Hell Ship

by Philip Palmer

  There is nothing finer, or so I thought then, than the moment of initial approach; that first glimpse of an alien stellar system, with no hint as to what might lie within.

  “Our gen-guns are being charged,” said Phylas matter-of-factly.

  For a moment I didn’t take in his words. Then:

  “What?” I said, startled.

  “The ship is taking evasive action,” Phylas explained.

  “Oh by all that’s joyous,” Morval muttered to himself, “this Master-of-the-Ship has no idea.”

  “Cease,” I barked at the old man, “sarcasming.”

  I could see, on the panoramic wall-screen, that Explorer was now weaving and zagging through space, in bewildering randomised patterns.

  I was uncomfortable. It was proper protocol for the Ship’s Master to be informed in advance of all decisions made by the vessel’s computational mind; but on this occasion I was being ignored.

  For a moment, I felt a surge of annoyance; for in truth, I hated being sidelined like this. I understood of course that my role as Master was largely ceremonial; and that all major decisions were made by the Mistress Commander and the Star-Seeker and the ship’s computational brain. But this was an ugly reminder of a truth I generally preferred to, well, ignore.

  However, I hid my irritation between a mask of bonhomie, charm, and self-deprecating wit; as I always do.

  “Why?” I asked courteously, with my favourite irresistible smile, “are we doing all this?”

  “Missiles have been launched by Explorer; power beams are being fired by Explorer; the intended target is the asteroid,” said Phylas, ignoring my question.

  “Yes but why?”

  “You’ll find out,” said Morval with grim pleasure, “soon enough.”

  I followed the progress of the attack on the wall-screen: our ship in space, the orb of the planetary moon looming before us; the flaring colours of the gen-gun missiles, and the pillars of energy from the light-cannons arcing a slow progress towards the asteroid. It was a stately dance of colour and light set against a black cloth of night.

  I assumed that the enemy were attempting to attack us; but Albinia had still told me nothing. Her lips moved silently as she and Explorer waged space war. I was tense; for the truth was, I had never been quite so close to combat before. In all the battles in which I had played a role, I had been part of the rapidly fleeing Trader fleet, protected by Navy and Explorer vessels.

  Now, I was in the front line and I could die.

  I saw, on the screen, our missiles flying closer and closer to the asteroid. While, on my phantom control display, a bewildering series of graphs and equations flashed before my eyes, though I had no idea what meanings they conveyed.

  “Now,” said Morval, somehow managing to guess what was about to occur.

  And at just that moment, the asteroid erupted. And a flock of black triple-horned warcraft emerged from it, hurtling towards us.

  “Two hundred and forty-two enemy drone missiles,” said Phylas.

  “The radiation trail indicates dirty nuclear bombs,” added Morval.

  “They’re attacking us!” I summarised, in a cheery fashion; playing the fool with my usual panache.

  “Forgive me,” said Albinia, dreamily. “I thought it better to act first, and inform you of my decisions later.”

  “Very wise, beloved Mistress,” I said generously, concealing my anger.

  “Sarcasming is not a word,” Morval reminded me, with his usual long memory.

  “It has a ring to it,” I said defensively.

  Commander Galamea arrived on the Hub, in a blaze of implicitly-rebuking-the-rest-of-us-for-being-so-lazy energy.

  “Master-of-the-Ship, report!” she barked.

  “Morval, brief the Commander please,” I said, sneakily.

  “Explorer seems to have detected an imminent attack, we have no more data,” said Morval, which irked me, because I could have said that much.

  Albinia groaned, lost in communion with Explorer.

  And, just as the last of the enemy drones emerged from the artificial asteroid, Explorer’s missiles began to silently detonate. It was like a birthday sky-fire display against the blackness of space.

  Moments later, a haze appeared on the screen; and the enemy drones began to slowly fall apart, like dancers breaking away from a tableau into separated solos. There were no subsequent explosions as these craft broke up; these were merely objects sundering into their myriad pieces as if changing their minds about existing.

  I realised that our gen-gun missiles were not just kinetic, they also harboured atom-disruptor particles. The snarling swarm of enemy drone bombs were being destabilised at sub-atomic level.

  “What information do we have about this civilisation?” asked the Commander.

  “Hostile?” guessed Morval.

  “Type 3, post-nuclear, pre-shiftingsands, the home planet is the gas giant fifth from the sun but they also inhabit five other planets and twelve satellites and those comets are in fact space stations with tails,” said Albinia, with her usual calm dreamy certainty.

  “Explorer is preparing to fire again,” said Morval.

  And thin rays of energy erupted once more from the gen-gun tubes.

  And before long, the panoramic wall-screen showed nothing but empty space, and the faint wisps of former menace that was all that remained of the enemy fusillade.

  “See this,” said Morval, somehow once again miraculously anticipating the action.

  A juggernaut of a spaceship was emerging from the hollow asteroid. It was clearly expecting an easy passage behind its escort of killer drone bombs. Instead, it was met with a withering hail of destructive energy from Explorer. The juggernaut shimmered, like a firebird on a midsummer night about to explode; then abruptly dematerialised.

  And I looked at Morval, puzzled. How did he manage, time and again, to predict so accurately what was going to happen?

  Explorer glided deeper into the stellar system, until it reached planet Five, the home of these unpleasant sentients.

  It was a gas giant, with six natural rings and a larger artificial ring which Explorer identified as a space defence system.

  And there we waited. We had already demonstrated that we (or rather Albinia in communion with Explorer) had powers beyond the imagining of these beings. The rational response would be for them to surrender unconditionally, in the hope of averting further fatalities.

  That seemed, however, unlikely.

  I reclined in my Master’s chair, watching it all on the wall-screen. “How many times,” I asked Phylas, “do the wretched aliens try to kill you when you appear?”

  “Always.”

  “Not always,” corrected Morval.

  “There was that time-”

  “That was a feint. They greeted us in peace, and ambushed the Traders a century later.”

  “How did you know-”

  “I always know what you will say,” said Morval.

  Phylas glowered; hurt at being shut out from his own conversation.

  Commander Galamea prowled the deck.

  “Explorer, progress report,” said Galamea.

  “Wait and see,” said Albinia dreamily.

  We waited.

  And then an image appeared on our panoramic wall-screen; Albinia had made contact with the aliens’ leader. He was a squat, asymmetrical, slimy and undeniably ugly creature, with no visible eyes and a mouth that went up instead of across.

  “Greetings,” I said. Explorer had of course been intercepting all the radio traffic from these creatures since we arrived in their system, and had gathered enough information about their language to run a translation facility.

  “You speak language our,” growled the alien.

  “Apparently not that well,” I conceded. “We come in peace, and so forth; and we wish to trade.”

  “You kill have of hundreds our people,” said the alien.

  “Albinia,” I snapped.

  “Give us time; their la
nguage has a weird syntax,” Albinia said defensively.

  “We did not destroy your warriors and their spaceship,” I explained carefully. “We have merely concealed them in another dimension, from which we can retrieve them easily if you prove you are peaceful. And now we wish to negotiate.”

  “You hold people our hostage!” roared the alien.

  “Indeed we do.”

  “Smart is thinking,” said the alien, evidently reassured. “Down welcome planet ours.”

  “I would be delighted,” I said.

  Our landing craft emerged like a child being birthed from the hull of Explorer, and rocket-propelled across the expanse of open space. The shadow-selves of Albinia and I sat side by side in the cockpit and watched the view. I was close enough to smell her skin, and hear her breath, if she had been possessed of skin and breath.

  It occurred to me that I had certain clandestine personal reasons for wanting Albinia on this mission with me; and I was delighted at my own unsuspected subterfuge.

  Our craft reached the outer atmosphere of the bright purple gas giant; and we looked down at the swirling winds below.

  “Are you still inhabiting Explorer?” I asked Albinia.

  “Yes.”

  “Whilst operating the simulacrum.”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you have, perhaps, enough reserves of consciousness remaining to engage in idle chat?”

  “No.”

  “As I feared.”

  The landing craft descended; we were held in position by our stay-still fields, as the vessel rocked and shook. The hull was being buffeted by powerful gales and seared with toxic gases, but the craft’s force-mantle protected it entirely. The electronic eyes on the craft’s hull looked deep into the wild screaming madness of the atmosphere, and Albinia saw it all too.

  “ How do they endure this place?” I marvelled, using a murmur-link to connect directly to Albinia.

  “ It is, strangely, magnificent, ” Albinia said and smiled. And then the smile faded and she was, once more, off in a world of her own, barely aware of me.

  I looked at the view from my tiny porthole, a maelstrom of heat and burning gases, and I felt nauseous. Outside the craft, the pressure was so great it would crush a space suit and condense an Olaran body to the size of a crumb, if we had been so foolish as to go for a walk.

  Thus, through air as thick as ice, we fell downwards, until, finally, we were in the midst of the alien flock.

  These creatures-the Prismas-were spawned of gas and plasma, yet somehow (the physics entirely eluded me) nevertheless existed in squat asymmetrical solid and eyeless form that could survive without a spacesuit in the atmosphere of a gas giant.

  According to Phylas, these strange beings could act like suns-creating metals out of their own substance, and then weaving them into spaceships. Thus, their drone ships were spawned like eggs; and their “missiles” were not mere artefacts, they were in effect, cells discharged from the Prisma host bodies.

  “Can understand us you?” said a voice over our radio net. I looked outside the porthole; and I could see a hundred Prismas hovering in the air like fat turds with mouths all around us. This was as near as our species could get to each other; the Prismas could not survive in our atmosphere; and we would not be able to see or hear a thing in their atmosphere. So we would have to talk to them from within the landing craft.

  “Yes we can,” I said, peering out and wondering which Prisma I was talking to.

  “Living are creatures you?”

  “We are living creatures.”

  “You travelled space have? Through.”

  “We have travelled through space.”

  “Whole tendrils of a are you?”

  “We are not tendrils of a whole; we are the whole. We are creatures of flesh and blood. We do not exist as you do, as creatures of gas and, er, stuff.”

  “Impossible.”

  “It is possible. There are many varied kinds of life.”

  “Rocks are you. Excreta are you. Are worthy not to talk with us.”

  “We have to talk with you. We owe you this.”

  “Where is the planet from which you come?” said the Prisma. Our translator was, I noticed with some relief, finally getting the hang of the creature’s syntax.

  “Far far away. You cannot reach it.”

  “Can it be inhabited by our kind?”

  “You cannot reach it.”

  “It can be inhabited by our kind?”

  “No, and you cannot reach it.”

  “You have no idea who we are. We are the most powerful and fearsome creatures in all the universe.”

  You are, I thought to myself, a bunch of arrogant fucks; and then I realised my murmur-talk device had translated this into speech.

  I switched off my communicator and turned to Albinia.

  “What do you think?”

  “Something is happening.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  I turned on my communicator and spoke again to the Prisma:

  “We are here to trade; do you understand that concept?”

  “You have come from far away; how? What ships do you possess? Are you long-lived?”

  “We give you a thing; you give us a thing. It’s called trade. Do you understand this concept?”

  “We have sent spaceships into farthest space; they have never returned. Can you explain this?”

  “Well, it’s a dangerous universe out there.”

  “We are the most fearsome species in existence; no harm could come to creatures such as us. Our voyagers were told to conquer and destroy and then return to fetch us. That was ten thousand years ago; and they are late. And we are full of wrath.”

  Albinia and I exchanged glances; this wasn’t looking too promising.

  “Be that as it may,” I continued to the Prisma, “let’s talk a bit more about this concept of ‘trade.’

  “You see,” I continued, getting into the swing of it now, “you have the ability to create metal artefacts with the power of your thoughts, and we could maybe sell stuff like that. Whereas we-”

  “Perhaps the journey was too long, and they died. We long to travel swiftly among the stars, rather than being trapped at sub-light speeds. Can you do that? Journey faster than light?”

  “We can.”

  “Can you teach us how?”

  “We could certainly give you some hints,” I temporised.

  “Then we can ‘trade,’ ” said the Prisma.

  Albinia patted my arm. I switched off my communicator. “Yes?”

  “Firstly, these creatures are a bunch of dangerous fucking lunatics,” she pointed out, quite accurately. “Secondly, I’m detecting some kind of weapon. Don’t know what. It involves the planet, and the sun, and a fleet of-something nasty. I think they’re aiming to attack Explorer again.”

  “What should I do?” I asked her, for though I was Master-of-the-Ship, I trusted her judgement totally.

  She thought, for a brief moment, with her merged-with-Explorer face, then a cold look came upon her.

  “They’re bastards; let’s fuck ’em,” she said.

  And so we fucked ’em.

  I triggered the self destruct switch.

  And our landing craft exploded; and obliterated into particles so small they could not be assimilated by the Prismas.

  And then a searing wave of heat from the explosion ripped through the alien creatures, sundering them into a billion wave-lets.

  And then-as I was later told-in orbit above the planet, the Prisma battle fleet emerged from the shadow of their moon and launched a massive attack upon Explorer.

  At the same time, Prisma drone ships leaped from hiding places amidst the gas giant’s rings and rained missiles and heat-energy upon Explorer, drenching its forcefields.

  However, Explorer’s shields deflected the enemy’s beams and missiles with ease; and it then counter-attacked, using its disruptor ray at full capacity; and the entire Pr
isma fleet was obliterated in an instant.

  And all that was left was a swirl of random atoms in space.

  For such is the power of Olara; we do not seek war, but when we fight, we always win.

  At about this time, I woke up on my simulacrum bench. And I staggered to my feet and saw that Albinia’s skin was close to burning point; steam was rising from it. The simulated experience of being burned alive on the planet was manifesting as actuality on her real body.

  I doused her with cooling spray, just as she woke up, and screamed with agony. Then I cradled her, as Phylas entered.

  He turned ashen at the sight of Albinia.

  “She’ll be fine,” I snapped. It had been my idea to take Albinia with me on this mission; but to risk the life of a Star-Seeker was, in retrospect, a reckless and a foolish thing. I knew it myself, and I desperately hoped no one would be vulgar enough to tell me so.

  I carried Albinia to the sick room and placed her in healing stasis. Then I returned to the Hub.

  “What’s happening?” asked Commander Galamea. “Explorer isn’t moving.”

  I am not-well, said Explorer, forlornly, via our murmur-links.

  “Manual operation,” I said, and spoke directly to Explorer: “Your human half is unconscious. She has been injured. Seal the system.” Injured, how? said Explorer’s voice.

  “Psychosomatic sympathetic burns. We died, down there, and we felt it here.”

  “Your fault,” said Morval, cruelly. “You jeopardised the life of our Star-Seeker. You-”

  I should have known it would be him.

  “Explorer: these are my instructions,” I snapped. “Bomb the gas giant, kill as many of those ugly big parent-fuckers as you can. Then seal the system. Get us out of here.”

  “I need to-” Commander Galamea said.

  “DO IT NOW,” I screamed, and Explorer heard my voice of command, and on the wall-screen I saw plumes of cloud start to emerge from the gas giant. Teleported bombs were exploding on the planet’s surface.

  Explorer accelerated; but the stay-still fields were not in place so we were scattered like ritsos, and I flew across the room and crashed into Commander Galamea. We gripped each other, just as the stay-still came on; and for a few awkward moments we were held aloft in each other’s arms, as if swept up by an imaginary wind.