The Immortal Game (Rook's Song) (31 page)

“We’re not cooling our ionic trail anymore,” he says.  “I’m sending the repair bot back to do some work on the systems, but we’re gonna need to push out of here at high speed.  And when we do, they’re gonna spot us, either by sight or by sensors, but probably both.”

“The luminal is now just two hundred miles above us
, and the timers are set to go off in less than five minutes.  We need to move now.”

“Don’t gotta tell me twice.  Activating forward thrusters. 
Get ready to engage, my friend!  You are weapons-free.”

Instead of getting a response, a song comes over the comm.  “What the…?”

“A little music for inspiration,” says Bishop, activating the particle-beam turret.  “Cuing up targeting axis now.”

“
Apply principle-of-four and principle-of-ten targeting parameters.”

“Copy that.”

“Here’s hoping…”

The Sidewinder sho
ots up and westward.  However, with the inertial dampers still not at a hundred percent, they can’t accelerate very fast, especially since almost immediately they have to start banking left, right, left, and right again, to avoid collision.  The skies are completely full of obstacles.  Almost at once, the skirmishers and the seekers both know something is wrong.  Irregular energy spikes tell them something that they cannot believe.  As ghosts, we can feel their trepidation, the agonizing uncertainty.  We follow it all the way up the chain of command, to the Supreme Conductor, who looks down on this data in utter disbelief.

He’s dead
. 
It can’t be him
, the Conductor thinks.

The only logical conclusion is that it isn’t the Phantom.  It’s someone else.  Another Sidewinder pilot.

But that cannot be, either
. 
He was the last to flee the devastation, the last of his squadron not accounted for
. 
All other Conductors, Observers, and Managers concluded the deaths of the human colonies and military personnel, and all Sidewinder pilots except for the Phantom
. 
There were only a few billion humans in all and their life signs are easy to detect, and they cannot live on dead moons or asteroid fields for too long
…

So who is this person?

Are there more humans?

Is it possible that we missed—?

The Phantom File warns him to tread carefully.  It fills his programming with practically endless uncertainty, and that is too much for a Supreme Conductor.  It’s enough to cause massive shifts in the mind, and release the pent-up madness waiting so long to be discharged by the huge responsibility of the datafeed.

Still, there is a way to have an answer.  The Sidewinder in question is in the open, undefended, witho
ut a working sensor shroud or any shields whatsoever.

Ready to be extinguishe
d, finally and forever
.  This, at least, gives him some small consolation. 
We’ll sort out this new Event Anomaly later
.  All of this thinking and trepidation and decision-making happens in the span of a second, and he sends his orders down to all skirmishers to engage and destroy the enemy.  When he does, though, the datafeed informs him that music has been detected.  His files on human history tell him the origin.  A
band called Nazareth
. 
Song title “Hair of the Dog
.
”

We travel along that datafeed, collide with the song’s intro, hear the drum and the cowbell.
  The swaggering guitar enters.  The skirmishers descend, as do seekers, they being to open fire, and as they do another wonder happens.  The Sidewinder fires back, and in rapid succession takes out five skirmishers without a problem.

“
Heartbreaker, soul shaker!

I’ve been told about you!

Steamroller, midnight soldier!

What they’ve been sayin’ must be true!
”

The skirmishers swarm, descend, take damage, peel off and regroup.  As their own particle beams smack against the Sidewinder, the endoergic armor absorbs and borrows some of that power to kick to forward thrusters.  Almost every single hit is answered in return, and each attacking skirmisher is blown to pieces seconds after engaging.

“
Red-hot mama!

Velvet charmer!

Time’s come to pay your dues!
”

The Sidewinder takes a direct hit.  EA systems show an overload, and Rook quickly bleeds off a little more power into sub-systems.  Without inertial dampers or artificial gravity, they’ve been sent back in time, fighting much the way an old F-16 fighter pilot would, pressed into their seats with each hard maneuver.  In the corridors behind them, Rook can hear the repair bot being slung around as it tries to make its way to the circuitry bay.

Another hit.

“Deploying chaff!” he calls.

From
the Sidewinder’s tail, a cloud of aluminum shards blooms, and all at once his enemies are trying to lock on to dozens of phantoms.

Bishop lines up another series of targets,
each one igniting under the concentrated power of the Sidewinder’s energy weapons.  They receive hits from above and below.  The Sidewinder rocks so hard Rook feels certain his restraints might’ve cracked a rib or two.  He still manages to peel away from a swarm headed right towards them, still continuing them climb, just as the luminal breaks through the cloud line above.

“
Now you’re messin’ with a…

A son of a BIIIIIIITCH!

Now you’re messin’ with a son a’ bitch!
”

Another downed skirmisher, another hit to the Sidewinder.  Energy blasts and lightning ignite the sky, illuminating the belly of the beast descending upon them.  Rook finds an opening in the cloud of enemies and gives the Sidewinder an extra push, his body fighting against acceleration while Bishop remains unfazed.

Rook finds an opening in the sky, and forces them past Mach 1.  He is pressed against his seat, holding on tight to the yoke.  Aerodynamic condensation creates a halo around the Sidewinder, which turns into a cone and bleeds out across their airfoil.
  They leave a sonic boom in their trail.

Still not fast enough
.

Another hit.  This one bad.

“We’re losing atmo!” Rook says, giving a glance to a diagnostics screen.  “Repair bot’s applying sealant.”

“I’m working on our inertial dampers and arti-grav now,” Bishop chimes in, even as he selects from an array of other targets
and locks them into the computer’s targeting system.

At least one thing is working
.  He wasn’t even aware at which point he starting boiling with rage, but being chased and pinned like this, with limited access to escape, it has reawakened his bloodlust from months before in
Magnum Collectio
.

Then, all at once,
the dampers come back on, and Rook feels his body become free of acceleration
g
-forces.  A second later arti-grav reasserts itself and Rook feels his seat press up into him again.

“Inertial dampers and arti-grav back online,” Bishop reports calmly, as if he is telling Rook that his pizza is in the kitchen, might wanna eat it before it gets cold.
  “Plasma charges set to detonate in T-minus two minutes, fifteen seconds.”

“Activating full burn!”

“
Talkin’ jivey, poison ivy!

You ain’t gonna cling to me!

Man taker, bone faker!

I ain’t so blind I can’t see!
”

The inertial dampers cause a lurching in Rook’s stomach as they suddenly blast past hypersonic speeds, then into high-hypersonic.  Within seconds, they are finally beyond the luminal-created ceiling, and they can now shoot straight through the clouds.  Skirmishers follow them as they reach escape velocity.

“
Now you’re messin’ with a…

A son of a BIIIIIIITCH!

Now you’re messin’ with a son a’ bitch!
”

Then, energy readings in the sky outside suddenly go off the charts.  Rook looks at a flickering holo-display.  “Jesus, they’re targeting us with their primary weapon!”

“A little ship like this with a beam that powerful?”  Bishop sounds humored.  “I’m honored.”

“Yeah, well, you’re fried unless we can clear the—”  Another hit to starboard cuts him off.  Rook uses NUI to direct some of ship’s repairs on his HUD.  He tells the EA systems to bleed some of that incoming power to keep enforcing the inertial dampening effects, but just now the endoergic layer of armor seems to be failing.  Too many ruptures.  The repair bot isn’t able to apply sealant fast enough…

“We need to close off the back half of the ship,” Bishop suggests.  “And cut off all life-support systems.”

“Concur.”  Rook has enough oxygen in his environment suit to last another hour.  Tapping a few keys, he seals off the cockpit and switches off life-support systems and lets what’s left in the corridors drain out as they begin to exit the atmosphere.

“Luminal is still angling to fire primary weapon.”

“Time to detonation?”

“
Forty-six seconds.”

On his screens, all of the skirmishers
are peeling away.  They’re getting clear of the massive, high-yield particle beam that’s about to split the sky, with a radius too large to miss the Sidewinder. 
Unless we bank hard for the east, and accelerate to top speed
.  But that will mean they’ll be running parallel with the planet’s surface, with the luminal ship below them, and when—if—the plasma charges go off and that drive core destabilizes enough to fully detonate…
We won’t be high enough to escape the explosion
. 
We can turn back for space once it happens, but it’ll be close
.

Rook recalls their narrow escape from
Magnum Collectio
when the last ship’s core destabilized and exploded.  The power unleashed is going to be just as tremendous here.

“Hang on,” Rook says, and banks east, pushing the thrusters to full.
  Skirmishers follow.

“The luminal ship is elevating.  They’re pursuing and still targeting.”  Bishop targets two skirmishers, destroys them in as many seconds.  “Detonation in T-minus forty-five seconds.”

They’ve broken through the clouds, and can just see the dots of supermassive starships and space stations as they are illuminated by the glow of particle beams and superheated explosions, all happening hundreds of miles away.  Just now, Turk 8 is being obliterated, but Turk 12 has partially taken up the position left empty by 8, and enough of 8’s debris remains to hamper any chance of an immediate escape.

“Detonation in ten seconds.”

Rook counts to five, then rolls hard to port and pushes for space.  He pushes to Mach 32, hoping with every bone, tissue, and blood cell in his body that the inertial dampers and artificial gravity don’t choose that moment to suddenly switch back off.

“Four, three, two, one…”

For a moment, nothing happens.  A dreaded few seconds where it seems like it was all for nothing.

Then, the world becomes light.  They have made it into full vacuum and so cannot hear the explosion as it happens.  The Sidewinder begins to shake.  Only we may safely pass outside and look below the ship, at the holocaust expanding outwards, bringing ungodly light and heat to a planet left so long in darkness and cold.  No less than 2.93 exajoules of energy are displaced in an instant, creating a surge of first white, then orange-hot superheated debris, gases, and plasma clouds, before turning white again
in a series of shockwaves that expand outwards.  The black clouds of Kali become illuminated and join with the white dome rushing up at us.

Yes, a dome!  A dome of displaced energy pushing across Kali’s surface, expanding at a rate that makes it seem limitless, as though it might consume the whole planet, the whole galaxy.  When the shockwaves hit the
other luminal ship hovering above the dead luminal, it survives for merely a few seconds, energy shields trying to bleed it off.  But it cannot hold up.  And here’s where it seems as if the
universe
might end.

The luminal ship explodes, its own drive core erupts a second later, the energy is displaced
down
towards the energy rushing up from the first explosion.  The energetic ripple effect bounces into the ground, then back up, joining the rest of the energy already rising above the planet’s surface, tripling the energy to
six exajoules
—six times the energy released in the most powerful earthquakes in Earth’s history.

Energy goes into the earth and into the sky, and the Sidewinder is
still racing away.  The ship shakes and jerks, the EA systems no longer work, so there’s no bleeding off this energy.  The light is so intense the viewport dims itself, else the light might be great enough to sear Rook’s retinas, permanently blinding him.  The concussive shockwaves rush out, but displace as each concussive wave reaches the void.  However, the shockwaves still propagate via the ejected material coming straight up from the planet below.