The Immortal Game (Rook's Song)

by Chad Huskins

  “Compliance.”

  The bot rolls away, checking more circuits and dusting some plugs as it goes, leaving him in blissful peace. Rook takes note of the main circuitry board, the quantum transistor, amplifier, battery relays, resistors, and capacitors. It was one specific capacitor that had been giving them trouble lately. No matter what they replaced it with—be it a capacitor of human or Ianeth design—it simply folded early during launch initiations. The ship’s AI was having a problem locating the source of the problem, and Rook was likewise befuddled. However, a conversation yesterday with Bishop had perhaps proven fruitful—Bishop was once a member of his species’ engineer caste, and had hypothesized that the problem wasn’t with the capacitors themselves, but with the influx of electrostatic energy the ship was trying to put through to it.

  Presently, Rook runs a powerful energy flow through the system, a wash of current that shows that, indeed, a current is being driven into the base of the quantum transistors. Then, he attempts to adjust the energy flow, dampening how much he wishes to be stored in the electric fields, then inserts a new capacitor, and is unsurprised when it works flawlessly.

  Son of a gun knows his stuff.

  Thinking about the alien, Rook recalls their chess game. They recently started a new one, and he realizes he has yet to make his move. He pulls up the game on his micropad, sees that Bishop is White and therefore went first. He’s moved one of his knights to H3. Rook smiles. He’s still not getting it, he thinks. That is a poor first move, putting White’s knight in an inferior square, far too passive, and unnecessarily wasting a move.

  To answer that move, Rook pushes his pawn from E7 to E5, giving his queen an open diagonal line to shoot along. He was already seeing several moves ahead, and, knowing how Bishop tended to play, Rook felt he already saw the three primary scenarios this game would follow. He would checkmate Bishop in fourteen moves, fifteen at most. The alien understood war, combat, but only from an engineer’s perspective of repair, or trouble-shooting. Despite having a capacity for intelligence that was undoubtedly far superior to any human ever had, and understanding so much about tactics, it seems Bishop has a problem seeing the relevance of strategy in a game—or, perhaps that was all Ianeth?

  He makes a mental note to advise Bishop on how to develop his pieces more intelligently, and to remind him that in the opening of a chess game, one should never move a piece more than once, at least not before move ten or so.

  A red light turns on in the upper left-hand corner of his micropad. Rook taps it, and a small image appears, along with a message: SENSOR ANALYSIS COMPLETED. Rook walks to the nearest comm station and activates the ship’s intercom. “Bishop, meet me in the cockpit, we’ve got our first full scans.”

  A second later, he receives a short reply. “Affirmative, friend.” The alien’s translator box sounds a bit better. Bishop has worked a great deal on the Cereb translator, adapting it to his physiology and even implanting it deep in some sort of subcutaneous pouch his species was bred to have—little pockets left open for future techno-organic chip upgrades.

  Rook does one last scan of the main circuitry board, pulls up a diagnostics screen, and follows the source of the previous electrostatic overcharge, follows it all the way to the main engine’s AI computer. The engine’s computer has several thousand petaflops of processing power, and was built to continually learn as long as it lived. It is constantly having a debate with itself concerning Quantum Slipstream Theory, learning as it goes, its knowledge growing exponentially each day. Rook, just like every saboteur, was first taught how something works properly before learning how to destroy it, yet even still, he knows the problems of the Sidewinder are fast outpacing his and Bishop’s ability to keep up, despite the strides they’ve made together, and despite the wonderful omni-kit they’d taken from the Cerebs.

  This in mind, he turns and walks towards the cockpit, passing the forward hold where the shower and bathroom are, and he reminds himself that the shower also needs to be looked at—it now alternates between hot and extremely hot water. Before that, though, Rook passes the number two hold, which once kept an old friend, the only other human besides himself, and now houses the hydroponic greenhouse box. The eye above the cockpit door scans his vascular ID and approves him, and the doors shunt open. Inside, he sits at the pilot’s seat, and looks out through the forward window, seeing his bearded reflection looking back at him through the alkali-aluminosilicate sheet glass. The beard is sharply trimmed, at least, though of course it would never have passed military inspection. Neither would the ISF badge on his arm and breast, both faded and frayed. Need to flash-forge some thread and fix that, he thinks.

  That makes him smile, because the thought instantly brings about an image of Badger. Ol’ Badge. It hurts to think what he’s done to survive, and what he did to Badger…But the old man asked for it, he tells himself for the umpteenth time. He wanted it. He told me to do it. At least, in a manner of speaking.

  That has been little solace, and hardly kept him going these last few months. Mostly, Rook just tries not to think about Badger, the man who loved shouting at people to show his care, the man who screamed angrily even when he was giving praise, the man who loved double entendres so much he’d delighted in giving Rook his call sign, relishing that the snot-nosed recruit had assumed the name reflected only his love of chess, never guessing it was a pun on how green a rookie he was.

  Badge. Where are you now?

  Badger’s sacrifice—or rather, Rook’s sacrifice of Badger—had led to the first victory the human race had ever seen over the Cerebral Empire. Was it worth it? he can’t help but wonder. Was it? After all, it’s just me now. No one else to carry on our legacy.

  Perhaps contradicting that, the doors shunt open behind him, and in walks the alien. Here, undoubtedly, we encounter another mind made for meddling.

  The Ianeth is Rook’s diametrical opposite in both mind and body. The alien’s two eyes are as black as the void, and the mouth is wide and leathery, like a crocodile’s smile. His outward appearance is that of an exoskeleton, a series of chiton-like shells all over his body are all tightly sealed, like the hermetic seals of Rook’s spacesuit. This exoskeleton often changes colors, from dark reds to softer hues, sometimes blue or purple. This is due to subcutaneous pigment sacks, which allow him to blend in with his environment like a chameleon.

  The Ianeth were once a proud race. They fought countless wars against one another over thousands of years, much as humans did, though theirs continued into the stars. They modified themselves for battle, even the lowest-class engineers were genetically engineered to take the most favorable aspects of their species and amplify them with performance-enhancing implants. By the time the Cerebrals discovered them and made their attack, the Ianeth were well versed in space combat, and attacked brutally and relentlessly. All this according to Bishop, who usually speaks only when spoken to—he is much more inclined to work in silence and solitude, but he never shows any sign of resentment when Rook goes to him with a problem. Indeed, he often turns his attention completely to Rook whenever a problem is discovered, and listens carefully. However, Bishop’s professional manner leaves something to be desired, and Rook has come to think that the alien is treating him like an assistant, more like a highly intelligent repair bot than a comrade, though he often calls Rook friend.

  Rook now realizes that, though they are joined and helping one another, they couldn’t be more alone.

  We’re both fighting two separate wars, Rook thinks, watching the nearly seven-foot-tall alien take a seat in the co-pilot’s chair. He’s still fighting for his people, and I’m fighting for mine. He supposes that’s something. Like the old Chinese proverb said, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

  “What have you found, friend?” says Bishop, managing his own micropad and looking over the day’s scheduled repairs. His voice comes out of the translator box as a modified human voice, deep and authoritative.

  “Check this out. The drones just sent u
s this.” He taps a few keys on a holo-display, and brings up a composite image of the planet’s surface. “I’ll adjust it here. And…” The image changes from a diagrammatic representation to live video. He then uses a photogrammetric sensor in one of the drones to create a highly-detailed hologram of the planetary layout, and compares the two. “There it is. Look like what you remember?”

  Bishop puts his micropad away and leans forward and stares at a view of a rocky, dusty planet, not unlike Mars. However, instead of Mars’s red surface, everything here is some shade of black or gray, with dim, red-orange lines and splotches scattered about, marking some of the volcanic plains. There are thick clouds in the upper atmosphere, but they are usually long, white streaks and sensors say they probably rarely gather in storm clusters. Though, the high winds do cause much erosion, those winds picking up the granules of sand and dust, etching snake-like ribbons across the landscape that look so beautiful that one might be forgiven for thinking they were done by artist’s design.

  Further scans reveal other ways the planet differs from Mars. Scans indicate an active and somewhat erratic core—unlike Mars, which has a solid core that does not move, and therefore gives Mars no magnetic field. This planet’s core is active enough to give it the all-important magnetic field that shields it from cosmic radiation bombardment. She could be terraformed. It’d be the hardest terraforming job in history, but it could be done.

  Bishop said that the name of the planet was unpronounceable in any human dialect, but that it was once named after a vile demon in Ianeth culture, one who was hated and often portrayed as the source of all evil. So Rook took to referring to the planet as Kali, after the Hindu demon on Earth, who was likewise reviled.

  Rook glances over at the hard data:

  Designation: Kali 1278c

  Type: C; rocky, volcanically and tectonically active, large regions of dust bowls

  Diameter: 7,889 km.

  Year Length / Synodic Period: N/A

  Gravity: 1.2 g

  Temp Range: -195° F at poles; 46° F at equator (current)

  Suns: 0

  Moons: 0

  Atmosphere:

  81.0822% carbon dioxide

  0.14% oxygen

  1.6% argon

  9.2% hydrogen

  2.1% nitrogen

  0.2% sulfur dioxide

  0.08% carbon monoxide

  5.5978% methane

  2.55 ppm neon

  300 ppb krypton

  18 ppb hydrogen peroxide

  Aphelion: N/A

  Perihelion: N/A

  Mean Anomaly: N/A

  Semi-major Axis: N/A

  Inclination: 1.991° to ecliptic, 1.67° to invariable plane

  Strange that a rogue planet could keep temperatures as high as 46° Fahrenheit, seeing as it has no parent star. Something adrift in cold interstellar space ought to freeze out. Of course, it isn’t entirely impossible: human scientists once theorized atmospheres could be contained by pressure-induced far-infrared radiation opacity, provided there was a thick enough hydrogen-containing atmosphere, as well as other small factors working in concert. Before the end, they had even discovered a few planets fitting that description.

  Some readings indicate it might even snow on Kali. The snowflakes would be made of carbon dioxide, and would only be about the size of red blood cells, but in big enough storms the landscape could very easily be coated in a fine, white frost.

  It’s a little marvel, he thinks, looking out the view. From here, one receives a commanding view of the dark planet.

  A chime goes off on the trouble-board. Rook checks his nearest screen, and finds a small problem with the ship’s exhaust, specifically with the cryogenic coolers. “Got some cryo problems, and some…huh.”

  “What is it?”

  “A weird heat signature bouncing off our wake. Dunno what that’s about.” He looks out the viewport, searching.

  While Bishop looks over the holographic surface map of Kali. Rook pulls up a few diagnostics screens, checks the trouble-board to make sure at least most of the lights were still showing green, then checks the pycno mixture levels. Running a little low there, he thinks, but that is no surprise. He’s been checking and rechecking it every hour, as if expecting their increasingly dire situation to magically reverse. “Well?”

  Bishop leans back. His translator device has a temporary hiccup, a few bubbling words, like someone trying to speak underwater, but it quickly corrects itself. “It is certainly the planet I told you about.”

  Rook is holding back some dismay. He tries to be as diplomatic as he can in his disappointment. “Are you sure? I mean, you said that there would be many resources left behind. Surface scans don’t show any—”

  “I told you that the installations were kept underground. There is nothing aboveground to make this planet stand out.” Bishop looks at him patiently. “This planet was carefully selected for its lack of resources, its lack of a parent star or profitable moons. It is a rogue planet, a dangerous one with angry, active volcanoes, and when my people were last here, it had cataclysmic tectonic activity in almost every region of the planet, due to its unstable core.”

  Rook nods, and looks at the core scans that confirm Bishop’s words. “So, something even the Cerebrals would have a hard time finding useful. No great resources here.”

  “Correct, friend.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me we were coming to such a dead planet, instead of letting me speculate?”

  “You and I have not been adequately blooded yet.”

  “Blooded?”

  “Yes. We haven’t shared in conquest.”

  Rook looks at him. “What do you call what happened back in the asteroid field?”

  “Desperation,” Bishop says, his hands moving quickly over the micropad’s keys. “An alliance hastily made for mutual survival. That is not the same as being blooded in a long campaign together, not the same as sharing knowledge, tactics, strategies, and forming a common language.”

  He means brothers in arms. That jibes with what Bishop told him about Ianeth warrior culture, but this issue of trust earned only under fire, well, this is something a little new. That is, Rook realizes strangers often show mistrust, and so will soldiers from different militaries, but they are each the last of their kind, and it’s difficult to think that the alien can still be putting up such roadblocks to a fluid and potentially beneficial relationship. Rook sighs and flips a switch to begin O2 mixtures in the air-exchangers. “All right, so, you’re not quite sure if you can trust someone until you’ve been blooded with them.”

  “It is our way.”

  “Well, as it turns out, we may get our chance to be blooded. And soon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He swivels one of the viewscreens around for Bishop to see. “The cryogenic coolers. They’re still seeing spikes. They’ve cooled our ionic trail for a couple hundred light-years, but still not enough. I’m glad we decided to bounce around a bit before coming here, or else our trail would’ve probably led them straight to us by now.”

  Ah, so, as it turns out, we were only partially right. Rook didn’t mean for his ionic trail to be detected, it’s just that the coolers were on the fritz and he had to make the best out of a bad situation. Bouncing all around the galaxy in different directions and dipping so close to that gas giant served a purpose, but he’s right, eventually the Cerebs will pick up the trail.

  “We’ve done the best we can,” he says, seeing he vacant stare on the alien’s armored face. Such stillness in Bishop is something that Rook has come to learn as the alien’s equivalent of uncertainty. Rook looks back at Kali. “Whatever resources are buried down there, we need to get them and get out.”

  “It may take us a few days. The bunkers my people built go deep, into ancient catacombs.”

  “What was this place before? How did your people discover it?”

  “Before the Cereb Empire found us, for the last two hundred years my people were stretching across the
stars, and becoming interested in extensive stellar cartography.” He looks at Rook. “We wanted to map the entire galaxy, not just for resources, but we wanted to know if we were alone. We wanted a final answer, because many of those in our scientist caste detected strange stratic readings across the cosmos, anomalies that were more than just the cosmic background noise. There was a theory that we weren’t alone, a serious theory, and it was gaining support.” When he speaks again, there might be the teensiest bit of remorse, or it might just be the monotone nature of the translator. “We didn’t know it was the Cerebs, we only knew something was out there, and that it was moving. They found us first, and had the honor and advantage of first strike.”

  “So, you fled?” Rook says, nodding to his screen. “To this place?”

  “To this and places like it, correct. We had already traveled far and wide in our explorations, and we had just discovered that there was life far beneath the surface of this world. But then our great enemy came, and like you, we dropped everything else in our society and focused on our enemy. It wasn’t until the end that we discovered they had almost no understanding of deception. The whole time they were watching us dance, watching us prepare what they determined were meaningless deceptions—and they were mostly meaningless, since the Cerebs had done enough planning beforehand and could calculate almost every conceivable place we meant to move our people and resources to.” Now, he looks rather appreciatively at the forward view. “But then we had another plan. We came back to this place. I was one of the engineers that designed and built the subterranean installations here. It was never quite finished, as you can plainly see.”

  Rook looks at his screen, at the twelve large spheres hanging around the planet. “Those survey and defense stations, you said they were never made fully operational?”

  “That is correct. The remoteness of this planet, and its speed and likeliness of being flung entirely from the galaxy, made it someplace the Cerebs would never see as a tactical advantage.”