The Phantom in the Deep (Rook's Song) (2 page)

Wordlessly, he commands the helmsmen to roll the ship slowly a few degrees to one side, and then back to another.  “Do it slowly,” he advises his crew.  To one Observer, he says, “Recheck our pitch after we’re done with the maneuver, and make certain we’re still on our previous course.”  It
is done within the span of a breath.

The Conductor watches the image below their belly turn slightly one direction, and then sees it turn back to its original path.  The highlighted spot on the three-dimensional display moves with them.  “Run a diagnostics checks
in spectral analyzers.  Look for systemic errors.”  But we can see the concern etched on his face.  No matter how alien these creatures are to us, we can see that much.  He knows.  As sure as you and I are ghosts, the Conductor already knows.  It’s why they made him Conductor.  It’s the way his brains work.  In short, it’s not something he’s capable of missing.

“Diagnostics check complete,”
says one Manager.  “No systems errors detected, sir.”  The Manager turns and looks at him meaningfully.  Indeed, all of the Observers and Managers look at him now.  The Conductor turns and faces us.  Not us really, just
through
us, his eyes attempting to pierce the veil of black silk, specks of twinkling sand, and shapeless asteroids all around him.  Those black, bulbous eyes pulse with a deep blue, sometimes a green cloud emerges inside of them, ringing around an inky-black pupil.

Finally, the Conductor nods, knowing the truth.  “It i
s him,” he says.

“Sir?”

“Send out skirmishers.”

“Sir, our objective is to scan and log those asteroids prime for mining—”

“I know our mission,” he interrupts.

“If it is him, he poses no threat to—”

“It
is
him,” the Conductor concludes.  And that settles it. 
And I am nothing if not thorough
. 
That is how I obliterated the rest of them
.  “I told you to send out skirmishers, now do as I say.”

“Yes, sir.”  No further arguments.

With tentative steps, we now leave the bridge of this alien ship, perhaps to enter into something vastly more alien, if it can be believed.  Back out of the bridge, floating on a sourceless wind, out into the nothingness, that world of perfect vacuum and tumbling rocks.  Past the asteroids being tossed carelessly out of the path of the ship, like a child casting aside toys that it has no further interest in.  Around what ancient explorers would have called the port side of the ship, should they have set eyes on it (and if they had been able to comprehend such a thing, without losing their minds).  Past the superheated exhaust ports, where the ship casts out the nuclear byproduct of the pycnodeuterium fuel required to ignite the exomatter core and engage the power necessary to move into the quantum slipstream, that Bleed that carried the Conductor and so many of his ilk far from home.

We pass
through this exhaust, this intense heat which is the footprint left in the wake of such a massive ship.  At many hundreds of thousands of degrees, we could not survive, if not for our incorporeal form.  (There are some advantages to being ghosts.)  Still, one thing that can be affected is our sanity, so take care now as you hold fast to it.  Hold fast, my friend, like a sailor in the days of yore, clamping down to the rigging and gripping the ropes of the mainstay, lest your sails tear away and you are lost forever in the storm.  Remember I told you this.  When you come to our next destination, remember I told you.

The spot where the Conductor was looking is no longer highlighted for us, but we see what we have to.  Space.  Endless, mindless, and devoid of hope.  A gulf so vast it has no reckoning but what we give it.  A thing without purpose, a Deep without end.

But look here.  Do you see it?  Look closer.  A ripple in space, almost like a tear.  We know that this isn’t possible, but here it is.  We could almost reach out and touch it, did we have hands to do so.  It is not a tear; logic tells us that much.  It’s…it’s…a mirror?  Very large, almost exactly the eighty-three-foot estimate that the Conductor gave it, but not quite.  Whatever it is, it refracts light, but it has contours, so it isn’t a
perfect
mirror, is it?  No, because space does not have contours.  Like the Conductor’s massive ship, this little thing also defies the Deep’s laws of having no perfect lines or circles.

Then, all at once, the lines along this not-quite-eighty-
three-foot mirror shift, proving that not only is it defiantly perfect, but also malleable, like clay.  At least, whatever cloak it keeps around it is.

And that’s what it is, isn’t it?  A cloak.  Yes…yes, a cloak.  And if we can pass through the hull of the Conductor’s ship, we can most assuredly pass through a flimsy cloak.  Here we go, let’s…

Hold on.  Take a moment to remember what I told you before.  Guard your sanity close.  You hear, friend?

Passing through this wall is so easy for an apparition, but once we’re through, we can detect a stifling air.  Almost like the morbid heat of a sun-blasted desert.  Only here,
the air is dense with a cloud we might have only detected a hint of, were we corporeal.  A cloud that reeks of desperation and of sadness.  Of murder and second thoughts.  Of regrets, dashed hopes, and mad ambition.

The ship is dark, with only nominal lighting needed at the moment.  It
runs silent.  So silent.  In the main corridor, there is a clutter.  Ostensibly, there appears to be no pattern to it at all.  If we want to explore this, we had best be prepared for anything.

Objects hang restlessly along the walls.  A collection of
weapons hanging almost haphazardly from their hooks along the walls.  Perhaps weapons taken from raids?  Or from the carcasses of any number of downed fighters?  That is almost certainly the case, since the ship itself looks of more Earth-like design (more familiar to our eyes), and the weapons themselves are alien.

Yes, this is a human vessel.  We ghosts have found a small vestige of humanity.
  By all means, let’s take a tour.

Stenciled on one wall, in fading black military letters, is an identifier:
Sidewinder x42
.

Along the cockpit access corridor, there are stacked compristeel cases.  If we were to peek into any of them, we would find explosives, ammunition, detonators, food, and a smattering of tools.  We pass the forward hold, which has a door that looks plain and innocuous.  However, at the foot of
it we see a tight string, as thin as fishing line, tied from one side of the doorway to the other.  If we inspect the door latch, we can see a thin wire running up to it.  A pair of traps, waiting for anyone who would molest it.  Since we are immaterial, we can pass right through the door without triggering these.  Inside, we find the life support systems, rerouted from another hold.  We can see why the pilot of this vessel wants to protect this.

Inside the number two hold, there is a stasis chamber, currently closed and insulated.  A heart monitor beeps out a lonely but steady rhythm.  Something small and frail appears to be inside the tube…

Just behind us, we see an engraving etched proudly into the compristeel wall:

Interplanetary Space Force

Eternity

Legacy

Humanity

If we creep down to the main hold, we find more compristeel cases sealed and stacked against the walls, each one stuffed with MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat).  These reside just inside an open doorway.  However, there is a sensor aimed right at us.  It detects the vascular system of any organic creature approaching it.  If we follow the wires within the walls, we’ll find it connected to canisters marked
ONEIROGENIC GENERAL ANESTHETIC
.  By this, we can gather that if this system detects a creature with the wrong vascular ID, this “Sidewinder” ship will fill with a gas engineered to incapacitate the intruder.

What paranoid creature would concoct all of this?  Hold on to that question, because we’re not finished yet.

Further down, where an oily smell is emanating from, we come to a maintenance access in the floor. Its door missing.  There is absolutely nothing to keep a person from falling through.  At the bottom, I can show you another trap.  A motion sensor.  Should it detect anyone, a congenial automated female voice will announce “Say the passphrase, please.”  If the correct phrase is not spoken, the walls, access ladder, and floor will become electrified to the tune of fifty thousand volts.  Here, within these cramped confines, tools lay strewn across the floor, leaving almost no room to stand, the sign of disorder taking over.

Let’s move down to the circuitry bay.  Careful now!  The silence reverberates in here.  As do thoughts and instincts.  And perhaps, just perhaps, he can hear us?

There is a snare trap hidden beneath a compristeel panel in the floor—unless one knows where to step, they’ll lose a foot.  Move carefully now…

The circuitry bay is overloaded with patches and upgrades, none of which were ever meant for this class of ship. 
Numerous parts from other ships have been cannibalized and repurposed to keep this vital part of the ship running.  All of it has the look of a helter-skelter, repair-as-you-go kind of technician.  Surprisingly, nothing here appears to be short-circuiting, though a few connections do appear close to it, and quite a few are held together by nothing more than some form of tape or quick-sealant.  A few dials and screens beeped self-importantly to themselves.  A repair bot sits inert in a corner, in heavy need of repair itself (oh, the irony!).  All around this bot are more scattered tools, most of them arrayed at its feet, as if in offering to the monument of the Great Repair God.

Down a bit from the circuitry bay, through another thin corridor littered with MRE’s toss
ed here and there across the floor, is the engineering station, right outside of the engineering bay.  Several diagnostics screens are unattended, scrolling endless streams of data and system checks without anybody to appreciate them.  There is, however, that partially disfigured warbot sitting over there in the corner, powered down, its guts plugged into a generator nearby, with its one remaining ocular lens pulsing with a dying red ember.  We’ll leave him alone for now.

Inside the engineering bay itself, there
is another clutter of boxes and wires pouring out of the walls like a gutted beast.  Blue lights blink on and off indecisively around the luminal engine’s diagnostic readout, and the nearby freight elevator is rigged to explode.  A bomb with a tripwire hidden just at its entrance has been prepared in case anyone ever gets on board the Sidewinder through stealthy means.

A paranoid mind has arranged all of this.

The engine itself has its own AI.  One of the last great feats of Man, before everything went south, the engine’s computer has several thousand petaflops of processing power, and was built to continually learn as long as it lived.  It is constantly having a debate with itself concerning Quantum Slipstream Theory, learning as it goes, its knowledge becoming exponentially larger with each successive permutation and calculation.  The computer constantly cross-references the gamma radiation output with the quantum mathematics of its modified energy input-output in the fusion generator through its several kilometers of superconducting wire, and as it follows the methods of the horizontal boosters and calculates the efficiency of the ionization chamber, and as it checks to see if its current output is more efficient than the last check.  Never satisfied, it checks and rechecks the exo-matter containment units, the exhaust output, the fuel-to-speed ratio, and an endless list of concerns.

On a ship so chaotic and unkempt, the engine room is a bastion of order and efficiency.  But for now, we’ll leave it to its calculations, ruminations, and debates.

Beyond the engineering bay, there is the crew’s quarters, inside of which is nothing more than a cot on the floor, a dozen empty MRE wrappers left discarded, a pile of boxes filled with random batteries, a single sidearm of military-issue, tools and spare parts, and more compristeel cases of MRE’s.  There is another vascular-ID sensor hidden in the ceiling that would alert the rest of the ship to an intruder.  The randomization of traps here is chaotic, but that chaos is purposeful, there is a method to the madness; it sets no pattern, and makes it impossible for all but the most seasoned and prepared expert to infiltrate.

Now, we finally come to the cockpit.  The door is sealed, but that is no problem for us.  As we pass through, we come into an area large enough for six people to sit, just behind the pilot and co-pilot.  That is, if there was any co-pilot, and if there were any other seats to spare.  At the moment, there is only one seat, and
a sole occupant.

The window
is made out of alkali-aluminosilicate sheet glass, forged in microgravity conditions.  Another one of Man’s final, worthy achievements.  The pilot reflects on that, even as the window reflects him.  The flash shield is down, pulled just over the window, blocking out most of the surrounding space and the asteroid field.  His face is only lit from the bottom up by what few flashing lights remain.  It isn’t just because he’s trying to keep dark and quiet.  No.  The ship is dying, has been for years.  Some of these buttons and indicators will never light up again.

He looks back at his reflection.  In that reflection,
we see a haggard face, angular and predatory.  A predator that has been hunting, and been hunted, far too long.