Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

Then I thanked them again, and the aerials released me, and flew off, no doubt relieved to be no longer lifting my considerable bulk. I was now gliding on updrafts of air, undulating my cape and extended body to remain stable.

And from my aerial viewpoint, I peered down at the forest canopy, looking for the haloes of the arboreals who were supposed to be Sharrock’s cabin friends.

It took me a while to remember the knack of ignoring visual input so that I could focus on the mesh of body heat and personality that defined each sentient’s halo. The four I was looking for had strongly defined haloes-they were angry, spiteful creatures, and that made them easier to find. They were: Mangan, who I had introduced to Sharrock, Tara, Shiiaa, and Daran.

But there were hundreds of arboreals down there, and it was hard to focus on haloes as my body bucked and kinked in the wind. But I persevered: and so slowly and carefully, as the black shadow of my body fell upon the green and yellow forest canopy below, my eyes analysed the blurry patterns of hundreds of bodies in motion.

Eventually I was confident I had found my four. They were travelling fast, running up and down trees and swinging from branch to branch. They were chasing something; and then I saw a fifth halo and recognised it as Sharrock. They were playing with him.

This was exactly what I’d feared; the foul-mouthed, arrogant, always-angry Sharrock had riled the vicious little bastards.

I began to glide downwards towards the canopy. I furled my cape to make my body smaller then released my hood so it dangled above and behind me, slowing my fall, allowing me to control my descent.

Then I tightened into a hard ball and crashed through the canopy, breaking branches and shattering tree trunks until I landed safely on the ground.

I was now back to my usual size, a moist-skinned jet-black sea creature in a forest; feeling out of place and claustrophobic. But I owed it to Sharrock to rescue him.

I called out Sharrock’s name; no response.

I called Sharrock’s name again, but still he did not show himself. So I peered through the trees, looking for his halo, and saw that he was near. He was running along the ground, frenziedly and fast; clearly he was not agile enough to swing from branch to branch.

He had been doing this, I guessed, for about thirty-four days; and yet his pace was unfaltering and fast.

I charged forward and crashed a path through the thick forest, towards Sharrock’s fleeing body. I could hear screaming and cackling near him. On I thundered; I was too large to weave between trees so I simply ran at them and pushed the trees over, leaving a trail of destruction behind me.

And as I ran, I called Sharrock’s name, and his halo moved closer and closer, and I could tell that he was tracking me, trying to reach me. And finally, I emerged into a clearing, and he broke from cover and ran towards me.

As he ran, projectiles rained down from the trees and crashed into his body, exploding like bombs and coating him from head to toe in a slimy brown slurry. The blows were powerful and I could hear bones breaking, but Sharrock’s run did not falter. He ran towards me, and rolled, and stood up behind me, using me as his shield.

The projectiles, I realised, were balls of shit; Sharrock was stained with the juice of them, and I was glad I had no olfactory sense.

“You evil fucking bitch!” Sharrock shouted at me. He was out of breath. His arm was crooked and he favoured one leg; I guessed he had been beaten badly, perhaps several times. One of the arboreals had eaten his nose, and the bloody mess on the front of his face was still damp and unhealed.

“Oh Sharrock,” I said, “I’m so very sorry.”

“You fucking should be!” he roared. “These bastards have been chasing me for an entire fucking [unit of measurement on his world]. You treacherous cock-with-contagious-boils! This is all your fucking fault! Get me out of here!”

I sighed sorrowfully through my tentacle tips; for there was really no cause for such extreme language. I considered myself to be unoffendable, but even I was starting to get annoyed.

Meanwhile, the arboreals leaped down from the trees and hopped around, elated at the success of their great joke.

“I cannot,” I said.

“They tried to fucking kill me!”

“You must have provoked them,” I said sternly.

He looked at me, with horror and rage. “No I did not!”

“Did you tell them,” I asked, “that they are inferior to you, mere ignorant simians without any culture or grasp of sophisticated concepts?”

He hesitated; no doubt startled that I knew him so well. “Well perhaps,” he said. “But not in those exact words.”

“What were in fact your exact words?”

“I told Mangan,” said Sharrock recalling the moment with evident relish, “that he was nothing but a tree-fucking ape, and that on my planet we cook the brains of such ignorant branch-swinging hairy-arsed shit-hurling ignorant fucking savages!”

I sighed again, and in fairness he had the grace to look abashed at his own misguided eloquence.

“You insulted them,” I said. “And this is their way of asserting dominance over you.”

“Over me!?!” roared Sharrock. “On my planet, we feed hairy-cocked beasts like this to our fucking pets! You evil fucking whore-shit! You led me into a trap. You knew what would happen to me!”

“I knew it was possible. But you should not have not been so discourteously provocative,” I advised him.

“You should have warned me how vicious these evil fuckers are!”

“I sedated you,” I pointed out, “prior to leaving you in the forest. Surely that was warning enough?”

At that moment, Mangan strode towards us, his three legs moving in an odd rhythm, his silver fur matted, his big staring eyes blinking. Mangan’s four arms were huge, and he carried spiked clubs made out of tree branches in each hand.

“You fled, you hairless foul-tongued coward,” he sneered at Sharrock.

“I am no coward! However, I would like to try,” said Sharrock, in an unexpected attempt at diplomacy, “to be your friend.”

Daran threw another shit ball, rather sneakily; and I batted it away with one tentacle.

“This is wrong,” I told the arboreals. And they cackled and danced on the balls of their feet, entirely unrepentant.

“I regret my words,” said Sharrock. “I have insulted you, and for this I deserve all you have done to me. For Sharrock is,” and at this moment he literally hung his head in shame, “humbled, and defeated.”

The arboreals cackled again. Mangan was starting to look mollified. For one exhilarating moment, I began to think that Sharrock was capable of behaving like a sane and civilised sentient.

And then Sharrock screamed: “Ha! I jest! Sharrock? Defeated? Never!! ” And he pounced.

And then I realised that for all this time he’d been trying to get the four arboreals to descend to ground level. In the trees, they had the advantage; down here, he had a fighting chance.

And so he dived forward and rolled, like a bird in flight, and unbalanced Mangan with a foot swipe, and as he did so his elbow connected with the huge arboreal’s ribs. He broke two of Mangan’s arms in moments and then he had one of the clubs in his hand, and as the other three arboreals leaped at him he lashed out and in a series of swings so fast they defied the ability of eyes to see, he smashed their heads into pulp.

Mangan was back on his feet, and locked one hand around Sharrock’s neck but Sharrock had a knife made of serpent’s fangs concealed and he hacked Mangan’s arm off then buried the knife in his brain.

Shiiaa recovered from her battering, and got up, and lunged; her skull was caved in but her three knife arms were swinging. However, Sharrock leaped above Shiiaa’s head and landed behind her, then delivered two savage kicks to the arboreal’s twin spines, shattering both, and then broke her neck with a single savage twist.