“He tried for so many thousands of years to take revenge-and then died in just a moment,” I said.
“This story-” said Quipu One.
“-could just be another lie,” said Quipu Two.
“Trust me or not, I don’t care,” I said. “There is about to be a war; prepare yourself for it.”
And then I told them what Sharrock wanted me to do.
“Is it possible?” said Quipu One after I had finished my account.
“Sharrock knows my powers,” I said. “He knows the powers of all of you. He has studied us all and he has planned; and it is the best plan any of us have yet conceived.
“In short, we have a chance,” I said. “Minos is no longer in my head; and I know from this that the pakla-link has been broken, for that evil bastard loves to haunt me and to spy on me. He thinks I do not know he is there; but I can always tell.
“But now Minos has gone; my mind is truly my own again; and this Sharrock has achieved.
“Now, the rest is up to us.”
I made my way down to the cargo bay, where the hull-hatch was located. Many times we had toppled stone corpses out through this gateway to the stars. But today we had another purpose in mind.
I squeezed myself into the hatchway, and Quipu manipulated the controls. An outer door opened, and I squeezed through; an inner door then closed, protecting the air in the cargo hold from the emptiness of space.
Then the outer door opened too and I fell out and was among stars.
Below me the Hell Ship floated, huge and beautiful and black-sailed. It was a cylinder of a vessel, elegantly curved, culminating in a triangle tip, and dazzlingly illuminated with lights buried in the metal. But the hull looked old now, and was coated with strange growths, like living beasts; save for a large patch of clear metal which I recognised as the spot where Explorer 410: Property of the Olaran Trader Fleet had sent a missile into the hull.
I unfurled my cape to its fullest extent, and hurled an ear frond at the ship until it touched metal and connected; and so I was now being pulled along with the Hell Ship on its effortlessly swift course through space.
I thought about Minos, and all that he had told me of himself. How much of it was true? I wondered. I knew of course that he had lied to me about many things. But had there been any honesty at all in his words? Did he ever actually have qualms about what he and his evil crew had done?
I doubted it. Whatever he had once been, Minos was now simply malign: beyond remorse and compassion, hate incarnate. I longed to kill him.
And so I would.
I fired air from my gills, and flew closer to the Hell Ship.
Then I clung to the hull with my body, gripping with my claws, embracing it like a bird smothering its prey.
And with a powerful jolt, I buried my centre quill in the hull.
It dug in deep-I felt pain rip through my body-then I pulled myself off, leaving a broad circular hole in the hull. The strange creatures that dwelled on the hull were clinging to my body now, gnawing me painfully, but I ignored them. My quill had become torn in the penetration; and blood dripped from my stomach.
I crawled, in pain, further along the hull.
Behind me, I knew, a small slow leak would have sprung up in the hull of the Hell Ship. Air from the outer world where the Ka’un dwelled was billowing out into space. I had ruptured the hull, and the inner seal, and the secondary inner seal; and, or so I hoped, it would take time for the hull’s self-heal mechanisms to repair the breach.
I did the same thing on another patch of hull. And again, and again. I performed the act one hundred times or more; and all the holes in the hill hissed out air silently.
Eventually the effort of it ripped my quill from my body, and blood gushed from my middle segment; but I thrust another quill into the hull. I had twenty in all.
After all twenty quills had ruptured, I was done.
I crawled back along the hull towards the hatch, as blood slowly spilled from my body to form a long scarlet slick in the midst of empty space.
I lay on the green plain; the rate of flow had slowed, but the blood that was emerging from my body now was mixed with black bile and entrails. The sheer power needed to thrust organic quill through hard metal had torn my insides apart.
Lirilla flew above my head, fanning me with her wings, whispering words of comfort wrapped within a song of tender beauty:
“Brave
Sai-ias
Joy
Pleasure
Hope
Do
Not
Die.”
I blacked out and woke; and when I woke I realised I was surrounded by an army of my fellow captives. Thousands of them had gathered, in silence, to comfort me in my pain, and perhaps to see me die.
Fray ceaselessly poured healing water of the well of life from a bucket over my bloodied stomach segment-sparing me her healing piss, for which I was grateful. A long chain of my fellow captives on this interior world brought fresh supplies of well-water ceaselessly.
And for a while I wondered if these healing waters were going to work upon me; might I survive this ordeal, and enjoy future days with Sharrock and the others as my friends once more?
But the pain was getting worse not better. My guts and womb and heart and other internal organs had been crushed and ripped in my huge effort; I was little more than a carcass of flesh surrounding a mess of damaged organs.
It was becoming undeniable to me that my injures were too serious to be healed; the only salvation for me was resurrection.
And that, I desperately hoped, would never happen; not if Sharrock and the others triumphed in this last terrible battle. For to be reborn as my twelve-year-old self, thrust back into this appalling world again! I could think of no greater horror.
Sharrock was kneeling by my head, stroking me with his hand. He looked worse than I felt; but I was pleased to see the look in his eyes. It was a look of rage, and a yearning for vengeance.
I whispered to him, but he could not comprehend.
So I opened my mouth; baring my huge jaws, and my sharp teeth. He reached inside with his hand, seeing the spark of ruby light there. And when his hand emerged, he was holding the Jewel of the Seventh Sun. His gift to me, returned.
“I kept it safe,” I said, but he did not comprehend.
“How goes the war?” I asked of Quipu.
“Soon they will come,” said Quipu One. “Soon.”
“Then you must kill,” I said, “those evil souls.”
“We shall,” said the Quipus.
“We shall,” said Fray.
“Don’t go,” said Lirilla.
Sharrock
“You stupid fucking beast,” I said to the dying Sai-ias, “you ignorant arse-sucking cock-kissing ingratiating, soft-hearted, infuriating, patronising whore-bitch-whatever happens, we owe you everything! We thank you, ugly beast, from the depths of our souls. And I-fuck it, I can’t believe I’m saying this- I love you. Can you understand a single fucking word of this?”
Sai-ias grunted something which I could not comprehend; but I read the meaning in her eyes.
And then her body deflated; her eyes dimmed; and she died.
There was no time to mourn. We all knew what we had to do.
We had to wait.
The Ka’un would be suffocating by now; their hull had been breached a thousand times and would be spewing air at a formidable rate. I assumed they would have spacesuits with air tubes; that might buy them some time.
But not much. The hull holes would heal themselves; but the air that had spurted out could not be easily replaced. A world’s worth of air! No machine could generate that much fresh atmosphere in less than several weeks; by which time the Ka’un would all be dead.
So they needed to take our interior world back; this would give them air enough for years, until they had replenished their own supplies.
And what’s more, we had defied them. So they had no choice. They had to attack us.
&nbs
p; And when they did, we would be ready.
An army of us had gathered, stretched across the Great Plain, breathing slowly, waiting for the moment. Fray, Quipu, Lirilla, Raoild, Ioday Zubu, Doriel, Caramo, Doalyu, Sargan, Biark, Sahashs, Loramas, Thugor, Amur, Kairi, Wapax, Fiymean, Krakkka, and more, many more.
Quipu spoke; and Fray poured more water of life upon me. Despite my lack of skin, I felt strong and ready for battle.
Fray spoke to Quipu; Quipu replied. I understood none of this.
Lirilla uttered a sound: I actually recognised the word. “Sai-ias. Sai-ias.” She was singing the name of our dead friend.
I clutched my sword, which Lirilla had brought to me; stolen I guessed from a Kindred in the Valley. It was a blade of near-unbreakable metal, forged from the walls of a Hell Ship cabin. I touched it; and felt its power.
And we waited.
And the silence was broken by Lirilla, singing to the sky.
And when Lirilla had sung her song, Miaris howled, a melancholy howl; this was his song. And it was beautiful.
And though I could not understand the language of the others, I realised immediately what was happening when Quipu began to pace and chatter; and all of his five heads were talking, sharing, interrupting, and all were rapt as they listened to the tale he was telling.
And then Fray roared, and scraped her hooves, and spoke at length; and her tale, whatever it was, was surely magnificent.
And as we waited still, more tales were told; and the creatures of the Hell Ship were united, a single family, bonded by one creature; the dead Sai-ias.
And finally the story-telling and the singing and the sharing was over. And our enemies came.
The skies above us were black; I looked up and realised that three thousand or more Kindred warriors were flying in space-armour above us. Some were from the Valley, but most I guessed had been despatched from their barracks somewhere in the outer hull. The Ka’un had sent their finest warriors to fight us!
And the flying Kindred swooped down low upon the Great Plain, and their guns began to spit fire.
And the aerials swooped upon them, knocking them from the sky. They flew in vast flocks, hundreds of them, pecking and ripping at the motors that held the Kindred body armours aloft; and one by one the Kindred began to fall from the sky. And those that fell were trampled under the hooves of the grazers and of Fray, or torn apart by the teeth of the giant sentients, or thrashed and bitten to pieces by the angry arboreals.
Or slain by me! For my sword did the work of a hundred Maxoluns, as I cut and slashed and killed!
And as I fought, I thought of Sai-ias.
Blade at my head; duck to evade; weave; dagger in the throat; knee in the balls; on I fight!
I mourned her, and I treasured her memory, insofar as I could treasure and mourn in the midst of a furious and bloody battle with these huge and powerful Kindred warriors.
(Back! Strike! Thrust! Fuck your parents for conceiving you and die!)
Sai-ias was brave indeed. She died to save us. And what’s more, she left us a legacy; a way of love and forgiveness and respect for the rhythms of life, and it is a way I intend to respect and to follow. Just as soon as I win this fucking battle!
And thus
We slew the armies of the Kindred! And lopped off their limbs, and shattered their skulls, and broke their bones! And they slew us, or some of us; but our people were fierce beyond belief and though the Kindred had guns and armour and force fields and cannons we had weight of numbers and fighting fury and a cause that was just.
And so we crushed them. Literally in some cases. Fray trampled Kindred with her hooves; Quipu bit their throats out; Miaris, the largest of the giant sentients since Cuzco was gone, was a creature of terror and carnage.
And I slew fast and furiously, and dodged bullets, and sidestepped energy rays; for no one and nothing could defeat me on this day.
And so we fought, and won.
And when the last Kindred body dropped to the ground, a cry of fear resounded out.
For above us in the air were Cuzco, and Djamrock, and Tarroth, their great wings beating.
And at the same the waters of the lake were draining away. And when the lake bed was fully dry an army of giant sentients began to crawl and walk and trot towards us, in a long trail that led from the island of the Tower where the gateway to the outer world was located. There was Balach, and Morio, and Tamal, and Sheenam, and Goay, and Leirak, and two-headed Shseil, and the serpentines Dokdrr and Ma, and more.
And behind them walked ten bipeds dressed in red robes.
“Cuzco join us!” I screamed up, and he laughed, and then he shat, and I had to dodge out of the way of his vast turd as it crashed to earth.
“Fray,” I said, “we should attack while they are still in the lake,” and I beckoned with one arm to make my meaning clear to him.
And Fray turned to me, and there was sadness in her eyes; but she did not move.
“Quipu?” I turned to Quipu. His five heads were still; he was holding a home-made sword in one of his hands and he pointed the blade towards me.
Around me were the bloodied corpses of the Kindred and the bodies of many of our own: Zubu was dead, and so was Doriel; and Caramo also. Doalya the foolish blind aerial-she was a broken wreck. Sargan, who could drum his own body, had been eviscerated by Kindred and his brains ripped out. But Biark was alive, and so was Sahashs, and Loramas, and Thugor, and many more. But none of them moved; they all had that eerie stillness.
I was the only warrior left able to fight; my entire army had joined our enemy. And I realised that my strategy had failed; the paklas still controlled each creature’s mind, except for mine.
And so I waited, a dreary patient wait for my own inevitable doom. Waited until the ten Ka’un had walked across the dry lake and had joined me on the battlefield, while their monsters stood flanking the lake shore like statues in a Sabol temple.
And I watched as their leader-a male with a face like black parchment-walked towards me, proud and calm. He was the one I had seen before; the one who had stared so curiously at my body as I dangled naked from a hook.
“Greetings Sharrock,” he said, in my own language, without use of pakla. “I am Minos; and I am the captain of this ship.”
“You are the one who did this, aren’t you? You released me!” I said, appalled, retrospectively, at my own stupidity.
“Yes.” Minos did not smile, but he was clearly delighted at his own great joke.
“You disabled the pakla-links, temporarily.”
“I did. And it yielded us a battle most glorious.”
“What I did to the Machine Mind-”
“Achieved precisely nothing. The power to control the ‘paklas’ ”-Minos tapped his forehead with a long finger-“is here. All in here.”
I nodded; my humiliation was complete. I had played the foolish pawn in Minos’s cruel game.
And yet I did not care.
“And now you are going to kill me?” I asked.
The Ka’un drew his sword and held it aloft; the universal sign for a challenge.
I stifled a gasp at this unexpected move; and wondered if this was merely another jest; and yet a flicker of hope stirred in me.
“My name is Minos,” said the Ka’un. “And I shall fight you for this world!”
And I nodded assent; then I raised my sword and attacked him.
Above me Cuzco and Djamrock and Tarroth beat their wings in syncopation with the clang of my hull-steel sword on Minos’s far superior fusion-forged weapon. Fray and Quipu and all my comrades watched, paralysed, their bodies controlled by Ka’un. The giant sentients standing by the lake shore were silent too; and the nine other Ka’un watched impassively as Minos recklessly gambled their world on a single combat with a warrior supreme.
And as I fought, I wondered if the nine other Ka’un would honour Minos’s bargain in the event of his death. For I was alone, one warrior against an army of monsters; even if I did beat Minos, I could b
e slain by them with effortless ease.
And yet, I sensed that Minos was sincere. With his black old face and his tired eyes, he looked as if he would welcome the release of defeat in glorious battle.
So with hope in my heart, I struck and I stabbed and I danced, and I used all my warrior skills against this aged slender monster with the dry and withered face and the weary eyes; for I was Sharrock, and Sharrock could never, ever, be defeated!
However, after a few minutes of masterly and dazzling and heroic swordplay I realised, to my utter and abject horror, that I could not actually beat this bastard. For Minos was faster than me; and defter; and more skilful. His strokes were unerring, his grace was faultless, and he was strong. His body looked punier than mine by far; but each strike of sword on sword shook me to the core. I leaped over his blade but he leaped too and we fought in air, clashing swords wildly till we both somersaulted and landed back on grass, but his mid-air turn was faster and his fall more agile, and he struck again, and the blade cut my shoulder and blood flowed.
My injuries were not to blame, for my battle strength was on me, and I fought like a Maxolun possessed. But even so I could not compete with a devil like Minos.
And then my blade shattered and I fell to the ground helpless and Minos raised his blade as if to cleave my head.
But a female Ka’un stepped forward; and fire sparked from her fingers. And Minos drew back.
The female Ka’un looked into my eyes, and I looked into hers; and I saw nothing there but nothingness. Then she drew her sword; there were jewels on the hilt and the blade gleamed in daylight and then she passed it to me hilt uppermost; and when I held it was like caressing a soul.
A second Ka’un stepped forward holding a jug and poured water from the well of life over my ripped and bleeding flayed body; soothing my pain; giving me strength to continue.
Fray roared; they gave her freedom to do that much.
Cuzco beat his wings and stared down and I looked up at my old friend and acknowledged him.
And the battle resumed.
I was refreshed now, I had a superior sword, my comrades had shown their support; and my spirits were high!
Hell Ship Page 36