The Immortal Game (Rook's Song)

by Chad Huskins

  Then, another data spike. New information coming in. The two stations at the “top” of the planet are moving, too.

  Turks 1 and 2 have been activated, but they do not move straight towards the fleet as Turks 3 and 4 do. No, 1 and 2 now split apart, and begin wide arcs around the planet’s “sides”, at the edges where the western and eastern hemispheres meet on each side of the globe. The Conductor orders confirmation on the space stations—there are no signs of any kinds of weapons, only moderate shields, which have retarded from neglect. The Conductor orders his fleet to start pulling back—the space stations are thrice as large as a luminal, and the Ianeth were once brutal creatures, and perhaps they programmed these things for ramming maneuvers.

  We might ask ourselves, what exactly is Rook’s plan here?

  For that answer, we race back to the Sidewinder and place ourselves directly between the human and the alien. “Okay. The pieces are in motion. Let’s see what they…ah.” On his sensors, he sees the fleet starting to back away. Rook takes a steadying breath, and moves his hands across the controls. “Alright, Bishop, what’s say we give them a little deception play?” Bishop’s ghastly grin returns. “I want you to move Turk Eight to an angle that will put it directly behind them. Put it on a direct line, at top speed. With Kali in front o’ them and Turk Eight behind them, they’ll be boxed in.”

  “They’ll probably fire on it as soon as it starts to move on that line. They’ll note the trajectory, and know that they’re being cut off, even if they don’t believe you’re doing it.”

  “Then wait until they start charging their primary weapon to bring up both Seven’s and Eight’s shields.”

  “Affirmative, friend.”

  A few seconds later, their enormous neighbor, which is floating a couple hundred miles off, parts its panels and extends its mass drivers. At first, it moves incredibly sluggishly, like an old car that hasn’t been started in a season. Then it picks up speed, and it is a marvel to watch something so large move so fast.

  An alarm goes off. “Looks like the flagship is charging its primary weapon,” Rook alert. That massive particle beam will eradicate half of Turk 8 if it hits, and with its systems ruined, the other half will be just a massive, uncontrollable hunk of space debris.

  “Copy. Bringing up the shields on Turk Seven and Eight in three, two…”

  An energy spike on his screen tells Rook that the invisible force-fields are up. The flagship fires its particle beam, and with the Sidewinder peeking just over the top of Turk 7, they are able to see the blinding green light as it smashes against Turk 8’s energy shields and bleeds off, cascading across the surface of the shield and bending around it, some of it carrying on and hitting Turk 7, which absorbs the rest of the energy enough that only low-level waves cascade over the Sidewinder’s own shields.

  “Status.”

  “Turk Eight has lost some of its guidance systems, and one of its mass drivers,” reports Bishop. A few seconds of checking, then, “It looks like it’s still on course, though, and has enough maneuverability to make it to its destination in time before they can charge for another hit.”

  Rook looks over his sensors. “The flagship and its partner are still backing away from the planet. They know something’s up, but they don’t know what.”

  “Our probes on the surface confirm ground troops landing down on Kali’s surface. They’re entering our cave.”

  He can’t help but smile. “I’d like to see the look on their faces when they meet the welcoming party.” Rook peers out the viewport, looking down at the burnt sky over Kali. What he cannot see, we can. We may pierce both cloud and shadow, and dive down to see the landing parties at work.

  When the sixteen skirmishers land, the operatives deploy. Kali greets them with a large temblor. Four groups of four proceed on shaky ground to the cave’s mouth. They peek inside, the forward operatives aiming down into the darkness, scanning for energy signatures. There are scant signs of activity, even Ianeth biology, but much of this, they assume, is probably coming from the techno-organic exo-suit standing in the very middle of the cave. The forward operatives hold their aim as their brothers dash inside. They proceed on a bounding overwatch, very similar to the tactics of Earth SWAT (as Rook noted, there are only so many ways to do some things).

  When they get halfway to the hole in the wall where the derelict Sidewinder was found, all of the operatives’ sensors come alive with warnings of movement, and small energy spikes. The signal is given to freeze and take cover. Some of them move behind stalagmites and columns of joined stone. Others find refuge behind piles of rubble. Kali trembles again, and a few of these rocks fall from their piles, revealing what’s just beneath. Some of the operatives see the half-buried Ianeth bodies in time to do something. Most do not.

  The eyes have been watching, noting the movement of strange bodies and alien faces. The faces of old enemies. When the first Ianeth husk awakens, it does so in dramatic splendor, ripping out of its mound of rubble and clenching the closest Cereb by his neck, squeezing with brutal force and ripping the head clear off. Two operatives turn to douse the husk in a rain of particle-beam fire, and as they do three other husks erupt out of the ground like mole men of folklore, or like the undead from their graves, seeking vengeance. Others seem to materialize out of nowhere, the built-in subcutaneous pigment sacks allowing them to blend in with their environment. Stalagmites begin to move, the walls appear to breathe—countless husks are on the march.

  The caves glow with blue-green beams that slice and cut through the brainless killing machines. Hewn husks crawl on the ground by their hands, clawing, snatching up Cereb operatives and breaking their necks, lifting them off the ground and flinging them into columns of stone or against jagged walls. A dozen have now risen, now two dozen, now fifty. A massive swarm of giant, angry insects descend on the confused operatives, who automatically send sit-reps back to their ship, and those reports are in turn sent up to the Supreme Conductor.

  The Supreme Conductor stands on the bridge, looking at the holographic images coming from his operatives thousands of miles below. Even as the Ianeth husks rise and attack, the old Ianeth space stations move to create a perimeter. If he didn’t know better, he would believe that their escape routes were being cut off. Those spheres coming from the south have cut off their direct escape from below. And those spheres coming from the north have split, covering exits to the left and right, while the sphere they fired upon is now moving behind them, leaving the planet itself in front of them.

  Something is trying to get us hemmed in.

  But that is impossible. That’s got to be the Phantom File talking. These stations never had such tactical programming, they were meant to form defenses, float abreast in pairs over each hemisphere and create protective shields. The weapons, which were never installed, were meant to dissuade incoming threats. The mass drivers were meant to allow for maneuverability…

  But never this. They were never meant to leave orbit and cut off an escape.

  The datafeed continues to inform him. Down below, exactly sixty-seven Ianeth husks have risen from their graves. The Conductor is well versed in Ianeth physiology and design, he knows that they have dead-man switches…But they’ve been so obviously arranged. The Phantom, he thinks. The Phantom File has warned him about this. He used the dead once before in the asteroid field to fake his own death.

  Meanwhile, the Cereb operatives inside the cave are being slaughtered. The Supreme Conductor is calling for reinforcements to be sent in. The operatives try to regroup and attack, but the husks are relentless. They grab and tear, rending flesh from bone, almost angrily, as if there is some spark of emotion left inside of them, an ember of revenge that has been nurtured to flame. If we, the ghosts of humanity, could see the ghosts of Ianethity, we can be sure they would have wicked grins seeing their perfectly-designed bodies were still giving their killers hell.

  Now back to the Sidewinder, which, strangely enough, still hasn’t made a move. Rook looks
over his sensors, pulls on the yoke a bit to correct their orbit around Turk 7. He watches as the flagship and its partner back farther away. They fire up their primary weapons, and fire simultaneously at Turk 8, which sheds off enough of the energy to keep going, but twenty percent of its structure is blown apart and sent into space in superheated chunks.

  “Turk Eight’s mass drivers are down by sixty percent,” Bishop reports. “Another shot like that will disable all the drivers completely.”

  “Momentum will still carry the bulk of it where it needs to go. It’ll block their escape.”

  “Affirmative, friend. But a third or fourth shot will blow it apart entirely.”

  “They won’t be able to get as many shots in if Turk Eight reaches the flagship’s stern in time,” Rook says, checking to see if 8’s momentum will put it there in time without drivers. It’s going to be close. “Only the flagship will be able to fire on it, the others won’t be able to fire for fear of hitting the flagship.”

  “They already know that.” Bishop points to a holo-display. “They’re already moving the two luminal ships to be able to target the station.”

  Rook looks, sees that he’s right. “Then it’s time to move another piece. Begin powering up the graviton gun.”

  “With pleasure, friend.”

  Over the next few seconds, skirmishers streak across both his viewport and his sensor screens, all of them on their way to inspect the worrisome Turk 8. So far, none of them have detected the Sidewinder. Rook is hoping that the sensor shroud keeps them off of any scanners just a little while longer.

  “Graviton gun cuing up. Any second now they’ll be able to detect its energy signature.”

  “Copy that,” says Rook.

  “Whatever we’re targeting, you better choose fast.”

  “I already know our target. The luminal ship down below the atmosphere.”

  Bishop looks at him. “It’s a little over a thousand miles down, out of range if we want to encapsulate the whole ship in the reverse-field beam.”

  “I know. We’re gonna have to get closer. Hang on.” He engages forward thrusters and pushes them down, following in the ionic wake of the luminal ship, hoping that the Sidewinder’s own signature will be blurred in that giant wake. “How close do we have to be to get all of that luminal ship?”

  “Our beam isn’t big enough to encapsulate all of it,” says Bishop. “Not even if we were touching it. But we can get about eighty-seven percent of it if we remain a safe mile or so back.”

  “Copy that. Ready targeting sequence.”

  “Copy.” Two seconds later. “Targeting sequence readied.”

  They move through the heavy atmosphere, passing purple and even blood-red lances of lighting as they streak through into the relatively clear underside of the clouds. They’ve emerged on the opposite side of Thor’s Anvil from the mountain cave that has been their home all these weeks. They sore low at first, hugging the ground to defeat radar, then Rook holds his breath as he pulls back on the yoke and shoots for the sky. Seconds later, they are skirting around the Cereb ship. Seen from above, the luminal is a dark shape against a slightly darker ground. The holo-screens highlight it for them.

  “Got it locked in?” asks Rook.

  Bishop makes a weird grunting noise, which might be a sarcastic snort. “I couldn’t miss this target if I tried.”

  “Copy that. Go for maximum g’s.”

  “Roger. eight-point-three g’s it is.”

  “Tell me when we’re in range.”

  Seventy-three seconds pass in total silence, both Rook and Bishop hoping beyond hope that they aren’t being detected by the skirmishers buzzing around the luminal like gnats. They get a little closer. The luminal’s dark hull now takes up most of the viewport. Now all of it. Rook has to watch the electromagnetic situation in the clouds all around, flying the Sidewinder in such a way to hide their ionic trail within each pocket of invisible energy. Skirmishers are zipping all around them, oblivious to the Sidewinder moving amongst them. How much longer can that last? Rook thinks. The Sidewinder’s mirrors do good reflecting the darkness of space and the many stars, but down here with the random bursts of lighting, clouds above, and magma below, the jig could be up fast.

  “We are at optimum range,” Bishop calls.

  “Fire when ready.”

  Bishop’s hands move across the controls. From outside, we see the red-and-blue energy field briefly highlight the graviton gun’s mount, then dissipate quickly—it shows up as a random atmospheric spike on the Conductor’s datafeed, incidentally—and the long beam emitter hums to life. The entire Sidewinder quakes with heavy vibrations. A second later, the invisible beam shoots out faster than the speed of light and suddenly grabs hold of most of the luminal’s midsection.

  All at once, the luminal is bent, as though its belly has swollen and wants to burst. The front and back ends are still obeying Kali’s 1.2 g’s, but the entire middle section, with the bulk of the ship’s mass, buckles down, as if lassoed and yanked downwards. Each end bends upwards and splits, but doesn’t break off entirely as whatever Conductor is in command of that ship struggles to compensate by shooting extra power into the vertical drives.

  But it’s not gonna be enough, pal, Rook thinks, smiling, watching the luminal lose the battle with gravity because the damage done at each end has already ruptured the connections between thrusters and engines—wires severed, pipes ruptured, hulls hewn, bulk heads split, important circuits disconnected or ripped apart entirely.

  Slowly, the luminal begins to plummet towards Kali’s surface.

  As Bishop silently fights to angle the beam to keep its target as it falls, Rook engages the forward thrusters and rockets down, baring on top of the warship. Down, down, down. Skirmishers surround it, as if the gnats now stupidly believe they can help. Down, down, down. Now the skirmishers scatter, presumably given the order to cut their losses. Down, down, down. From inside the Sidewinder, they can both hear the screeching metals as the luminal bemoans its fate. Down, down, down. Rook’s grin grows wide as he hears the vertical thrusters begin to fail, watches them sputter out, and one of them even explodes. Down, down, down.

  Eventually, the massive warship’s fate is completely sealed and its downward momentum alone should carry it the rest of the way.

  “Disengage graviton gun!”

  “Copy. Disengaging,” Bishop reports.

  Rook lets out a whoop and a laugh.

  The Sidewinder quits shaking, and he kicks speed to thrusters to get them out of here, in case of a reactor breech in the plummeting luminal. They fly right along the magma-covered surface as they watch what happens behind them on screen, and hear the great beast roar as it collides with the ground and ruptures an underground lava lake. The thing cracks into a dozen pieces as it sends up a plume of both black smoke and red-hot magma. At that moment, lightning chooses to split the sky, illuminating the messy end. The massive boom jars the world. Small explosions erupt throughout the luminal’s corpse, and skirmishers scatter even more.

  Thumping his fist against the console, Rook lets out another great howl, and Bishop sends out a guttural cry and thumps his chest with one hand. Then Rook spins around in his seat and, without even thinking, slaps the Ianeth’s hardened shoulder, and Bishop grins all the wider. “Okay, buddy! Climbing to an altitude of five hundred feet!”

  “Copy that. Beginning recycling of containment field generator.”

  “Starting a flyby scan of the downed luminal on a parabola.”

  Bishop looks over at him. “You’re taking us back around to the luminal?”

  “If we’re gonna do it, we have to do it now while everything’s a mess.”

  “Do what?”

  “Infiltrate the luminal drive core.”

  Bishop only stares. “Might we just do the same thing to the other luminals?”

  He shakes his head. “We’d never make it close enough. Look at that field of skirmishers between us and the luminals. We’d be detected a
nd destroyed before we knew what’s what. The sensor shroud works good enough from afar—or when there’s only a few ducks to trick, you can be evasive—but like this?” Another shake of the head. “Trust me. We need to play the long con here.”

  “Affirmative, friend. But I should remind you we have weeds all around,” the alien says, using brevity code to describe numerous aircraft operating below two thousand feet.

  “Copy that. I haven’t forgotten. Now let’s get moving.”

  “Affirmative, friend.”

  Rook is quite surprised how fast the alien goes along with him. He almost expected an argument.

  As the Sidewinder rockets towards the downed warship at Mach 7, we pass through the walls and soar to the clouds, then pass through them, through the troposphere, thermosphere and exosophere, out into high orbit where Turk 8 is just now reaching its destination, cutting off the Supreme Conductor’s luminal before it can turn around and head for deep space. He doesn’t even want to retreat, but the Phantom File urges him to. Retreating is unbecoming of our people, he thinks, sorting through the datafeed.

  But what has him even more outraged than being forced into a retreat—a retreat that isn’t currently possible—is the undeniable fact that they’ve lost an entire luminal. They’ve lost it. Completely and utterly. It…it shouldn’t be possible. But the datafeed argues otherwise, showing him massive gravitic distortions. There’s not been tech like that in use since the Ianeth graviton manipulators. None of those were ever used here, all of them are off on their fortress world, light-years away.

  The Phantom File urges him to pay attention. Something is amiss here. There is an anomaly happening, an Event inside of this system of long-dead machines, a consciousness that is slowly being revealed.