The Phantom in the Deep (Rook's Song) Read Online Free Page B
Author: Chad Huskins
once he has it together again.
2
The massive ship hasn’t yawed, rolled, or pitched any more. It has continued forward at its same lazy speed, the magnetic cannons still clearing a path through the asteroid field. The smaller asteroids jump out of the ship’s way, and a faraway observer might’ve thought it looked a great spearhead cutting a V through black waters.
The Conductor now stands near the largest screen on the bridge, drinking in the datafeed, which comes streaming in smoothly as ever. To his left and his right, holographic monitors show rotating displays of the area all around the ship. Everyone is in search mode now, all Observer-Manager teams have been re-tasked to find their quarry. The Conductor can sense that others are disbelieving. Many don’t believe him, despite his superior cognitive capacities, but they will never question him.
It i s him , he thinks. There is no room for argument, not even from one brain to the other. Though his logic tells him there ought to be a margin for error in this, he does not listen. It is him .
The Conductor knows it is him. He knows it deep in the marrow of his bones. It is him . The last human being in the universe, last spotted in this sector ten years ago. The last confirmed sighting, anyway. Others have claimed to detect similar gravitic distortions in this sector and other exhaust clouds that spoke of this revenant, but many believe he has to be long dead by now.
But the Conductor knows. He knows, even if he does not know how he knows. It’s him.
The Phantom in the Deep .
A moniker mentioned here and there throughout the end of the War, when all things were coming to a close, when there had been a paucity of humans left on any world, any moon, any space station. Back when the mass burnings had been ordered, many of which the Conductor carried out personally, including right here in this sector.
The world that the humans called Shiva 154e was nearly ideal for all humanoid life. It didn’t take the humans much terraforming to make it habitable, and it didn’t take the Conductor long to obliterate it. It was done in a single afternoon, while many of their species were attending their own meditations in a sacred church. A day they called Sunday. As the Conductor opened up the napalm cannons and set fire to the air, he wondered how many of them would believe it was the day foretold in their various prophecies, specifically the one from the book called Revelations.
The human race built itself up over a hundred thousand years, and was utterly annihilated in less than a year. They fought bravely, and proved most industrious when trying to coordinate and focus their efforts on building bigger ships and better weapons. There was even evidence that they had set up labs for captured Cereb skirmishers, and tried to reverse engineer the technology of the Conductor’s people. Industrious, competent, technologically savvy, but wholly unwise.
Unwise, because they expanded too far, too soon, and with too little resources to fend off the Conductor and his people. Rather than remain inside their own solar system and learn to harvest the materials from the various planets, moons, and gas giants, they had reached for other stars.
The Conductor remembers first hearing about the sightings. His people began detecting the emissions from the human’s pycnodeuterium -fueled drives (similar to Cereb drives, though less efficient), saw their influences on the Bleed, and tracked disturbances along that quantum slipstream. The Calculators collated the data, and confirmed that a new spacefaring race had emerged in the galaxy. The Conductor was the first to act, getting permission from the Elders to take aggressive action, to ensure that their harmony was not compromised. An extermination job, conducted well before these newcomers’ expansion could become an infestation.
The Conductor opted to strike
2
The massive ship hasn’t yawed, rolled, or pitched any more. It has continued forward at its same lazy speed, the magnetic cannons still clearing a path through the asteroid field. The smaller asteroids jump out of the ship’s way, and a faraway observer might’ve thought it looked a great spearhead cutting a V through black waters.
The Conductor now stands near the largest screen on the bridge, drinking in the datafeed, which comes streaming in smoothly as ever. To his left and his right, holographic monitors show rotating displays of the area all around the ship. Everyone is in search mode now, all Observer-Manager teams have been re-tasked to find their quarry. The Conductor can sense that others are disbelieving. Many don’t believe him, despite his superior cognitive capacities, but they will never question him.
It i s him , he thinks. There is no room for argument, not even from one brain to the other. Though his logic tells him there ought to be a margin for error in this, he does not listen. It is him .
The Conductor knows it is him. He knows it deep in the marrow of his bones. It is him . The last human being in the universe, last spotted in this sector ten years ago. The last confirmed sighting, anyway. Others have claimed to detect similar gravitic distortions in this sector and other exhaust clouds that spoke of this revenant, but many believe he has to be long dead by now.
But the Conductor knows. He knows, even if he does not know how he knows. It’s him.
The Phantom in the Deep .
A moniker mentioned here and there throughout the end of the War, when all things were coming to a close, when there had been a paucity of humans left on any world, any moon, any space station. Back when the mass burnings had been ordered, many of which the Conductor carried out personally, including right here in this sector.
The world that the humans called Shiva 154e was nearly ideal for all humanoid life. It didn’t take the humans much terraforming to make it habitable, and it didn’t take the Conductor long to obliterate it. It was done in a single afternoon, while many of their species were attending their own meditations in a sacred church. A day they called Sunday. As the Conductor opened up the napalm cannons and set fire to the air, he wondered how many of them would believe it was the day foretold in their various prophecies, specifically the one from the book called Revelations.
The human race built itself up over a hundred thousand years, and was utterly annihilated in less than a year. They fought bravely, and proved most industrious when trying to coordinate and focus their efforts on building bigger ships and better weapons. There was even evidence that they had set up labs for captured Cereb skirmishers, and tried to reverse engineer the technology of the Conductor’s people. Industrious, competent, technologically savvy, but wholly unwise.
Unwise, because they expanded too far, too soon, and with too little resources to fend off the Conductor and his people. Rather than remain inside their own solar system and learn to harvest the materials from the various planets, moons, and gas giants, they had reached for other stars.
The Conductor remembers first hearing about the sightings. His people began detecting the emissions from the human’s pycnodeuterium -fueled drives (similar to Cereb drives, though less efficient), saw their influences on the Bleed, and tracked disturbances along that quantum slipstream. The Calculators collated the data, and confirmed that a new spacefaring race had emerged in the galaxy. The Conductor was the first to act, getting permission from the Elders to take aggressive action, to ensure that their harmony was not compromised. An extermination job, conducted well before these newcomers’ expansion could become an infestation.
The Conductor opted to strike
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