powerful civilization, and your warring capabilities would have been far more formidable when you set out for the stars.”