Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

And every night Albinia came to my bed and we had sex. And afterwards we talked; and sometimes, she would let me be Explorer again. And we became close. We even became, dare I say it, “friends.”

In the days however I continued to worship her, as my goddess and inspiration, as she, in her dreamy trance state, steered and flew and lived through our ship.

And, as it happens, I was at this time also spending a good deal more time with Phylas. He was determined to be a Trader, so I tried to teach him some tricks.

He was however, I concluded regretfully, after several role play exercises, too easygoing and nice to haggle; and he had no flair for deception and manipulative body language. However, I persevered; he was a dumb and sweet kid and the universe needed more of those, in my view.

And also, around about this time-I remember it well!-Morval and I discovered and explored a fascinating planet, which we christened Gem, that was populated by microbes and rich in jewels. The diamonds were clearly visible in the rocks, there were rubies, there were mountains made of gold. We spent a month running sentience tests on the bacteria and viruses who comprised this planet’s only biosphere, before concluding that they were just stupid bugs and we had the right to claim this planet for Olara.

Galamea toasted our success with champagne; all the ship’s officers would get a small percentage of the profits from this planet in perpetuity. It was our pension plan.

But then, just a week after the champagne toasting, we saw it; the ship with black sails. Or rather, Explorer did.

I have a located a telling trace, said Explorer.

“Tell us more,” said Commander Galamea.

We were all in the Command Hub; Albinia’s eyes were wide open, and clearly she too was shocked at Explorer’s decision to speak to us all directly, rather than via her.

A vessel is travelling this sector via rift space; there are visuals.

An image appeared on our panoramic wall screen, of a black sailed vessel with a cylindrical hull.

“Is this-” I began to say.

This is the vessel that destroyed the FanTangs, said Explorer.

There was a sober silence.

“Send the coordinates to the Navy,” said Galamea.

“They may rift at any moment,” I pointed out. “We should tag them.”

“If we get too close they’ll fire on us,” Galamea pointed out.

“Do we care?”

Galamea smiled. “We do not. Explorer, pursue, and prepare for battle. We’re in for a father-fucker of a fight.”

Albinia was living in the rift; she could smell the tang of the shifting-sands as Explorer soared through the cracks of reality that connect one part of the universe with another.

And Albinia/Explorer could feel and smell and hear and touch the enemy ship as it tried to escape.

She sensed too that there was something strange about the ship, yet she could not at first find words to describe it.

Then, as Explorer later explained it to me, the words came to Albinia:

She could smell Death upon this ship.

These were creatures who to our certain knowledge had destroyed two entire planets and all who dwelled on them. These were creatures who could blow up suns. These were creatures who had massacred the citizens of an entire Olaran Trading Post and left them as corpses for the birds to pick at, except that all the birds had died and no creature was left to scavenge.

The enemy ship was Death, it wrought Death, it savoured Death; but, Albinia resolved, soon it too would die.

Explorer/Albinia flew through the final rift and there it was, the Death Ship, waiting for her, and for us.

“Do we know anything about these creatures?” I asked.

“We have no records of a ship of this kind,” said Phylas. “The materials of the hull are unfamiliar. The elements of which the materials are made are-unfamiliar.”

“How strange is that?” I asked.

“Fairly strange,” Phylas conceded. “Axial theory accepts three different classes of elements, the Real, the Unlikely, and the Never to be Dreamed Of. This ship is made of other stuff entirely.”

“It may be from a different universe,” said Morval.

I scoffed. “Not that old myth again. I don’t believe in other universes.”

“That’s because you know no transdimensional science,” sneered Morval.

“I don’t need to; that’s your job, to remember the dull stuff,” I mocked. Morval bridled at the insult.

The enemy ship had a cylindrical hull that was scratched, and covered in chaol, a space-dwelling parasitical life-form. High black sails loomed above the hull; their purpose, Phylas explained, was probably to gather dark matter and use it as an energy source.

Explorer drifted closer, invisible in all wavelengths and heavily shielded.

The enemy ship was still. It seemed to drift through the darkness of space like an idle thought in a blank mind.

“How many crew?” I asked.

“Our sensors can’t penetrate the hull,” said Phylas.

“On the count of three, fire missiles, flit anti-matter bombs, release energy beams. Then when we’ve done that, switch on the Quarantine cage; we’ll trap the parent-fuckers inside a box full of detonating explosives.” I said.

“Agreed,” said Galamea.

“One-” I began.

Explorer rocked and shook.

“They’ve hit our shields,” said Phylas.

“No weapon was fired,” said Morval.

Then we saw on the screen the tell tale shadows of missiles in flight.

“The missiles struck before they were fired,” theorised Phylas. “They’re using some kind of time reversal mechanism.”

I froze at the implications of that.

Morval didn’t wait for the rest of the count; he pulled the sliders on his phantom control display to flit the anti-matter bombs.

Our flitting technology can cut through any force shield; one moment the bombs were on our weapons deck, the next they were inside the enemy vessel.

And so the black-sailed ship spun madly in space, as if beset by fierce winds, as the bombs exploded inside its hull. The hull itself cracked, spewing air and bodies into space. And the sails collapsed, as their energy supply was compromised, and they dangled helplessly in vacuum.

Meanwhile, real-space missiles surged forth from Explorer and, ten minutes later, cut through the enemy’s force-shields with ease and detonated on its hull, shattering it further.

“It can’t be that easy,” I said.

“Watch,” said Albinia. She could see the ship as Explorer saw it, on our panoramic wall screen. And she knew, with a chilling certainty, that something strange was happening.

And then it happened. The shards of the enemy ship began to reform. The two parts of the hull rejoined; the sails refurled.

“Nice trick,” conceded Phylas.

“Quarantine cage?” I said.

“Activated,” said Morval.

Another missile exploded on our force shields. And another. The stay-still fields kept us safe, but the Hub was rocking wildly with each impact.

“Quarantine the bastards!!” I screamed.

And so the battle raged: the Death Ship continued to hurl missiles at us, and the missiles continued to splash hopelessly against our invincible shields. And meanwhile we cast a quarantine lattice through space to envelop the black-sailed monstrosity. Within moments the battle would be over.

Then our fields failed, and a missile crashed through our hull.

The impact on our ship was devastating: the hull cracked; air billowed out into space; our wireboards exploded, and the lights flickered wildly.

But in the Hub we saw none of that. The stay-stills kept us in place. The armoured doors protected us from all blast impacts. Our wireboards were shielded and discrete. And we could if necessary survive for centuries in this Hub even if the rest of the vessel were destroyed.