Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

There were six of the brutes waiting for us, each with at least twenty arms, and each arm was festooned with vicious claws. The claws klakked in unison like applause at a concert. I walked towards the largest of the Klak-Klaks, went on one knee, and attached a translating device to its chin.

“Can you understand me?” I asked.

“Yes,” said the Klak-Klak.

“We come in peace,” I said.

“No,” said the Klak-Klak.

“We wish to trade,” I said.

“No,” said the Klak-Klak.

“Do you understand this concept-‘trade’?” I asked.

“No,” said the Klak-Klak.

“Is it possible,” asked Phylas, “for a species to be considered sentient if it only knows two words?”

The Klak-Klak’s eyes rose out on stalks and peered at Phylas. Then the eyes retreated into the black carapace again.

“Yes,” said the Klak-Klak.

“Let us show you our treasures,” I said. And Phylas stepped forward and opened up his cargo bag. He took out a huge Balla Pearl and held it in his hand. It glowed lustrously, transforming the dark shadows of the cave into lighter shadows. The Pearl sang, and the sound was like a female’s post-orgasmic smile on a sunny day. Phylas passed the Pearl to the Klak-Klak, who clutched it in his claw. Then the Klak-Klak crushed the pearl and dust dribbled to the ground.

“Or this,” I said, and took out an energy gun. I aimed it at the wall and carved a crude face, with two eyes, a nose, and a smiling mouth. Then I grinned. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

The lead Klak-Klak visibly recoiled, stepping back and raising its arms in what in any creature’s body language would indicate horror. Then he and the other crustaceans began to klak-klak their claws loudly. The sound was deafening, and ominous.

“You have,” said the leader of the Klak-Klaks, “hurt our wall.”

I laughed. “It’s a wall!” I said. “Walls can’t-” I broke off. I looked at Phylas.

“I’m on it,” said Phylas and took a sentience reading of the walls of the cave that enveloped us.

“Ah,” Phylas eventually concluded. “Shit,” he added.

“The wall is alive?” I said, and Phylas nodded.

Red water trickled down the rocks of the cavern. The black wires dangling from the rock changed colour and became pink, then started to flash. A terrible low moaning howling sound emerged, as the wall groaned in agony.

“We didn’t realise,” I said, and the Klak-Klak lunged and ate me.

There was a crunching sound as the Klak-Klak devoured armour and body and bones.

[I woke up.]

Phylas raised his energy gun and incinerated the Klak-Klak.

Out of the ashes, a shadow stirred. The shadow grew, and became a silhouette. Finally the shadow became me again.

“Forgive us,” I said, “for our error. But we come in peace, and we wish to trade.”

The Klak-Klaks starred at us through eyes that stuck out through black armour plating and a terrible silence descended.

“Maybe we should-” I began to say.

Then there was a cracking and groaning sound. Phylas and I looked up. A trickle of dust slowly drifted down through the air, forming a haze like a parachute. A terrible wailing sound emerged; it was the rock, baying with pain, declaring its hate for the two intruders; we needed no translation for the sound was a dagger being plunged through our eardrums.

Then the roof crashed down on us.

I found myself enveloped in rubble. Boulders bounced off my body. Dust and rocks were everywhere, and in a matter of minutes, I was trapped under tons of screaming, howling, roaring rock.

“Not again, ” muttered Phylas, irritably.

[I woke.]

I wrote up my log that night: Negotiations failed after we were buried alive by a sentient cave. These creatures have much we would desire; but the evidence is they want nothing from us.

System placed on the Trading Reserve List, to be reviewed in one hundred years.

The missile hurtled through space then teleported and reappeared and exploded an inch from the battleship’s hull. The image blurred as the battleship’s forcefield engaged, and the explosion lit the awesome blackness of space with a red and yellow fireball.

The smaller fighter ships were V-shaped and daringly fast and were firing energy beams of some kind at the battleship’s rear end; tiny columns of flame erupted from the huge ship’s side as the en-beams struck home.

Pinpricks of light in the distance betrayed the locations of fighter craft that had been hit and had expired in a burning maelstrom. Meanwhile, a new flotilla of space-fighting vessels had appeared and was spewing out debris which, I deduced was explosive.

“It’s kind of beautiful,” said Phylas, soulfully.

We were in invisible orbit in the planetary system of Xd4322, watching two tribes of the same species attempting to destroy each other in a series of colossal space battles.

“The planet is a radioactive shell, the sentients now live on moons and satellites,” Morval explained.

“What savages,” I murmured.

“Perhaps; but do they have anything we’d like to buy?” asked Commander Galamea, with creditable hard-headedness.

“Bombs?” I hazarded.

“According to our intercepted transmissions,” Morval continued, “this war has lasted a thousand years. One group of sentients live in the inner solar system, the other group live in the outer solar system. They are fighting for dominance and the right to own the sun.”

“What do they look like?” asked Galamea, and Albinia conveyed an image from Explorer’s space-cameras and projected it in the air.

I studied the image with curiosity. These were diamond-headed creatures with no visible eyes or ears or limbs, whose squat bodies were supported on three powerful legs.

“How do they play piano?” asked Phylas, mockingly.

Albinia animated the image; tendrils emerged from the diamond torso and sweet music was heard.

“They have no musical instruments,” explained Phylas, “but they sing their own internal organs.”

“Could we trade with them?” Galamea persisted.

Another missile struck the alien battleship and it split apart. And then, as sentients slowly spiralled out of the ship, the fighter craft dived in and obliterated the stranded sentients one by one.

“I doubt it,” said Commander Galamea regretfully. “Seal off the system.”

“When I was a boy,” said Morval, “the Olarans only had five planets. Olara, New Olara, Olara the Third, We Miss Olara, and Far From Olara.”

“In those days,” observed Phylas, “the Olarans were a sad bunch.”

“My father was on one of the first rift ships. He was a pioneer, one of the greatest of all explorers,” Morval bragged.

“I’ve read about him,” I said.

“Back then,” said Morval, “no one knew if the rifts were stable. Your ship rifted and it might, for all you knew, end up as random matter, or materialise in some other universe. So the courage of those early explorers was extraordinary.”

“I’ve heard it said,” said Phylas, thoughtfully, “that most of them were volunteers. They went into space exploration for love, not as a result of, um, a court order.” He blushed, filled with shame at his own criminal past.

“That’s true,” Morval acknowledged. “My father was an idealist. He believed the exploration of space was one of the greatest adventures of all time.”

“As do I!” I said defensively.

“You’re just here,” said Morval scornfully, “because some female broke your heart.”

“Who told you that?” I said angrily.

“It’s written,” said Morval, “all over your soul.”

I seethed; but could not deny the truth of his words.

“My father eventually settled,” Morval reminisced, “in a Trading Post in some far-flung galaxy, and never returned to his family. My mother didn’t care; she had married again of course, long before that. And she never spoke of him; all that I know about my father was gleaned from research.”