Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

And then, after what seemed an eternity of light-war, the flow of Hell Ship missiles came to a halt. And the dazzling glare slowly faded, and the stars began to reappear.

But a few moments later still I could see that the swarm was still coming towards us. And there were now more of them than there had been before; the Cagashfly-spaceships were mysteriously multiplying as they were destroyed. I marvelled at this, briefly. And wondered how these creatures could manage such a trick.

And then I realised: these Cagashfly-ships were now rifting through space like stones bouncing upon a lake, spitting energy beams at us, getting closer and closer with each The Hell Ship lurched. And I looked around, and I realised that the stars in the space around me had changed, and the hazy after-glare left by those countless explosions had vanished entirely. The Hell Ship had fled the scene of battle.

I realised that the Ka’un had been thwarted, and had given up.

It was a shock to discover that the Ka’un did not always win. I had thought them invulnerable in battle, as they had been in the war with my people.

On the next occasion however I was able to witness the destruction of an entire planet, as the Ka’un ship fired the same large finned missile which this time broke through the enemy’s defensive weapons and struck the planet’s crust.

Once again I saw everything that happened through the mind that possessed my eyes, and which saw through remote cameras all that took place.

And I not only saw; I understood, through my intimate bond with my possessing mind. I grasped everything; how the weapon was constructed, how it worked, what it did. I knew that this missile was designed to drill a path to the planet’s core, where “un-matter” was then released which collided with the hot liquid matter of the planet’s core to create a series of huge blasts that, before my Ka’un-inhabited eyes, ripped the planet apart.

The Ka’un who dwelled in my head had a name for this weapon: the planet-buster.

This was the same weapon that had killed my world. But, I now knew, if we had possessed the right technology, we could have stopped it.

That was, for me, a bitter moment of insight.

The wars continued. And the Ka’un continued to ride me like his beast of burden. And I continued to watch, and watch, as planet after planet fell.

The Ka’un were remorseless, but they lost as often as they won. But when they did win, their wrath and their cruelty knew no bounds.

And all too often, I-or rather my body-was the leader of the giant sentients who took part in their massive ground offensives against bipeds and smaller polypods. These poor creatures were justly awed at our “ferocious” aspect; and we slew them in their thousands.

And for the first time, I truly understood the reality underlying the rhythm of our lives. For whilst we on the interior world were spending our days in tedious repetition, the Ka’un were laying plans and setting up war weaponry. They seeded energy beacons in hundreds of stars to fuel their war machine. They created machines in space that generated robot warriors and robot spaceships to comprise their battle fleet. They reconnoitred carefully all the systems they were going to attack. And only then, did they fight.

The wars were brief; but the preparation for those wars was intense and prolonged.

As for me-I had become one of the Vanished. For months, then years, I did not return to the interior world. I spent all my days with the Ka’un’s other warriors. The Kindred were the Ka’un’s regular army, alternating soldiers on a regular basis to keep the troops fresh. And these Kindred were masters of warfare, and shockingly brutal.

And, meanwhile, we giant sentients were there to shock and appal and to engage in the most bloodthirsty of the combats. The wars could have been won without us; but we were there to add glory and magnificence to the combats.

We were unlike the Kindred of course. They chose to fight. Whereas we giant sentients were without volition, controlled like puppets by the Ka’un. Thus, oblivious to the desperate protests of our minds and souls, our bodies murdered and massacred like evil savages.

And, every now and then, we were joined by familiar faces.

My troops awaited my instructions; I scanned them carefully, looking for traces of fear or of independent thought. A hundred Kindred warriors stood with me in the hull, together with eleven giant sentients. Balach, Morio, Tamal, Sheenam, Goay, Leirak, Tarrroth, Shseil, Dokdrr, Ma.

And Cuzco.

I wanted to scream with joy when I saw him; but I could not. I also wanted to savagely wrap a tentacle around his throat and strangle him, in revenge for what he did to Sharrock and the other rebels. But I could not. I was a prisoner in my own mind; able to see but not to act.

Cuzco looked magnificent. His orange scales gleamed, his eyes were full of an angry vitality. He was no longer the sad and defeated creature I had loved; he was a warrior lost in battle-lust.

“Cuzco,” my voice said, “these creatures have primitive projectile weapons and use spears and mechanical spear-throwers. You will enjoy today.”

“Can they fly?” Cuzco asked.

“They command,” my voice said, “regiments of aerial creatures who routinely massacre beasts larger than yourself. These people, let us call them the Shasoon, which in my language means Prey We Taunt Before We Eat, will give you a battle royal.”

Cuzco roared with joy, as did Balach, Morio, Tamal, Sheenam, Goay, Leirak, Tarrroth, Shseil, Dokdrr, Ma, and myself.

The Ka’un strategy, I now knew, was to engage in direct combat only when the enemy was technologically primitive. And in these cases, we were the Ka’un’s favoured warriors; the giant sentients who could be relied upon to stage a battle both bloody and magnificent.

Ah, and what a battle it was!

The Shasoon were octopod creatures who could gallop on four legs while firing spear-weapons with their dextrous four arms. Their torsos stood upright atop their cylindrical bodies and they howled when they fought, an ululating cry that allowed them to control the animals and the plants in their vicinity.

They were brave and bloodthirsty creatures, with a rich history of combat, as I learned from the thoughts in the mind of my equally bloodthirsty Ka’un master. The Shasoon had slaughtered all the other major land animals on this planet indiscriminately, and fought constant wars amongst themselves. They were gifted astronomers and had spotted our space ship arriving in their stellar system. And they had prepared carefully for an alien invasion, by laying traps, training armies, and concealing missiles capable of throwing vast balls full of explosive powder, albeit for a relatively short distance.

They stood, of course, not a chance.

First Cuzco appeared in the skies above them and fusillades of burning spears were loosed at him from machines built of wood. But the spears splashed harmlessly over his armoured body, and he swept down low and ripped apart Shasoon warriors. Flames were fired at him and engulfed his body but that merely entertained him and he spat back fire from his neck and skull vents. Nets were thrown upon him and he burned them off with acid from his body.

And then I swooped down, my cape fully unfurled, and I landed in the midst of a regiment of Shasoon who fired primitive projectile guns at me and stabbed me with their spears. And I batted them down with my lengthy tentacles, and impaled them with my quills, and ripped their bodies apart with my claws.

Then Goay and Leirak joined the fray; they were carried down in the claws of the giant aerial Tarrroth, and dropped on the earth, where they used their claws to rip open the soil in search of the Shasoon’s buried encampments. And when the network of tunnels were revealed, Dokdrr and Ma were conveyed to the planet’s surface and they slithered their vast serpent bodies inside the tunnels and I know they would not stop until they had paralysed or chewed to pieces each and every Shasoon warrior in this sprawling underground labyrinth.