by Alix Labelle
“This,” I say pointing to the reactor. “Wrong, bad.” He looks from the reactor back to me.
“Acrulla die if not here. Come.” He holds his hand out, and I shake my head, crossing my arms over my chest. A loud popping sound comes from the far end of the room, and one of the elephant-sized hearts above us skips a few beats, its rhythm becoming unsteady.
“Talacanthus!” Someone bellows from the gloom behind the reactor. “Give up.”
“Never,” he shouts back from my side, throwing his arm across my chest and nudging me backwards.
The translator can’t tell me all of what’s said then, but one word comes through clearly.
“...die...”
To Be Continued...
Protected By The Alien Boss
My head...what the hell happened? I’ve had hangovers before but nothing like this. Even this dim light hurts my eyes, when I finally pluck up the courage to open them. At least I know where I am, Talacanthus’ room judging by the blood-red flooring and...no. This isn’t his room at all. It’s far too small, to begin with, and I’m chained by the wrist.
I wish I could recall what happened, why I am here and where Talacanthus is. I sit on the raised area, which serves as a cell, feeling the gentle warmth from the surface flood through me. I’m probably still aboard...what was it he called the ship? Oh, Acrulla. That was it.
As if recalling the ship’s name was a key which fitted the lock holding back my memories, the whole situation came back, slamming into my psyche as if I was living through it again.
Talacanthus had brought me to the middle of the ship for some reason. I remember seeing some kind of reactor and a pair of giant hearts suspended above our heads. There was some kind of popping sound, and I remember voices, alien voices, shouting, but my translation device wasn’t good enough to tell much of what they were saying. Talacanthus tried to push me backwards, to steer me from the danger he knew was coming, but I wouldn’t let him. Why wouldn’t I let him help me?
I sit and rub my temples, literally trying to rub the stabbing agony away. My fingers delve round to the back of my head, and I wince, snatching my hands away from the sensitive lump, which feels as if it’s the size of my fist. Head injury. That would explain the pain and loss of memory. So how did I get that then?
My whole body jumps as a door I hadn’t known was even there retracts into the ceiling, and one of the aliens walks in. He’s smaller than Talacanthus, in both height and bulk, with dirty pond water for eyes and a cruel looking mouth. It looks as if someone has tried to yank his head off at some point recently, as there are puncture wounds and scratches on what serves for his neck.
“Who are you?” I have to wait for the translator to change my words into the whale-song like language this species uses.
His head tips to one side as he replies. “I am Jonober, commander of the Sentient-Ship Acrulla.”
Apparently, the translation device my friend Deakins gave me has had some time to expand the vocabulary it can recognize.
“Talacanthus is commander of this ship,” I tell him. “I demand you set me free and take me to him.” I hope the translator doesn’t give away the fear, which has just started crawling through me at his words,
“Talacanthus,” he states, rubbing his neck wounds with one long finger, “is no more.” That hits me like a punch to the stomach, and I hope it’s just a mistake by the translation device. “I ended his existence and sent him on to the Hereafter. At which point, I claimed this ship.” I can’t hold back the tears, even though I don’t want this bastard to see me cry. “What is the purpose of your leaking eyes?” He demands to know, and I remember our two species know virtually nothing about each other.
“It’s a poison we give off when we want to kill our enemies,” I tell him, then scoop the tears from my cheeks and flick them at him. I can’t feel any gratification from seeing him flinch a bit before he sees through my lie. I can’t feel anything but anguish.
“You will pay for that, breeding sow,” Jonober spits at me, and I don’t need the translator to tell me he’s put venom in his words. “I will take you to Intrellia prime and give you over to the Royal Institute exactly as Talacanthus planned to do.” He steps into the room and comes close, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of backing away.
I stare up into his eyes – he’s still formidably big, even if not as muscled as Talacanthus was. Was? I’m already thinking of him as gone? – as he carries on with his pathetic threat.
“The scientists there will study you, examine you and discover your weaknesses,” he says, “All will be on file and transmitted to every Intrellian ship in the fleet in case we come across your kind again. Eventually, after you have been subjected to the most humiliating and painful tests, your corpse will be dissected and preserved for all time, for any to visit and study.” He turned and walked back out of my cell. “Although why anyone would want to is beyond me.”
I had found this species didn’t use their facial features much, but I could definitely see this one was confused when he heard me laughing. I walked over to the door and saw there were two more armed Intrellians outside.
“You’re pathetic,” I told him. “How you ever managed to kill Talacanthus is beyond me. You had to bring these two with you just to talk to me?” I taunted him. “You’re a weak, cowardly shadow of this ship’s last commander, and I hope someone blows you out into space.” I snorted some phlegm into the back of my throat and spat it into his face. I didn’t care if he executed me here and now. If Talacanthus was truly gone, I had nothing to live for anyway. Better to die quickly here than become some test subject in a lab.
Jonober wiped my mucus from his face and looked at me with his pond-water eyes. His hand flashed out, catching me on the cheek, and I staggered back under the force of the blow. The pain in my head came back with a nasty vengeance, and the door slid shut, leaving me to sob on the floor.
***
“HETTY!” I hear myself screaming her name over and over again, while I descend into blackness. Is this the Hereafter? Is this eternal blackness all I have to look forward to? I cannot feel nor see anything, yet I have awareness and that awareness longs for the warmth and peace it only ever found in her hot embrace. Images float past, ethereal pictures of Hetty, the soft substance which grows from her head, which she calls ’hair.’ My fingers can remember its smoothness and strength and how I used to bury my fingers in it. Her face, alien and beautiful, floats before me, and I would happily spend the rest of eternity staring at it. I can still recall the first time I saw her face change color. A pink flush crept up her neck, and the first time I saw her change the shape of her face. Pulling her bottom ‘lip’ between her teeth almost drove me wild with the need to have her.
Like phantoms, however, her face dissipates like smoke in the wind, leaving me in this nightmarish hell. Alone.
***
I’m still on the floor of my little cell. What’s the point of getting up? The bed is made of the same stuff the floor is, and everything aboard is the same temperature anyway, so I might as well just stay where I am.
Everything seems pointless now. I’m locked in a cell aboard an alien ship, and I don’t know what’s happened to my human companions, Deakins and Nerravin, where we are in the universe, or what kind of place this Intrellia Prime will be like.
A hollow of despair gets carved deeper inside my chest every time I think about Talacanthus. He can’t be gone, I won’t accept it! Yet, even the thought of him in pain or dead brings a deep well of misery. I hope we get to this planet soon, so they can kill me. They’ll be doing me a favor.
God only knows how long I’ve been laying here, wishing I could see him one last time and gradually fading into the edges of a restless sleep, but I jerk up with a scream as something tickles my cheek.
My back hits the wall, but all I can see is some kind of protrusion hanging from the ceiling. I recognize what I think it is. I saw Talacanthus with one of these in his rooms. I think it’s some method of talking dire
ctly to the ship. Come to think of it, there were similar things attached to the other aliens on the bridge just after the first explosion, so maybe they’re input devices too.
Standing, I step across to the thing, which is swaying slightly, and reach for it. As warm as the rest of the ship, it’s got a cup on the end, half spherical and filled with what look like billions of hairs. Maybe they’re nerve bundles which would make sense in a living spaceship. Talacanthus had it on his forehead when I saw him but surely his species, Intrellians, are biologically different, and maybe they’ve evolved to be able to interface with this proboscis. Being human, it might cause brain damage or even kill me, so what have I got to lose?
I seat myself on the shelf which serves as a bed and hold the ball shaped end on my forehead, waiting to see what might happen. Nothing seems to for a while and I let go, surprised to see it doesn’t fall off and swing, like a pendulum, in the middle of the room. My fingers search around the edges and find it has solidly attached itself to my head, and I can’t even get a fingernail underneath it. Still the pain in my head has gone, and I feel a little sleepy so I might just have to li...
“You have been misled,” I think. No, wait a minute, someone else thought that. “Talacanthus has not yet passed into the Hereafter.” Whose thoughts are these?
“Hello. Who are you?” I ask the thought. It doesn’t even sound like my thoughts.
“I am Acrulla, one of the oldest Sentient-Ships in existence and you reside within me.” A flood of memories cascade into my mind, and I see the conception of a massive craft. A genius amalgamation of robotic parts and biological tissue, created and grown artificially on a planet I can only assume is Intrellia Prime. An ancient looking Intrellian, wizened and old, shuffles through the passages of the bright, new ship, which pulses with life around him. He makes his slow way to an area, which looks familiar to me and, I know this is where Talacanthus had his quarters. The feeble alien lies down on the floor and the long tube I saw joined to Talacanthus (something like which is also joined to me) droops down to connect with his head. I see all of this in a dream like state, both through the eyes of the alien and externally, so I’m looking up along the length of the proboscis when the sight fades and I become the spaceship.
Intrellians never enslaved a race of peaceful creatures! They never installed a nuclear reactor inside its chest and the sentience which runs it all was a volunteer who actually had the thing built. Talacanthus is free from any blame I might have put on him. He’s...gone, my mind tells me.
“He is not dead yet. There is still time to save him, but, I will need your assistance.”
“Why are you helping us?” I think before I can even begin to hide the thought.
“I joined with Talacanthus both before and after he met you,” Acrulla’s thoughts come to me. “And now with you. Part of what makes me who and what I am is now due to the thoughts, memories and feelings I have taken from you. You and he share a bond which transcends worlds, ignores species and is unbreakable.” Shock jolts me as Acrulla’s feelings for both of us wash through my psyche.
“What have I got to do?” I wonder into the ship’s mind. A flood of information, pictures, thoughts and ideas, slam into me, and I have to take a few seconds to understand what I’m being shown. Dread runs through me as I fully comprehend what this entity wants me of do.
“I can’t.” My thoughts sound pathetic, even to me.
“You must, if you intend to save Talacanthus.” With those final words, the connection is severed, and I open my eyes as the final section of the communication pipe retracts into the ceiling.
It’s a mad plan with little chance of success and quite a high chance of my death. If Talacanthus is alive, though, it’s got to be worth the risk. I strip my coveralls off to stand naked in the small cell wearing just a pair of boots as apparently where I’m going it would be better to be slippery. Then I start taking deep breaths as I watch a hole growing in the corner of the cell, trying to fill my blood stream with oxygen. The hole is like a portal to hell, and I have to force myself to jump in feet first.
***
“Report.” My voice rings out across the command station.
“All essential repairs have been completed, Commander Jonober,” someone tells me as I sit in the command section. It’s about time. I thought I might have to make an example of a few of my new crew. “We can return to our original course and speed at your discretion.”
“Do so,” I tell Talacrus, who does not acknowledge my command but does execute it. I will have to watch him. If he decides to try and avenge his brother, I will have him put down. Lights flicker in the command section, and Acrulla jerks once before falling silent.
“Report!” I yell at the command crew. None of them have the answer, and my rage grows. “Someone aboard this ship is sabotaging my command, and I will not stand for it.” I glare around the room and single out the female, Shaktee. “My quarters. Now.” I command and she shuffles off, the bruises I put on her last time I took her fading a little. “If I return and this situation is not resolved, I will begin executing crew.” I say as I leave.
I stand outside the door and listen to them chuckling before someone, I cannot tell who, says, “We had better get something done fast then. He will not spend too long with Shaktee.” Further laughter follows and my rage boils. Yet a cold satisfaction spreads inside me. We shall see who is laughing when their blood boils in the vacuum of space.
***
My lungs feel ready to burst. There’s pain in my throat, and I’m going to die in the thick walled artery deep inside Acrulla. As soon as I’d jumped, feet first, into the hole he’d opened for me, I was plunged into blackness and being pumped into the bowels of the massive ship along with the dark ichor which is his blood. It’s warm, horribly, and slowly creeping into my nose and ears, insinuating itself into any little hole it can find. And the pressure! It’s like being squeezed from head to foot, making it even harder to hold my breath. I clamped my eyes shut when I jumped in and my mind conjures images of being absorbed into Acrulla’s living hull, in exactly the same way as the Intrellian male who died to bring life to the ship.
Panic is threatening to snap my sanity like a Popsicle stick, and a thousand horrific deaths cross my mind as I contemplate drowning in alien blood. It feels as if I’m being squeezed along by some vile peristalsis which forces even more precious air from my lungs. There’s nothing I can do. I have to breathe and when I do, my lungs are going to fill with Acrulla’s oily blood drowning me.
My mouth opens, and I pull the blood in at the same time as I’m birthed from the thick blood tube like a chubby infant. I cough and retch, gasping air in to my tortured lungs and spitting to clear the vile shit from my mouth.
Eventually, I look up, taking in my surroundings. This part of Acrulla is coated in a thick layer of dust, unused and abandoned, a fact I’m thankful for as I’m only wearing boots. I scrape as much of the blood off my skin as I can and try to think what the next step of Acrulla’s plan was, the fear and loathing I felt at the first stage nearly blocked it from my mind. From what I could tell of Acrulla’s memories, this is where any personal items from past crew members and their commanders are put. Around me, I can see boxes and cases, bags and even some furniture. The air is warm but not as humid as other places aboard, probably to keep everything from decomposing.
I have to find Talacanthus, and this is where Acrulla’s thoughts said he would be, but it’s another vast chasm of a place piled with containers, which have left narrow alleyways in between. I feel boxed in, almost as confined as when I was inside the artery, and an involuntary shudder runs through me, making my curves wobble. As well as finding my alien, I’ll have to find some kind of clothing, even if it’s just a blanket. Even though there’s nobody else here, I feel more naked than ever before.
With nothing else to go on, I take one of the alleyways and try to make my way towards where I think the exit might be, even though I don’t want to leave. Exhaustion thr
eatens to drag me to the floor after all I’ve been through, but the overpowering need to find Talacanthus, to make sure he’s alive and safe, drives me on. I trip over something in the semi-darkness and fall hard on my hands and knees, jarring my shoulders.
“Talacanthus!” I yell desperately, not hearing my words echo as the sounds are absorbed by Acrulla’s live walls. I get no response and struggle to get back to my feet, stumbling on towards some unknown destination. I can see lights up ahead, brighter and glowing with warmth and a spike of hope stabs through me, spurring me on. Maybe Acrulla is trying to help me by showing me the way.
I trip again and stumble forwards into the brighter area, looking up to see even more storage boxes and assorted junk. Dragging myself to my weary feet again, I scan around in the poor light, catching sight of an area where the wall of boxes has been bowed as if something heavy has plowed into it hard. Scrabbling across the top of all this crap isn’t easy, but I’m determined to make it over to see what’s made the mess.
Peering down from the top of a large, green, storage box, with the metal edges digging into my naked thighs, my eyes catch sight of a broken looking body which has been dumped at the bottom of a chute. It’s got to be Talacanthus. It’s got to be. Dropping down beside the corpse-like body, I flinch back as my leg hits the arm of this individual and feel the ice cold coming from it. Whoever this is, they must be dead to feel as cold as that.
It’s far too heavy for me to move, so I have to crawl over to the other side as it’s facing away from me. Sickness crawls over my skin wherever it comes into contact with the body, and when I finally see it is Talacanthus, my heart snaps, and I hear a keening wail coming from somewhere. I grasp his oddly thumb-less hand and clutch it to my naked chest, howling my loss and despair, when the fingers twitch. It must be the shock of feeling it which makes me press my fingers against his neck. Panic hits me again when I realize I can’t feel his pulse. Sense takes over when I remember his physiology must be completely different to mine.