Hell Ship

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 spiralling 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.

Pinpricks of light in the distance betrayed the locations of fighter craft that had been hit and had expired in a burning maelstrom. Meanwhile, a new flotilla of space-fighting vessels had appeared and was spewing out debris which, I deduced was explosive.

“It’s kind of beautiful,” said Phylas, soulfully.

We were in invisible orbit in the planetary system of Xd4322, watching two tribes of the same species attempting to destroy each other in a series of colossal space battles.

“The planet is a radioactive shell, the sentients now live on moons and satellites,” Morval explained.

“What savages,” I murmured.

“Perhaps; but do they have anything we’d like to buy?” asked Commander Galamea, with creditable hard-headedness.

“Bombs?” I hazarded.

“According to our intercepted transmissions,” Morval continued, “this war has lasted a thousand years. One group of sentients live in the inner solar system, the other group live in the outer solar system. They are fighting for dominance and the right to own the sun.”

“What do they look like?” asked Galamea, and Albinia conveyed an image from Explorer’s space-cameras and projected it in the air.

I studied the image with curiosity. These were diamond-headed creatures with no visible eyes or ears or limbs, whose squat bodies were supported on three powerful legs.

“How do they play piano?” asked Phylas, mockingly.

Albinia animated the image; tendrils emerged from the diamond torso and sweet music was heard.

“They have no musical instruments,” explained Phylas, “but they sing their own internal organs.”

“Could we trade with them?” Galamea persisted.

Another missile struck the alien battleship and it split apart. And then, as sentients slowly spiralled out of the ship, the fighter craft dived in and obliterated the stranded sentients one by one.

“I doubt it,” said Commander Galamea regretfully. “Seal off the system.”

“When I was a boy,” said Morval, “the Olarans only had five planets. Olara, New Olara, Olara the Third, We Miss Olara, and Far From Olara.”

“In those days,” observed Phylas, “the Olarans were a sad bunch.”

“My father was on one of the first rift ships. He was a pioneer, one of the greatest of all explorers,” Morval bragged.

“I’ve read about him,” I said.

“Back then,” said Morval, “no one knew if the rifts were stable. Your ship rifted and it might, for all you knew, end up as random matter, or materialise in some other universe. So the courage of those early explorers was extraordinary.”

“I’ve heard it said,” said Phylas, thoughtfully, “that most of them were volunteers. They went into space exploration for love, not as a result of, um, a court order.” He blushed, filled with shame at his own criminal past.

“That’s true,” Morval acknowledged. “My father was an idealist. He believed the exploration of space was one of the greatest adventures of all time.”

“As do I!” I said defensively.

“You’re just here,” said Morval scornfully, “because some female broke your heart.”

“Who told you that?” I said angrily.

“It’s written,” said Morval, “all over your soul.”

I seethed; but could not deny the truth of his words.

“My father eventually settled,” Morval reminisced, “in a Trading Post in some far-flung galaxy, and never returned to his family. My mother didn’t care; she had married again of course, long before that. And she never spoke of him; all that I know about my father was gleaned from research.”

“My father,” said Phylas, “was-” Then he ran out of words; clearly there was very little to say about his father.

I sipped my rich-juice; thinking about my own father.

I had not really known him all that well, in all honesty. My mother had been the main presence in our family, as was so often the case with Olarans. He had been an artifice monger; but I could recollect no tales he had ever told about his work. I decided I had nothing much to add to this particular conversation.

“Have I ever told you,” I said, “about the time I tried to sell carpets to the Vengans and-”

I drank too much that night and went to the Command Hub to look at the stars. On a Vassal Ship I could have used the Observation Deck and looked into space with my own eyes, but here I had to make do with camera images.

Albinia was still wired to Explorer; eyes closed and effectively unconscious. I wondered when she slept, or if this for her was sleep.

I conjured up the phantom control display and flicked through different star charts until I found the night sky of my own home world, Shangaria. It brought back fond memories; when I was ten years old I’d wanted to be an astronomer and spent every night looking at the stars. My mother used to name them for me; for she knew each star by heart.

I wondered if my mother had ever loved my father. There was however no evidence for it. She was a wonderfully self-contained female, and intensely serious; my father had been a funny delightful man, but she’d never once laughed at his jokes. Perhaps that was because they were stupid jokes. I had found them incredibly funny; but then, I’d been just a child.

After the divorce my father had visited us every weekend and he always had a smile for me. He told me that no Olaran marriage ever lasts more than twenty years; because females always grow impatient at the intellectual gap between them and their males. “Savour it while you can,” he’d told me, still with a smile.

“You’ve been drinking,” said Albinia. Her voice startled me out of my reverie. I turned to her. Her eyes were open; she’d emerged from trance.

“I am smashed,” I said, extravagantly, “sozzled, delirious, and delighted!”

It was a stupid thing to say; and I said it in an extremely stupid fashion. And after I’d said it, Albinia stared at me for a long while, clearly baffled at my idiocy.

Then she giggled.

I offered to leave of course, after the giggle-moment, but Albinia insisted that I stay.

And so I stayed, and we talked, surrounded by stars, as she plucked absent-mindedly at the cable that led out of her skull.

We talked about aliens we’d encountered, and about missions, successful and unsuccessful, and about other members of the crew. Albinia knew the biographies of every crew member. I knew most of them by their first names from card games and drinking bouts, but she knew their full names including the matronymic and their professional and personal histories and she told me it all. I listened, an expression of rapt interest pinned to my face.

“Are you bored?” she asked abruptly.

“Not in the least,” I protested. “You say something.”

“I would be delighted so to do.”

“Go on then.”

“Shall I tell you,” I said, expansively, “of the time when I was trapped in a cloud on the planet of-”

“Unplug me,” she whispered, urgently, cutting off my words.

“I’m sorry?”

“Please. I’d like to get up and stretch my legs.”

I was startled at her request; but I reached over and gently eased the plug out of her skull; a curiously intimate act.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“You can’t bear to do it yourself, can you?” I said, with dawning comprehension. “Disconnect yourself?”

Albinia blinked, clearly disorientated at being fully in a human body. “I do find it-an effort of will,” she admitted. “Galamea makes me spend an hour in the gym, twice a day. But there are brain-plugs there too. It’s only at meal times that I am-naked.” She touched her skull holes self consciously.

“Here, take a walk with me,” I said.

I changed the settings on the panoramic wall screen; we were in a park now, the sun was shining, and there was a lake.

Albinia got up from her chair, carefully stretching her limbs. Her bald head gleamed in the muted evening lighting.

We promenaded around the Control Hub for several minutes; I held her arm in mine. She was, I noted, a little wobbly on her feet.

“Look,” she whispered, confidingly.

She showed me what was in her hand; it was her skull plate, that she used to cover the holes in her head on social occasions. “It holds a wirefree,” she admitted.

“You wear this when you’re not connected to Explorer?”

“When I wear this, I am connected to Explorer.”

She smiled, like a child confessing a wicked secret; and she slipped the skull plate back into place, covering the holes. It was a silver oval, almost the same shape in miniature as her shapely head.

Her eyes sparkled as the contact was made; Explorer was back in her brain.

I found myself kissing her; I have no idea how that happened.

We went back to my room, and fornicated for several hours.

Albinia was a passionate lover, and it was a pleasure to bring her to climax. I felt curiously detached however; for I hardly knew this woman I was so skilfully orgasming. Because this wasn’t the Albinia I loved; it was the “in trance” Albinia who captivated me. This Albinia, the real one, was just a shy awkward creature, oddly young in her ways, and emotionally needy to a degree that terrified me.

But I copulated her competently enough, then she fell asleep in my arms. And when she woke up she was crying and I had to ask her why; and then she told me what was wrong with her.

“I fear that I’ve lost my olarinity,” said Albinia.

I stroked her naked breast, and she shuddered. Her skin was warm, I could still taste the aroma of her soft flesh on my lips.

“You don’t believe me,” she said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I can see,” she said, and held a hand out in front of her, “the galaxies unfolding. I can hear the beat of pulsing stars, I can touch the pull of gravity-well stars, I can count supernovae in a single glance and I can smell the carbon and the iron and the uranium in the clouds of matter circling each and every star in my sightline.”

I touched her cheek with my fingers, and kissed her temples. “Feel that too?”

“I feel that too.”

“You’re Olaran.”

“Some of the time.”

I touched her skull plate, with its wirefree link to Explorer’s brain. I was somewhat shocked by it, in truth, for I’d never heard of such a thing.

“Then cut the link. Turn off Explorer, exist in the here and now.”

“I can’t.”

“You’re supposed to. It’s not customary to be permanently connected. It’s surely in breach of safety protocols.”

“I don’t care. I love it too much. I am the ship, the ship is me.”

“I just fucked a ship?”

“Well, yes.”

“That makes me feel,” I said, “odd.”

And, to my delight, she giggled again.

Here’s a truth I learned at an early age: females are not like males.

When I was twelve years old my six-year-old sister explained to me the fundamental principles of Olaran science. I had no idea what she was talking about, despite my several years of school. But she had accessed a single memory file and had learned it all, instinctively. She could do mathematics the way I could throw a ball. But she could also throw a ball further and more accurately than I ever could.

When I was sixteen years old I was given a degree in astrophysics with a distinction, and was considered to be one of the brightest students in my all-male class. But my sister, by this point, was building suns, with the help of a mind-machine link with the Olaran computer. Her intellect so far surpassed mine that I marvelled at our memories of being kids together, playing in a pool in the garden, creating imaginary friends.

But Albinia was the first female who ever explained to me the negative side of having such effortless intellectual proficiency. Since she was ten years old she had been cyber-linked with a computer or robot for large parts of her waking day. And so she’d grown up awkward, clumsy, and not at ease in her own body. Males terrified her, and the fact that all the males she met treated her as a superior being terrified her even more.

“All my life I’ve known I could have any male I wanted, with a click of my fingers,” said Albinia, trying but failing to click her fingers. “And a lot of my girlfriends did just that. They fucked their way through college and carried on screwing around in their twenties. What was there to lose? Pregnancy is volitional these days, males are getting more and more beautiful, and the sexual congress is officially an artform. But I hated it.”

“Poor little powerful girl,” I said with-or so I realised in the retrospect of a moment later-a hint of bitterness.

“Every male I’ve been with behaves like a servant. I never feel relaxed. I always feel in charge.”

I remembered Galamea’s words on the dark world and, for the first time, I began to doubt my understanding of my own species.

“Females are natural leaders,” I said tactfully.

“Have you ever been treated as an equal? By a female?”

“No,” I lied.

We fucked again that night, and when I reached the moment of her orgasm she stopped and she looked into my eyes. And she cupped my head in her hands.

And she transferred her consciousness into me, from her skull plate into my brain dot.

And then we carried on fucking.

And this time, I wasn’t me, servicing my goddess. I was her; I felt the heat of Jak’s skin, the hardness of his body, I felt his cocks inside me, and I saw it too, with my Explorer part; saw the two naked coupling bodies from the cameras in the wall, and then I was in the Command Hub watching the stars on the screen and I was also outside the ship, I was looking at Explorer/myself thorough space cameras, and I was travelling through space, and my telescopic and spectrographic and electromagnetic vision allowed me to zoom close to any sun I desired and feel the soft caress of its interstellar matter on my body.

I was no longer myself; I was Albinia; I was Explorer; I was everywhere; and data swirled around me and I knew it without thinking. And when Albinia achieved her orgasm, I felt it too, and the ship shuddered, and the engines roared.

Afterwards we lay silently and nakedly entwined.

“How was that?” asked Albinia.

“Let’s,” I said, “do it again.”

“Commence to rift, please,” I said, and unreality descended upon us all in the Hub; on Morval, Galamea, Albinia, Phylas and myself.

As the rifting process began, I kept my eyes carefully focused on the star screen, and on my work. I did not, thanks to my exceptional self-control, digress in my purpose by looking at Albinia: the cable trailing from her skull like a leash, her absorbed and haunted features, her distantly-staring eyes, her twitching lips. Though in truth I wanted to look at her so much; so extraordinarily much.

And indeed, I did, just for a moment, sneak a peek!

For I loved, I realised, both Albinias now. The real one that I had fornicated with so beautifully that night; and the other one, the trance-Albinia who I knew on the Hub; a beautiful child lost in dreams.

“Improbability is-” Phylas started to say.

But suddenly Albinia screamed. It was a scream of pure hysteria and it shocked us all. And the ship rocked and shook, as she broke her link with Explorer. We were flying through un-space without a Star-Seeker!

“Operating manual controls,” said Morval swiftly, as he took control of the vessel from Albinia/Explorer. He eased us back into reality. The Command Hub flipped and flipped again, until the walls and ceiling were whirling around us in our fixed points, held by the stay-still.

Then finally we were back in real space. I broke the stay-still with a murmur-link command, and hurried across the room to Albinia. Her face was twisted with pain. I reached for her cable.

“That could be traumatic,” Morval warned.

I touched Albinia’s face; she opened her eyes; she saw me and smiled.

I wrenched the cable out.

She sighed with huge relief; and was herself again.

“What is wrong Star-Seeker?” I asked, appalled at the look of emptiness in her eyes.

“I saw,” she said, “another world come to a terrible end.”

The genocided aliens in this case were the Maibos; a species of artificers, and we had done a great deal of business with them.

The Maibos had built for us some of our most magnificent furnishings and tapestries. They were an entirely non-violent species; it was a miracle they had survived so long. The Maibos had constantly refused all offers from Olara to equip them with a space defence system. And they refused to heed our argument that this is, and always has been, a viciously violent universe.

But the Maibos held to their faith, that violence begets violence; whereas a spirit of peace and love will spread and possess all those who encounter it. They called it the “contagion of joy.”

And in this delightful faith they were proved entirely wrong. For these peace-loving creatures were invaded and exterminated like bugs. All of them died; all. Not one Maibos remained, except for the handful who dwelled at the embassy of the Olaran Home Court.

And even their planet was destroyed; shattered and exploded into many parts, just as had happened to the planet of the FanTangs. And to salt and sting the wound, un-matter bombs were flown into their sun, sending it into a flaring frenzy; it was now poised to turn nova.

We knew all this because, in the dying moments of their civilisation, the Maibos had found a way to transmit space camera images of their demise through rift space, on what they knew were Olaran frequencies.

This is what Albinia had seen through her Explorer link. The end of a world; the planet of the Maibos sundering; billions of gracious, honourable creatures perishing even faster than their own ideals. It was an image of horror that had seared her mind.

It was a shocking holocaust and all Olarans mourned for the lost Maibos.

But the good news was that this time there had been a sighting. An Olaran scout vessel had viewed the foul slayer of the Maibos as it had fled the planetary system.

And according to this reliable report, there was no fleet, no alien armada; just a single vessel, with black sails.

“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 parts 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.

Are you ready?

I am ready.

A moment later, Explorer and I embraced improbability, and left the universe of the Olara

For ever.