Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

“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.

And the streets of the cities and smaller settlements were covered in corpses, and already-whitening skeletons. All the dead were FanTang or Jaimal, and many wore heavy body armour or exo-skeletons.

The people of this planet were warriors and they had marched into battle against some implacable foe. Billions if not trillions had died; yet our cameras did not see the corpse of a single enemy combatant.

It was carnage; token of a defeat so absolute it beggared belief.

“That’s a Trader craft,” said Morval, and the scout ship flew lower and we saw the wreckage of a Trader vessel on the ground, its complex bottle-curves shattered by some hammer blow. There were corpses lying near the wreckage. They were clearly Olaran.

“Retrieve the bodies,” I said, and the scout ship levitated the corpses and swallowed them in its hull.

“Who did this?” asked Galamea.

The image on the screen began to flicker.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

Albinia screamed, and screamed, and her eyes snapped out of trance, cutting her link with the metal minds.

“The planet,” she murmured.

Phylas changed the sky-eye image, and now we saw hovering in mid-air a more distant view of the blackened smoking globe of the planet of the FanTang.

“The planet’s going to blow,” said Phylas, taking the readings.

Pillars of flame started to burst upwards from the planet’s surface. Black clouds gathered and dispersed, then re-gathered. The blue of the seas and the red of the fields slowly vanished; until nothing could be seen except a black haze of smoke that mingled with the mushroom clouds.

“The sun!” screamed Phylas, and an image of the sun appeared before us.

The sun was changing colour, and its corona was flaring even more wildly, expelling gobbets of plasma like the vomit of a dying Olaran. I looked at my instruments and saw that we were being drenched in solar radiation.

“Supernova?” I said.

“I believe so,” said Phylas.

Now, the process seems wearily familiar; then, it was a horror like nothing we had ever seen.

After hours of devastating volcanic activity and earthquakes that ripped the land to shreds, the planet itself shattered -it broke into a million parts, as if struck a terrible blow, and the fragments drifted in space.

And then, in a ghastly slow ballet, the moons too detonated, one by one; like spools of cable unwinding, leaving sad haloes of light behind where once life had dwelled.

And finally, the sun of the FanTang turned supernova; an eruption of light like a universe birthing; a vision of nature’s fury such as I had never seen before.

Ten years previously I had travelled to this stellar system and raged at the ignorance and brutal violence of that wretched species, the FanTang. Now they were a memory; their bodies interstellar debris; and I was chilled at the breathtaking malice of such an act of planetary genocide.

“The FanTang,” Albinia announced, “left a dying message; they blame us for their downfall.”

“No one will believe that,” said Albinia.

“Some may,” conceded Morval.

“They accused us of betraying them; ambushing them; and destroying their planet,” said Albinia.

“They were,” I said excusingly, “wild with grief.”

“The Trader Post was also destroyed; five hundred Olarans dead,” Albinia added.

Morval made a strange exclamation; more howl than word.

“How is that possible?” Morval said. “Our space defences are-”

“The Olaran Court believes there is a aggressive species currently active with technology comparable to our own,” Albinia concluded.

“That conclusion is inescapable,” said Galamea coldly. She had fought in the war against the Stuxi; she more than anyone knew what was at stake here.

For our entire culture, our entire civilisation, is founded on one thing: undefeatable military might, based on science far beyond the imaginings of most sentient species. The Stuxi came close; but even they were, ultimately, easily defeated by our astonishingly powerful weapons of destruction.

It was our military power than ensured that no species could invade us, or defeat us, or threaten our trading links. But now, at a stroke, that had changed. And we were vulnerable.

I felt dizzy; as though standing on a high cliff top, staring down into an abyss.

“Whoever did this,” I said, calmly, but with utter conviction-for I knew the ability of our kind to birth a grudge, and to nurture it, and then to wreak the most terrible vengeance-“they shall pay.”

Sa-ias

I was travelling fast across the plain, throwing myself upwards and forwards with my tentacles, like a bullet with arms, when I heard a roaring sound above me. I tried to swerve away, but I was too slow and a great weight came crashing into me.

Cuzco!

His claws lashed at me, his great jagged tongue jabbed me, his six wings enveloped me and prevented me from propelling myself forward.

“You fucking cunt-eating cowardly fucking seamonster!” he screamed at me, and his foul words flew on the wind as our bodies encoiled and rolled.

I screamed at him to stop but he wouldn’t heed me and we continued to tumble along the ground.

At the last moment Cuzco broke free but I carried on hurtling onwards and gouged a huge trench out of the grey earth with my arse and back segments.

Cuzco’s assault had knocked the breath out of my lungs. I was dazed. I clambered myself upright on to my twelve feet and I glared at Cuzco.

“Was that your idea,” I asked, “of a joke?”

“Oh,” said Cuzco, “yes.”

And Cuzco bared his face at me; and mocking laughter consumed his features.

I sighed, from my tentacle tips; I loved Cuzco, but even so, I had to concede that he could be an annoying bully sometimes.

“That stupid fucking biped of yours,” he said tauntingly, “will never last. He’ll be in Despair and out of the hatch in less than a year.”

“We’ll see.”

Cuzco’s features were consumed with hilarity. “He doesn’t stand a swamp-fucking chance!” he crowed, and I raged at his cruel mockery.

And yet I feared his words were true.

The Rhythm of Days consumed me, as it always did.

And then, on a Day the Ninth, just three cycles after leaving Sharrock with the arboreals, I travelled to see him, once again using my tentacles to fling me fast through the air.

I saw that the camp I had helped him to make in the forest was deserted. I stood by the trees and called his name and saw no trace of him.

And so I called up to the aerials flying above and they descended, and I asked them courteously for a favour.

And then I spread my cape and they gripped my carapace in their claws and lifted me up into the air. Up I rose, their sharp talons gripping my soft skin, their wings beating; a hundred aerial creatures with scales and feathers and furs upon their wings, some with double heads, some with none, some as large as clouds, some as tiny as a biped’s skull; and they flew me up, above the tree line; then higher still; and patiently waited until the winds were strong enough to support me.