The Immortal Game (Rook's Song) (2 page)

He might be there, hiding between wavelengths, in the smallest of “dead zones” in wavelength distortions, or perhaps hiding within an extreme power flux
.

Perhaps a bit more frustrated than he would ever admit, the Conductor
steps deeper into the hologram of the colliding stars, and continues running the analysis data.  Searching.  Searching.  Searching.  Then a few more milliseconds are spent running simulations.  These are quite different than fanciful imaginings, more data-based.  He finds no indication of any protocols that were not met to the fullest during the Event Anomaly.

There is nothing anomalous here
, he thinks. 
But that is what
makes
it so anomalous, isn’t it?
 
That the Conductor did nothing different, and yet was defeated
.  That was perhaps too philosophical for a Conductor, but then, a Conductor’s madness began early, and was almost invisible to detect in its first stages. 
How do you know when you’re going insane?

We may smile, because we know what
happened at the Event Anomaly.  We were there.  As the ghosts of humanity, we saw it all.  We witnessed the desperate acts of a madman and his clunky little ship, witnessed a seemingly hopeless act of sabotage that actually worked.  And, of course, we saw the unlikely ninth-inning save that came from another lone warrior: an Ianeth, the last of his kind, whom Rook dubbed “Bishop.”  The Conductor doesn’t know all this, of course.  He doesn’t even know that the Phantom goes by the call sign “Rook.”  But we do.  We know many things that the Conductor doesn’t know.  For instance, we know of the incoming transmission before he or anyone else does, the transmission that will set all the following events in motion.

“Sir, a transmission from the far side of the system,” says the Observer.

“Vessel?”

“No
, sir, it’s from a Four Point space station.”

Four Point.  That is extremely far away, one of the remotest outposts that the Cerebs have.
  Four Point’s mission out there is to map galaxy filaments, the largest cosmic structures in the universe—massive, thread-like formations, which form the boundaries between large voids in the universe.  After a few million years, enough of them should be mapped so that the Everlasting Empire can begin sending probes to other galaxies.  “What does the message say?”

“
That they’ve detected a strange gamma burst flash on their sensors, not conducive with predicted supernovae eruptions in the vicinity.”

“An
unpredicted localized anomaly?”

“Yes
, sir.”

“I trust they
sent probes?”

“They did, sir.  The probes found nothing that might
have generated the gamma burst.  However, they did find one anomalous thing: carbon black particles.  They were extremely tiny fragments, barely detectable at all, the Researchers at Four Point missed them entirely but a more thorough scan by seekers later detected them.”

Carbon black particles
.  There it is again, the Phantom File.  It is fleeting, there and gone, lasting only as long as he needs its reference and the reminder of protocols.  It is an extremely unlikely thing that the Sidewinder would be that far out, in the farthest regions of the galaxy.  However, the Phantom File is very clear on this part—the Sidewinder-class ships were made to be mankind’s greatest stealth ships, they had hulls made of compristeel, a very special alloy that was strong, flexible, and included a mixture of radar-absorbent materials.  Part of that mixture was the old tried-and-true carbon black particles, but such particles were typically only created by the incomplete combustion of petroleum products.  Of course, humans weren’t the only species that had ever used such products on starships.  The Cerebs themselves had once used them, never for stealth purposes, but they
had
used them.

“Those particles might have been left a long time ago by the ships of other spacefaring civilizations, or by our own older model ships,” the Conductor
reasons.  “Have they quantum-dated the particles yet?”

“No
, sir.  They said the particles were far too scant for that.”

“Were there any signs of
cooled ionic exhaust?” he asks, following the line of questioning initiated by the Phantom File protocols.

“No, sir.  N
one.”

That
doesn’t necessarily mean that it
wasn’t
the Phantom who left those particles behind. 
If it was him
, the Supreme Conductor thinks, stepping through the large burst of light between the stars,
then either his ship saw a glancing blow from a small asteroid moving too fast for his shields to deflect, or else the ship is still damaged from the Event Anomaly, and pieces of it are still being chipped off
.

The Conductor runs through the scenarios, gauges likelihoods, weighs the risks versus rewards that the Phantom would have for fleeing that far.  The answer is simple. 
It cannot be him
.  It can’t be, because there are no habitable planets out that far, and no sources of deuterium, which the Sidewinder would need to convert into pycnodeuterium, the fuel required to ignite its exomatter core and engage the power necessary to move into the quantum slipstream, the Bleed. 

No food, no water, no fuel
. 
If he went out there, he went out there to die
.

Still, the Conductor is surprised to find that the Phantom File cannot be so easily dismissed.  It keeps returning and insisting itself on him.  Within a few seconds, another tier of the File is revealed to him:
by the command of the Council of Elders, the Conductor is hereby ordered to follow this lead.

Only mildly perturbed by this, he
signals one of the bridge’s Manager and issues a command.  “Send a reply to Four Point, tell them we will make way shortly, after we’re finished recharging our cells here.  And tell them that, in the meantime, they are ordered to run a spectral analysis on the carbon black particles.  Tell me if the decay rates match.”

“Yes
, sir.”

He concludes that if the decay rates don’t match, it would indicate that the particles were probably left over from the passing of some ancient fleet, but if they
do
match, then at least that would tell them that the particles came from one craft, not many.  It was a start, even if a small one.  And in matters so great as cosmic forensics, even a small start helps.

Another hour or so passes, then finally the Conductor prepares the rest of the fleet to make for Four Point station.  We
retreat from this Event, and the Conductor stands amid the holographic field, taking one last look at the colliding stars.  Data confirms the formation of proto-gold, which will be thrust from the epicenter of the explosion over the next year.  He files a report, and sends it back to the Council.  Soon, they would have to prepare a mining fleet to come and gather the materials.

The
Supreme Conductor takes his seat.  All matters such as the Event Anomaly and the great matter of the Phantom recede.  Now, his focus is solely on that of his ship’s navigation, as well as the other three ships.  He communicates with the other Conductors, they share a Commune, cross-referencing data.  Now all control is handed over to him, and now he moves his flagship to the front.

His mind is everywhere at once, calculating the pycno levels, routing power to the primary ignition cells, checking their relativistic shields, and measuring the tachyonic distortions all around the ship.
  The forward laser is fired, and warps space-time by one part in ten million.  They enter the Bleed in a free-fall geodesic, so there are no acceleration
g
-forces.

We follow them, never concerning ourselves with such technical probl
ems.  We follow on the heels of those that annihilated us—but not for long.  For, as you well know, we can move faster that the Cerebs.  Much faster.  In our form, the laws of physics don’t quite apply, and we race ahead of the Cereb fleet, through the quantum slipstream at speeds that would humble their Calculators.  Stars wheel over end.  They become wavy, like we are viewing them through a glass of sloshing water.  The stars bleed together, their light and color compressed into blues and reds only.  Very soon, a purple, mottled mess is all around us, and we move along the trajectory set by the Conductor.

It will take the fleet
several hours to get to this part of the Milky Way, but we make it in seconds.  And so here we are, exiting the Bleed mere moments later and coming into the blackest patch of space we’ve seen yet.  Of course, space is never truly empty.  Invisible trails of cosmic dust span thousands of miles, and the occasional rogue meteoroids may slip by, perhaps no bigger than a coin.  Still, no major cosmic bodies are to be found for thousands of light-years.  No planets, no stars.  We are very nearly to the outer limits of our galaxy, our Milky Way.

Our home.

For so long we thought of Earth as our home, but with our new perspective we now see that our home was so much bigger than imagined.  We framed ourselves within the context of our houses, not our neighborhoods.  We identified ourselves according to our DNA, rather than coping with the fact that the majority of the elements in our bodies came from stars.  We now realize that we were only connected to each other biologically, but that we were connected to the rest of the universe chemically and atomically.

Now we see our relationship with the tiniest of elements.  Take these black carbon particles
the Conductor was told about, for instance.  So miniscule, and yet they were created by the same processes that fling comets through the universe.  Well, actually, these particular particles might’ve had a helping hand.  Being ghosts, we may know more than machines can ever find, and know for a certainty that these particles did indeed come from a single ship.  We also see afterimages of its passing, impressions left on the fabric of space and time, like footprints at a quantum level.  We follow these afterimages, which are scarcely more than blurred photographs, for a few dozen light-years.

Yes…yes, after a fashion, we
do
pick up on a cooled ion trail.  We know that cryogenic coolers were added at the ends of the engine nozzles of all Sidewinders, and that those coolers used Bose-Einstein condensate to cool the ions just before they left the engine’s exhaust ports.  A stealth measure, exactly as the Supreme Conductor noted before.  However, it’s a bit strange.  The ion trails, scant as they are, seem to be leading off in many different directions…

Ahhhh, but now we see the reason and the rhyme. 
He knows that if the Cerebs found him once before, they will most assuredly find him again.  It is only a matter of time.  After all, they found every other human being, didn’t they?  So the Phantom figured that, if he was eventually going to have his trail detected, he’d best make the occasional stop, fly off in one direction before double-backing to the same spot and shooting off into another.  Deception and confusion, these are the only tools left to him and his Ianeth ally now.

So where do we begin?  Well, lucky for us, we may go at tremendous speeds, impossible speeds, in all directions.  We may check this
path and then check that path, until we have tried them all.  However, we soon find that
none
of these trails leads to anywhere in particular—no asteroid field, no solar system, no lone star or rogue comet, nothing.  So what would he…?

Oh…oooohhhh.  Clever Phantom.  These aren’t trails
leading to something, but rather ruses to lead us
away
from something.  These trails aren’t indications of where he’s going, but perhaps where he’s come from.  Perhaps, assuming his new base of operations would soon be discovered, he and his alien ally decided to give the Cerebs a feint, just something to occupy the Cerebs’ time while the two of them worked on something else?

We won’t know
for sure until we follow the scant ionic trail back to its origin, and then try and focus on a trajectory.  This…this could be difficult.  The Sidewinder’s cryogenic coolers appear to have been focused,
boosted
even, to the point that there is virtually no detecting the trail.  The Conductor’s Phantom undoubtedly powered them down to leave the slightly more obvious trail.  He gave them bait to follow.  But the real trail…

Well, we are ghosts,
and though it may be difficult, we can see other things besides ion trails and quantum footprints.  We can see the impression that energy,
all
energy, leaves on the universe.  Thoughts are energy.  They are made up of electric pulsations, and they form a narrative, they give off a signal, a “scent” no machine yet made can detect.

We focus.

We concentrate.

We see it.

A mind made for meddling.

It coincides with what we know of him.  For what is a saboteur if not one who interferes with the normal processes of things?
  A meddler.  In any case, here is an energy trail that only we may follow…the Cerebs will have to figure out a method for themselves.