Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

I realised that the Commander’s skin was pinking; and it dawned on me that she was in heat.

“Commander,” I said softly.

She glared at me.

“If you need any-” I hinted.

“What?”

“Help?”

She glared even more.

“Help with what?”

“If your mood is… I realise that when a female is…”

Her glaring intensified.

“You want to fuck me?” she asked, savagely.

“If you need me to,” I said helpfully,

“I will never,” Galamea said, “need a male ever again!”

Her body was trembling with repressed passion; I was awed at the strength of will she was displaying in refusing my offer.

And baffled, too; for all she had to do was indicate her sexual state, and all of us males would do our duty. Grudgingly, perhaps; but even so!

So what, I wondered, made her so bizarrely reluctant to ask?

We shadow-suited up, Galamea and I.

I had a bad feeling about this. But it was the Commander’s idea; she wanted to experience a mission with me.

I lay down on the shadow couch. I closed my eyes.

And then I opened my eyes and found myself standing on a planet full of dark gloom. I could hardly see my way to walk.

Galamea switched on her helmet-torch and we made our way through a dense mass of pointed stakes. This was, I realised, a field of sorts.

“ The nest is to your left, six thousand baraks, ” said Albinia/Explorer.

“Why the darkness? I thought it was daytime,” Galamea asked.

“ I have no data on that.”

“Are there thick clouds?”

“ I have no data on that.”

My shadow feet left no tread; but my motion must have triggered a trap. A stake impaled my body, from my arse to my scalp. I tried to wriggle free.

“Split yourself,” said Galamea bluntly.

“I can’t.”

“Split yourself!”

I split my body in half and Galamea picked up the pieces and stuck them back together. My shadow self reformed.

“ Here, ” said Albinia/Explorer, and I switched on my own helmet-torch and the field was illumined. We saw around us leafless trees haunted by shadows. The shadows were the nocturnals who were the primary sentient species on this planet. The secondary sentients were trees and our chances of trading with them were approximately low to zero.

“Do you have any concept,” Galamea said to me, in quiet tones, as we were waiting for the shadows to approach.

“Of what, Commander?”

“Of how it feels. To have no power over your body.”

“I do not follow.”

“Last week. When I was in heat. You so courteously offered to… fornicate with me. When I was, as you were aware, in heat.”

“I would have been privileged to assist you, Commander,” I said, cautiously. I had never been spoken to so candidly by a female before about this delicate matter. Even my lovers had never referred to the monthly imperative of their biology, except in terms of their needing it, and needing it now.

“I did not want you to do so,” Galamea said bluntly. “I mean-what I’m trying to say here Master-of-the-Ship Jak-is that I didn’t want you to fuck me, at such a time, and in such a way.”

I was piqued at that.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because I don’t want to be,” she pointed out, with anger modulating her normally calm tones, “just an animal. Unable to control my brute lust. Nor frankly do I savour your selfless pathetic obedience. We need to be more than prisoners of our own biology, Jak! We have-don’t we see-the potential to be so much more!”

“Whatever you say, Commander,” I said, my casual tone belying the fact I was affronted at her words.

Pathetic? Obedient? Was that really how she saw me?

“Do you have the faintest idea what I’m saying?” she asked me, sadly.

“Not really,” I admitted

“Then forget we had this conversation.”

“It’s forgotten.”

The shadows lifted from the trees and hovered above us. A slow hissing sound surrounded us.

“Can you translate?” Galamea asked Albinia.

“ Not yet. ”

We waited patiently for Explorer to decode the linguistic patterns in these creature’s malign hissing.

“Are these shadowy bastards a hive intelligence?” I asked.

“ I have no data on that,” said Albinia/Explorer.

The shadows hovered high, and when I looked up at them, at the black clouds that blocked the sun, I realised that the clouds were moving.

“These creatures block their own sun,” I told Albinia/Explorer.

We stood in that field for fourteen hours, but Explorer never managed to decode the aliens’ strange hissing language.

And so the system was abandoned, but not quarantined. The mission was a failure.

But Galamea’s words stayed with me.

And many years later, after she was dead, it occurred to me what she had really been saying that day in the field of trees and shadows.

She had been asking me to change. To stop serving her blindly; to cease treating her with craven adoration; to treat her, in short, as an equal. All this, I eventually realised.

Too late.

“Where are you talking me?”

“Not far. My cabin is here. Down the corridor,” I said.

Sharrock stepped anxiously along the circular corridor, struggling to keep his balance because of the steepness of the slope. The corridor was large enough to accommodate my bulk and that of Cuzco and the other “giant” sentients, as we are called. Sharrock was dwarfed by it, like an insect clambering across the hide of a huge and grossly fat land animal; or, indeed, like Lirilla dancing upon the backside of Fray.

He slipped, and fell, and scrambled back to his feet.

“Take care,” I advised him.

“I tripped,” he said angrily, “on that fucking slime trail you leave wherever you’ve fucking been.”

“It is an outpouring of my essence, not a ‘fucking slime trail,’ ” I told him stiffly.

“You fucking corpse-fucking slime-leaving freak,” Sharrock sneered.

I slithered on.

The circular tunnel expanded into a large circular atrium, and I spoke the code and a door opened in the wall. I slid inside and Sharrock scrambled behind me, and we arrived in my cabin, the largest on the ship, which also was a perfect sphere.

Sharrock stood and looked around and his breathing became irregular, and I guessed this was a visceral response to what he saw before him.

“These are my cabin friends,” I explained.

His face was calm, his demeanour relaxed, as befits a warrior; but I could tell that, beneath the mask, Sharrock was filled with fear.

“Hello there,” said Cuzco.

“Hi,” added Fray.

“You look like shit,” said one of Quipu’s heads-the leftmost one, Quipu One-unhelpfully.

“Welcome,” said Doro.

“Hello,” said Lirilla.

“I am privileged,” said Sharrock, with nary a tremor in his voice, “to encounter such noble creatures.”

Cuzco snorted with contempt; and Sharrock flinched, as smoke seared the air and Cuzco’s eyes radiated hate.

“In my world,” Cuzco said softly, “you would be carrion.”

Sharrock stared up at Cuzco, fearlessly. “You really are one ugly son-of-an-arsehole fuck, aren’t you,” he said marvelling. And Cuzco’s eyes blazed scarlet with rage and his back-body thrashed and his body-horns grew into long spikes, and his scales rattled, and all at once the huge circular room seemed too small to contain us all.

Sharrock continued to stare, with no trace of fear; ready to fight or to die; his body a veritable masterpiece of composure.

And finally, Cuzco gave ground: his body shrank, his back-body stilled, his scales became silent, his horns sank back beneath his armour, his eyes turned green again. And his tongue lapped the air, and we could see the jagged tongue-spikes which Cuzco, in the old days, would have used to suck the blood and the life out of any errant or impertinent biped.