The Phantom in the Deep (Rook's Song) (20 page)

Rook now turns back to the Sidewinder.  He starts off in a light jog, but then is bounding across the asteroid and dashes up into the cargo hold.  He activates artificial gravity
, putting it at 0.8 g, so as to keep a little extra spring in his step, and bolts into the cockpit, sits in the pilot’s seat, and punches up a few old flight recordings.  The ship’s sensor array and the cameras on the exterior of the hull are constantly recording the goings on of the ship, whether it be during a routine supply run or a combat event.  He pulls up recordings of his most recent run-in with the Cereb skirmishers, and starts playing with a few figures.

At first, the computer doesn’t know what he’s playing at, but eventually Rook is able to teach it what he needs to, and from there the system’s AI begins to extrapolate.  He looks at the skirmishers’ movements, rewinds, watches them again.  Then, he selects a few vectors that he thinks make the best retreating lines, at least according to his computer; vectors that have the least amount of asteroids and other types of resistance.  He selects the four best options, asks the computer to predict which of these retreat lines the spacecrafts will likely select…and is astonished when he finds that the computer’s prediction is correct.  At least, close enough.

It still needs a great degree of other considerations and calculations
, he thinks.

But it works.  At least, theoretically.  Perhaps not always, but in this first little experiment, the principle of four works.

But so what?  Even if it does work, the mother ship is still impenetrable
.

On the heels of that, Badger’s words return, louder than before. 
Manage your resources wisely
.

“Resources,” he says, and at once his mind goes to the omni-kit
, and the hunk of sizzling pseudo-flesh he made from the remains of the one Cereb operatives’ charred corpse.  “Four.”

Suddenly,
Rook can’t stop laughing.  It’s a different kind of laughter this time.  We must back away.  Here is that madness again, so catching, so easy for us to join him.  He is, after all, our last champion.

9

Rook wastes no time.  He returns to base camp to check on his prisoner, who is still out.  He injects him o
ne more time, just to be sure, then leaves his prisoner inside the habitat and returns to the Sidewinder parked outside.

It i
s time to get to work.

At the ship’s console, he begins working out the figures.  It has to be precise.  One inch off in outer space, especially with such great distances involved, and a
spacecraft or flung object can miss a target by miles.  The math that is required to be certain about this involves so many variables it is mind boggling.  Rook does a lot of the figures on the screen himself, checks and double-checks with the computer, even scribbles some out on paper.

Astrophysics was a mandatory class at ASCA,
naturally, and if a pilot intended to fly a Sidewinder- or Arrester-class, he or she had to go through both the intermediate and advanced courses.  There was no other way.  Intense focus was put on studying the physical properties of celestial objects, as well as their interactions and behaviors.  A pilot must consider everything from the CMB (cosmic microwave background, the thermal radiation detectable almost uniformly throughout the observable universe) to the luminosity, temperature, density, and chemical compositions of every examinable object in the space around a vessel.

Of course, computers
do much of that work, yet what Rook is working on is purely speculative, not exactly what the Sidewinder’s computers were built to do, yet they can provide valuable data that allows him to extrapolate and predict.  Within a certain margin for error, of course.  And they can learn new tricks, too.

What if I moved this
asteroid this way?
he thinks, tapping his touch-screen and moving one of the asteroids across the display, just to see what it would do.  He had the computer measure the outcome, recorded it, and included it with his other calculations.  Then, he moves a whole cluster of asteroids, and sees what they will do.  Finally, he injects a hypothetical object into the equation, one roughly the size, shape, and density of the Cereb luminal ship.

Rook sets up several experiments, and walks away from the computer while
it compiles the data.  To get some of his physical training in for the day, he performs six sets of one-minute burpees, and about ten minutes of stretching.  Once finished with PT, he goes about using the omni-kit to flash-forge more parts for the warbot.  It hasn’t worked since he first came across it on the Eye of Shiva, but, since they were part of the Space Force, basic warbot repair knowledge was mandatory for pilots, especially since near the end of the War the warbots were being clandestinely dropped near luminal ships by Sidewinders.

The warbot
s were once humanity’s great hope.  If Parnes Industries had been able to manufacture more of them, mankind might have had a greater shot.  After all, all of the Cerebs that had been killed in the War had been killed by the warbots: the SH-72 series. 

The SH-72s came
equipped with seismographic sensors, built-in particle beam cannons, motion sensors, advanced photoreceptors, FLIR (forward-looking radar) hardware, and in-depth knowledge of all modern weapons so that they could improvise them from the environment if necessary.  Such warbots usually came with a pared down version of the Sidewinder’s sensor shroud.  They also had Parnes-specified “T.67a” ablative armor that partially vaporized or eroded incoming objects, diminishing their power by the time they slammed into the warbot’s shell.  Underneath that shell were interlocking ceramic plates, encased deep within a proprietary tungsten alloy weave.  They also had an immense magnetic field generator that washed some of the most powerful particle beams right off the invisible force-field.  Stealthy, yet strong.

If we just had a few million of these things
, he laments, scanning one of the shoulder sockets so that he can fabricate a workable rotator cuff for the bot.  A couple of hours is all it takes to get the thing standing up again, and scanning.  Its voice box takes a little more time to repair, since so many electronics are involved.  The first words it says upon full reactivation are, “Series S-H-seven-two-E-E-E-B-four-one-seven-three-nine-seven is online.  Scanning known parameters.  Checking for program corrosion.  Eight-nine percent functionality.  Finding directives.  Standby.  Standby.  Standby.”

Rook speaks slowly, making sure to enunciate every syllable.  “Alpha, Bravo, Echo, one, three, Echo, Zeta, Tango, four, seven, Tango, Tango, Bravo.”  The warbot goes silent.  “I have given you my prime authorization code.  Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledged.  Searching for primary, secondary, and tertiary objectives.”

“I haven’
t given you any yet.  But I will soon.  Begin command.  Power down for now, and run a more thorough systems check.  Ready a report.  End command.”

“Acknowledged.”

Rook makes a pit stop in Badger’s room, just to see how the old man is doing.  The life support shows he’s as stable as ever.  Rook is tempted to wake him up, tell the old man what he is thinking of doing, but he can’t bear it.

Over the next few hours, Rook watches the movements of the asteroids in his simulations
on the holo-display, gauges the probable trajectories of Goose Egg and Lucifer if they are both pushed out of the way of the Cereb luminal ship by its forward solenoid cannons.  He made sure to choose a variety of approach vectors the luminal ship might use.  Since it was space, it could approach from practically an infinite number of directions.

“But not entirely infinite,” he whispers, leaning forward and tapping a few keys.  He’s been examining the many different possibilities, and has asked the computer to compile what it believes are the sixteen best vectors for avoiding obstruction by the larger asteroids, which
will take the magnetic guns longer to push to one side.  Then, Rook prioritizes those possibilities, selecting the
top four
options.

Every ship has its alternate routes planned out.  Backups and redundancies, in case the weather changes, or something crops up that couldn’t be accounted for in earlier predictions.  Back on Earth, classic naval ships once had them, as did submarines and aircraft.  Rook is betting the Cerebs have sixteen, with four of them prioritized.

It is just a hunch, but one with strong support.  If what the Leader told him is accurate, that is. 
They destroyed Tyson 788b, Earth, Nomar 442b,
Shiva 154e, and countless other worlds in four waves
. 
Never three, never five, always four
.

It i
s his only hope.

A psychology predisposed to the number four
, he marvels. 
With sixteen being the Supreme Number
.  Such a tiny little detail, yet like David casting his small stone at Goliath, it could be all he needs.  Well, not
all
he needs.  Rook looks at the omni-kit, and reconsiders what he must do.  It is a nasty notion, downright macabre, but it might be all he has.

For another hour, he studies those four
vectors.  Then, he begins to account for the asteroids the Cereb ship will likely swallow on its way.  It is, after all, here to gather more resources.  Rook knows this, because he saw the long metallic tentacles reaching out to harvest the asteroids.  He also knows this part of the field well, and knows all the properties of all the asteroids in the sector.  He believes he knows which asteroids they’ll go for, those with the richest minerals.  He isolates them on the computer—there are twenty-seven of them—and he starts to account for what approach vector the luminal ships will likely take if they wish to both scoop up those asteroids and finish off their last termite.  He comes up with sixteen possible approach vectors, focuses in on the four most likely, and accounts for what the luminal ship will do to the asteroids around it once it begins pushing them out of the way.

“I need to get a feel for what the field will probably look like,” he says to himself, reaching over to move another piece on the holographic chessboard. 
Black king moves to F1.  The computer responds too quickly with knight to A8.  He’s pretty sure the computer’s got this one in the bag again.

Music is playing.  It’s on a loop of various favorite tracks of his.  Right now, the console reads his latest:

SEARCH: CLASSIC BANDS: ERA/YEAR: 1997

ARTIST NAME: FIONA APPLE

ALBUM NAME: TIDAL

SONG TITLE: CRIMINAL

Right now, the song is just going through its long, haunting prelude. 
Rook looks back at his experiment.  The computer is still setting up various configurations, trying to learn this new mathematical notion Rook is calling the “principle of four,” giving him estimates of what the asteroids will probably do when disturbed, which way they will roll, what other asteroids they are likely to intersect with, and therefore what Cerebral pilots might do if they approach along any of these four main vectors.

Then,
Rook starts moving the Seven Dwarfs around the simulated
Magnum Collectio
, practicing his moves.  He blocks off the area in sectors, and moves the icon representing Dopey to what he’s now calling Sector 6, or S6.  Before, he always considered the asteroid field a series of landmarks, and has always monitored their shifting the way a good meteorologist measured the winds and high-pressure currents, so he could better predict tomorrow’s weather.  Now, it is a potential battlefield.

Fiona Apple finally begins to sing:

“
I’ve been a bad, bad girl,

I’ve been careless with a delicate man
.

And it’s a sad, sad world,

When a girl will break a boy, just because she can
.”

Over the next two hours, he renders an orb that encompasses the immediate debris field surrounding King Henry VIII, with the King at the very center.  The orb’s diameter is two hundred miles across.  The King is 87.661 miles at its longest, and 30.4 miles at its widest, so a little less than 60 miles extend above and below it, and more or less 85 miles extend in every direction from its middle.  The Queen, roughly half the size of her King, fits snugly inside the imaginary sphere, facing the King’s eastern hemisphere.

Rook has now effectively built a “sectorboard” out of
Magnum Collectio
.

The King’s current position constitutes Sector 1
and some of Sector 2, with the other sectors numbering in a spiraling fashion out from center.  Since this is a three-dimensional battlefield, he must account for forward, reverse, upward, downward, diagonal and side-to-side movements.  Rotating his new map, Rook develops a system for slicing up the sectors into smaller regions.  Much like a galactic map, there are Sector Quadrants (SQ), Sector Blocks (SB), Decants (D), Pentants (P), and Haplants (H).

This kind of mapping was called “scheming” back at ASCA, but Rook has never had to apply it to an asteroid field before,
but it works well enough because a galaxy is constantly in flux, as is an asteroid field.  And like a galactic map, this sectorboard is always spinning, albeit slowly, but even such slow rotation could affect his calculations.

The Queen
, despite being so close to the King, is caught in the outer rim of this numbering spiral, and is therefore hovering halfway through S39 and S40.  In S16 and S17, the two spaces between the King and the Queen, there are approximately 233 small-to-medium-sized asteroids, as well as all of the Wild Cards and three of the Seven Dwarfs (Happy, Bashful, and Doc).  To the King’s southern hemisphere (S5, and further down S23), there are another ninety-seven free-roaming asteroids, most of them tiny and slow-moving, along with two of the Dwarfs (Sneezy and Grumpy).

The approximate coordinates for the smaller pieces have to be more specific.  He cannot generalize.  Thus, relatively small pieces, such as any of the Dwarfs, have long strings representing their placement.  Sleepy, for example, sits at
S3 – SQ775 – SB180 – D7 – P6 – H124
.

“Let’s see.  What if
I send Sneezy to the outer rim, say to S20?”  He does this on the simulation.  “And what if the luminal ship approaches on one of the four most likely vectors?  And what if I move Happy, Bashful, and Doc, here, here, and here?”  He saw the asteroids being pushed out of the way of the hypothetical Cereb ship, and saw that they would have cover.  “Okay, now what if the ship comes in on one of the other three vectors?  Say…S20?”  He runs that scenario.  “And now up a level, to S19?”

The changes add what is called an “exponential problem” to the scenario.  Space, and the number of directions one can go in it, is practically infinite.  Figuring out the movements on this sectorboard is no more or less problematic than figuring out the problems of a chessboard.  In chess, there are eight possible opening moves one might make, and since the opponent has eight possible counter-moves, and there are counter-moves to
those
counter-moves, so on and so forth, the calculations of moves creates an exponential growth in possibilities.  In no time at all, even a computer can get bogged down with such exponential growth in numbers.  After all, there are more possible games of chess that can be played than there are atoms in the universe.  That’s why humans always had a problem building a computer that could effectively play chess at the human level.