Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

I thought of her often.

In fact, incessantly.

Indeed, for every moment of every day, I was haunted with memories of her achingly intellectual features, her lusciously perceptive smiles, and her casually neglectful glances when I performed for her some great service or other.

But I had made my choice: I would lose himself in my work. And I was no more a Trader. My job now was to lead the Explorer craft into the depths of uncharted space; where, in time-hallowed fashion, we would search out new and alien civilisations, in order to get the better of them in sly negotiations.

“Welcome to my ship,” I said to Morval.

His old, withered, bald head scrunched up in a scowl more ugly than-well, I had never seen anything more ugly.

“I have been on this vessel,” he pointed out, “for two hundred years.”

“It’s my vessel now,” I reminded him, courteously.

“I’m aware of that.” The scowl became a sneer; hardly an improvement.

“We should be friends,” I told the old Trader generously.

“I have, as a point of policy,” said Morval, “no friends. My friends all abandoned me when I was banished by the Chief Artificer.”

“I always admire an Olaran,” I said, “who can harbour a grudge the way a father raises a child; with love, care, and the passage of decades.”

“Ah, Master-of-the-Ship your wit is so… entirely adequate,” said Morval, bitterly.

“Let me make a wild surmise; you were passed over for promotion?”

“I was.”

“Because of your sullen attitude and melancholic disposition,” I suggested.

“And my abundant lack of youth and beauty.”

“Then clearly,” I suggested, “I am better qualified; for young I am, barely forty years, and many consider me beautiful. But you shouldn’t in any way feel-”

“This is a godsforsaken Explorer ship! We don’t need a pretty boy Master! We need someone who knows what in fuck’s name he’s doing!”

“And you would be that someone, I take it?”

“I would be, and I am.” And Morval stared at me with his dark haunting deep-set eyes. “The previous Master-of-the-Ship,” he pointed out, “died of shock when his simulacrum was eaten alive by sentient slugs, after he and I had spent two years trapped in an alien forest.”

“I’m used to danger.”

“You have no idea,” Morval told me, with evident glee, “what danger really is.”

I stood in the bleak, spartan Command Hub of my new ship, with grey walls all around, no porthole, and four brushed-Kar-goat-leather (I mean the common variety of Kar goat, not the rare beasts with skin like a baby’s arse) seats for the ship’s officers and our Commander. One of these seats was currently occupied by Star-Seeker Albinia, who was linked by a cable which stretched from her shaved head to the ship’s brain; and hence existed dreamily in a world of her own.

“You’re used to better,” sneered Morval.

“My Vassal Ship,” I said politely, “had wooden furniture, shaped and whittled intricately by a Master Carver, and a ship’s wheel made of gold and titanium.”

“Frippery!” said Morval. “Explorer steers the ship, Albinia sees through its eyes; what’s a ship’s wheel supposed to do?”

“It made me feel,” I pointed out, “important.”

Phylas grinned at me as if I’d made a great joke; he was, I realised, a shameless ingrate.

“Any chance of a view?” I asked, and Morval grunted again, with even greater disapproval. But I glared: Pardon me, direct order? And he yielded.

“Albinia,” Morval said, “give us your eyes.” Albinia responded without speaking, and the blank grey wall ahead of me became a panoramic view of the space outside our ship.

“Background music?”

A dark dense thrilling chord pitched at almost subliminally low levels filled the small cabin; that, and the stars, gave the spiritless space at least some sense of atmosphere.

Morval grunted and scowled, clearly caught up in a crescendo of disapproval, but I ignored him.

“My bunk,” I said to Phylas, who stood shyly beside me, “is it considered acceptable on such vessels?”

“It is the largest bunk on the ship.”

“Except for the female quarters.”

Phylas snorted with amusement. “Except, obviously, for the female quarters.”

“What is the Commander like?” I said. “Give me fair warning. Is she firm? Fair? Disciplined?”

“She is fierce.”

“Ah. Fierce.”

“She is a former Admiral in the Olaran Navy; she was discharged for excessive, um, brutality.”

“Against who?”

“Against the Stuxi.”

“The Stuxi,” I pointed out, “tried to destroy our home world; they were flesh-eating savages who murdered millions before we forced them into a truce.”

“Even so, a military tribunal found her too brutal.”

“Ah.”

“I believe also that she considers me an idiot,” Phylas admitted.

“And does she have grounds for that?”

“Occasional comments of mine have not always, um, accorded with common sense.”

“You really are,” I said kindly, “a child, aren’t you?”

“Aye Master.”

“Morval. Tell me about the ship. What weapons do we have?”

“Six gen-guns; twelve light-cannons, three negative matter transporters, and a disruptor ray,” Morval said.

“Engine capacity?”

“Four point two kais. With booster engines, and stay-still wraparounds. In a crisis, we flee to the nearest rift and escape.” Morval’s tone was brisk now; when it came to the business of the ship, he clearly knew his stuff.

“Show me how the stay-still does its job.”

Phylas conjured up his phantom controls, and pressed an oval; and our three bodies shimmered as the inertial haze surrounded us.

Then Phylas pressed another oval and the ship suddenly flipped over. Albinia of course was strapped to her seat; but Phylas, Morval and myself remained hovering in air, in the same position, though we were now upside down in relation to the Hub floor and control rigs.

Phylas pressed a third oval and we were right way up. “An alternative,” he said, “to seat harnesses.”

“Seat harnesses have always worked for me,” I said testily.

“I find,” said Morval, “they chafe.”

Phylas pressed the oval again. The ship flipped again. I was upside down, again.

“Oh, boy,” I said, delighted.

“Initiate the space drive,” said Commander Galamea.

We were ready to rift, and Commander Galamea had joined us in the Command Hub. She had made no comment about the wrap-around space panorama that now dominated this small room, but had quietly asked Albinia to cut the background music.

Galamea was a lean, strongly muscled female; her eyes burned with a blue light that betrayed many years in rift space; she did not look as if she knew how to smile, nor did it seem likely she would welcome instruction in that art.

“I am proud to serve, o exalted mistress,” I said.

“Just ‘Yes Commander’ will do,” Galamea said tersely, and I recalled how the military hate any display of courtesy and eloquence.

“Yes, exalted Commander,” I replied.

“Disreality is achieved, Commander,” said Morval.

“The slippery-sands-of-chaos envelop us,” said Phylas.

“Explorer is content,” said Albinia, dreamily. The cable that connected her to Explorer hung loosely out of her shaved head; her eyes were closed; her mind entirely in tune with the ship’s computational brain. She was, I noted in passing, the most ravishingly clever-looking Star-Seeker I had ever seen.

On my phantom controls, I could see that we were getting random readings across all vectors, as a consequence of the flux of chaos being generated.

A certain amount of time elapsed, but no one knew how much, or whether it was a longer or shorter passage of time than usual.