The Phantom in the Deep (Rook's Song) Read Free

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