The Phantom in the Deep (Rook's Song) (19 page)

Many of
their kind were left to dissect, but only this one remains completely untouched.  Someday, it too would be taken apart, piece by piece.  And when that happens, the Ianeth will finally be eradicated from the universe. 
Just like the Phantom
, he ponders. 
Nothing more than a relic of a flawed and destructive people, gratefully forgotten
.

While pondering this, a message comes racing in from the bridge.  “Sir, we have some interesting readings coming from another patch of the asteroid field,” says a Manager.

“Send it through now.”

“Of course, sir.”

This communication happens in the breadth of a second, and the three-dimensional image is superimposed over the walls around him.  Another amorphous patch of asteroids go swishing by him.  He doesn’t know it, though we do, but he’s currently scanning
Magnum Collectio
, the massive sector where the Phantom has fled to.  He even bypasses Queen Anne and a few of the Seven Dwarfs.  He glances at King Henry VIII, surveys the innumerable asteroids around it that are much smaller, and checks the readings he’s getting from the bridge.  Spikes in energy signatures, though some of it can be from the radiation, ice, and space dust left by a passing comet, which his computers tells him passed through here not so long ago.

Now, we must leave him.  The Conductor is lost in calculations it would make no sense to try and convey.  We pass through countless levels now, outside of the hull and beyond the magnetic field pushing the asteroids out of the ship’s path.

About fifteen hundred miles away, roughly half the width of the former United States, that same bundle of asteroids waits for us.  Some zipping past us, others moving with the ponderous ease of glaciers.  And there, somewhere amid the chaos, is Queen Anne.  We pass through her gap, and not too far beyond is the King she died for, the King who killed her.

Atop the King, we can see nothing has changed.  Well, nothing much.  The same craters pock the surface,
and the same debris hovers around it like silent attendants.  However, as we come closer, we can see a small black dot along the King’s eastern hemisphere.  It’s like a tiny mole, a minor skin blotch, nothing more.  Yet as we come even closer, we see that a smaller dot has just exited the larger dot.  Indeed, it is walking.

Rook steps lightly across the King’s surface, just a few dozen feet from the Sidewinder’s cargo ramp.  Standing atop the massive, slow-spinning asteroid,
he looks over at the jagged hills he named Badger’s Mountains.  The old man liked mountains, and there were few left for Rook to gaze upon.  Beside Badger’s Mountains was the Great Chasm, the largest hole leading to the King’s belly, splintering off into a myriad of tunnels.  Rook ponders this immensity, then looks out at the mishmash field, out at the star of Shiva Prime, and of course at the Deep all around him.

There’s nowhere to go
, he thinks. 
I’m a flea lost at sea
. 
There’s nowhere to go
.  Though he’s thought this many times before, it is now a very truthful statement.  He knows now that he is the last of his kind.  How does one deal with that? 
They don’t prepare you for that in psych evaluations
. 
They prep you for handling serious g-forces
. 
They talk to you all day long about the pressures of battle, and the stresses of long-term stays in the Deep
. 
They even make sure you understand all about post-traumatic stress disorder, they have pamphlets and everything
.  Rook laughs. 
But they don’t prepare you to be the last human left in the universe
.

He takes a deep breath of the metallic air, lets it out in a slow, slow sob.  Then, he breaks down.  The tears could be a problem inside his helmet, so he fights to maintain control and hold them back.  “Just breathe, man,”
Rook growls at himself.  “Just breathe, you’re all right.”

Then,
he laughs again.  “No, damn it, you’re not all right!  You’re all that’s left, and there can never be any ‘all right’ ever again.  Not for you, not for anybody.”  It is a stern and honest reminder.  And, as it happens, an important one.  “It’s okay if you lose it, man.  There’s nobody left to tell you you’re weak, or that you’re a coward.  No one to judge you.  There are no judges left in the entire universe.”  He chuckles mirthlessly, and holds his arms out to embrace eternity.  “All o’ this is yours, pal!  It’s yours!”

Tears almost come again, but he holds them back.

Rook turns slowly around and around, taking in Badger’s Mountains, his boots gripping hard to the asteroid so that he doesn’t float away.  He looks at everything.  He stares into the Deep, over at the Queen and the Seven Dwarfs, over at some of the Wild Cards, and at the thousands of other asteroids dancing all around them, mostly in slow-motion action.  “It’s yours,” he whispers.  After a moment, he corrects himself.  “It’s mine.”

Then, all at once, these words begin a chain reaction.  Is it born out of madness, or truth?  Funny how the two can be so tightly interwoven.  Inspiration often appears as madness, doesn’t it?  Especially when it stems from
a desperate mind.  “It’s mine,” he says again.  He turns around, once again taking it all in.  “It’s mine,” he repeats, this time testing how the words feel on his tongue, on his lips, in his heart.  He says it more slowly.  “It’s…
mine
.”

Then, as usually happens with the best ideas, and with the strangest, another idea came rocketing out of nowhere and joined with it.  It is the same idea as before, the one he’s been stewing on since he first interrogated the Leader.  In fact, the Leader’s voice returns to him:
And there is another problem with your race, of course
. 
Sacrifice
. 
Wave after wave of your soldiers were sent on suicide missions, against odds that, did they have the minds for it, they would’ve known were impossible to overcome
.

Rook’s mouth is slightly agape, his tongue is touching the roof of his mouth again, playing over his teeth.  His mind is searching for the connection.  Again, the Leader’s words return:
Why sacrifice, when you may plan ahead, get a feel for your enemy’s technological capabilities, and allow them to make all the foolish mistakes?

“Why sacrifice?” Rook
says, speaking those words slowly, committing them to the vacuum.  “Why…sacrifice?”  What happens next has happened to him many times before.  He talks to himself, if only to hear himself.  They
did
teach him that in SERE training (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape).  Talking to oneself helps maintain sanity, and roll ideas around, testing them, debating them with oneself.  “They don’t understand sacrifice.  And why not?  Because it’s not logical once everything else is accounted for.”  He nods.  “Yeah…yeah, and they’re accountants.  They are
accountable
.  They…”

A light goes off in his head.  A little dim, but
it’s there.

Rook turns
suddenly and looks across the asteroid field, across
Magnum Collectio
.  He sees Queen Anne, gauges her, then looks over at the Seven Dwarfs.  Then, he looks down at his feet, at King Henry VIII.  “They don’t quite comprehend the usefulness for deception,” he says.  “Because it’s never been necessary for them.  They only need shielding from the elements, from their enemies.  Just ships and shelters and shielding.  Never any deception…”

Rook
trails off, thinking.  He pulls out his micropad, connects to the Sidewinder’s computer, and pulls up various details about the asteroid field.  He’s looking at Gonzo, Holey Roller, Big Ben, Little Ben, the Three Sisters, and his network of false asteroids.  He glances over various other asteroids that he rarely gets to visit.  Betty Page and Maximillion.  Jethro and his four brothers: Ike, Isaac, Ivan, and Ian.  Bebop and Rocksteady.  The Beatles and the Rolling Stones.  Then the Queen’s guardians: Goose Egg, Mickey Mouse, Lucifer and the Blarney Stone.

Over the next few minutes,
Rook paces about, checking their trajectories.  He takes a moment to conduct some complex math—speeds and trajectories were important studies at ASCA, and it has helped him survive this long.  However, something is eluding him.  A minor detail…

Then, it dawns on him.

Rook looks up from his micropad, and directly across the gulf of space to Queen Anne.  The Queen…who can move in any direction she wants, thanks to the nuclear mass drivers, one on each of her poles, and one on every hemisphere.

He smiles.  It’s kind of funny at first,
but then the thought slowly morphs into a more serious notion.  And then it transforms into another idea.  And another.  And another.

And another.

Manage your resources wisely
.  Those were the words of Badger, leaping back to mind now.

Rook’s attention goes back to his micropad, and he does a few more calculations.  As he works, something else occurs to him.  In his two conversations with the Leader, he became
increasingly angry at their cold logic.  Thinking about the Leader’s words is distracting, but there is something else there, too.  Something interesting:
We have about as much use for trickery as the average human had for quantum theory
. 
It just doesn’t come to bear very much in our daily lives
. 
Why should it?

“
Very few thoughts of deception,” he says to the asteroids and the stars, his only remaining confidants.  Who else could he disclose his secrets to?  “Few thoughts of deception.  ‘Little use for it,’ he said.  No thoughts of…”  It’s a crazy idea, no doubting it this time.  Bizarre, and definitely gruesome.  “But can it work?” he begs of his confidants, the asteroids all around.  “I’ve already tested the omni-kit on organic materials.  The one charred corpse left over from the Leader’s posse.”

Neither the asteroids nor the stars
have any thoughts on the matter.

“
If they really, truly don’t have a use for deception, and they really don’t feel they need to plan for it…then they won’t have any security aboard the ship, will they?  Definitely monitors, and systems to keep track of the crew, but no security.  Doors might just open for me, no codes or passwords needed.  It could…no…no it can’t work. 
Stupid!
  There are too many variables.  To even get on the ship, I’d have to…”  He trails off, lost in figures.  “Yeah…yeah, impossible.  I just can’t be sure about—”  He stops himself short.

Four
.

The notion leaps out of his mind, then goes back into hiding before he can secure it.  Rook’s attention goes to the recent past, to the two conversations he had with the Leader.  So much was said, but a few things were still nagging at him.  He knows he’s searching for an answer that doesn’t exist.

And yet, something else leaps out at him. 
To waste even a scrap of our soldiers or pilots on search and rescue before we have acquired our target would be wasteful
, the Leader told him, pretty much bragging about his people’s drive towards efficiency, and why Rook could bank on never outrunning them.

Four
.

Rook tries to hang on to the idea, but it slips out of his hands like a wet fish, and back into the water, back to its hiding spot.

He thinks back on the Leader’s words. 
Search and rescue
…
search and rescue
…
no search and rescue until they’ve acquired their target
. 
No
…

“Waaaaaaaaaait a minute,” he says.

No…no, that is just an insane notion.

Four
.

It
once again leaps out of the corner of his mind where it has been hiding.

“Four?” he asks aloud.

Yes
, his mind confirms. 
Four
.

“Four what?”

Prioritization of four
.  Those were the Leader’s words. 
Four is everywhere, in all things
.  That’s what he said, and he claimed that only by following “nature’s wisdom” and this sort of divine number, his people have succeeded.

“But what about it?  What can I do with…?”

Then, like the welcome feeling of warm water suddenly cascading down your back, so too does the comprehension cascade through his brain (all four of its chambers), and then, before he knows it, it has taken root.  “Four,” he says.  The number suddenly fills him with awe.  “Four.”  It is said with greater confidence each time.  “Four!”  He starts to laugh.  “
Four!
”

From somewhere deep in his past, Rook’s father’s words suddenly
echo forward through the halls of time. 
You think too much about your pieces
, the old man once said sagely. 
Not enough about the person sitting across from you
. 
You’re playing them, not their pieces
. 
A good chess player thinks like his opponent
.