The Phantom in the Deep (Rook's Song) (25 page)

And why risk yourselves when your pals are setting up an ambush on the other side, right
, guys?

Rook smiles.  He takes two more turns, and thirty seconds later he has
left the King’s caverns and emerged back into open space.  Only, it’s not quite so “open.”  The debris off of Goose Egg and Lucifer is now rocketing through the field, some of it moving too fast to be deflected by the Sidewinder’s shields.  A few clangs on his hulls are disconcerting.  One huge chunk affects the ship enough to cause it to jar, as if he was on the highway and had just gotten rear-ended by another motorist.  This collision causes some hardware to loosen in the engineering bay, but the repair bot is on it.

The eight skirmishers that moved around the surface of the King have now conglomerated on his exit, and are directly behind him.  However, just behind
them
, waiting in the King’s shadow amid the rapidly increasing debris field, is Sleepy.  Rook has utilized his knowledge of
chiaroscuro
, and gauged his enemy well.

Here,
though, a bit of improvisation comes into play.

Sleepy opens fire on the skirmishers, scattering them along retreating lines.  Rook makes sure the Sidewinder is suitably hidden for the moment, not only by his sensor shroud, but by a cluster of rocks, the remainder of either Goose Egg or Lucifer, tumbling away from the epicenter of the explosion.  While the skirmishers
attempt to evade the particle beams being fired at their tails, two of them get taken out, and the rest retreat on lines the computer predicts.

Rook swivels his chair over to the targeting computer, readies the main blast coils, checks the heat sinks, and then
runs a final systems scan—the computer recommends that he rotate the targeting axis by .14 microns.  Targets are established and lined up.  Finally, he fires not where the skirmishers are, but where they
will
be
as they retreat from Sleepy’s beams.

It has never been this easy
killing skirmishers.  It’s as if they line up just for him, going where he asks them to go, obeying like good little targets.  Rook just listens to the computer’s estimations, applying the principle of four.  All he has to do is set up the intended target, a blank piece of space, with patches of rocks and boulders, of course, where, for the moment, nothing exists.  He coordinates the firing controls with the targeting sequences Sleepy is operating on.

First, Sleepy fires.

A split-second later, the Sidewinder fires.

A skirmisher retreats from Sleepy’s beam, and
flies directly into the Sidewinder’s beam.

They all die.

In all his years of training, it has never been this easy to take out any of his squadmates in simulations, and it has certainly never been this easy against Cerebs.

“Yyyyyyyyyyyyeah!” he screams.  “It works, Badger!  Hahahahahahaaaaaaaa!  It works!”  He looks out his forward viewport, at the luminal ship.  “Did ya see that, freaks?  Did ya?  Human beings are flawed, huh?  We’re all just so freakin’ flawed and you guys are so perfect, right? 
Right?!
  Hahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”  The madness has taken hold.  The years of loneliness and sadness, of desperation and despair.  It is the ultimate release, the vindication of a man who knew he was right all along, that nothing and no one is indestructible.

Nothing and no one.

“This calls for a celebration!”  He cues up another tune, circa 1995, a high-energy piece that screams rebellion.  “All righty, let’s see here.  Queen to S52.  Keep ’em chasin’ ya, girl!  Lead the boys on!  Now, Grumpy, rocket straight on up.  All the way through to S41.  Let’s see what move they make now.”

Alarms!  More skirmishers, coming in
from S4, directly below him.  He laughs.  “Rook to S2, then.”  He kicks full power to forward thrusters, just as the new song begins to play.

12

“
Iiiiyyyyyeeeeeee can’t stand it!

I know you planned it!

But I’m gonna set it straight,

This Watergate!

I can’t stand rockin’ when I’m in here,

’Cause your crystal ball ain’t so crystal clear!
”

The song is played over various channels.  The Conductor has it played inside the bridge, hoping to get a lock on the signal since the Phantom has reactivated his sensor shroud, but the loudness and aggressiveness of it jars his people to their very core, himself included.

“
Oh my God, it’s a mirage!

I’m tellin’ all ya’ll it’s a SABOTAGE!
”

A song once popular amongst the youth of America
, he considers, watching the movements of the asteroid they are chasing.  The data streams across his six outer brains, filters down into his seventh. 
A rock-rap group identified as the Beastie Boys
.  The Conductor watches the Queen ascend, higher and higher, moving around two other asteroids, the first of which they are about to destroy like the others. 
What does he hope to achieve by all of this?

It seems obvious enough.  The second-largest asteroid is perhaps a base of operations, or yet another cache of weapons and food stores the Phantom has been gathering and subsisting on.  He is trying vainly to move it out of harm’s way. 
But why even try to get it clear?  Surely he’s seen our capabilities
. 
Surely he knows we will obliterate it momentarily
. 
Why do the humans always run? 
An eternal question, one for the Elders to ponder and siphon out exactly what it was that made the humans reach such heights, and yet not achieve true self-awareness.

“Turn it off,” the Conductor finally says.  The music finally stops, and the bridge is once more cast into
grateful silence.

The music
was jarring, but not so jarring as the data scrolling in. The total annihilation of sixteen skirmishers, all within the span of twenty seconds.  It…it doesn’t quite compute. 
It is not possible
, the Conductor thinks.  Then, he corrects himself. 
Perhaps not probable, but it is obviously
possible
because it happened
. 
There can be no denying it
.

The Calculators will want a full report.
  Did he, the Conductor, manage his resources improperly?  Was there a grave miscalculation on his part, or a random systems malfunction that could account for all of this?  Is he soon to become one of the Usurped?

The Conductor tries not to think on this, and instead casts his mind towards the field and their slow chase.  The luminal ship is still engaged in harvesting procedures—after all, there is no reas
on not to do so, no matter the minor setback with the skirmishers—even as they ascend towards the Queen.

A Manager routes data to him.  “Sir, the Phantom remains inside his sensor shroud, but we have two squadrons saying they’ve detected the ion trail
, and have isolated bits of the Bose-Einstein condensate used to mask the trail.  They have spectral analysis on that ice, and are cross-referencing it with what radio transmissions they’re detecting.  They are tracking the Phantom along these coordinates.”  The astronomical coordinate calculations funnel into his seven brains, and he gets a visual of where the skirmishers are heading to next.

The Conductor imbibes
more applicable data, cross-referencing vague radio transmissions with spectral analysis of the ice particles left by the Sidewinder’s coolers, and instantly extrapolates on the Phantom’s probable course.  He sends those coordinates to the Managers, who dispense it to two other squadrons.  The two already closing in on the Phantom have him blocked from the tail and his sides, while the other two can cut him off from the front.  The Conductor orders the four squadrons to fan out wide, and slowly come back in towards the center of their search zone, boxing him in.

Suddenly, more
troubling data comes streaming in.  Another one of the particle beam turrets has been located.  A scan of its surface reveals it is covered in the same shape-shifting clay as the others.  Just as it is discovered by the skirmishers’ scanners, it begins to open fire.  However, it doesn’t get a chance to do much damage before it is destroyed.  This is the death of Dopey.

The Cerebrals may have strong aversions to deception, but they also learn from their mistakes.  The seekers near the Holey Roller were taken out by small asteroids containing small explosives, but no
w they know the Phantom also has enough mimetic clay to cover large turrets.  They have become aware of their enemy’s resources, and are accounting for them.

We slip away from the bridge now, away from the self-impressed Conductor, and rejoin the game taking place outside.  We pass through the luminal ship’s hull,
stepping back outside into the increasingly cluttered
Magnum Collectio
, and are just in time to witness the massive particle beam generate forty terajoules of energy, enough to smash into Mickey Mouse, superheat it, melt its surface and its core, and cause it to explode outward.  It is a quiet, gorgeous expansion of superheated rocks, all of which we pass through easily as we attempt to penetrate the veil of secrecy surrounding the Sidewinder.

It’s in here somewhere.  We may find it by following the four squadrons of skirmishers, all converging on the same zero-spot.  We follow the ion trails, but that is very difficult since the cryogenic coolers at the Sidewinder’s exhaust ports go a long way in masking its emissions.  But,
just as the Conductor and his Observer-Manager teams did, we can follow the radio transmission, and.

The music.

When we finally find the right frequency, we travel along it like motes of dust hitching a ride, and, at last, we come to the almost-but-not-quite-invisible ship.  We slip inside undetected, and find Rook exactly where we left him: in his pilot’s seat, still totally suited up, his visor still dimmed so that we cannot see his face.

“Damn,” he says out loud.  “They got Dopey.”  He looks across his various screens, gauges the holographic sectorboard, makes a decision on a few moves,
then taps a dozen keys.  Rook need concern himself only with the placement of each piece; the computer does most of the calculations for him, including movements from microns to miles.  “All right, you bastards.  All right.  Sleepy to S16.  Grumpy to S53.”  Grumpy is gaining on the luminal ship, remaining directly beneath it and, so far, seems to be unnoticed.  The Queen has gone to S63 and covers a quarter of S64, and just a smidgen of S65 directly beneath it, going nearly to the limits of Rook’s sectorboard, almost exiting the technical boundaries of
Magnum Collectio
.  “And let’s move Sneezy right underneath Grumpy, in S52.  And then Happy and Bashful, you guys go over to S66, just behind the Queen.”

These moves go somewhat against his principle of four. 
It is obvious by Doc’s and Dopey’s destruction that Rook cannot keep up the small tactics forever.  He sees this clearly.  The principle of four is good for many applications, but not for
all
applications.  The Cerebs do learn, after all.  It’s what makes them so powerful.  He might be able to use the principle a bit more to remove another squadron or two out of his way, such as the ones approaching about twenty miles ahead, but even that is dicey and will not ultimately get him what he wants: their king.

However, it isn’t just the principle of four Rook has been banking on.  There is another weakness he has perceived in the Cerebs, one last
blind spot they’ve overlooked.

It’s gonna take some maneuvering
, though
, he thinks.

First, though, he has to take care of the skirmishers on his tail.  Rook is pushing hard for the far corner of S16, where he has Sleepy firmly established now at
S16 – SQ998 – SB173 – D8 – P8 – H8
; the “top right corner” of that Sector.  Rook made that move moments before because of the immense debris coming off of the remains of Mickey Mouse, freshly blown to pieces.  Sleepy now appears to be just another random hunk, hurtling through space without direction, yet moving directly towards the skirmishers coming right at him.

Rook swivels his chair around to the firing controls again, leaving the autopilot to its work—if his theory still proves out, then the algorithms the computer worked out and memorized ought to keep him safe for the moment, as
the autopilot accounts for the incoming vessels, their changes in trajectories, and their likely flight paths.

The Sidewinder slows down, allowing the skirmishers that are following him to catch
up, but this also keeps him from running headlong into those coming right at him before Sleepy is suitably in position.

He waits for Sleepy to activate its primary weapons.  When it does, it is naturally a surprise to the Cerebs.  You see, the Cerebs do not appreciate deception, but they can certainly
learn
about it from humans.  These particular Cereb pilots thought the only deception they had to penetrate here was that of the sensor shroud, and the Phantom’s incessant game of hide-and-seek.  This means they’ve had to keep up a constant awareness of multiple deceptions.  The involvement of Sleepy makes this a
threefold
deception, though, which Rook is hoping will be enough to make even their four brains spin. 

Sleepy opens fire, and almost at once the Sidewinder’s computer begins to set up targeting lines where he can fire at a split-second later, allowing the skirmishers no time to evade, and virtually guaranteeing they run right into it.

The entire encounter lasts just forty-seven seconds.  He even has time to confidently leave himself open so that their particle beams can wash over his hull, his EA systems further converting the power and transferring it to the ship’s main power cells.  At the end of it, sixty-four skirmishers are gone, four squadrons of sixteen fighters just wiped out, and all that’s left is more debris.

He cranks the music louder.

“
So listen up, ’cause ya can’t say nothin’!

You’ll shut me down with the push of your button!

I’m out, and I’m gone,

I’ll tell ya now, I keep it on and on!
”

Rook swivels back to the flight controls.  He feels confident enough to slow down, open the belly of the Sidewinder’s fabricator, and absorb some of the advanced materials that the skirmishers are made of.  If he survives this day, they may prove very useful.

Rook looks down at his sectorboard.  The pieces are still moving.  And now, the
mother ship has cleared much of the debris field and has a clear shot at the Blarney Stone, the last hunk of rock blocking the Queen.  He turns his ship so that he can see through his main viewport.  He wants to watch the end of the Queen with his own eyes, not just through some screen.

The
mother ship fires on the Blarney Stone, the last of Queen Anne’s protectors, annihilating it as easily and as casually as you might have flicked a beetle off your arm.  However, just as the luminal was cuing up its particle beam, Rook sent the command to Grumpy to eject the warbot hidden within.  It takes a mere two seconds, and it activates its jets, rocketing away from Grumpy.  The two of them now close in.

Cerebrals may never have really feared humans, or their weaponry, but one invention that got their attention just before the War ended was the warbot.  Incredibly dexterous things, capable of sharp turns in space, much like their seekers,
only with far more firepower, including arm-mounted plasma guns and a shoulder-mounted particle beam cannon, capable of firing almost as many terajoules as the turrets.

Within ten seconds, Grumpy and the warbot move across the belly of the mother ship and open fire.  They target the exact same hole that Doc started on, pumping out maximum firepower with absolute disregard for overheating.

Rook watches all of this on his 3D display, then looks out at the massive mother ship.  It is angling itself just a tad.  As predicted, it is addressing this new threat. 
Queen Anne is no threat at the moment
, he thinks. 
She has no weapons
. 
They’re being attacked in the same spot on their ship as before, I’m sure they haven’t missed that
.  The Cerebrals must now address this new threat. 
You gotta defend your king, can’t leave it open for attack
.  The Leader said sentient species throughout the universe were mostly alike.  Rook is willing to bet this principle is no different. 
It’s a forced move
. 
They have to do it
.

Indeed, the
mother ship does address these attacks.  Its weapons are now focused on the false asteroid and the warbot.  Grumpy is destroyed within seconds, though not before dishing out appreciable damage of his own, according to the readings before the turret was destroyed.  But the warbot is far more adroit at tactics and evasion, keeping the ship focused on this damaging attack.