Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

But Albinia was the first female who ever explained to me the negative side of having such effortless intellectual proficiency. Since she was ten years old she had been cyber-linked with a computer or robot for large parts of her waking day. And so she’d grown up awkward, clumsy, and not at ease in her own body. Males terrified her, and the fact that all the males she met treated her as a superior being terrified her even more.

“All my life I’ve known I could have any male I wanted, with a click of my fingers,” said Albinia, trying but failing to click her fingers. “And a lot of my girlfriends did just that. They fucked their way through college and carried on screwing around in their twenties. What was there to lose? Pregnancy is volitional these days, males are getting more and more beautiful, and the sexual congress is officially an artform. But I hated it.”

“Poor little powerful girl,” I said with-or so I realised in the retrospect of a moment later-a hint of bitterness.

“Every male I’ve been with behaves like a servant. I never feel relaxed. I always feel in charge.”

I remembered Galamea’s words on the dark world and, for the first time, I began to doubt my understanding of my own species.

“Females are natural leaders,” I said tactfully.

“Have you ever been treated as an equal? By a female?”

“No,” I lied.

We fucked again that night, and when I reached the moment of her orgasm she stopped and she looked into my eyes. And she cupped my head in her hands.

And she transferred her consciousness into me, from her skull plate into my brain dot.

And then we carried on fucking.

And this time, I wasn’t me, servicing my goddess. I was her; I felt the heat of Jak’s skin, the hardness of his body, I felt his cocks inside me, and I saw it too, with my Explorer part; saw the two naked coupling bodies from the cameras in the wall, and then I was in the Command Hub watching the stars on the screen and I was also outside the ship, I was looking at Explorer/myself thorough space cameras, and I was travelling through space, and my telescopic and spectrographic and electromagnetic vision allowed me to zoom close to any sun I desired and feel the soft caress of its interstellar matter on my body.

I was no longer myself; I was Albinia; I was Explorer; I was everywhere; and data swirled around me and I knew it without thinking. And when Albinia achieved her orgasm, I felt it too, and the ship shuddered, and the engines roared.

Afterwards we lay silently and nakedly entwined.

“How was that?” asked Albinia.

“Let’s,” I said, “do it again.”

“Commence to rift, please,” I said, and unreality descended upon us all in the Hub; on Morval, Galamea, Albinia, Phylas and myself.

As the rifting process began, I kept my eyes carefully focused on the star screen, and on my work. I did not, thanks to my exceptional self-control, digress in my purpose by looking at Albinia: the cable trailing from her skull like a leash, her absorbed and haunted features, her distantly-staring eyes, her twitching lips. Though in truth I wanted to look at her so much; so extraordinarily much.

And indeed, I did, just for a moment, sneak a peek!

For I loved, I realised, both Albinias now. The real one that I had fornicated with so beautifully that night; and the other one, the trance-Albinia who I knew on the Hub; a beautiful child lost in dreams.

“Improbability is-” Phylas started to say.

But suddenly Albinia screamed. It was a scream of pure hysteria and it shocked us all. And the ship rocked and shook, as she broke her link with Explorer. We were flying through un-space without a Star-Seeker!

“Operating manual controls,” said Morval swiftly, as he took control of the vessel from Albinia/Explorer. He eased us back into reality. The Command Hub flipped and flipped again, until the walls and ceiling were whirling around us in our fixed points, held by the stay-still.

Then finally we were back in real space. I broke the stay-still with a murmur-link command, and hurried across the room to Albinia. Her face was twisted with pain. I reached for her cable.

“That could be traumatic,” Morval warned.

I touched Albinia’s face; she opened her eyes; she saw me and smiled.

I wrenched the cable out.

She sighed with huge relief; and was herself again.

“What is wrong Star-Seeker?” I asked, appalled at the look of emptiness in her eyes.

“I saw,” she said, “another world come to a terrible end.”

The genocided aliens in this case were the Maibos; a species of artificers, and we had done a great deal of business with them.

The Maibos had built for us some of our most magnificent furnishings and tapestries. They were an entirely non-violent species; it was a miracle they had survived so long. The Maibos had constantly refused all offers from Olara to equip them with a space defence system. And they refused to heed our argument that this is, and always has been, a viciously violent universe.

But the Maibos held to their faith, that violence begets violence; whereas a spirit of peace and love will spread and possess all those who encounter it. They called it the “contagion of joy.”

And in this delightful faith they were proved entirely wrong. For these peace-loving creatures were invaded and exterminated like bugs. All of them died; all. Not one Maibos remained, except for the handful who dwelled at the embassy of the Olaran Home Court.

And even their planet was destroyed; shattered and exploded into many parts, just as had happened to the planet of the FanTangs. And to salt and sting the wound, un-matter bombs were flown into their sun, sending it into a flaring frenzy; it was now poised to turn nova.

We knew all this because, in the dying moments of their civilisation, the Maibos had found a way to transmit space camera images of their demise through rift space, on what they knew were Olaran frequencies.

This is what Albinia had seen through her Explorer link. The end of a world; the planet of the Maibos sundering; billions of gracious, honourable creatures perishing even faster than their own ideals. It was an image of horror that had seared her mind.

It was a shocking holocaust and all Olarans mourned for the lost Maibos.

But the good news was that this time there had been a sighting. An Olaran scout vessel had viewed the foul slayer of the Maibos as it had fled the planetary system.

And according to this reliable report, there was no fleet, no alien armada; just a single vessel, with black sails.

“It’s the Magrhediera,” Morval speculated. “They escaped from their planet and they are taking revenge on us.”

“The ship doesn’t conform to any of the Magrhediera designs,” I pointed out. “And it’s not their style; they burn biospheres, then colonise; these creatures are killing actual planets.”

“The Stuxi?” asked Galamea.

“It could be a rogue Stuxi ship,” I conceded. “Their planet is Quarantined; but it just takes one vessel to keep a war going.”

“The Stuxi are ruthless bastards,” Galamea said. We all knew her past history with these creatures; we preserved a tactful silence.

“The Navy will find them,” said Phylas. “And that will be that.” He was clearly comforted at this vision of the remorseless power of the Olaran military.

“There may be other vessels,” I worried.

“One ship,” said Morval. “It’s just one ship. Against the entire Olaran Fleet. It’s just a matter of time before one of our vessels finds it, and crushes it.”

We were nowhere near the Maibos system, and there was nothing we could do to help. And so we continued with our exploration of the farthest stretches of the furthest galaxies.