“Enough,” I yelled, and seized each of them in a tentacle.
“Let me down,” screamed Sharrock, and hacked at me with his sword.
“Let me down,” screamed the female and hacked at me with her sword.
I roared; and spat webbing in their faces; and they fell to the ground, bound and helpless.
A killing rage had come upon me; I yearned to smash them into pieces.
The rage passed.
“Let us talk,” I said.
In the shadow of the snowy mountains, the female warrior-who I had by now recognised as Zala, the only female Kindred with such red-and-silver-hair-and Sharrock confronted each other; while I placed my body between them.
“Tell me why you fought this female,” I said to Sharrock.
And Sharrock told the tale:
“As you know,” he said, “I fought the giant Gilgara. Nobly he-”
“Just the facts,” I said.
“I defeated him,” Sharrock synopsised sulkily, “freed my people; and then sought out the renegade Kindred who dwelled at the foot of these mountain. And I gave them my terms; release your slaves and we will live in harmony.”
“He’s insufferable, isn’t he?” I said to Zala.
“He is indeed,” she concurred. “To state my case: we acknowledge no master; we broke free of Gilgara many cycles ago. We are free.”
“But your bipeds are slaves,” pointed out Sharrock.
“Well, yes.”
“And I bested you in combat, therefore-”
“I was winning, you shit-eyed bastard!”
“Sharrock, I’ve heard enough. Zala, tell your tale.”
“I have no tale to tell; I do not answer to monsters such as you.”
“I have said what I must say; the slaves will be freed, I demand it!” roared Sharrock. “And as for this bitch, this evil-I cannot find a word for one so fucking-she has to die! Her presence cannot be tolerated! For she tried to kill me!” Never had I seen Sharrock so dementedly enraged; which was indeed remarkable, since demented enragement had been his commonest mood during his early days on the Hell Ship.
“You shameless liar!” Zala replied, with evident astonishment. “You attacked me! I was merely defending myself!”
“Not here,” said Sharrock, calming himself visibly. “Not on this pathetic excuse for a planet. On my home world. She was part of the invading army. She serves the Ka’un.”
There was an appalled silence; and ruefully I acknowledged to myself that I had always known this day would come.
For I had recognised, of course, from Sharrock’s account of his battle with the female alien on Madagorian, the red-and-silver-haired Kindred Zala.
“Do you deny it?” Sharrock accused.
Zala laughed. “No, I do not deny it. I have no recollection of such a battle; but it may well be as you say. For I have fought, I will not deny it, many times in the service of the Masters of this Ship.”
Sharrock looked at me in triumph.
“You see?” he said savagely. “She fights for the demons who control this ship; she was a warrior in the invasion and slaughter of my world!”
“I know,” I said.
There was a terrible silence.
“You know?” said Sharrock, more stunned than if I had smote his skull with an axe.
“Yes. It is the way of this world: all of us know that the Kindred serve the Ka’un. It is why there are so many of them; they are ruled by the Ka’un, and they in turn rule us.”
Sharrock seemed to have lost the power of speech. He looked at Zala and tried to spit at her with contempt; but his mouth was too dry, and all he managed was an ugly croak.
“How could this be?” Sharrock said faintly, his eyes radiating accusation and hatred.
“We are soldiers; we serve,” said Zala, but there was shame in her eyes.
“You should also know,” I explained to Sharrock, “that I collaborate with the Kindred on a regular basis. That is how order is achieved on this world; the Ka’un speak to the Kindred, the Kindred speak to me.”
Sharrock stared at me with horror.
“Collaborate in what way?”
“Information. Discipline. The training of the new ones, and, if necessary, if they fail to settle into our world, their execution.” I spoke calmly, but inside my spirit was quaking with anxiety; I knew Sharrock was going to take this badly.
“You are the lick-cock of these craven giants?” said Sharrock.
“That is not how I would-”
“Oh Sai-ias,” said Sharrock, and my soul’s fire was quenched by his cold disdain.
“You are indeed,” said Zala to me, “our lick-cock; a phrase well chosen.” And she smiled, not pleasantly.
I bowed my head submissively; for one of the conditions of serving the Kindred was to comply with their strict etiquette of submissive behaviour.
“If you say so, Zala, then I will agree that the phrase is apt,” I agreed courteously.
“And now that Gilgara is gone,” added Zala.
“Indeed! I yield to your authority, mistress,” I said swiftly.
Zala smiled. Her look of triumph encompassed both me and Sharrock.
“Serve me well, beast,” said Zala arrogantly. And she departed.
There was a prolonged and horrifying silence. Sharrock’s unblinking blue eyes were like ice.
“How could you, Sai-ias?” Sharrock said to me. His voice was calm, which filled me with foreboding.
“If not me, then it would be someone else,” I explained. “Once it was a beast called Carulha; when he died, I took over his role, and his responsibilities.”
“And why did you not tell me all this? Before I conquered Gilgara and assumed chieftainship of the Kindred?” asked Sharrock savagely.
“It did not for a moment occur to me,” I admitted, “that you could win.”
Sharrock was silent for a long time. I waited.
“You are a traitor,” Sharrock concluded finally, in the quietest of tones.
“Sharrock,” I explained, “you cannot-”
“To deal with them, those evil conquering bastards, to do their bidding, that is truly-”
“You have to be pragmatic about-”
“TRAITOR!” Sharrock’s red face was redder still; his rage hit me like a punch.
“I do what I have to do,” I said, wretchedly.
And Sharrock drew his hull-metal sword from his scabbard in the blink of an eye; and he struck me with it in my face. The blow barely registered for me, but even so I flinched.
He struck me again, and again, hammering his sword against my carapace, my skull, jabbing my eyes, trying to hurt me and break flesh but failing.
Eventually he was too exhausted to lift his arm. He threw the sword down on the ground. Then he walked away.
Sharrock did not return to the Valley, nor did he have any further dealings with the Kindred.
And from that day on, he refused to speak to me.
Jak
It was one of those days.
I was leading the crew in an emergency drill. We performed a mock evacuation, with all five officers and ten ordinary crew members in spacesuits. A year had passed since the extermination of the FanTangs; I was Jak the Explorer now, no longer Trader Jak.
One by one the crew filed into pods and the pods broke away from the main ship and vanished into uncertain space.
I shared a pod with Albinia and Darko, an engineer. “You know this would never happen in real life,” said Darko, dourly. “If a missile ever got past our shields, we’d be dead.”
“Break away,” I said, and Darko hit the switch and the pod broke away from the main ship.
As we spiralled around weightlessly, Albinia’s hair lifted from her head in a halo. She looked at me. Just looked.
Galamea’s voice came through to me via my murmur-link implant. “ All pods detached, in fourteen point two minutes. Drill is over, return to the main ship.”
We re-entered real space, still spirall
ing around, with a clear view of Explorer through our window. She looked eerily beautiful.
Albinia was weeping.
“I apologise Star-Seeker, can I help?” said Drago, in terrified tones.
“It’s like being outside myself,” said Albinia, as she looked at Explorer’s exterior hull.
I was dining alone, and a tray crashed on the table next to mine.
“Can I join you?” Albinia said.
“Please do,” I said, startled.
Albinia slid into place beside me. “I have a favour to ask,” she said, in very quiet tones.
“I would be honoured,” I replied gallantly.
“You don’t know what I’m going to ask.”
“I’d be honoured anyway,” I insisted.
She looked vexed.
“Have I offended you, Mistress-”
She waved a hand; I silenced my own rhetoric. And then Albinia sat there, looking anxious, for quite some time.
“What?” I coaxed.
“I would like to be your friend.”
I nodded. And smiled, graciously, savouring the gift of her presence, and the nearness of her sublime intellect. And then:
“What?” I asked, baffled.
“Will you? Be my friend?”
“Um. Yes. Of course I will.” I was sweating now. This was indelicate beyond all measure. Friendship is the rarest gift a woman may offer to a man; and for a Star-Seeker to suggest it so openly to a mere Ship’s Master was unheard of.
“Good. That’s wonderful.” And she beamed, like a child that has a toy that can talk back.
“And indeed, I’m flattered beyond all measure that you asked,” I said.
“Good.”
“Yes, it is good.”
“What do we do now?” Albinia said hopelessly.
I smiled my most charming smile. “Well, I could tell you some stories of my days as a Trader. The duplicitous aliens; the magnificent deals! Or, if you prefer, I could tell you about the time I met the Empress, in my days at the Home Court, or-”
“You want to tell me stories?”
“Well-they’re good stories,” I said, defensively.
“And that’s what friends do?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “Friends, well. Friends take each other for granted. Interrupt each other. Give each other crap, forget each other’s birthdays, then make impossible demands at the worst possible moments. I could never treat you like that, Mistress!”
Albinia started weeping; I was utterly confused.
“I did say yes, to your generous and extraordinarily kind offer,” I apologised.
“Are you afraid of me, Jak?”
“Of course not,” I lied, fluently.
“You are.”
“Well-”
Albinia got up and walked away.
I was utterly bewildered. But one thing was clear to me.
I had totally fucked that one up.
“Couldn’t we just shadow-flit into the cave?” asked Morval.
“We have to make a good first impression,” I told him.
“A canoe?”
“Just row,” I said.
The three-Olaran canoe bearing myself, Morval and Phylas skimmed fast along the viscous waters. The sky was dark with purple clouds, and the only trace of sun was a faint glow behind the largest swirl of cloud formations. It was raining. On this planet, it always rained.
The Klak-Klak that was leading us surfaced and its many claws klak-klakked. We looked ahead and saw the cave entrance.
“I hate caves,” said Morval.
“How come?”
“I have a fear of small dark confined spaces,” Morval admitted. “My simulacrum was once buried alive and the remote link failed. I spent a year under the earth before they found a way to wake me up.”
“That’s nothing,” snorted Phylas. “On my first Explorer mission, I was flogged and sprayed with salt water and Commander Galamea refused to wake me because she thought the aliens were just ‘playing’ with me.”
“Bitch.”
“She is a hard woman, without a doubt,” Phylas admitted.
“How many times have you been killed by aliens, Morval?” I asked.
“Thirty, forty thousand times,” admitted Morval.
“I’ve only been killed sixty-four times,” I said.
“That’s because you’re just a Trader,” Morval said.
“You have the easy job,” Phylas added.
“We do the hard stuff. Prepare the way.”
“Fornicatory traders.”
“Take all the glory.”
“Earn all the money!”
“Will you quit fornicatoryishly whining?” I told them.
We carried on rowing, an even steady stroke that sent the canoe flying above the sticky red waves of the planet’s ocean.
Our boat penetrated deep into the complex of caves. Stalactites made of precious gems dangled down. Fish bumped the underside of our canoe and a few of them leaped in and were killed by Phylas’s energy gun. The smell of burning fish flesh became intolerable.
The narrow waterway through the cave complex began to broaden, and we emerged into a high damp cavern. Thick black tubes dangled from the rock, forming complex shapes, like a latticework.
“Artworks,” suggested Phylas.
“Excrement,” was Morval’s opinion.
“Rock formations,” I suggested.
The canoe ran aground on the rocks and we stepped out. We were wearing full body armour, even though we were in shadow-self form. The armour had been sprayed jet black and decorated with bumps and spikes, to make us seem more attractive to the crustacean-type entity that was the Klak-Klak.
There were six of the brutes waiting for us, each with at least twenty arms, and each arm was festooned with vicious claws. The claws klakked in unison like applause at a concert. I walked towards the largest of the Klak-Klaks, went on one knee, and attached a translating device to its chin.
“Can you understand me?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the Klak-Klak.
“We come in peace,” I said.
“No,” said the Klak-Klak.
“We wish to trade,” I said.
“No,” said the Klak-Klak.
“Do you understand this concept-‘trade’?” I asked.
“No,” said the Klak-Klak.
“Is it possible,” asked Phylas, “for a species to be considered sentient if it only knows two words?”
The Klak-Klak’s eyes rose out on stalks and peered at Phylas. Then the eyes retreated into the black carapace again.
“Yes,” said the Klak-Klak.
“Let us show you our treasures,” I said. And Phylas stepped forward and opened up his cargo bag. He took out a huge Balla Pearl and held it in his hand. It glowed lustrously, transforming the dark shadows of the cave into lighter shadows. The Pearl sang, and the sound was like a female’s post-orgasmic smile on a sunny day. Phylas passed the Pearl to the Klak-Klak, who clutched it in his claw. Then the Klak-Klak crushed the pearl and dust dribbled to the ground.
“Or this,” I said, and took out an energy gun. I aimed it at the wall and carved a crude face, with two eyes, a nose, and a smiling mouth. Then I grinned. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
The lead Klak-Klak visibly recoiled, stepping back and raising its arms in what in any creature’s body language would indicate horror. Then he and the other crustaceans began to klak-klak their claws loudly. The sound was deafening, and ominous.
“You have,” said the leader of the Klak-Klaks, “hurt our wall.”
I laughed. “It’s a wall!” I said. “Walls can’t-” I broke off. I looked at Phylas.
“I’m on it,” said Phylas and took a sentience reading of the walls of the cave that enveloped us.
“Ah,” Phylas eventually concluded. “Shit,” he added.
“The wall is alive?” I said, and Phylas nodded.
Red water trickled down the rocks of the cavern. The black wires dangling from the rock
changed colour and became pink, then started to flash. A terrible low moaning howling sound emerged, as the wall groaned in agony.
“We didn’t realise,” I said, and the Klak-Klak lunged and ate me.
There was a crunching sound as the Klak-Klak devoured armour and body and bones.
[I woke up.]
Phylas raised his energy gun and incinerated the Klak-Klak.
Out of the ashes, a shadow stirred. The shadow grew, and became a silhouette. Finally the shadow became me again.
“Forgive us,” I said, “for our error. But we come in peace, and we wish to trade.”
The Klak-Klaks starred at us through eyes that stuck out through black armour plating and a terrible silence descended.
“Maybe we should-” I began to say.
Then there was a cracking and groaning sound. Phylas and I looked up. A trickle of dust slowly drifted down through the air, forming a haze like a parachute. A terrible wailing sound emerged; it was the rock, baying with pain, declaring its hate for the two intruders; we needed no translation for the sound was a dagger being plunged through our eardrums.
Then the roof crashed down on us.
I found myself enveloped in rubble. Boulders bounced off my body. Dust and rocks were everywhere, and in a matter of minutes, I was trapped under tons of screaming, howling, roaring rock.
“Not again, ” muttered Phylas, irritably.
[I woke.]
I wrote up my log that night: Negotiations failed after we were buried alive by a sentient cave. These creatures have much we would desire; but the evidence is they want nothing from us.
System placed on the Trading Reserve List, to be reviewed in one hundred years.
The missile hurtled through space then teleported and reappeared and exploded an inch from the battleship’s hull. The image blurred as the battleship’s forcefield engaged, and the explosion lit the awesome blackness of space with a red and yellow fireball.
The smaller fighter ships were V-shaped and daringly fast and were firing energy beams of some kind at the battleship’s rear end; tiny columns of flame erupted from the huge ship’s side as the en-beams struck home.
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