Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

Then the ground beneath us shook.

“We’ve been hit!” Quipu One exulted. “Someone is actually firing missiles at the ship!”

“That is,” screamed Quipu Two, “a fair surmise.”

The ground shook again. The aerials in the sky were dashed out of their flight patterns, thrown around like pebbles tossed in the air. And the sky-the sky!-actually flickered. And then the earth rocked violently to one side and I was rolled across the grass.

Nearby Fray fell too, then fumbled up to her feet, and bellowed at me.

Quipu was hissing with fear, clinging to a tree with his strong feet. Lirilla screamed, with rapid shrill shrieks like nothing I had ever heard before.

And then the world turned upside down.

And the waters from the lakes and rivers were now pouring down upon us like rain. And creatures were tumbling through air, clutching at trees and rocks, and the air, the air itself was whirling in thick clouds and we were all choking, unable to breath.

“What’s happening?” someone screamed.

“Is something attacking us?” another voice yelled.

“I believe so!” screamed Quipu One.

“I’ve never felt it like this-”

“The gravity!” screamed Quipu Two, “has failed!”

Jak/Explorer

The hull is ruptured. The Death Ship is dying.

We’ve won. We’ve won!

Haven’t we?

“Someone or something is destroying us!” I said exultantly, but no one could hear my words, because of the falling of water and the screaming of aerials tumbling out of the sky and land creatures falling up into the air.

The sky flickered again. Once again the ship changed course violently, and we were thrown around wildly.

Gravity mercifully returned, and we crashed back down to the ground.

Then the earth beneath us trembled even more wildly.

Lirilla hovered by my head, bruised and shrieking with pain. I caught her in my tentacle, and tucked her in my mouth to keep her safe.

There was a long silence.

The ground beneath us shuddered and shook again.

“I’m certain now that we’re being struck by missiles, or energy blasts, or both,” Quipu One finally concluded. “We’re under constant enemy attack.”

“Can they actually defeat the Hell Ship though?” I asked.

“I doubt that,” said Quipu One sadly. “We sent our own fleet against this vessel and they pounded it with weapons; nothing could break though its force shield. The Hell Ship is invulnerable to all-”

But a final shudder threw us off our feet again. There was a roaring sound. I could tell that something terrible was occurring.

“However, we might very well be wrong about that!” said Quipu Five brightly.

And then the shuddering reached its frenzied peak; and the Hell Ship, shockingly, e x p l o d e d.

We watch, in awe and marvelment, as the hull of the Death Ship rips open and bodies begin pouring out. We realise that many of these bodies are captives of the Death Ship because they come in such varied shapes and sizes and none are wearing body armour. The bodies explode when they enter a state of vacuum, and the carnage appals us. But all on board the ship must die. There is no other way.

We harden our heart.

After the explosion, the ground below me opened up. And I found myself tumbling into the hole and then falling and flailing wildly through the layers of the hull itself, until I was floating freely in black space.

And all was calm and silence, though all about me bodies were erupting into blood and gore. I alone had survived the rupture of the ship’s hull.

When I looked more carefully around, I could see the many unfamiliar stars that were the hazy backdrop to the myriad corpses of creatures I had known and liked, now ripped into pieces. And, stretching out beneath me like a continent seen from the air, was a huge and eerily beautiful black-sailed space vessel with a silver, glowing hull.

But though magnificent, the ship was rent and broken. The sails were slack. And bodies continued to pour out of the several huge cracks in the hull and, for reasons I didn’t fathom, they continued to explode and die. Small pieces of flesh and slicks of blood hung messily in space in seeming orbit around my body; and would remain out here as undecayed fragments, I supposed, for all eternity.

I prayed that my friends were safe, as I sucked up breath from my lungs into my mouth (for Lirilla was trapped there and would need to breathe) and spread my cape and soared through space, propelling myself with gusts of air from my gills, away from the damaged Hell Ship.

Joy! I was free!

And instead of breathing air, I was now breathing energy, captured from the undertow of all space that only my kind seem able to perceive and access. And instead of drinking water, I was supping the light from the stars and making it into me.

And instead of being trapped in a globular cage that mockingly pretended to be a planet, I was swooping through a small and precious portion of the infinity of space; and I exulted at the end of my captivity!

I noted however that the main part of the Ka’un’s ship was still intact, even though the rear area had been holed; and I knew that the battle was far from over.

Then I looked further, using eyes that were as powerful as telescopes, and saw the Hell Ship’s enemy vessel-a huge and ugly spaceship that looked as if it had been constructed by a blind creature with more energy and materials than talent. And at the heart of the asymmetric more-planet-than-spaceship was a striped hub that looked as if it had once been the entire original craft.

And from this monstrous murder machine pillars of missiles were pouring forth then vanishing then crashing against the shields of the Hell Ship; these corporeal bomb-blasts followed instants later by vision-bending stems of light that also thrashed the Hell Ship’s beautiful lines. Smaller vessels scattered in space were also playing a vicious harrying role in this anarchic battle of light and energy; spitting missiles then darting elsewhere before reprisal could strike. The pace and blur and bright and splash of it all made my perceptions swim; I felt as if I were on the inside a star watching a deadly duel between sunlight and plasma.

And suddenly, I could hear voices, in my head:

After all these years…

We’ll kill the parent fuckers! Kill them!

Don’t miss.

I shall not miss.

As the voices spoke, more missiles were launched from the Ka’un ship and travelled instantaneously through space and exploded on the hull of its enemy vessel. Light splashed on the vast and ugly hull of our potential saviours, but no damage was done; and then the saviour craft retaliated, and haloes of light now appeared above the Hell Ship and crashed down upon it, striking sparks like burning fronds spat from the mouth of a Padiux.

The blackness of deep space was lit up by missiles exploding and light-haloes writhing and burning, and the invisible walls of protective energy around both ships glowed brightly, oh so brightly, to my eyes which saw energy as if it were light.

The space between the ships shimmered as deadly beams of energy were unleashed and repelled and reflected back.

I could hear atoms fusing and sundering and interacting to form massive eruptions of raw power that seared my sight. And I could sense the universe itself being bruised as the two ships dived in and out of tunnels in space, to emerge once more vomiting forth fire and metal and nuclear holocaust.

The attacking ship vanished; reappeared; vanished; reappeared; and for one astonishing moment it appeared beneath me and my claws were scratching at its hull; and then it was gone again.