The Immortal Game (Rook's Song) (29 page)

“Thor’s Anvil is giving us some assistance.”

“
I’ve been counting on that, and hoping it and the other volcanos would keep erupting like they’ve been doing.  At least Kali’s on our side today.”

“What do we do now?”

“Just sit tight.  Let ’em think I’m dead for a while, let ’em sit with that knowledge.  Turk Seven’s got us covered for now.”  They are “parked” in a slow orbit a mile above the space station, half the viewport showing Turk 7’s curved surface, the other half showing the massive black ball of Kali above them.

Ten minutes pass in silence.  Both of them stare at their screens.
  There is a gnawing uneasiness in the pit of Rook’s stomach; that eternal feeling that he’s forgotten something.

“You really think they bought it?” the alien
finally asks.

“I think they have to buy it.  Not only do they not fear being deceived, they think it’s hardly possible and they also happen to think I’m a, uh, how did you put it?  A madman?  Insane?”  He smiles at Bishop.  The Ianeth’s mouth
spreads, forming an even more massive and disturbing smile.  “Ya know, whatever happens here, I just want you to know that…that…”  He chuckles.  “Well, I’m glad I met you, buddy.  Just wish it had been under better circumstances.”

The alien’s hands move rapidly over the controls.  “Me,
as well.  On both counts.”

Rook’s eyes range across the display
s.  He looks at the luminal now disappearing through the sensor-frazzling clouds being pumped out of Thor’s Anvil, pushing through more than a thousand tons of sulfur dioxide.  Then he looks at the other three luminals.  One is out front, presumably the flagship?  The other two take up a formation, which the principle of four programming predicts and shows him on his holo-display seconds before the maneuver’s completed.  The formation axis of the two ships, and the formation axis of the skirmishers they’re still spewing, aligns to the flagship’s long axis.

Other skirmishers push hard for Kali’s surface, as do their hundreds of seeker offspring.  Wordlessly, Bishop applies the principle of four
and ten to both squadrons and seekers, and on Rook’s screen various predictions are made by the Sidewinder’s AI.  The screens show various cones, the wide ends being the huge numbers of directions they might go in, and the narrow ends showing the most likely vectors.  Almost every single prophesy the AI makes comes to pass.  The Cerebrals are nothing if not precise.  Terrifyingly so.

As the rest of the fleet approaches orbit over Kali, Bishop asks, “You don’t think they’ll detect us?”

“I imagine they’ll detect fresh ionic disturbance, but remember, they think they just killed me, so they’ll probably just think it’s leftover exhaust from my attempted suicide run.” 
At least, I hope so
, he thinks, but doesn’t dare say.  He studies another holo-display, which shows that the Sidewinder’s sensor shroud is still holding strong and all systems are near optimum. 
Hang in there, old girl
.  He may not be a praying man, but he sure believes in sending good vibes to his ship. 
Hang in there, just stay with it
. 
Don’t fail me and I won’t fail you
.

The
luminal ships that are lagging behind are now about a thousand miles above Kali’s surface, just above the exosphere and therefore on roughly the same plane as the Turks.  A check of their angle and speed reveals that they do not intend on going down to the surface.

“Alright,” Rook says.  “Show time.”  He looks at Bishop.

The alien nods and sends the signal over to Turks 3 and 4, far below them at Kali’s south pole.  We follow that signal to its destination, and witness the activation of the behemoths.  Massive panels slide to the side as the mass drivers extend, and immediately start directing them up around Kali.  The sixteen skirmishers flying around the space stations give them a wide berth, maneuvering to keep clear of the colossal mass drivers as they push up, up, up towards Turks 7 and 8.

That data is not missed by the Supreme Conductor, who reads the datafeed coming into him almost as fast as we can zip inside his mind.  The ocean of data has this little ripple, and he notes the strange movements of the ancient space stations.  They are on a course with the luminal fleet. 
We must have triggered some old proximity alert sensors
, he thinks.  To one Observer, he remarks, “Tell the squadrons to give those stations a more thorough scan.”  It has not yet occurred to him that the Phantom could have left those stations on some sort of autopilot—humans had neither the technology nor the understanding of Ianeth hardware to control such things.  However, the Phantom File informs him that he might be wrong about that, and that a thorough inspection is needed. 
Absurd
. 
How could he even interact with the data screens when it requires seeing into other spectrums of light?
  But he does as he’s told.

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 we
apon,” 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.