The Immortal Game (Rook's Song) (22 page)

“
Rook to Bishop, you copy?  I’m in structure.  Repeat, in structure.”  He reels in his gear bag and unzips it, pulling out his Exciter and wrapping it around his shoulder and neck by its strap.  He clips the thermite and plasma charges to his tactical belt, then flips the lights on his helmet and Exciter, and pans around the room.

“
I copy.  What’s it look like in there?”

Rook tries to think of how best to describe it.  Though there
is no mistaking an alien culture once lived here, yet it is oddly similar to an office building back home, except for the large, oval-shaped room he was in.  The light of the pale blue star comes through the windows and kisses the walls, casts some hazy lighting through the windows behind him, giving the entire room a desaturated sheen but revealing enough details to determine dimensions.  It is like one of the spherical rooms inside the Turk stations, only here everything is incredibly dusty and it doesn’t look like maintenance machines have touched it in quite some time.

Also, everything is upside down.

“It’s…about what you described,” Rook finally answers.

“Does the area look dangerous?”

He starts to answer, then feels the world shift.  The graviton tide causes everything in the room to slide a few inches to the left.  All the furniture and random debris move slowly, as if pushed along by a lazy ghost.  It feels like the floor tilts just slightly beneath him.  His HUD indicates gravity has increased to 2.4
g
’s.  “Furniture and other items look destroyed, there’s debris that could make the going precarious, but the room seems stable.”

“Do you see the stairwell?”

Rook pans around, his helmet light revealing more of the room.  His light shines on a thin line of dust falling from the floor overhead—
Might as well start thinking of that as the ceiling
, he thinks—and beyond it is a wide-open Ianeth-sized doorway.  “Affirmative.  Stairwell twenty meters ahead, exactly where you said.  Door’s open and there’s no barricade or blocking debris.  Performing scan.”

A few taps on his
wrist computer, and it pulls up scanning selections.  Rook runs the gamut of scans, from infrared to EM.  No thermal readings, but there is some serious electromagnetic feedback, as well as some scant biological signs, including organisteel. 
Undead aliens
, he thinks, shaking his head because he never thought he’d live to see the day.  He switches off his lights and sets his visor to night-vision.

“
Proceeding to stairwell.”

Rook moves
slowly across the room.  The doorway, unfortunately, wasn’t designed to go all the way from the floor to the ceiling.  He has to dial up the power to the Stacksuit, then lets his rifle hang from his side before he preps for a jump up to what was once the
top
of the doorframe, then crawls over and lands on the ceiling—
Floor
, he reminds himself—on the other side.

He uses sonar to map out the stairwell.  He picks his way around more furniture and steps into a corridor with dimensions that fight with his brain.  It is wide and expansive, yet it has a
set of stairs immediately to his left, one that is, of course, above him.  Except for being upside-down, the stairs look almost of human design, just a little rounded, almost like large pull-up bars.  The stairwell is a spiral, a little strangely-shaped but more or less what one would expect.

He thinks about climbing up to the stairs using the same magnetic grips in his hands that helped him cling to the exterior wall, but in here the walls aren’t made of steel—here,
they are ornate marble walls.  He has a tactical drill in his utility belt, and he gives thought to drilling into the walls to give himself some handholds and footholds, but a scan shows that their density is enough that drilling into them would take some time.

Time isn’t something Rook has a lot of.  Looking
at his HUD, he sees that he has maybe two hours’ worth of oxygen before he starts rebreathing spent air.

Rook looks down at his
wrist computer.  He taps a few keys and his HUD gives him the state of his Stacksuit.  His eyes range over the display as he makes sure the suit is ready to get started with some heavy-duty work.

This
gives a whole new meaning to “climbing stairs,”
he thinks, checking his HUD for the graviton tide’s readings—he is now in a stream running 2.9
g
’s.  Rook readies himself for a climb.  Just as he does, gravity increases to 3.1
. 
“Jesus, this is gonna be tougher than I thought.  I hope like hell I can—”

Suddenly, music in his ears.  It’s not coming from his helmet, but from over the comm channel.  A hard guitar and drums start it off. 
BOMP!  Bomp-bomp-bomp!  Bomp-bomp-bomp!  Bomp-bomp-bommmmmmm!

Rook makes a face to himself.  “What the hell?  Did you cue that up on purpose?”

“You seem to like music. 

“’Course I like music, everybody likes music.  Don’t you guys have it?”

“Yes, but it seems to be a motivating ritual for you.  I have subroutines dedicated to understanding you.  This one seemed most appropriate for several reasons.”

Yeah, well, the gulf between what you and I feel is appropriate could swallow the Pacific Coast
. 
If it’s still there
.  Yet the selection was right on.  Once again, Rook considered that the Ianeth might well be learning faster than he was letting on.

Now
, Rook positions himself against one wall, facing up at the stairs.  He bends his knees, dials the Stacksuit’s power up to maximum, and waits.  A red bar is climbing in his periphery, and when it reaches the top it turns green and a chime goes off.  He jumps, and for a terrible second Rook thinks he isn’t going to make it, but his right hand barely clutches the rounded step and the glove grips hard enough to hold on.

“
Risin’ up, back on the street,

Did
my time, took my chances;

Went the distance
, now I’m back on my feet,

Just a man
, and his will to survive
”

Grunting, Rook performs an agonizing pull-up, then reaches for the next step, and the next, and the next.  He is able to brace his feet against the lower steps and climb the stairs, hand over hand, foot in front of foot, until he reaches the next landing, preps himself for another jump, and then leaps.  Again, grunting and tugging, feeling the slight swaying of the graviton tide as he does so, constantly pushing and pulling and bullying him.

“
So many times, it happens too fast,

You
trade your passion for glory;

Don’t lose your grip on the dreams of the past,

You must fight just to keep them alive!
”

Gritting his teeth, pulling, slipping and regaining himself.

“
It’s the Eye of the Tiger,

It’s the
thrill of the fight;

Rising up to the challenge of our rival;

And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night,

And he’
s watching us all with the Eyyyyyye
…

…
of the Tiger!
”

Once on the ninth floor, Rook stops and scans for any biological signs, finds only scant readings.  Then he checks for movement.  Sonar catches none. 
Alright, then
. 
Keep going
.

Puts his hands beside each other, pulls his feet up and hangs like a monkey before performing a dynamo jump
.  Up another flight of stairs.  No signs of life, no sign that anyone ever lived here in the last hundred years.  Then up another flight.  He is starting to sweat—much of the effort isn’t just the Stacksuit’s, it is his.  The fans are working a little extra to keep him cool.  A bead of sweat makes it into his eye and when he blinks and jerks his head, he loses his grip and falls back to the previous floor’s landing.  “Stupid!” he chastises.  “Get it together!”  Another leap, another climb, hand over hand, foot in front of foot.

“
It’s the Eye of the Tiger,

It’s the
thrill of the fight;

Rising up to the challenge of our rival;

And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night
”

Up another flight.  At the sixth floor, he stands and pants, gathers himself for the next climb.  He checks the graviton tide—he is now in a stream running 3.6
g
’s!  It is taxing on both him and the Stacksuit.  He’s already feeling a little lightheaded, and worries about the stream reaching the dreaded 4.0
g
’s, when his body would no longer be able to pump adequate blood to his brain.

Rook starts towards the wall, preps himself for another jump…when his blood suddenly goes cold.  There, not a few feet away,
slumped against the wall, is a figure that looks vaguely humanoid, a statue of sorts, cracked into several pieces.  It is a large body with a small head sitting at the top of a long, stalk-like neck.  The body has been frozen and shattered, exactly like those in the catacombs.  Rook looks at the lower half, at the bird-like feet…

Rook remembers to leap backwards, and is just in time.  Its hand suddenly reaches out to him, fast and exact, like Bishop’s insectile movements.  Rook hits the wall and brings his rifle up to bear, only to watch the near-fossilized Ianeth’s arm crack and crumble to the floor, shattering into a dozen pieces.
  The body slumps, goes through spasms.

Rook looks up at the face. 
Doesn’t look exactly like Bishop, does it?
Another race of Ianeth, I guess?
 
Like Caucasoids and Mongoloids?

Bishop said there was enough time for
worldwide evacuation, but he also estimated that not everyone made it.  He was right.

All at once,
Rook imagines the moment. 
What must it have been like when it happened?  The screaming
. 
The confusion
. 
Anyone who didn’t get out in time “falling” into the sky and reaching “up” at the earth, the fear so great
…
it must’ve felt like a betrayal of the planet
. 
A betrayal of physics
. 
A betrayal of their own defenses
.

The Cerebs pulverized the planet, damaged the generators, sent them out of control and turned the Ianeth’s greatest asset into their
downfall. 
They don’t miss a trick, those Cerebs
.

Another brutal climb.  His muscles are now quivering, nearing exhaustion from the sustained effort.
  He performs one more dynamo jump.

In his ear, Survivor is wrapping up:

“
Risin’ up, straight to the top,

Had the guts, got the glory;

Went the distance, now I’m not gonna stop,

Just a man, and his will to surviv
e!

It’s the Eye of the Tiger
…”

“Status,” calls Bishop.

Grunting, he pulls himself onto the fifth-level landing.  “
On the fifth level now.”  Rook takes a moment, steadies his breath, checks his oxygen reserve and the graviton tide, which has shifted again.  He starts to move, feels a little woozy and staggers towards a wall—the physical exertion and the 3.7
g
’s are taking their toll.  He pulls his Exciter up into ready-low.  “At this rate, I got an hour of oxygen left.”  He huffs.  “Proceeding inside now.”

“What’s the stream you’re in looking like?”

Another check of his HUD.  The tide is shifting, this time for the better; he can feel his body give out a sigh of relief as the load is lessened.  “Dropping to 2.3
g
’s.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I got a bunch o’ fat kids are jumping on an’ off my shoulders.”  The tide shifts again, and some of the ancient furniture scratches across the floor, and Rook tilts with the rest of the world.  The random debris gently collects in a pile in the corner of the room.  Gravity shifts so dramatically to one side that eventually he’s straddling the debris, walking along the V in the corner where the wall meets the floor.  Then, suddenly, violently, the gravity intensifies to 2.6 while leaning slowly in the opposite direction.  “Jesus!”  Gravity now starts to trend straight out, more and more powerful, pressing him against the ceiling.  He checks his gauge.  The
g
’s are slowly climbing.  Now 2.8.  Now 2.9.  Now 3.1.  The pounds are being added to his shoulders and the Stacksuit struggles to compensate.  Rook finds a wall, and braces himself.  Now 3.3.  Now 3.5.  It’s climbed this high before, but he’s not as fresh as before.  Now 3.8.  Now 3.9.  Now 4.0.  Now 4.2.