The Immortal Game (Rook's Song) (34 page)

“Copy.”

“And give me a heads up about any debris our shields can’t realistically deflect!”

“
Compliance,” Bishop says calmly, blasting a small shard of Turk 8 out of their way.  “Should I fire the graviton gun at the luminal before we leave it?”

Rook takes a second to think.  “Are they targeting us?”

A brief check.  “Not anymore.  It looks like they’ve got the same idea we do to start blasting anything that might collide with them.”

Rook cackles madly, shaking his head.  “Then it’s every man for himself.  Save the graviton gun in case we need to push
debris out of our way fast.”

“Affirmative, friend.”

After the Sidewinder rushes past the half-sphere remains of Turk 6, Rook gets a brief glimpse through all the debris at the rogue planet.  Kali is no more.  The planet has been pulled apart and all its solids and gases are being pushed out into the battlefield in a porridge of detritus, even as nightmare tendrils swim within the multicolored clouds and occasionally lick out, tasting the vacuum, moving around as if feeling for something, anything. 
It looks like it’s searching for somethin’, all right
, he thinks. 
Like it knows the person who woke it up must still be around
.  Scans show that Kali’s core, hidden deep within the cloud, is coming completely undone.  Another scan reveals that the tentacles are indeed giving off biological signatures, and that they’re all connected to a main body deeper inside.  Whatever the Colossus is, Rook has no doubts that it is doing what it was made to do.

Seek and destroy
.

Space is now overpopulated by incalculable debris of every size. 
The Sidewinder streaks past the destroyed husk of a dozen skirmishers, then gets rocked when a boulder-sized piece of Turk debris smacks up against them, penetrating the shield a smidgen.

“What the hell, man?”

“Sorry, friend,” Bishop responds.  “We’re running low on power.  I have to conserve energy for the major targets, and it wasn’t so big we needed to use the graviton—”

“Just a little heads up next time!”

“Heads up.”

“Exa
ctly, just give me a—” He’s interrupted by another heavy impact, which knocks them off-kilter, forcing Rook to fight with their momentum to correct both yaw and pitch.  “What the
hell
, man?”

“I said heads up.”
  Before Rook can curse him out, the alien says, “Incoming!  Colossus tentacle is—”

“I see it!”

The very tip of one tentacle suddenly cuts a wave through the debris field, reaching for something to devour, and inadvertently knocking a good swath of obstacles out of their way.  That is, if Rook can correct in time and predict its movements.  Rook pulls up, then turns hard to starboard, then rolls hard to port and kicks in extra speed.  The tentacle suddenly jumps, coils, the miles-wide tip curling back at them, as if it senses them. 
It might just do it
.  He rolls hard back to starboard and outruns the tip, flying along the length of the tentacle, back towards the nightmare cloud that was once Kali.  Finally gaining enough ground on it, Rook rolls back to port and shoots back into the debris field, just as Bishop blasts a lost skirmisher coming up on them.

“Nothing that big should be able to move that fast,” he says, looking at the 3D image of the tentacle’s tip giving up the chase behind them.

“I’m detecting large amounts of tritium and small-scale fusion reactions happening all along its stalk.”

“
My readings say it’s
biological
!”

The Ianeth conducts
himself over a few more screens, correcting targeting parameters.  “I’m getting the same.”

“Biological life forms can’t just produce fusion reactions on their own,” Rook argues.

“The fact remains, it’s producing fusion reactions to power its musculature.  I don’t know what else to tell you.”

No sooner are the words out of Bishop’s translator box than all of space lights up, as a rippling blue-white light stems from a tentacle miles off on their starboard side, the light traveling first from the core of the planet to the tentacle’s very tip, before bouncing all the way back down.

“What the hell am I
seeing
?”

“An energy burst from the core, one or two exajoules’ worth,” Bishop says.  “It’s either breathing or thinking or both.”

The Sidewinder fares well enough through the debris field, and for a moment it looks like they might just get clear.  The two luminals have become embroiled with the Colossus and have huddled relatively close together, about ten miles abreast, and while the flagship does all the work of fighting off two separate fusion-induced bioluminescent arms, the other luminal is struggling to keep the debris from the Turks and the planet from colliding with them.

Rook sees this, and smiles, thinking,
Couldn’t have happened to nicer people
.  Now comes a surge in energy readings from where the planet core is still ripping itself apart, somewhere deep, deep in that boiling cloud.  A glance to his right viewport shows that two new arms are lashing out like whips made of blue flame, so bright is the energy pulsating from within.  The Sidewinder’s AI gives off a size estimate: 424.3 miles long, 62.7 miles wide.  As long as the state of Nebraska, as wide as New Jersey.  Even at that size, it’s quickly rushing towards the viewport.  Estimated speed…
God, twenty-seven miles per second
.

As the nightmare cloud continues to expand, the debris cloud begins to disappear, all the shrapnel being swallowed by the…organism? 
It’s like it’s breathing it all in
.  Rook doesn’t struggle too hard trying to figure whether or not it’s truly alive, all that matters is getting clear, but whereas the tentacles have no concern for cutting straight through the remaining Turks, the Sidewinder cannot be so indiscriminate.  Even the smallest of remaining bits randomly launch themselves in front of Rook and Bishop’s field, disallowing them from being able to hit top speeds.  The two new tentacles are gaining, the Sidewinder is busy wading.

Then, Rook watches half in wonder, half in horror as one of the tentacles grabs hold of half of a Turk, coils around it, crushes it like a beer can and suddenly hurls it across the debris field directly at them, seemingly with purpose.

“Uh, Bishop—”

“Graviton gun locking on.  Granularity of quanta is being rerouted—”

“Don’t care!  How long to fire?”

“Locking in six, five, four, three, two…”

The loud hum.  The walls trembling.  The usual signs of the graviton gun cuing up.  A second later, the Sidewinder feels like it might shake apart.

“Locked.  Intensifying reverse-field to maximum
g
’s.”

“
Engage when ready!”

“I have to wait.”

“
Wait?
  For what?!”

“We need to let it get closer—”

“Closer?”

Bishop doesn’t respond.

The twisted piece of organisteel is hurtling at them at speeds nearing forty miles per second.  Five seconds go by.  It’s growing larger, the debris moving silently towards them, spinning end over end, now filling up the entire viewport.  The massive hunk is smashing to pieces all other debris in its wake, a juggernaut that won’t be stopped…

“Uh, Bishop?”

“Engaging beam,” he says casually.

The Sidewinder shudders like a car with its wheels out of alignment, and gun’s beam
doesn’t appear to have an immediate effect.  The miles-long hunk is coming at them.  Then, its speed decreases noticeably.  It’s still coming forward, though.

“I
’ve slowed it down, but it has a lot of momentum, so you’re going to have to kick some speed to—”

“I can’t!  There’s too much debris!  It’s
all small but we have to go
around
, we can’t go
through
!  We can’t get a straight enough line to get that much speed!”

“Any open lines above or below us?”

Rook does a brief scan.  “None that I can see, buddy.  This is the best line with the least debris—”

“Hang on.”  A few seconds later, the whole ship hums, and a whirling noise can be heard coming from the rear.  “
You’re good to go.”

Rook looks around at his diagnostics screens. 
Deflector shields are back
.  He wants to ask Bishop how he did it, but he doesn’t have time.  Now able to shoot ahead unafraid, Rook has the ship’s AI plot a quick course, taking into account their new capabilities.  It tells him if he rolls to port eighteen degrees and then stabilizes on a preset line of coordinates, he can scream ahead for sixty miles before he has to slow and correct for a portion of debris too large to deflect.  He follows the directions exactly, and breathes a sigh of relief as he sees the huge chunk pass by them by a scant half-mile.

Scanning the debris field for his next best course
, Rook has time to call back, “What did you do?”

“
I rerouted every last bit of power to from the particle-beam turret to boost the shields.”

Rook wants to curse, but he knows it was smart thinking.  Anything else, and they’d
be pulverized now, the last human and Ianeth destroyed by space junk.  “Graviton gun’s still charging, I take it?”

“Fifteen minutes, thirty-three seconds before it’s available again.”

“And no quality stealth systems online.  We’re in defensive mode now—” Alarms!  They’re blaring on all screens!  Data is showing a terrific disturbance in the debris field behind them.  It only takes a glance at the holo-display to his right to know what it is.  The photogrammetric sensor on the Sidewinder’s belly sends him a 3D image of the flagship, now blasting through the debris field, coming right at them, using its small-turret particle beams and solenoid gun to remove debris from its path, but ultimately taking what licks it has to in order to bare down on them.

And there is no mistake, it
is
coming for them.  “Jesus, they must’ve detected us firing the gun.  They know we can’t hit ’em with a reverse-field now.” 
Which means they’re not pinned with their backs to Kali anymore
.

“
Correct,” says Bishop.  “Skirmishers and seekers are closing in fast.  Last data I’ve got has the other luminal in pieces.  I believe the Colossus claimed it.”

“Ha-
ha
!  I’ll chalk that up to teamwork!  Don’t we make some beautiful music together?”

“
Affirmative, friend.”

“Three down, one to go.”

“Affirmative.  But now that we have no particle beam, we’ve only got one weapon available to us, but we still have to give it time to recharge.”

Rook
glares at his display, not seeing a way out.  “I don’t see any safe lines.  You?”

“No.  But the
flagship obviously has no qualms about taking nominal damage to close the distance on us.  But there is one thing its Conductor does appear to be afraid of,” Bishop says suggestively.

Rook takes a deep breath, and look
s out his right viewport.  “I was hoping you had a better idea.”

“Unfortunately, I do not.  It i
s our best chance, as far as I can see.  We need to turn hard to starboard and push fast for the Colossus.  Either the ship will let us go for fear of facing the creature, or else they’ll follow and bear down on us.”  He turns to Rook.  “Either way, friend, it means facing our deaths very soon, but at least with the Colossus we can hope they get taken out with us.”

“Bishop,” Rook says, setting the coordinates one last time before rolling the Sidewinder.  “Where I’m from, we have a saying:
‘Great minds think alike.’ ”

14

There is nothing left for the Supreme Conductor except final subtraction of the human race.  Witnessing the other ship being grappled and
crushed was not unlike watching a small lizard being squeezed in someone’s fist until the guts are pushed out of its face.  It was traumatic to watch, and it has put him over the edge.

The Conductor knows it now.  He knows that this is what it feels like to go insane.  It’s undoubtedly the fastest any Conductor has ever had to face
obsolescence.  But he can’t stop it.  Like levies giving way one right after the other, the overflow is too much to bear.  The failure to compute all the ways this battle could have been won giving the available data—it shouldn’t have been a
battle
in the first place—causes a weakness in his knees.  He can feel the eyes on him, can sense that they sense his end.  The programming errors begin to compound on his psyche, cascading down from one brain-tier to the next, coming up with one final conclusion:

ERROR.

At times of such critical failure, a Conductor will find himself on the brink of Mass Error, falling inexorably into it as light does a black hole.

But I will have him
, he thinks, ignoring advice from the Phantom File to back off, even as he sends the last records of this battle to Four Point. 
I will have him, and then they will see that he was nothing but an anomalous fluke
. 
There is nothing he has to teach us, nothing to learn from these examples
. 
They are not systemic errors in us
. 
The only error would be to grant him more weight than he’s worth
.

“Sir, the Sidewinder has turned hard to starboard and is on a hard heading for the collapsing planet,” an Observer reports.

He’s headed straight into the heart of that thing
.

The Old Ones knew what they were doing.  They constructed something that even the Cerebrals had not noted the significance of. 
They were not skilled warriors, they were not even aggressive enough to conduct a proper war, but they were an ancient and long-lived species, with near infinite patience
. 
They played a long game against us
. 
How many worlds were seeded like this?  How many other such booby traps litter the galaxy, awaiting our discovery?
  Also aiding his Mass Error is this knowledge, that his people haven’t just been duped by a single human, but by a race long extinct.

“Change our heading to match the Phantom’s,” he commands.  “Do not let him get away.”

A brief pause.  Then, “Sir, we narrowly escaped the creature’s—”

“It is not your place to remind me of anything!”

Only it is.  At times of Mass Error, it is every Observer’s duty to watch carefully for the time when the Conductor must be relieved of duty.  But now, in this moment, no one questions.  Perhaps they suffer a kind of madness, too?  A systemic error sprouting from his own?  It was known to happen, such a corruption of the shared datafeed…of course, it happened only once before, its own Anomaly.

“Do as I say.”

“Yes, sir.”

The exchange was a tense 2.829 seconds long, and now they are correcting their yaw and rolling ever so slightly.  The ship has incredible mass, and will take longer to turn than the Sidewinder, but it doesn’t matter.  Their weapons have greater range, and the skirmishers
and seekers will cut off any other avenues of escape.

Into the darkness, then
. 
Into the gullet
.

That’s where we go, as well.  Away from the bridge, straight through the flagship’s hull and into the gullet, racing a hundred miles ahead, past skirmishers and seekers hot on the Sidewinder’s tail.  Once rejoined with her crew in the cockpit, we see that Rook and Bishop are involved in quick exchanges.

“Thousands of targets bearing Sectors Twelve through Twenty-three,” Bishop calls, just as the Sidewinder jumps a little when the energy shield deflects a hunk of debris almost too big for it to handle.  “We are completely covered up on the rear.  We’ve got azimuth,” he says, indicating more than one major group separated in bearing.  “Skirmishers bearing straight towards us, seekers swarming to the outside, cutting off flanks.”

“Say speed.”

“Twenty-seven miles per second and gaining.  Alpha check?”

Rook looks ahead at the churning clouds and the now three dozen tentacles reaching out into the void, then looks at the holo-display to his left.  “About six thousand miles away from the heart of that thing,” he replies.  “But only about twenty miles before we’re in range of the closest limb.”

A loud whine!

“We’re being targeted,” Bishop says, as calmly as he might be ordering a sundae.

“We got one batch o’ chaff left.  Releasing in three, two, one…chaff away!”

The cloud blooms behind them, and immediately the skirmishers
begin firing through the cloud, missing or hitting debris, although one beam does slice across their top, causing the whole ship to quake like the surface of Kali.

Deeper into the
debris ejected from the breakup of the planet, mostly gases and billions of scattered lava rocks, what was just on the very surface of the planet.  The viewport starts to go dark, but the swirling, brilliant masses of limbs are still visible, shining and reaching.  Rook spots one batting away the empty husk of a Turk, and is haunted by how similar it appears to a documentary he once saw where an octopus was playing with a mayonnaise jar someone had dropped into the ocean.  And for a moment, he’s back home, sitting and watch the documentary with his dad…

More particle beam fire, two shots glancing off their starboard, breaching the hull in the sealed corridor behind them. 
A few seconds later they absorb a second barrage across their stern.  “They don’t seem to be trying to take us alive anymore,” Rook says.

“They’ve sustained enough losses,”
Bishop replies.  “I can only imagine what it’s done to their ego.”

“My dad always said that if you beat a guy ranked higher than you in chess, he’ll spend the rest of his days dreaming of a rematch so he can redeem himself.  He can’t live without the redemption.”  As they get deeper into the cloud, Rook checks his sensors, sees denser materials coming their way.  “How much longer before we get that graviton gun recharged?”

“Thirteen minutes, ten seconds.”

“A watched pot never boils,” he mutters, watching another particle beam slice the space above them, annihilating
a huge block of black rock.

“What?”

“Nothing.  Just…”  He trails off.  Something strange has materialized on a holo-display.  “Bishop, where’s the closest skirmisher?”

“Six-point-one-three miles off.  Why?”

“You’re
sure
there’s none right above us?”

“There isn’t.  Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m getting that same heat signature bouncin’ off our wake, and it’s staying steady.  If it was just a superheated piece o’ rock, it wouldn’t be following us, it’d be going
away
from the erupting planet.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that something’s following—”

An alarm!

“Skirmishers are breaking off,” Bishop reports.  “They’re opening a path for the flagship, and we’re being locked on.  Energy buildup detected in flagship.  It is preparing to fire its primary weapon.”

Rook looks around the debris field. 
No more pieces to move.  No more chaff.  No more weapons.  No more plays to make.  There’s nothing to hide behind.  Nothing so large that a blast from those world-ending particle beams can’t just burn through it and destroy the Sidewinder once and for all.

A hand on his shoulder.  He looks back at Bishop
, and the alien just looks at him.  “It was the greatest final show our peoples could’ve hope for.”  He is right.  How could we have asked for anything more?  “The Clan of the Frozen Hands would be proud.”

Rook sighs, and nods.  The alien offers a wide grin, and the human returns one of his own.
  It almost feels good.  It’s…kind of a release, isn’t it?  No more fighting.  No more knowing that he’s the last.  No more wracking his brain for the right answers, the right plan.  No more running.  No more living on the edge, wondering when death will finally come, because it’s here.  This is it.

Rook looks out the forward view at the swirling mass of incandescent clouds. 
Can’t imagine a more beautiful last sight
.  He can almost imagine it’s heaven.  He sees us there, waiting on him, and we can see him.  We’re ready if he is.  Ready to accept him into our worthy fold.

A tap of a few keys and an adjustment to the throttle.  The Sidewinder is now at full speed, moving with total abandon, not carrying the slightest about the massive hunks too large to be deflected.  It just means the flagship will have to chase them a little deeper,
maybe put them in the way of…

There it is
, he thinks, seeing the large, churning swell coming right at them.  The tentacle is uncoiling, and indeed dozens of miles of gases and debris seem to part just for it as it unwinds at what looks like a slow speed from this far, but is actually several miles per second.  It’s been sliced some, split down its center, and is hemorrhaging a dark-red liquid—doubtless, a wound given by the flagship in its escape. 
I hope you get your vengeance, too, friend
. 
For the sake of whatever race made you, I hope you get vengeance
.

Then, out of his right viewport, there comes another parting in the cloud, this one a tentacle twice as large as the one coming right at them.  This one is curling and uncurling even as it elongates.  It collides with the first tentacle, they twist around one another in an arresting scene of coordination, forming a barrier.

Protecting its center?
Rook wonders, considering the fact that they are diving for the creature’s heart.

Right before his eyes, the two tentacles split, and, like a snake giving birth to live young, smaller tentacles come slithering out, each one moving faster than their parent limb.  The Sidewinder moves towards them, and Rook and Bishop b
oth stare like moths drawn to flame.  Then, on instincts, Rook decides to try and evade.  The burst of hope comes quite out of nowhere, and he rolls hard to starboard, takes a glancing blow on their underside by this sub-limb, which is a mile wide and looks to be made of black leather.

Another limb goes for them, and he zigs the other way, then zags away from another.  They’re now hit on their rear, taking out their main thruster.  The Sidewinder screams like a woman being murdered, then shudders before all engines shut down.

Rook looks at the holo-display to his right, and smiles at the image of the oncoming flagship. 
Bet you can’t maneuver like that, can you, big fella?

It can’t, and it doesn’t.  The sub-limbs smash into it, wrapping themselves around
it at crippling speeds.  The primary weapon is fired, blasting through a dozen or so of the sub-limbs, but like the fabled hydra, as each is severed, more only seem to come.

Rook closes his eyes, waiting for the end to come.  The Sidewinder has only
a few side thrusters left, and is tearing through space without a prayer.  Spinning.  Arti-grav is off, then back on, then back off again.  He opens his eyes, sees nothing in the viewport but the tentacle barricade they’re about to smash into, and a swirling cloud of both light and miasmic terror, and he smiles.

When the music starts, he almost misses it:

“
I feel my wings have broken in your hands,

I feel the words unspoken inside,

And they pull you under,

And I would give you anything you want
, oh
…”

The music is coming from the comm, one of the few things still working on the Sidewinder.  Rook smiles wider.  “Good choice, friend,” he says, closing his eyes and absorbing the sweet sounds of home.  “Damn good choice.”

Bishop turns to him.  “I didn’t choose it.”

Slowly, Rook opens his eyes again.  When he does, he’s very confused, because now instead of the barricade of intertwined tentacles, he sees…
Angels?
  Rook leans forward, mouth agape, looking at the large objects hovering in front of the Sidewinder’s viewport, swimming in space amid the debris and clouds.  They look roughly humanoid in shape, but they’re twelve feet tall at the least, dark blue, with arms and legs that splinter off into numerous tentacles, each one with a four-fingered hand.  They…they have
two heads
.  One at the top of the body, where you would expect, but another one situated inside the chest.  They are moving by no propulsion system Rook has ever heard off.

“
You are all I wanted;

All my dreams
are fallen down
…