Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

“If not me, then it would be someone else,” I explained. “Once it was a beast called Carulha; when he died, I took over his role, and his responsibilities.”

“And why did you not tell me all this? Before I conquered Gilgara and assumed chieftainship of the Kindred?” asked Sharrock savagely.

“It did not for a moment occur to me,” I admitted, “that you could win.”

Sharrock was silent for a long time. I waited.

“You are a traitor,” Sharrock concluded finally, in the quietest of tones.

“Sharrock,” I explained, “you cannot-”

“To deal with them, those evil conquering bastards, to do their bidding, that is truly-”

“You have to be pragmatic about-”

“TRAITOR!” Sharrock’s red face was redder still; his rage hit me like a punch.

“I do what I have to do,” I said, wretchedly.

And Sharrock drew his hull-metal sword from his scabbard in the blink of an eye; and he struck me with it in my face. The blow barely registered for me, but even so I flinched.

He struck me again, and again, hammering his sword against my carapace, my skull, jabbing my eyes, trying to hurt me and break flesh but failing.

Eventually he was too exhausted to lift his arm. He threw the sword down on the ground. Then he walked away.

Sharrock did not return to the Valley, nor did he have any further dealings with the Kindred.

And from that day on, he refused to speak to me.

It was one of those days.

I was leading the crew in an emergency drill. We performed a mock evacuation, with all five officers and ten ordinary crew members in spacesuits. A year had passed since the extermination of the FanTangs; I was Jak the Explorer now, no longer Trader Jak.

One by one the crew filed into pods and the pods broke away from the main ship and vanished into uncertain space.

I shared a pod with Albinia and Darko, an engineer. “You know this would never happen in real life,” said Darko, dourly. “If a missile ever got past our shields, we’d be dead.”

“Break away,” I said, and Darko hit the switch and the pod broke away from the main ship.

As we spiralled around weightlessly, Albinia’s hair lifted from her head in a halo. She looked at me. Just looked.

Galamea’s voice came through to me via my murmur-link implant. “ All pods detached, in fourteen point two minutes. Drill is over, return to the main ship.”

We re-entered real space, still spiralling around, with a clear view of Explorer through our window. She looked eerily beautiful.

Albinia was weeping.

“I apologise Star-Seeker, can I help?” said Drago, in terrified tones.

“It’s like being outside myself,” said Albinia, as she looked at Explorer’s exterior hull.

I was dining alone, and a tray crashed on the table next to mine.

“Can I join you?” Albinia said.

“Please do,” I said, startled.

Albinia slid into place beside me. “I have a favour to ask,” she said, in very quiet tones.

“I would be honoured,” I replied gallantly.

“You don’t know what I’m going to ask.”

“I’d be honoured anyway,” I insisted.

She looked vexed.

“Have I offended you, Mistress-”

She waved a hand; I silenced my own rhetoric. And then Albinia sat there, looking anxious, for quite some time.

“What?” I coaxed.

“I would like to be your friend.”

I nodded. And smiled, graciously, savouring the gift of her presence, and the nearness of her sublime intellect. And then:

“What?” I asked, baffled.

“Will you? Be my friend?”

“Um. Yes. Of course I will.” I was sweating now. This was indelicate beyond all measure. Friendship is the rarest gift a woman may offer to a man; and for a Star-Seeker to suggest it so openly to a mere Ship’s Master was unheard of.

“Good. That’s wonderful.” And she beamed, like a child that has a toy that can talk back.

“And indeed, I’m flattered beyond all measure that you asked,” I said.

“Good.”

“Yes, it is good.”

“What do we do now?” Albinia said hopelessly.

I smiled my most charming smile. “Well, I could tell you some stories of my days as a Trader. The duplicitous aliens; the magnificent deals! Or, if you prefer, I could tell you about the time I met the Empress, in my days at the Home Court, or-”

“You want to tell me stories?”

“Well-they’re good stories,” I said, defensively.

“And that’s what friends do?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “Friends, well. Friends take each other for granted. Interrupt each other. Give each other crap, forget each other’s birthdays, then make impossible demands at the worst possible moments. I could never treat you like that, Mistress!”

Albinia started weeping; I was utterly confused.

“I did say yes, to your generous and extraordinarily kind offer,” I apologised.

“Are you afraid of me, Jak?”

“Of course not,” I lied, fluently.

“You are.”

“Well-”

Albinia got up and walked away.

I was utterly bewildered. But one thing was clear to me.

I had totally fucked that one up.

“Couldn’t we just shadow-flit into the cave?” asked Morval.

“We have to make a good first impression,” I told him.

“A canoe?”

“Just row,” I said.

The three-Olaran canoe bearing myself, Morval and Phylas skimmed fast along the viscous waters. The sky was dark with purple clouds, and the only trace of sun was a faint glow behind the largest swirl of cloud formations. It was raining. On this planet, it always rained.

The Klak-Klak that was leading us surfaced and its many claws klak-klakked. We looked ahead and saw the cave entrance.

“I hate caves,” said Morval.

“How come?”

“I have a fear of small dark confined spaces,” Morval admitted. “My simulacrum was once buried alive and the remote link failed. I spent a year under the earth before they found a way to wake me up.”

“That’s nothing,” snorted Phylas. “On my first Explorer mission, I was flogged and sprayed with salt water and Commander Galamea refused to wake me because she thought the aliens were just ‘playing’ with me.”

“Bitch.”

“She is a hard woman, without a doubt,” Phylas admitted.

“How many times have you been killed by aliens, Morval?” I asked.

“Thirty, forty thousand times,” admitted Morval.

“I’ve only been killed sixty-four times,” I said.

“That’s because you’re just a Trader,” Morval said.

“You have the easy job,” Phylas added.

“We do the hard stuff. Prepare the way.”

“Fornicatory traders.”

“Take all the glory.”

“Earn all the money!”

“Will you quit fornicatoryishly whining?” I told them.

We carried on rowing, an even steady stroke that sent the canoe flying above the sticky red waves of the planet’s ocean.

Our boat penetrated deep into the complex of caves. Stalactites made of precious gems dangled down. Fish bumped the underside of our canoe and a few of them leaped in and were killed by Phylas’s energy gun. The smell of burning fish flesh became intolerable.

The narrow waterway through the cave complex began to broaden, and we emerged into a high damp cavern. Thick black tubes dangled from the rock, forming complex shapes, like a latticework.

“Artworks,” suggested Phylas.

“Excrement,” was Morval’s opinion.

“Rock formations,” I suggested.

The canoe ran aground on the rocks and we stepped out. We were wearing full body armour, even though we were in shadow-self form. The armour had been sprayed jet black and decorated with bumps and spikes, to make us seem more attractive to the crustacean-type entity that was the Klak-Klak.