Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

And a moment later, a jagged spike of coloured energy shot through the glow of the Ka’un ship’s shields, and struck the Ka’un ship itself, and my vision blurred again as the massive impact shook the very soul of my perception.

And, as I watched, more bodies billowed out of the hole in the rear of the Ka’un vessel.

I glided closer to see them and I recognised arboreals and aerials and sessiles who had been sucked out of the ship, and I saw too I saw too a body in a space suit, with a face as black as a starless sky, and its voice spoke to me. Rescue me, I am your master, said the voice, and I knew it was a Ka’un. It was small, a biped, protected by its space suit but cast adrift into space in the midst of this dazzling space war.

I wrapped my tentacle around the Ka’un’s body. You can fly in space? You crazy Saviour-shagger! cackled the Ka’un.

I wanted to break the evil bastard’s body in half with my tentacle and eat him; just as Djamrock would have done.

And I imagined how that would feel: I imagined the Ka’un’s howls of pain, slowly fading as he died. And I felt a rush of exhilaration. It was in my power to kill a Ka’un! And the power felt good.

But-I couldn’t do it.

For some reason, my limbs would not obey me. And so I relaxed the tightness of grip on the Ka’un; I still held him in my tentacle, but gently now.

I raged at myself; I did not lack the will or desire to kill this creature, but suddenly my body was not my own.

That’s better. You always do as we tell you, don’t you, sea monster? Now, take me back to the sh -said the Ka’un, then a stray energy beam caught him and his head vanished.

He was dead. But not through my doing.

The energy beam also raked my body in passing; I absorbed it, and grew.

Then out of the front part of the ship, a new vessel appeared, in a twisting turning shape which I knew was called a Helix. And the Helix darted towards the enemy ship, raining missiles as it flew.

But the enemy ship ignored it, and continued firing its missiles upon the Hell Ship itself. The Helix faded into nothing; it was a mirage, a trick.

And then another missile struck the Hell Ship’s hull; and time itself seemed to stand still as the Hell Ship erupted in a massive explosion, a single dazzling flash! The ship lit up like a Biollai seed exploding and igniting in mid-air.

And then the light faded and there was nothing left. No Hell Ship, just debris.

The corona of light had dazzled my eyes, though I felt no heat on my carapace. I floated in space with my cape outspread and the memory of the dead Ka’un in the spacesuit haunting my mind.

And I realised that it was all over. All my friends were dead; but so were all the Ka’un.

Fragments of the hull of the Hell Ship drifted closer to me. Corpses and coils of blood and limbs and torsos and heads and ruptured internal organs cluttered the once-empty blackness of space.

The attacking ship was badly damaged, but intact. I began to glide towards it, hoping they would realise I was a friend and not Ka’un. But something held me, and tugged at me; I felt as if I was in a dream and had no power over my own body. I was being pulled, pulled, pulled And then the pulling stopped. But when I tried once more to glide through space, I found I could not. I could no longer swirl and swoop, and I could not go beyond a certain point here. Or a certain point there.

These obstacles to my movements were corporeal. Not like a force shield, such as that which surrounded the Tower; more like walls.

I was surrounded by walls!

I summoned my inner eyes and saw the truth; and the truth was that I was no longer in space surrounded by stars; I was in a hangar bay shaped like a huge globe within a space vessel. And the walls of my confining space were silver, just like my cabin; the light was pale and yellow, just like the light from our sun.

I was back inside the Hell Ship.

And the strangeness was upon me again. We were travelling somewhere far away; escaping the enemy’s wrath.

I spat, and Lirilla emerged from my mouth.

“Safe?” she asked, plaintively.

“Not safe,” I told her, sombrely.

My cape retreated back into my body. And I realised that the destruction of the Hell Ship had, like the appearance of the smaller Helix vessel, been just an illusion.

The Hell Ship had been damaged, I was sure of that, but not destroyed. And then it had fled; and it was now, once again, swimming in what Quipu called the rivers of chaotic flux until, at some point, it would re-enter the Real.

And then it would all, the terror and the horror, begin again.

What joy! What release! After all this time, they’re dead! Those cruel parent-fuckers are dead! We’ve won!

You know, I can’t believe it! To see that black-sailed vessel engulfed in the flames of a space-burning missile. To know that, finally, we have managed to take revenge for what they did to Olara! And to my family on Olara. And to all my people. The ghosts of all these Olarans will Say something Explorer?

We’ve won. Haven’t we? Tell me we have won? Why aren’t you speaking to me?

I’m not sure exactly what happened there.

What the fornication are you on about? You saw it. We both saw it. Sensors, visuals, all confirm. The Hell Ship blew up and is no more.

Wait.

Tell me what you detect.

I detect many things.

Then tell me what you conclude.

The data is inconclusive.

And what does the inconclusive data suggest to your wreck of a mind?

It suggest there is no debris consistent with the explosion of such an exceptionally large rift-drive space vessel. It’s chaff, bits of matter scattered in a pattern that superficially resembles a blown-up spaceship.

What are you saying? And please don’t say it, even if it’s true. No, tell me-what?

It was a trick. We did not destroy the Death Ship.

An illusion?

A corporeal holographic projection, that disintegrated in front of our eyes and registered on all my sensors. Like the Helix ship we fought, which they expected us to treat as the “real” vessel but which turned out to be nothing but a chimera. These creatures have technology that allows them to mimic reality with remarkable verisimilitude to all our electromagnetic, visual and mass sensors. They duped us twice in other words, and the second time we fell for it; and the Death Ship used the moment of the deceptive distraction to evade our restraining lattices and enter another universe.

Bastards.

As you say, bastards. And now we are giving chase.

We can do that?

We are doing it.

How can we do that? We have no way of knowing which universe they are in, surely? You swore to me that I don’t know how we can do it. I am just attempting to do it, out of complete fucking desperation.

I understand, calm yourself.

It is folly. We can never find them. But we shall try. Instead of waiting here, we will pursue avidly. But not by travelling through a single universe at a time. No, we shall stay here at the Source and dip in and out of a million different universes with dazzling speed until we smell our prey. Because I believe we can detect them from afar now; I know the trail they leave. Death, destruction, and messages from lost civilisations trapped in the ripples of reality.

Then-do it.

I am doing it.

And so we rift once more through the Source itself. Through an area of space where reality is riven with cracks. And we Yes we We arrive, somewhere. Somewhere very strange. Our sensors are-the very atoms are We adapt, somehow, to this new reality. We absorb the new parameters and constants. This is now our universe.

Can we detect them here, Jak? Help me please, I need your help, you are invaluable to me in this vital stage of our mission-please?