Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

Once we had destroyed all of the warriors in this army, we travelled onwards to the country’s major city where we were confronted with a fortified building with high walls that towered up to the clouds. But Tarnal swiftly smashed a path through the walls and Cuzco flew inside billowing flame while I clambered over the wrecked walls with my tentacles and we resumed the perpetration of carnage.

These valiant warriors fought fearlessly, and in turn were dealt terrible blows, and sustained appalling injuries. Tarnal had his eyes gouged out and ran off howling, lashing with his claws at air. A mob of Shasoon forced an explosive ball down the throat of Dokdrr, and when it detonated the serpentine’s body was rent into pieces and she screamed in agony and could no longer move. But then Tarrroth swept down from above and carried clawfulls of struggling Shasoon warriors high up in the air and dropped them to their deaths.

Shsiel and Ma had been my friends on the Hell Ship; I remembered them fondly. Ma was a herbivore with a long and (proportionate to her body) slender neck that allowed her to eat leaves from the tops of trees in the giant forests of her world. Her people had developed a rich philosophy, and her stories of the fantastical had always been a joy to hear. And Shsiel was a scaled two-headed beast whose people had befriended the sentient bipeds on their planet, and formed a multi-species civilisation with a single government.

These were the gentlest of beasts, despite their size. But today they were wrathful warriors. And when we smashed down the inner walls of the fortified building we found there the old and the young Shasoon cowering, and the babes in cots, the crippled and the ailing, the venerable leaders, and the terrified toddlers; all protected by ranks of archers fighting fiercely to the last. And Ma roared with joy at the sight and lashed at bodies with her hooves and ate young and old and crippled Shasoon whole, and Shseil used his horns to stab and his teeth to rip the octopods into shreds. Then I joined them on the ground and I I cannot speak of it.

Suffice to say, we slew them all! We butchered, chewed, maimed, ripped, burned and impaled these angry Shasoon by the tens of thousand. The hot blood of battle was upon me; I was fighting side by side with giant sentients of magnificent valour, and blood flowed freely that day!

All this I saw, and all these emotions I felt, as I inhabited the Ka’un mind that was inhabiting me. It was a day of bloody murder, and my Ka’un revelled in it. And so did the Ka’un who controlled Cuzco, and so did all the other Ka’uns who controlled this army of giant sentients. This was not a day for the Kindred; this was a day for monsters to kill small eight-limbed angry and aggressive intelligent beings who stood not a chance. They could hurt us, but they could not kill us; all they could do was die screaming with rage.

Yet in my own soul, I raged with frustration, and with contempt for my inhabiting mind. For what glory was this? How could any sentient creature take pleasure in such cruel, futile atrocities?

The Shasoon were flawed creatures, without doubt; they were a young species, and primitive and bloodthirsty. They had not yet learned the joys of civilisation, collaboration, and societal love. But they had potential; their cities were beautiful, they loyalty to each other was noteworthy, and they had, I do not doubt, great love for their children and for each other.

But we slaughtered them that day as if they were insects who had built their nest in our child’s bedroom; and when the Ka’un were weary we departed and a planet-buster missile was sent to burrow into the planet’s core.

One solitary Shasoon was captured; and we made him watch, through the glass wall of the hull, as his planet was exploded into many pieces. He screamed and wailed, as they all did on these occasions.

And then he was taken away to the interior world.

When we did not fight, we slept. We woke, we fought again.

“Cuzco,” I whispered.

The great beast was asleep.

“Cuzco.”

Still, he slept, not moving, not even a trace of breath from his lips.

“Cuzco!”

Still, he did not stir. No one stirred; for all we giant sentients, sleep was absolute and involuntary.

But for some unknown reason, I had woken, and remained awake. And I could speak. But Cuzco could not hear me; his trance-like state could not be penetrated. I called and whispered and blew air upon his face, but he did not respond in any way.

Eventually I was silent. I lay awake, incapable of movement, unable to speak to anyone else; never have I felt more trapped.

“They are giants also,” roared Cuzco, as he hovered in mid-air at the head of his army. “It is a worthy encounter. Let battle commence!”

And Cuzco plunged and dived upon the basking reptilian creatures, each twice his size, and I loped along on my tentacles to join him.

We were on a swamp planet; double suns made the air a painful glare. These creatures were non-sentient but vicious, and Cuzco was enjoying the battle. Blood spattered and heads were severed and after several minutes Cuzco was maimed and weak and I came roaring in to help him.

“Cuzco,” I whispered, my face close to his bleeding head. “Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you,” he whispered back, then his eyes went blank again and he fell asleep.

The reptile tried to rip his body apart; and I stood and fought, to protect Cuzco’s sleeping body. I realised that Cuzco’s Ka’un body-rider had absented himself; and indeed so had mine. For I had at that moment, for the first time in a year or more, the use of my limbs back; I was free!

But Cuzco was in deadly peril. So I fought for my friend like a crazed thing, spitting rage and stabbing with my quills and slashing with my claws. I pounded the enemy beasts with my tentacles; and I defeated them all.

And when it was over, I was weary and bloodied, and Cuzco still slept, and I wondered what I would do now. Well done, Sai-ias, said a voice in my head, and I realised it was my Ka’un.

He was talking to me.

Cuzco’s wrecked body was carried up in a landing craft and taken to the Hell Ship. He would be restored to health, I knew, but it would be some time before I saw him again.

I recognised one of the Kindred landing party; it was Zala. Once she had been Sharrock’s enemy, and had fought him on his world. And now once again she was serving the Ka’un.

“Zala,” I whispered to her, “It’s me, Sai-ias.” But she did not respond. She is a beautiful creature, said the voice in my head. Or at least, I find her so. Larger, physically, than the females of my kind. And three eyes at the front, whereas our third eye is on the back of our neck. But beautifully proportioned. I have often, in the body of a Kindred male, fornicated with this beast.

Who are you? I thought at the voice in my head. But there was no response.

It was, once again, a slaughter most bloody and glorious.

On this day, I fought side by side with the Kindred, against tusked bipeds who had built huge metal machines to fight their battles for them. The Kindred were armed with their cylinder guns that spat fire, and I and a dozen other giant sentients fought beside them with our claws and teeth and, in my case, tentacles.

First, we had destroyed the tuskers’ cities with bombs from the air; we had smashed their missiles in their silos; we had slain them in their hordes. This was a semi-technological society which used steam to power its machinery; and their projectile weapons fired only one bullet before requiring a reload. But even so, the tuskers had large and well disciplined armies and catapults that could hurl burning fire, and there were millions of them. So we slew millions of them, remotely, with missiles and forest fires.