Hell Ship

by Philip Palmer

  “It’s the Magrhediera,” Morval speculated. “They escaped from their planet and they are taking revenge on us.”

  “The ship doesn’t conform to any of the Magrhediera designs,” I pointed out. “And it’s not their style; they burn biospheres, then colonise; these creatures are killing actual planets.”

  “The Stuxi?” asked Galamea.

  “It could be a rogue Stuxi ship,” I conceded. “Their planet is Quarantined; but it just takes one vessel to keep a war going.”

  “The Stuxi are ruthless bastards,” Galamea said. We all knew her past history with these creatures; we preserved a tactful silence.

  “The Navy will find them,” said Phylas. “And that will be that.” He was clearly comforted at this vision of the remorseless power of the Olaran military.

  “There may be other vessels,” I worried.

  “One ship,” said Morval. “It’s just one ship. Against the entire Olaran Fleet. It’s just a matter of time before one of our vessels finds it, and crushes it.”

  We were nowhere near the Maibos system, and there was nothing we could do to help. And so we continued with our exploration of the farthest stretches of the furthest galaxies.

  And every night Albinia came to my bed and we had sex. And afterwards we talked; and sometimes, she would let me be Explorer again. And we became close. We even became, dare I say it, “friends.”

  In the days however I continued to worship her, as my goddess and inspiration, as she, in her dreamy trance state, steered and flew and lived through our ship.

  And, as it happens, I was at this time also spending a good deal more time with Phylas. He was determined to be a Trader, so I tried to teach him some tricks.

  He was however, I concluded regretfully, after several role play exercises, too easygoing and nice to haggle; and he had no flair for deception and manipulative body language. However, I persevered; he was a dumb and sweet kid and the universe needed more of those, in my view.

  And also, around about this time-I remember it well!-Morval and I discovered and explored a fascinating planet, which we christened Gem, that was populated by microbes and rich in jewels. The diamonds were clearly visible in the rocks, there were rubies, there were mountains made of gold. We spent a month running sentience tests on the bacteria and viruses who comprised this planet’s only biosphere, before concluding that they were just stupid bugs and we had the right to claim this planet for Olara.

  Galamea toasted our success with champagne; all the ship’s officers would get a small percentage of the profits from this planet in perpetuity. It was our pension plan.

  But then, just a week after the champagne toasting, we saw it; the ship with black sails. Or rather, Explorer did.

  I have a located a telling trace, said Explorer.

  “Tell us more,” said Commander Galamea.

  We were all in the Command Hub; Albinia’s eyes were wide open, and clearly she too was shocked at Explorer’s decision to speak to us all directly, rather than via her.

  A vessel is travelling this sector via rift space; there are visuals.

  An image appeared on our panoramic wall screen, of a black sailed vessel with a cylindrical hull.

  “Is this-” I began to say.

  This is the vessel that destroyed the FanTangs, said Explorer.

  There was a sober silence.

  “Send the coordinates to the Navy,” said Galamea.

  “They may rift at any moment,” I pointed out. “We should tag them.”

  “If we get too close they’ll fire on us,” Galamea pointed out.

  “Do we care?”

  Galamea smiled. “We do not. Explorer, pursue, and prepare for battle. We’re in for a father-fucker of a fight.”

  Albinia was living in the rift; she could smell the tang of the shifting-sands as Explorer soared through the cracks of reality that connect one part of the universe with another.

  And Albinia/Explorer could feel and smell and hear and touch the enemy ship as it tried to escape.

  She sensed too that there was something strange about the ship, yet she could not at first find words to describe it.

  Then, as Explorer later explained it to me, the words came to Albinia:

  She could smell Death upon this ship.

  These were creatures who to our certain knowledge had destroyed two entire planets and all who dwelled on them. These were creatures who could blow up suns. These were creatures who had massacred the citizens of an entire Olaran Trading Post and left them as corpses for the birds to pick at, except that all the birds had died and no creature was left to scavenge.

  The enemy ship was Death, it wrought Death, it savoured Death; but, Albinia resolved, soon it too would die.

  Explorer/Albinia flew through the final rift and there it was, the Death Ship, waiting for her, and for us.

  “Do we know anything about these creatures?” I asked.

  “We have no records of a ship of this kind,” said Phylas. “The materials of the hull are unfamiliar. The elements of which the materials are made are-unfamiliar.”

  “How strange is that?” I asked.

  “Fairly strange,” Phylas conceded. “Axial theory accepts three different classes of elements, the Real, the Unlikely, and the Never to be Dreamed Of. This ship is made of other stuff entirely.”

  “It may be from a different universe,” said Morval.

  I scoffed. “Not that old myth again. I don’t believe in other universes.”

  “That’s because you know no transdimensional science,” sneered Morval.

  “I don’t need to; that’s your job, to remember the dull stuff,” I mocked. Morval bridled at the insult.

  The enemy ship had a cylindrical hull that was scratched, and covered in chaol, a space-dwelling parasitical life-form. High black sails loomed above the hull; their purpose, Phylas explained, was probably to gather dark matter and use it as an energy source.

  Explorer drifted closer, invisible in all wavelengths and heavily shielded.

  The enemy ship was still. It seemed to drift through the darkness of space like an idle thought in a blank mind.

  “How many crew?” I asked.

  “Our sensors can’t penetrate the hull,” said Phylas.

  “On the count of three, fire missiles, flit anti-matter bombs, release energy beams. Then when we’ve done that, switch on the Quarantine cage; we’ll trap the parent-fuckers inside a box full of detonating explosives.” I said.

  “Agreed,” said Galamea.

  “One-” I began.

  Explorer rocked and shook.

  “They’ve hit our shields,” said Phylas.

  “No weapon was fired,” said Morval.

  Then we saw on the screen the tell tale shadows of missiles in flight.

  “The missiles struck before they were fired,” theorised Phylas. “They’re using some kind of time reversal mechanism.”

  I froze at the implications of that.

  Morval didn’t wait for the rest of the count; he pulled the sliders on his phantom control display to flit the anti-matter bombs.

  Our flitting technology can cut through any force shield; one moment the bombs were on our weapons deck, the next they were inside the enemy vessel.

  And so the black-sailed ship spun madly in space, as if beset by fierce winds, as the bombs exploded inside its hull. The hull itself cracked, spewing air and bodies into space. And the sails collapsed, as their energy supply was compromised, and they dangled helplessly in vacuum.

  Meanwhile, real-space missiles surged forth from Explorer and, ten minutes later, cut through the enemy’s force-shields with ease and detonated on its hull, shattering it further.

  “It can’t be that easy,” I said.

  “Watch,” said Albinia. She could see the ship as Explorer saw it, on our panoramic wall screen. And she knew, with a chilling certainty, that something strange was happening.

  And then it happened. The shards of the enemy ship began to reform. The two p
arts of the hull rejoined; the sails refurled.

  “Nice trick,” conceded Phylas.

  “Quarantine cage?” I said.

  “Activated,” said Morval.

  Another missile exploded on our force shields. And another. The stay-still fields kept us safe, but the Hub was rocking wildly with each impact.

  “Quarantine the bastards!!” I screamed.

  And so the battle raged: the Death Ship continued to hurl missiles at us, and the missiles continued to splash hopelessly against our invincible shields. And meanwhile we cast a quarantine lattice through space to envelop the black-sailed monstrosity. Within moments the battle would be over.

  Then our fields failed, and a missile crashed through our hull.

  The impact on our ship was devastating: the hull cracked; air billowed out into space; our wireboards exploded, and the lights flickered wildly.

  But in the Hub we saw none of that. The stay-stills kept us in place. The armoured doors protected us from all blast impacts. Our wireboards were shielded and discrete. And we could if necessary survive for centuries in this Hub even if the rest of the vessel were destroyed.

  “Evacuate lower deck crew into pods,” ordered Galamea.

  “No one has ever done that much damage to an Olaran vessel before,” marvelled Morval.

  I began to worry we had got ourselves into a fight we couldn’t win.

  “Albinia, report,” I said.

  “Explorer is hurt; the sheer drive is damaged; we are using spare rift-support engines,” she replied.

  The black-sailed ship vanished from our screen.

  “It’s rifting,” said Phylas.

  “We have it tagged.” We rifted too and found ourselves almost on top of the Death Ship; and we rained more missiles on it. And then it vanished, once again.

  And again we tagged it.

  And so the battle was waged: our two damaged ships flickered in and out of space, landing occasional blows upon each other in the form of powerful beams of energy that smashed against energy-absorbing shields. Albinia relied on her powerful intuition to guide her in her rift-leaps and most of the time she made Explorer reappear within missile-range of the enemy, and we struck.

  Phylas and Morval were marshalling the barrage of energy beams, which collided with invisible barriers but, with each repulsion, stole data about what was within. They also used the disuptor ray in short bursts; but the Death Ship’s shields bore up against it.

  Then I flickerflew a black hole from Explorer’s inner cage and it rematerialised within the enemy ship. The ship’s image wavered, as the gravity well began to rip at its very fabric.

  Then the enemy ship vanished, rifting away with incredible skill, and the black hole was left behind, bending space around it, a pinprick with the gravitational pull of a red giant.

  And the enemy ship was below us now and Explorer began to shake. Every atom of our vessel was in motion. The enemy were trying to shake us to death with a weapon unlike any we had ever encountered.

  I opened the bomb hatch and Albinia rifted Explorer away, and when Explorer reappeared in real space we were able to see a flock of missiles explode as one in the space where we had been. And then the black-sailed ship vanished again and we rifted after it.

  After another hour of battle, we scored another hit: the enemy ship was smitten by a mighty energy blow, and its hull was dented, but this time it didn’t tear. But within instants our own hull was smashed with a mighty fist, and air began venting out again.

  “How are they managing to penetrate our shields?” asked Galamea calmly. “I thought that was impossible.”

  “They’re-good,” I said.

  “Wait,” whispered Morval.

  “But even so, we’re beating the fornicators!” I roared, as I saw their hull began to rip apart once more.

  “It’s rifting again,” screamed Phylas.

  “Continue pursuit,” I said.

  The black-sailed ship slipped through a rift in space; but once again we flew with it. We emerged in a different part of space; and the battle continued.

  They rifted again; we went with them. And again. And again.

  “What are they doing?” asked Morval baffled. “They’re not fighting; they’re travelling.”

  This continued for-how long? Hours? Or days? We received regular reports from the crew on the fatalities and casualties that had accrued. But our ship had self-healed, the wireboards had regenerated, and our guns were now recharged. We had lost six brave Olarans but we were battle-worthy once again.

  And finally we found ourselves in a solar system dominated by a large gas giant. The black-sailed ship stopped shooting at us. It seemed to be waiting for something.

  Our gen-guns fired, and fired again. The enemy ship’s shields were holding up; but it was making no effort whatsoever to avoid our blasts.

  “Look. Behind. On the wall-screen,” said Morval.

  The panoramic wall-screen in front of me showed the enemy ship, its hull a blaze of energy as bomb after bomb exploded on its invisible walls.

  “No, look behind you. Look at the stars,” Morval said.

  I turned around, and looked at the screen behind me, which offered a view of the far distant universe.

  And I realised that some of the stars were gone. Many remained, but I knew the patterns of the distant galaxies and I could see the absences as vividly as if they had been coloured flashes of flight.

  “Which stars are gone?” I asked.

  “The most distant.”

  More stars vanished.

  “And now many nearer stars too,” Morval said.

  All the stars vanished.

  “And now,” said Morval, unnecessarily, “all of them.”

  “What does this mean?” I asked, trying to keep the panic from my voice.

  “The battle is a feint,” said Morval. “We are not winning, we are losing. In fact, we have already lost. Utterly.”

  The enemy ship accelerated towards us in real space, scattering our space cameras like a farki running through a mob. Energy beams bounced off its hull, and the metal glowed white, but still the black-sailed ship flew, closer and closer to Explorer.

  “They’re breached our improb wall a second time; there’s a bomb inside Explorer,” said Albinia, her eyes wide open, terror in her voice. “I think it’s-”

  Our ship exploded around us. The instruments were shattered into shards, and Albinia’s body exploded and blood gushed out of her torso, and I heard her scream, but only once. Morval and Phylas too were ripped into bloody shreds of meat and bone.

  I was knocked off my feet, and one of my arms was ripped off, and my skin burned, and my legs melted. I dragged myself by the strength of one arm and hand until I reached Albinia’s seat. And I tugged myself up. And I touched her cheek, which was cold. And I took her pulse, and there was none. She was dead.

  “All systems failing,” said Galamea.

  “Help me,” I said. I pushed the dead body of Albinia aside with one hand, and sat in her seat. I ripped the cable out of her skull, and clumsily tried to attach it to myself, but of course I had no skull-socket.

  “I can’t,” said Galamea. I looked. Her lower body had been ripped off, and blood was gushing out of the half-torso.

  “You led us well, beloved Mistress,” I said formally.

  “Jak, you slippery devil-ah!” And Galamea died.

  I cut the end off the cable until I bared two spikes; then I thrust them into my skull, so they penetrated my frontal lobe. Blood trickled down my forehead; and suddenly I could see through Explorer’s eyes.

  What is happening? I asked.

  The enemy are possessed of a device that undermines the fabric of reality. It creates a zero-probability function; in other words, it restores this universe to the random chaos that existed before The Moment of The Universe’s Birth.

  They’ve destroyed this entire universe? I said, incredulous.

  This is not their universe. They do not care if it dies. Behold
, said Explorer.

  And as I looked at the single image screen, I saw the enemy ship flickering. Then it vanished.

  They’re in rift space? I asked Explorer, with my thoughts.

  No. There are no rifts left in our entire universe; for there is no universe. They must have passed through a strange kind of rift that leads elsewhere; which must mean into another universe.

  How is that possible? I asked.

  I have no data on that.

  Can we follow them?

  The Hub was awash with blood; Albinia was dead at my feet. I had been intending to tell her that I loved her; but I had not done so.

  We can emulate their path and rift signature; there may be an entrance to another universe at this location. That is the most logical conclusion.

  I had never before felt such a connection with a female. Not with Shonia, not with Averil, no one. There was a vulnerability to Albinia; I needed that. I needed to know that sometimes, she might need me as I Another universe? I said, helplessly.

  That or death are your only options. You should be advised that in fifty-three seconds, the un-probability wave at the furthest stretches of this universe will reach us and we will cease to exist. We are, very nearly, the last particle of reality left.

  Explorer, how do we clear the blood? And the bodies? I can’t endure this.

  The crew are dead. There are no cleaning robots in this part of the ship. The Hub is the only functional area left. You must wait until these bodies decay; and then I will cleanse them with jets of water from the ceiling and sluice the residue down runnels in the floor. But this is not relevant. We are the last particle of reality left; what do you want me to do?

  What are you asking me?

  Can you bear to live, or would you rather die?

  Live.

  I felt my body becoming wrapped in a healing cocoon; I knew that Explorer could keep me alive indefinitely like this, feeding me and disposing of my wastes without any need for me to leave my pilot’s seat.

  The cocoon covered my face; so that I could no longer see with my own eyes, only with Explorer’s eyes; I could no longer feel my body’s pain, I could only feel the icy touch of space on Explorer’s hull. I entered a trance-like state; and I ceased to become me, and I became a part of Explorer.