Hell Ship

by Philip Palmer

  “The air- knows this?” said Sharrock.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s-” said Sharrock, and could not find a word for it.

  “And it also, so I’m told,” I continued, “carries with it light. The sun is not the sun, it is merely air shaped in a ball. And when the air of the sun grows tired, the light gets redder and we call that sunset.”

  “Air can do all that?”

  “In this world, yes it can,” I explained.

  “Such marvels are-beyond belief,” said Sharrock, and I could tell he was plotting and scheming again. “But this air-the Ka’un created it right? It has, perhaps, micro-particles that carry information? So each molecule of air functions like a miniature artificial mind? Like a… a… data engine, but at a sub-atomic level?”

  “Perhaps,” I said, cautiously.

  “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?” said Sharrock.

  “No I do not.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Why is it amazing?”

  Sharrock’s mouth made a shape, common to many bipeds; a smile.

  “I’m not considered to be a great scientist among my kind. I’m certainly not a Philosopher,” Sharrock explained. “But these are basic concepts, that every sentient creature must be aware of. Surely?”

  “Not me,” I admitted.

  He was silent for a while. I could tell his spirits were high; he was convinced he had discovered some secret that could be used to destroy the Ka’un. The usual delusion.

  And so, as we sat there, I realised that it was time for me to proceed to the next stage of my strategy; to save this poor wretched creature before hope wholly destroyed him.

  Thus, once we had eaten and digested, I began to speak to him softly, whilst bathing him in a persuasive spray from my tentacles that would, I knew, render him more pliable and less aggressive.

  “This is what will happen,” I explained. “In a while we will walk down to the forest. You will find there a place to live. And there also will be creatures for you to live with. They will teach you the ways of this world; and they will be harsh ways. I will visit you when I can. But I can help you no more; this must be your home now.”

  “You’re leaving me?” Sharrock said, drowsily, with only a trace of fear in his voice.

  “I will see you as often as I can,” I said. “But though you and I can be friends, we can’t be-close friends. Our bodies are too different.”

  “And what do I do, when I’m given this new home?”

  “You must learn,” I told him, “to love the little pleasures. You can fish, and forage, and hunt; and bask in the sun; and savour the Rhythm of Days.”

  “That is no kind of life,” Sharrock said, through his sleepy haze, “for a warrior!”

  “Ah, you warriors, you are so brave,” I said, flatteringly.

  “I am,” he said, drugged yet proud, “among the greatest of warriors!”

  “You must forget all that,” I said soothingly. “Forget your old ways. Live for the moment.”

  “The greatest,” he murmured, “of warriors.”

  And I sighed, from each of my tentacle tips, sorrowfully.

  I dared not tell Sharrock the truth, not just yet; that there is indeed a place for warriors on the Ka’un’s ship.

  For some nights, the night does not end. And a deep dreamless sleep descends upon us.

  And when we wake, we find that some of our most fearsome fighters have disappeared. They have been conveyed, in a fashion we do not comprehend, away from their cabins while the rest of us slept. And of these, the Vanished Ones, some never return. And others, like Cuzco on so many occasions, do return after a passage of months or years, but horrendously scarred and battered, or with limbs that are weak and recently regrown.

  And these Vanished Warriors have no recollection of what has occurred to them, and no inkling as to how they sustained their injuries.

  At first, many of us assumed that the Ka’un were “experimenting” on the Vanished Ones, to advance their knowledge of alien biology; such ruthless behaviour is, I have learned, common among many technological species. Others believed that the Vanished Ones were being tortured for information; though since all of us had lost our worlds, it was hard to say what information the Ka’un might need from us.

  But as time went by the truth forced itself upon us all. The Vanished Ones always had one thing in common; they were strong, or armoured, or fierce, or terrifyingly large, or from species which made a religion of the art of war.

  Or to put it in bolder terms: those who go missing are the warriors supreme of the Ka’un’s Hell Ship. And it became obvious to all of us what they do.

  They fight, and vanquish, and destroy, and capture fresh slaves.

  Thus, these warriors unwillingly serve the evil that is the Ka’un. They conquer alien worlds; their memories are swept clean; and they are returned to us.

  This, I knew, would be Sharrock’s fate; his warrior skills would make him irresistibly attractive to the Ka’un. I did not warn him, however, of what was in prospect for him; for who could bear to know they were cursed with such a terrible fate?

  Lies, sometimes, can be kinder than truth.

  “This will be your home now,” I told Sharrock, as we stood in the shadow of the scarlet carola trees that marked the boundary of the forest region.

  He stared at me accusingly. “Did you drug me?” he asked.

  “I calmed you.”

  “My rage,” said Sharrock, incredulously, “has gone. I feel content.”

  “That is good.”

  “My rage has gone. I feel content!” He sounded like a child who has had a toy stolen by a sibling.

  “You will be happy here.” A silver-furred arboreal dropped from the tree-top and joined us, scamperingly.

  “This is Mangan,” I said. “He will be your companion and your mentor now.”

  Mangan danced, and snarled; and his eyes flickered hatred.

  “Why,” said Mangan, “do we have to put up with this hairless fucking freak?”

  “He is my friend,” I said soothingly. “Protect him.”

  Mangan cackled, and scratched his balls, and spat green phlegm, and began to-I need describe no more. Mangan truly was the foulest of beasts.

  Sharrock looked at the silver arboreal warily, and with an expression of considerable distaste. “ These are the creatures I must live with?”

  “Treat him well,” I said to Mangan, who merely cackled, and stared with hate at the fresh meat I had so generously provided him with.

  I unfurled my cape, and I seized the ground with my tentacle tips and hurled myself into the air away from them. Sharrock called after me; but I continued to seize and fly, seize and fly, and I did not look back.

  Sharrock

  I felt an overwhelming sense of relief when the monster departed.

  This black-hided brute has pretended to be my friend; but I know that she is no more than the hapless pawn of my gaolers. Her soft words-for her voice is melodious and beautiful without doubt-have been used to lull me and deceive me. She has preached acceptance and forgiveness; but as a warrior, I could never accept, or forgive, those who have wronged me so utterly.

  And so to be free of her gave me a great sense of liberation.

  I looked about me, and became attuned to the sounds and the sweet smells of the forest. I could hear screeches and howls and clicks and roars and bellows and grating noises. There were very many creatures here, and none of them were familiar to me. The trees also were strange-some with bark as hard as marble, some soft to the touch. The plants which covered the forest ground were equally diverse and bizarre and their leaves and flowers spanned the rainbow of colours, with some shades of green and purple I had never seen before. There were no insects; that was strange. The air was mild, quite warm; the sun cast a steady heat but never moved.

  Once Sai-ias had left, Mangan had fled too. As I had suspected, this was a creature who knew nothing about honouring one’s word. But t
his too filled me with relief; I had no intention of being trapped in a forest, and certainly not in a small cabin, with a bunch of monkeys.

  Instead, I resolved I would live alone, in this forest; I was a creature of the desert, but I was sure I could easily adapt. And I found that I liked the colours, and the scents, and the cacophony of sounds of this alien landscape.

  For months I had lived in a cage of metal, occasionally released from captivity only to spend hours in the company of garrulous monsters of astonishingly vile aspects.

  But now, after all those months of close captivity, I could smell flowers in the air, I could hear creatures crying and howling and singing, my senses were exhilaratedly alive. And I felt-no this could not be!-yet it was-I felt content. Fulfilled.

  I could of course never be truly happy on this world. But I did at least relish being alive, in the forest, with all my senses engaged to the full.

  And so I walked carefully through the avenues and alleys of trees, treading a path through wild shrubs and knotted ground vines, over mossy carpets of green and scarlet, and past plants with barks that resembled obsidian and others that seemed to be clad in soft velvet, and others stranger still.

  And then my instincts flared and I rolled to the ground and turned around, to see that a serpentine creature had dropped from the branches behind me. It was clearly enraged that it had failed to land upon my head; it snarled viciously; its fangs were large and it spat venom that I dodged swiftly. And then it lunged at me. I had no weapon, but I stood my ground, and caught the creature in my hands, and strangled it to death.

  Then I ripped the creature to pieces with my teeth and made a weapon out of its hide and fangs.

  I moved onwards. It occurred to me I was still wearing the clothes I had on when my planet was attacked-leather tunic, leather trousers, a gold-mail vest, and silver bracelets around my wrists; and I now wondered how that was possible. The lava would have burned all these things off my body, as well as destroying my flesh and organs. So how was I alive? And how could my clothing still be wearable? And what had happened to the space armour I had put on? Why in other words were some of my clothes intact, but not all?

  I decided these could not be my actual clothes. They must have stripped the clothing off the corpse of another warrior of similar bulk, cleaned it of blood, and dressed me in his garb. My body was then, or so I speculated, rejuvenated by means unknown to me; but that was hardly difficult to achieve. My own kind have rejuvenation therapies that allow us to restore a broken warrior to full health within months; it was no wonder these technologically advanced aliens could do better.

  I sniffed my clothes and my theory was confirmed; these were not Sharrock’s. The leather of the tunic smelled of leather; not of me. I had worn my own garments on a myriad adventures; they were steeped in my stench.

  And now a new adventure had begun. My planet was gone; my people were gone; I was alone on a hostile planet, which is actually a ship, surrounded by aliens who are monstrous beyond belief, ruled by unseen devils who all fear but none dare defy.

  It was, I resolved, time for Sharrock to show what he could really do!

  For I remembered the time A figure dropped to the ground behind me; I interrupted my reverie, and turned in a single easy gesture. It was the silver-skinned monkey, Mangan, glaring at me with his evil eyes.

  “Greetings,” I said.

  “You are to be our cabin friend, I gather,” said Mangan.

  “That was the stated intention of the monster Sai-ias,” I said. “But I am happy to live alone.”

  “That is not an option, cock-brain,” said Mangan, cackling.

  “I will live alone,” I said calmly.

  “You will do as Sai-ias requires,” Mangan insisted.

  “I think not,” I said smiling.

  Mangan cackled again. He was a vile creature. And then, to my shock and dismay, he hunched down and he shat, like the most vulgar of beasts. Then he captured his column of shit in one hand, and squeezed it into a tight compact ball.

  And then he threw it at me. It was so fast I did not have time to dodge; and the shit-ball was remarkably hard, harder than any stone. I felt the dampness of my own blood trickle down my cheek.

  But I ignored the provocation.

  “My people were killed, I will take revenge somehow, I will live alone,” I explained patiently.

  Three other monkeys dropped to the ground beside Mangan. One of them had a sharpened stick, and I relaxed, hefting the home-made fang-weapon in my hand.

  I sensed another home-made missile about to hit me from behind, and this time I was ready; I rolled easily to the ground; the shit-ball flew past me, but a second ball of excrement from an assailant I hadn’t spotted hit me on the side of the head.

  I cursed; the months of captivity had sapped my warrior reflexes.

  Fortunately, however, this particular ball had been inadequately compacted; it was soft, not hard; thus, I had sustained no damage. My head however, felt damp and sticky and I touched it with a finger. The smell overwhelmed me.

  However, I laughed uproariously, to show I could take a joke.

  “Do you have a hole where you ought to have a cock?” asked Mangan, provocatively.

  “Not so,” I said cheerfully.

  Mangan cackled, then he turned his back to me, and then he At this moment, I am bound to relate, I foolishly lost my temper.

  Jak

  Albinia closed her eyes. I watched as she sank into a trance.

  Her worry lines faded, her angry look disappeared. She was, once more, radiant.

  I could see on my phantom control display the images she beheld via Explorer’s riftscope. Glimpses of planets and suns and black wildernesses of space and U shaped galaxies and oval galaxies and spilled-milk galaxies and fast-whirling galaxies and exploding stars.

  “Three civilisations in subsector 412, planet O431,” said Albinia, through her trance.

  We saw, on our display screens: stars, then planets, then seas, then fields, and plains, and savannahs, forests, mountains, cities, walkways, flying vehicles, temples, houses, shops and, finally, images of three kinds of sentients.

  Furred bipeds with three arms, living in the cities.

  Scaled polypods with tusks, dwelling in the savannahs.

  And feathered aerials nesting in clouds made of excreted webbing, above the forests.

  “Three Grade 2 civilisations on one planet?” I asked.

  “It looks that way.” Albinia murmured.

  “Any of them aggressive?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Can’t tell.”

  “Any artefacts? Jewellery? Artworks?”

  “Too soon to say.”

  “Do they have shifting-sands technology?”

  “Yes. Maybe. No. I don’t know.”

  Albinia’s head twitched. She was seeing the not-real as well as the real; visualising shards of possibilities that existed on the other side of the rift, of worlds and civilisations that might in fact not exist.

  “Set the coordinates,” I said.

  “We have an incoming message,” said Phylas.

  “Take the message, then get ready for rift flight,” I said.

  A face appeared on the screen; I recognised it as a FanTang.

  (This memory comes to me now laden with such terrible ironical agony; for those loathsome murderous creatures did perhaps deserve to die. But not us; we did not deserve it! Not all of us.)

  “We wish you wealth and health, and success in all your dealings,” I said formally to the FanTang.

  “You betrayed us!” roared the FanTang, with the hysterical rage so typical of his species.

  “We may,” I admitted, “have out-negotiated you. It’s a cultural thing: we see no harm in it, you see.”

  “You brought death and destruction to our planet!” roared the FanTang.

  I hesitated.

  And then continued to hesitate.

  “What are you talking about?” I eventually asked, baffled.

&n
bsp; “Earthquakes have ravaged our land! Fires from the sky have-”

  The transmission was interrupted.

  I blinked, totally at a loss. “What was that about?”

  “I have no idea,” said Morval.

  “A hoax?” suggested Phylas.

  “A trap?” suggested Galamea.

  “No,” said Albinia. Her eyes opened. “Explorer has accessed other such messages, sent to other Olaran vessels. We have also made contact with the Fleet. There is a story is emerging about what has befallen the planet of the FanTang.”

  “And what is that?” I asked, impatiently.

  “Apocalypse.”

  The sun of the FanTangs had exploded. Or rather, to be more precise, it had flared to an exceptional degree; coronal mass was billowing forth, and a vast proton swarm had radiated into the stellar system, where it was wreaking terrible havoc on the various planets and asteroids and space towns where the FanTang dwelt. Our sensors told us that there were now no traces of organic life in the entire stellar system.

  And the home world of the FanTang was a fireball. As we flew our cameras closer, we could see that the forests were ablaze. Volcanoes were spewing their hot lava into the atmosphere. Even the seas burned. The seas?

  “How can that be?” I asked. “The oceans on fire?”

  I and the rest of the ship’s officers were watching camera images transmitted from Explorer via Albinia’s mind; images that were being filmed by robot scouts that flew through the cloud and into the depths of the inferno.

  “It’s possible,” said Phylas, “but only if-”

  “Do we have the technology to do such a thing?” I snapped.

  “No,” Phylas conceded.

  The robot scouts flew down closer. We could see lava spurting out of cracks in the planet’s crust. The cities were wrecked, and entire mountain ranges had been demolished after devastating crust-plate shifts ripped the planet apart. FanTang military aeroplanes had fallen from the sky like snowflakes ablaze, and the remnants of futile missiles were scattered on fields and plains wherever we looked. Mushroom clouds from nuclear explosions billowed and their clouds merged to form an ugly grey shell in the sky.