Pawn’s Promotion

The board was in its endgame. The chess set in the panoramic pod had been hand-cut from soapstone in a Paris atelier, and the bottom of each piece was magnetised to prevent it from shifting when the celestial, which was named the Régence, eased itself back into designated orbit at Earth’s L4 Lagrange point. On the white side of the board there remained four pawns in a chain; black had a rook, a queen and two pawns. The latter held a clear advantage, though white’s most advanced pawn was only two spaces from promotion. It was black to play.
The morning cycle began in the panoramic pod. Spotlights switched on. A percolator dispensed coffee heated to ninety-three degrees Celsius into a mug. Concealed speakers played Debussy’s Préludes by Giovanni Battel. Everything was perfect.
Then a tremor ran through the pod’s spine. The music skipped and the spotlights flickered. Coffee leapt from the mug to the spotless floor.
It was over just as quickly as it had begun. The Préludes found their rhythm and the spotlight became pure and hard. The coffee dried where it lay. In the bowels of the Régence, well below the panoramic pod, an AI reservoir ran a diagnostic lasting less than one-ten-thousandth of a second. The anomaly—the second since the celestial had been built six years prior—was logged, and a data packet was sent via premium DSN band to the contractor’s central database on Earth, as well as to an orbital overwatch station several thousand kilometres distant from the Régence. No alarm was raised; anomalies, though rare, did happen. The data packet existed solely so that the contractor could optimise the design of its next generation of celestials.
In the final step of the morning cycle, the Régence rotated toward the sun, the better for its owner to see it.


The pod door slid open and a man in a navy blue tangzhuang strode in. He took the coffee from the percolator and when he drank he closed his eyes in appreciation, because there would be no act more satisfying in his day than to taste beans grown in the Da Lat highlands and delivered to the Régence for a fee high enough to purchase an entire plantation back on Earth. Debussy’s Préludes were the final push into quiet ecstasy.
The man’s name was Tartakower, and he was retired. Where men like him had once bought a yacht on which to idle away their days, in Tartakower’s time the seas were too poisoned and so his craft was the Régence, hurtling through the black at a cruising speed of approximately eighteen-thousand kilometres per hour. He was not old by celestial standards, though he could no longer pass for young; he was in the bleed between the two, an interstice for which society lacked rules on how someone of his age and means should behave. Tartakower had made his fortune in asteroid mining, cashing out at the height of the antimony-microelectronics boom, and the Régence had been his place of solitude since. He saw other human beings only during his biannual sojourn to Gateway, where he had needs taken care of that InTen, the Régence’s AI, could not.
According to Tartakower’s eye-over interface he had slept without interruption. He’d dreamt that he’d stood in a rainforest on Earth, the leaves unspoiled and clean, and he’d known he was in a dream but had admired the trees anyway. With the coffee mug cradled between pale, well-manicured hands, he dissolved the eye-over and took his seat at the chessboard and scrutinised the pieces, though he knew their positions by heart.
‘Been thinking it over, InTen?’ he asked the AI.
‘Some,’ said a voice that was everywhere. ‘Between keeping the doughnut ticking over, getting your coffee ready and a million other things you don’t need to know about.’
InTen units were designed to take on a personality of their own over time, based on input they received from their owner and the tasks they performed each 24-hour cycle. Tartakower’s AI had a confidence that bordered on arrogance.
‘What have I said about calling the Régence a doughnut?’
‘Plenty. The gist is that I should have more respect for an inanimate object.’
‘Correct. Now, black to play.’
Tartakower enjoyed playing chess with InTen. After placing a restrictor band on its exponential learning program, he had granted it access to Silman’s Complete Endgame Course, Karpov’s Strategic Wins and Nikolayevich’s Openings, and it had quickly become a worthy opponent. Its style was aggressive, with shades of Kasparov, and it was willing to sacrifice pieces in an attempt to win.
Tartakower played a more cautious game.
He rested his index finger against the minute crenelations of the rook, luxuriated in the coolness of the soapstone. Then he moved.
‘Ah,’ said InTen.
‘Indulge me,’ said Tartakower. ‘Let me enjoy my coffee before you move.’
‘As we both know, you’re the boss.’
Tartakower turned to the tinted viewport, his chair altering its shape to accommodate the new position of his body, and watched what he liked to think of as the sunrise.


‘You may move.’
On Tartakower’s eye-over interface, the ghost of one of InTen’s pawns moved a square closer to the eighth rank. Tartakower pushed the real pawn forward to join the ghost. The eye-over was a sophisticated piece of technology, able to track the trajectories of spacecraft, establish communications and identify individual mould spores on a clean surface, yet he used it to play chess with an AI. The incongruity amused him.
As he pondered InTen’s move, a screen lowered from the ceiling and settled in front of his face.
‘A Ballista-class freighter, registered with a subsidiary of Faber AG, is within narrow-band broadcast range,’ said InTen. ‘We are being pinged.’
Tartakower frowned. Freighters had their own highways. They weren’t supposed to enter celestial channels.
The AI spoke up again. ‘I can shoo the blues back to their own corner of space if you wish.’
‘No, I’ll take care of it.’ Tartakower accepted the ping, and a stubble-headed woman appeared on screen. He kept his own vidlink off.
‘Captain Savedra of the Kowalski hailing delisted celestial with residence number #375934DK.’
‘What is it you want?’ asked Tartakower.
‘Is this the owner of the celestial? What should we call you?’
‘You don’t need to call me anything. What is it you want?’
The woman looked to somebody offscreen.
‘Will you activate your vidlink?’
‘No.’
Again the look. Tartakower cleared his throat, ready to cut the call.
‘Our vessel was damaged by the micrometeoroid storm that passed through the A3 strait thirty minutes ago. One of our starboard Whipple shields failed and four micrometeoroids tore through a branch of our CNS.’
Tartakower looked beyond the screen to the chessboard. Bringing his queen over to attack white’s most advanced pawn would prompt InTen to protect it with his chain. The best option was to ignore the promotion and pin InTen’s king. Then, even when the pawn did complete its run to the eighth rank, it would be too late.
‘Our supersteam thrusters are unaffected, but we can’t risk activating our disjunction drive without docking to take a closer look first. With your permission, we’d like to use your facility. We’d be out of your hair within twenty-four hours.’
Tartakower interlaced his pale hands.
‘Despite your storm, this is not a port, Captain,’ he said. ‘This is a private residence.’
‘We understand that,’ said Savedra. ‘But on supersteam alone it will take us approximately eighty-three hours to reach the nearest repair yard. Your celestial is the only station within useful range.’
‘Hail Gateway. It will send a ship to tow you.’
‘We did. Gateway has none to spare. They’re preparing for the return of the Minkowski expedition.’
Tartakower sighed. ‘Captain Savedra, I’m afraid I am under no obligation to receive your vessel.’
‘The United Nations Convention on the Law of Space dictates that you have to render assistance to any craft in danger of being lost.’
‘But you are not in danger of being lost. You said so yourself.’
The woman looked furious.
‘I would suggest you continue under supersteam propulsion to the yard previously identified by you, where you will be able to perform the necessary repairs.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘I bid you good day.’
‘You ivory ass—’
He cut the connection and the screen retracted into the ceiling. He took a breath, listened to Battel’s masterful interpretation of Debussy, then returned his attention to the board.
‘A coffee to wash away the unpleasantness of that exchange?’ said InTen.
Tartakower shook his head, his eyes on his queen. ‘Once the game is over.’
‘As you like.’
He mapped white’s pawn squares a final time, then moved. Three to go, he thought.
‘I have a question,’ said InTen. ‘But perhaps it can wait.’
‘About the freighter?’
‘No. The game.’
‘Ask away, but know that I may not answer.’
‘A man of mystery. I can’t for the life of me fathom why you haven’t made a run for the end of the board with one of your pawns. Then you’d have had a queen, a rook and another piece of your choice. Checkmate.’
Tartakower smiled. ‘A valid query, and not one to which you’ll find an answer in the books I gave you.’
‘And so?’
‘Yes, my pawn’s promotion would have been the easiest way to force mate. But it lacks grace, and winning by any means necessary is not the same as winning with grace. The queen and the rook should suffice for any serious player. So I refuse.’
‘I see.’ said InTen. ‘Interesting.’
On the last word the AI’s baritone suddenly rose to a tenor, but Tartakower said nothing. InTen added an inflection to its voice from time to time.
Still, that had sounded almost painful.


Some moments later, the music stopped and the spotlights switched off. Tartakower cleared his throat, waiting for the AI to offer an explanation. But there was only silence.
‘InTen.’
His voice echoed through the pod. He glanced at the viewport. His eyes weren’t the strongest, but he had the impression the tint had faded from the silicate. He padded over to it, pressed his hand flat against the glass. Sunlight gilded his hand.
‘InTen, can you hear me?’
His tangzhuang was uncomfortable against his throat. He undid the top button.
A surge, perhaps. He would have to go downstairs to resolve it. Even if InTen had lost its voice—as had happened once before when a semiconductor cluster had blown in the audio rig—he would be able to communicate via console and determine the problem.
He almost walked into the door when it didn’t open. He took a step back, waved at the motion sensors in the frame. Next to the door was a manual button he’d never had to use before. He pressed a finger to it. Not a movement, not a sound.
Tartakower called for InTen again, but the sound of his voice echoing through the pod made him afraid and he stopped.
He switched on his eye-over. That, at least, was not affected, because the chip was located at the base of his skull. He had it isolate the Régence’s IR band and build a link between the eye-over and the celestial’s central system. It took many minutes to do so, because the chip’s rudimentary neural interface hadn’t been designed for such work, but when he was done the link held firm. Over this he issued more commands to the central system to run an analysis of the pod and find the cause of the outage. Green digits appeared on the eye-over, telling him how long it would take it to conduct the analysis and convert the results into data the retinal display could handle.
One hour, twenty-seven minutes.
Tartakower dissolved the display, took a seat, tried to relax. In the light of the sun behind him he eyed the chessboard and ignored the warmth all around him.


He needed water.
He crawled across the pod to the percolator and popped the panel at its base. A small forest of wires and cables waited on the other side, and he pushed his arm among them, praying none were still live. As he probed the machine’s guts he pressed his body against metal and drew in breath to elevate the ribs and sternum. A bead of sweat started on his forehead, made its way to his nose.
When his fingers traced the hard outline of a receptacle he let out a cry. It popped free and he pulled it out from between the wires. In his hand was a tank approximately the width and length of his forearm, filled two-thirds of the way with water. Normally located underneath the percolator serving plate, the water was used to keep drinks chilled, and was changed once a month by the station’s inventory of spider bots.
Tartakower peered into the tank, then brought it to his lips and drank, and the water’s age was secondary to the relief it brought to his throat. He continued to drink, gorging himself until a voice told him to stop. When he looked again, only a few mouthfuls remained.
He crawled back across the floor, under the blazing viewport, and rested his head against the wall. The eye-over told him thirty minutes. He could do that.
The game was under control.


The soapstone chess pieces were strewn on the floor, the board in Tartakower’s hand as he fanned his face. Stripped to his vest and shorts, he sat with his knees to his chest. The water in the mug was almost gone.
On the eye-over the green digits reached zero.
A multicoloured schematic of the celestial appeared on the display, every sheet, nut, bolt and wire accounted for. From the Régence’s main ring—what InTen called the doughnut—the eye-over zoomed in on the P1 truss, one of three spokes that branched inward from the ring’s inner wall and serviced the shaft leading up to the panoramic pod. The truss pulsed green, except in one place where it was a bleeding red, and it was here the display halted and superimposed lines of information.
Orbital debris. Micrometeroid. A single piece weighing nine grams travelling at 10 kilometres per second. It had struck the P1 truss, dissolving the outer layers, passing through the reinforced arterial wall and stopping after it had severed the primary cable bundle used by the AI reservoir to control the panoramic pod. By a fluke, the micrometeroid had held the severed cables in place long enough for Tartakower to ascend and make himself comfortable. InTen hadn’t noticed an issue, because everything had appeared to be working fine. Then the debris had dislodged, the excess current had travelled along the bundle and overloaded the AI reservoir, and all power to the pod had been cut. Only the emergency system remained online in the ring below.
Tartakower laughed, a ragged sound in the near-silence. If he’d been in the Régence’s main ring, he could have simply rebooted the system and programmed a few spider bots to crawl over the hull to the P1 truss and fix the bundle. As it was, he would have to deliver all commands via the eye-over.
He began to enter the strings, but in his weakened state he made many mistakes, and the chip found his erratic neural patterns difficult to read. The heat was like volcanic stones pressed against his flesh, his vest and shorts sodden. He spent precious time double-checking to make sure he hadn’t missed any inputs, then transferred the data packet. Green digits appeared again in the corner of his display.
Tartakower swallowed. It would take too long.
He dissolved the eye-over, lifted the mug to his lips, drank the last of the water. Then he rested his head against the wall and stared into the middle distance. Perhaps it would be okay, he thought. He had chosen solitude. Now it would consume him.


There was one chance left.
Tartakower shook his head. He was drowsy, but he made himself sit up. He activated the eye-over, checked the time of his last communication. Then he calculated the trajectory and came up with a rough distance. It would be at the limit of the narrow band. To issue the ping via the eye-over he would have to sever the link with the Régence. Green digits, too many, glowed in imagined space.
He cut the link and placed the call.
A grainy image the size of a thumbnail appeared. The woman’s features expressed no surprise at his having hailed the Kowalski.
‘Captain Savedra,’ he said. It hurt to speak.
‘What do you want?’ she asked. Steel in her voice. ‘We’re gone, like you wanted.’
‘Don’t cut me off,’ he said. ‘I beg you.’
‘You beg us?’
‘I need you to come back. To the Régence.’
‘What is this? Some sick trick ivories pull when they’re bored?’
Tartakower breathed. The heat was everywhere. ‘Not a trick.’
‘We—’
‘Just listen for a second. Be quiet and listen.’
Calm, he told himself. Calm. Do what you need to do.
‘I’m trapped on the panoramic deck above the rest of the ship. A meteoroid slashed the power artery. The AI reservoir in the main body is offline. It’s not possible for me to restore it from my current location and the door will not open. The viewport is facing toward the sun.’
Savedra took several seconds to respond. ‘How long do you have, celestial?’
‘No longer than a couple of hours.’
The woman looked to somebody offscreen and then to him. ‘You know we’re more than two hours out? Travelling supersteam express.’
Yes, he wanted to say. He knew. ‘It’ll be close,’ he said, his chest tight as he heard his own words. ‘But you can make it. I know you can.’
‘And if we come back, we can dock with you and perform our repairs?’
‘Yes. Anything you want.’
‘Give us the access codes now. If you’re dead by the time we get there, we don’t wanna be left hanging in the vacuum.’
He opened a separate channel and sent the codes across the narrow beam to the Kowalski.
A minute passed in silence.
‘We have them.’ Savedra’s gaze hardened. ‘If this is a joke, you can count on us slugging you out of orbit. We’ll take our chances with a Gateway tribunal.’
‘It’s not a joke.’ Tartakower groaned. He wiped the back of his hand across his brow. He no longer sweated. Then he said a word he hadn’t uttered in a long time. ‘Please.’
His plea echoed through the vacuum.
‘Okay, celestial,’ said Savedra. ‘We’re coming. Stand by.’
The Kowalski cut the connection. Tartakower dissolved the eye-over. He could do no more.
He lay on his side with his face in the crook of his arm and took shallow breaths. After a while, the white pawns strewn across the floor of the pod became so brilliant that he couldn’t look at them, and Tartakower closed his eyes.

***

Grant Price is the author of By the Feet of Men (Cosmic Egg, 2019) and Reality Testing (Black Rose, 2022). His shorter work has been featured in The Daily Telegraph and elsewhere. He lives in the beating concrete heart of Berlin.