Hell Ship

BOOK 6
Sharrock

After my encounter with Zala of the Kindred, the slayer of my entire species, I walked away from Sai-ias with hate in my heart. And I wondered at what I had become.

What indeed had happened to Sharrock the great warrior?

I had fought battles in this “Hell Ship” and lost, and eventually won-but they were all the wrong battles. For what merit was there in being King of the Kindred? Who was I helping or saving through such an act of braggartry?

And yet what other options were there? I could not fight an enemy I could not see. And escape from this ship was, I knew, impossible. Everyone told me that, and I had of course verified it carefully for myself, by interrogating everyone I met, and through personal investigations.

Thus, I knew we had no access to the engine room-for though there was one place in the interior world where the throb of motors could be heard, there was no way to break through the walls. I had tried to cut through the metal, but it was impregnable to my blade. There were no ventilation shafts; and no hidden corridors or secret passageways of the kind I had been so used to finding when raiding the palaces of rich aliens or the Southern Tribesfolk. There were no space pods or lifeships we could steal, and hence no way to survive departure from the ship. I had spent many days in the glass belly of the vessel looking out at space, and I knew that through the hull-hatch I could get access to the world outside; but how long would even Sharrock survive in empty space?

So instead of trying to escape I had endeavoured to make a life for myself here. I had smelled the flowers, enjoyed the breeze, savoured the sun on my cheeks. I had made friends: Sai-ias, Cuzco, even Mangan. Mangan was an angry creature but a smart one; his blind rage was his way of coping with a terrible situation. Mangan’s kind, I had been told, were life-loving forest dwellers who on their native world had lived in peace and harmony with others. That was then; now Mangan was truly a vicious devil.

But that is what this ship did to people; it marred their souls.

As it had done to Sai-ias.

I had, in all truth, become fond indeed of Sai-ias. She was a gentle beast, and a thoughtful one. It touched me to see how she became involved in the lives of others; she knew each sentient on the ship by name and knew the names of their planets too, and could remember all the names of their lost loved ones. She remembered I had lost a wife called Malisha and a daughter called Sharil; I had only told her once but she never forgot.

But her soul was still tainted; for Sai-ias’s way of surviving was a form of complicity. She made the ship run smoothly; and hence the Ka’un had an easier time. She taught the ways of acceptance; and thus the Ka’un’s slaves were docile, and easier to handle. She was the prisoner who helps her own gaolers; I had always despised that type.

And so, after learning the scale of Sai-ias’s treachery in collaborating with the despotic Kindred, I refused to talk to her, or deal with her in any way. Instead I spent my time alone, climbing the mountain paths, swimming the lake, and exploring the ship. I refused to participate in their godsforsaken Rhythm of Days; I wanted to keep my mind pure, and my body honed.

And then one day, I swam to the Tower as I always did, at least once a day. And once I was in sight of the island’s shore the winds whipped up, as they always did. One time I had swum onwards and touched the force shield walls for myself. But the walls of force could not be penetrated of course; and my presence in such proximity had caused a great storm that had vexed the others hugely; so it seemed futile to keep attempting it.

So today, I merely trod water, and I stared at the Tower where dwelled my enemies; then I heard the sound of wings above me and I looked up.

And Cuzco swept downwards and caught me in his claws. I did not struggle, I let him carry me. He loosened his grip and I scrambled free and clambered up on to his back.

“Turd-for-brains,” said Cuzco amiably.

“Vile and ugly orange freak,” I informed him.

I enjoyed these flights; Cuzco soared up to the sky, almost touching it, then soared down, and made me dizzy with his speed.

Then he hovered as low as he could above the Tower. I saw the shape of the gardens around it; the shrubs on the craggy rock. The Tower was huge; larger than many cities. It was so near, and yet so untouchable.

“Watch,” said Cuzco, and he released the boulders in his rear claws and they dropped down out of the sky and they

Bounced.

Rattling like pebbles on a roof-yet there was no roof, just air-before sliding off in a downwards arc and splashing into the sea.

“Force shield goes all around,” I said.

“No way in,” agreed Cuzco.

“No way to escape,” I agreed.

“I believe, nevertheless,” said Cuzco sombrely, “that I may have found a way to leave this place.”

And my heart raced. “Tell me,” I said.

Sai-ias

It was Day the Third of my nine hundred and eighty-four thousand four hundred and twenty second cycle of the Rhythm of Days, and Sharrock approached me by the lake side.

And for the first time in many cycles, he spoke to me.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“I am.”

“It seems then you thrive,” said Sharrock, “upon the misfortunes of others.”

I made no comment; yet I could not comprehend how he could say such a thing to me.

“I have been planning,” said Sharrock, “how we might escape this wretched vessel.” And he smiled; but it was not a pleasant smile.

“There is no way,” I said.

“So I have concluded,” Sharrock said, grimly.

“Best-”

“-to accept the way things are. Acceptance is all. Yes, I know your lies, Sai-ias. I have also been considering ways to attack the Ka’un.”

“Many have tried and failed.”

“How? Tell me all.”

I sighed. “There is little point. Trust me on this: I have been here for many years. The problem is that we do not know who the Ka’un are, nor how to get at them in the Tower where they dwell.”

“Have you yourself tried?” Sharrock’s tone was taunting; I wondered at his game.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I swam across many years ago. The way was blocked. Cuzco attempted to storm it with a flock of aerials, that did not succeed. It cannot be done.”

“Indeed, that tallies with all I know and have been advised,” said Sharrock, his mood strangely buoyant.

“So what is it?” I asked. “Why are you speaking to me now?”

“Oh, there is news,” Sharrock said. And there was a smug look in his eyes; I feared the worst.

“What is it?”

“Cuzco,” he told me, “has issued a challenge to Djamrock.”

The news shocked me. “What cause?”

“No cause. They fight at dawn.”

And Sharrock’s features were lit with elation; for he knew already that my calm and ordered equilibrium was about to be destroyed.

Two giant sentients were at war with each other, with no valid cause.

Thus, bloody and pointless anarchy had returned to our world.

We were in our cabin, the night before the combat. Fray was sombre; Lirilla was distressed; Doro was a pool of turbulent water; Quipu was appalled at what was occurring, just as I was. And Cuzco himself was in arrogant and bombastic mood.

“On my planet, before we became gods to the other sentient species, we were hunted,” said Cuzco, with a pride that repelled me. “The biped Mahonosi feared us and slew us. The four-legged Karal feared us, and slew us. We were born in blood, we fought each living day. And we survived. And we evolved. And we grew mightier and mightier.”

“Evolved? From idiot, into total fucking idiot?” snapped Quipu One.

“Good point,” said Quipu Two.

“Where is it decreed,” said Cuzco, “that we should not fight?”

“This creature is so arrogant!” said Quipu Three.

“Such duels are foolish, and dangerous,” I told Cuzco, “They serve no purpose, and damage us all!”

“Those words are true,” said Quipu Four, and his fifth and first heads nodded in agreement.

Cuzco snorted his contempt at me, and at the bobbing-headed agreeing-with-himselves Quipus.

“I need,” roared Cuzco, “to taste blood and feel fear. Without that, I do not-”

“YOU CANNOT DO THIS!” I screamed at Cuzco, and they all stared at me, for I do not usually scream.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Cuzco said, in tones of utter scorn.

“Why? Because I’m not a blood-crazed warrior?”

“War is in my soul. It defines me.”

“War is a form of madness,” I told him. “Do not give in to it.”

“Oh let him do what he likes,” said Quipu One, and his other heads hissed.

“It’shisfuneral,” Doro taunted.

Lirilla howled; not a song, a howl. I had never heard such a noise from her before; it sent a shudder down my central spine.

Fray brooded, silent, conflicted; she knew the joy of war too, but this was all too much for her.

“Please,” I implored Cuzco.

“It will be a glorious combat,” Cuzco said, and steam emerged from his neck and skull; and I knew we had lost him.

It was Day the Fourth. But no poems were to be recited this day.

We gathered at the foot of the White Mountains. Cuzco’s scales were orange and scarlet and shone in the bright sunlight. Djamrock descended out of the clouds, his four wings flapping loudly. Djamrock had three heads, each of them fearsomely fanged and armoured. He was twice the size of Cuzco, and Cuzco was a giant even amongst the giant sentients.

No one had ever before dared to challenge Djamrock. But, from time to time, he had savaged unwary predators and herbivores and ripped them limb from limb. Eventually they healed; but the shock of Djamrock’s violence always left a lasting damage in the souls of those he attacked.

We accept the evil of the Ka’un; but when our own kind turn on us, it more profoundly hurts.

We formed a circle around the fighters. Sharrock caught my eye; and the ghastly smile on his face repelled me. His naked torso was glistening with sweat; his red skin was darker in hue, a sure sign that he was agitated and surging with adrenalin.

And I could feel terror descend upon me. Violence is a character aberration that perturbs and disgusts my soul, and so I truly did not want to be here. For I am the child of a pacific species. We never fought, we never went to war, and, until the Ka’un, no other creatures had ever warred against us-not since we became sentient, many aeons ago.

And yet, even so, I could not resist the mood of the day. The energy! The sheer exhilaration of being in the presence of the blood-lust of all my fellow sentients!

The combat began.

The two beasts leaped and flapped wings savagely, and hovered in the air above us.

I cannot bear to describe the scene, and yet I must; for the images are seared upon my mind and the pain of that day lives as a reproach in my soul.

At first, for the first twenty or more minutes, I did not directly observe the two beasts in their bloody combat; I merely watched the watchers. It shocked me deeply. The screaming, the drooling, the roaring of rage, the obscenities uttered, the lust for the dealing of death that consumed all those who beheld!

A thousand and more different species all united in hate and loathing! Polypods and bipeds on the land, gathered in a vast crowd around the combatants; and sea-dwellers peering up from the lake, and swamp-dwellers staring up from their boggy homes at the aerial part of the battle. Only the sessiles were unable to witness the duel, for understandable reasons. Even the sentient plants were savouring what they saw of the spectacle-jeering and shedding leaves and spitting spores as they savoured the carnage.

As she watched, Fray snorted and scratched the ground with her powerful hooves; clearly a large part of her wished she could be part of this legendary fight.

As for Quipu, he was in a frenzy; his heads whipping from side to side, a crazed look to him that I had never seen before. He was the dearest friend of Cuzco and, despite the cruel words that often passed between them, they felt a huge affection for each other. And yet, as Cuzco bled, he roared, all five of his heads roared, in brutal exultation.

And when I dragged my eleven eyes from the spectators, I saw blood raining from the sky as the two beasts gripped teeth into flesh and rocked back and forth in the air. Whenever he could, Cuzco breathed fire from his skull-holes and neck-holes upon his adversary, but the flames did not even sear the ebon hide of Djamrock. And Djamrock’s three heads relentlessly pecked and tore at Cuzco’s flesh.

One of Djamrock’s wings was severed by a bite from Cuzco and went tumbling to the ground. The black beast flapped free and spikes from its belly impaled Cuzco and Cuzco blazed fire again and the sky rocked with the horror of two monsters locked in an aerial death-embrace.

Then Cuzco lost a wing too and tumbled to the ground and crashed and Djamrock moved downwards with talons extended to sever his adversary’s remaining limbs, and thus secure victory.

Cuzco was dazed, and did not move. Djamrock was descending in a fast plunge. We all waited for the inevitable.

But Djamrock halted his dive. He hovered in mid-air above his near-unconscious foe, his great wings beating. And slowly Cuzco stirred. Then looked up. And saw his enemy poised above him, waiting.

A long and powerful funnel of flame from Cuzco’s skull enveloped Djamrock’s body, but Djamrock did not flee. He remained hovering, his wings beating out billows of flame, and after a time his black hide grew darker and the flesh below began to burn.

Djamrock screamed and screamed. For his body was aflame beneath the near-impregnable coating of his night-dark armour. His heads writhed from side to side. And Cuzco pulled himself on to his two legs and pounced, and his teeth caught Djamrock’s belly and ripped it. Then Cuzco took to the air again and flew above his opponent, stopped in a frozen hover, then plunged. And with a single powerful movement he landed on his prey and ripped Djamrock’s head off his body. And then he ate it. A silence descended, as we watched, stunned. Cuzco fed the head into his mouth and ate the skull, and ate the brains too. The slow steady crunching appalled us. Even the rejuvenating powers of the water of the well of life could not heal that; so now, one of Djamrock’s heads was completely dead.

Cuzco blew flame from his skull again, and we could smell and taste the aroma; it was the reek of the remnants of the burnt brain of Djamrock being expelled from Cuzco’s body.

Djamrock’s other two heads stared at the sight. He was in dire agony, but his dark hide was recovering its normal lustre. The fire in his body was being extinguished, his flesh was healing again. He was recovering. And even though he’d lost a head, he still had enough power to rip the crippled Cuzco into pieces.

But Djamrock did nothing.

Cuzco pounced again and ripped off a second head. And he ate that too. And he billowed steam from his neck to sluice his system of the last traces of alien skull and brain.

“No!” screamed a voice. “No!” screamed another voice.

But these were lone voices in the mob. I heard a drumming sound, as the crowd clapped and stamped their feet and chanted: “Kill him, kill him, kill him!”

Cuzco pounced one final time and ripped off Djamrock’s third head.

And ate it.

And shat out the remnants through his neck-holes.

And then Cuzco looked at me, with triumph and sorrow in his old eyes. And I knew then: this had been planned. This was a death pact between Cuzco and Djamrock.

And Djamrock had won. His victory in battle had entitled him to the ultimate reward: his irrevocable death.

Except that Djamrock was not truly dead. His sentience and his soul lingered on in his headless corpse. It endured in the particles of brain-ash that still floated in the air. Djamrock was thus doomed to an eternity of torment.

But he had died fighting; and that was enough for him.

The thought of what he had done, and what Cuzco had aided him in doing, appalled me.

I slithered away.

I was ashamed, so deeply ashamed, of Cuzco, of Djamrock, and of the rest of my fellow sentients. Could they not see that defeat was preferable by far to this kind of terrible victory?

That night, I crept out of my cabin and made my way through the pitch blackness of the interior planet’s artificial light, using memory to guide me, until I reached the lake.

And I there I sat, and listened to the waters lapping.

In the morning, as the sun rose. I watched the first fish leap from the water. I watched the aerials flock in the sky above, dancing patterns in air.

“Do you not see,” I argued, “that Cuzco must be banished? An example must be made.”

I was addressing the Guiding Council of the Sentients; twelve of us in all. Quipu, Biark, Sahashs, Loramas, Thugor, Amur, Kairi, Wapax, Fiymean, Krakkka, Raoild. And Sharrock, too, was there; for he had, unknown to me, been elected as a thirteenth Council Member and hence now had a responsibility for the government of this world.

The meeting was going badly. Quipu’s five heads were all laughing at me for my attempt to actually punish Cuzco for achieving a glorious victory.

Sharrock’s scorn too was evident in his every cold glare.

And the others-sentients I had known and regarded as friends for so many years!-treated me with a contempt that they barely bothered to disguise.

Thugor made a pacifying gesture. His words were silken, we felt them as much as we heard them. “You, my Sai-ias,” he said, “you, kind and gentle being, have always been a kisser of the arse of your enemy. Cuzco however is a hero. He showed us a way out. Through war and glory. You should celebrate him, not censure.”

“What he did was wrong,” I insisted.

“He enabled Djamrock to escape.”

“He cursed Djamrock! He will lead others to the way of death. That is not what we need,” I said, trying to keep calm, and to rein in my fury.

“Cuzco is a hero,” agreed Fiymean. “Sai-ias you are a dismal coward. You know nothing of war.”

“I know much about-”

“It’s pathetic,” said Kairi, in a shrill scornful voice, her feathers vibrating to make the sounds that the air translated. “All the things we do, and that you encourage us to do. The Days. The Temple. We demolish, we rebuild. We tell stories. The same stories. We talk about science, but we barely understand each other’s ideas, and have virtually no technology, and no way of acquiring fresh data. We talk about history, for all we have is history. There will be, for us, no more history. It is all futile. What Cuzco has done has shone a light on our world, and all we can see is shit and lies.”

“It is not futile,” I argued, in my gentlest of tones.

“Sai-ias, fuck yourself with a barbed weapon, and die in the process.”

“You turd-eating coward.”

“You pathetic fucker.”

“You’re not welcome here, you slimy sea fucking monster. Cuzco is our god.”

And so they continued; the taunting, sneering voices. I hated it so much, yet I endured the mockery patiently.

My task was all the harder because none of these creatures remembered the early years; the days of Carulha, and my two battles against him. For all the great beasts of that time had died, of Despair, or in some Ka’un battle or other. Only the Kindred remembered; and even they were starting to forget what I had truly done for this world. To this new generation, I was just a complacent fool; preaching peace and harmony to an angry lynch mob.

“Cuzco must be banished,” I insisted, “for the good of all.” And then I paused for effect, and said: “I so order it.”

But my words were like a light breeze in the midst of a hurricane; no one heeded them.

“Sai-ias,” said Quipu One, my favourite of the Quipus, and one of my oldest friends on the ship, “this is none of your affair.”

“It is my affair,” I said angrily. “You idiot Quipu, you know nothing-”

“Ah, fuck away,” said Quipu One contemptuously. “I have no more time for you.”

“Well said. Fuck away, Sai-ias,” said Quipu Two.

“Fuck away Sai-ias!” said Quipu Three.

“Cuzco is our hero now,” said Quipu Four, and his eyes gazed into the far distance, remembering the glory and the triumph of Djamrock’s demise.

“Fuck away, you black-hided beast!” said Quipu Five. “No one cares what you say, or what you think. Not any more.”

I looked at Sharrock.

“Sai-ias,” he said to me gently. “You are wrong.”

Words do not hurt me, usually.

Those words did.

Lirilla’s wings fanned my face.

“This is a cruel world,” I told her, the sweetest creature on this entire world. “But I know I am right.”

Lirilla flew away without speaking.

I found Cuzco, surrounded by acolytes in the field of green, telling his tale of victory to a mob that included Sharrock and Quipu.

I used my tentacles to hurl myself towards the crowd. I heard muttering and hissings and muttered insults. “Cuzco,” I called out.

Cuzco raised himself up, and his great wings beat and he hovered above me, baring his face whose soft features were distorted with contempt.

“You saw me fight?” he roared.

“It is Day the Fifth,” I said to him and the assembled crowd. “It is our day of music and celebration.”

“A waste,” roared Cuzco, “of fucking time.”

Laughter rocked the crowd. Sharrock stared at me sadly, his contempt merging with his pity in a toxic brew.

“We need it. It fills our days,” I said.

Cuzco pushed out his chest. And his face-or rather an illusion of a face, patterns of expression on the soft skin of the breast of his left body-bore an intrigued expression. “It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked. “ You created the idea of the Temple?”

“I did,” I said.

“And the Days, you created those too.”

“I did,” I admitted.

“And the whole structure of our lives. The gatherings. The cabins. The Guiding Council. That was you.”

“When I first came to the ship,” I said, “all was anarchy and-”

Cuzco laughed at me. And the crowd laughed. Even Sharrock laughed.

And in that terrible moment, I felt humiliated.

For I was, I realised, considered by all present to be a gullible fool who believed that make-believe work was better than real work. I was the one, the only one, who did not understand that glory is to be found in heroic defeat, not in meek surrender! I understood at that moment the depth and sincerity of their scorn, and of their contempt. And I found myself consumed by self-hate. Was I really this wretched creature they despised so much?

“Sharrock, ignore them. Do not laugh at me. You and I know better about what is right,” I said wretchedly. But he grinned at me too, tauntingly.

However, I stood my ground. “Cuzco, you are banished,” I said, as firmly as I was able. “That is my irrevocable decision.”

The mob began to howl and shout, drowning out my words. I continued desperately: “You must dwell on the mountain crags, but you cannot speak to anyone or be spoken to by anyone. When you are gone, all will return to normal. Our Rhythm of Days will return.”

Few could hear me for all the baying and roaring, but still I continued: “Fighting will once more be forbidden. I do not ask this, I do not beg for it, I demand it!”

“You fucking turd-sucking bog-fucking slack-cunted bitch,” said Cuzco. “Why don’t you fuck-”

My tentacle lashed out, and unfolded in an instant to double its usual length; and I swung it in a huge loop to create momentum; then I smote Cuzco with it.

The blow was powerful and as fast as thought itself, and he was knocked across the ground like a ball struck with a bat in one of the biped’s wretched games.

There was a startled silence.

Cuzco got back on his feet. He puffed up his chest again, and showed me his face; there was glee in his expression. “I’ve been waiting,” said Cuzco, “for this for a long-”

I struck again but this time Cuzco was expecting it and he rolled out of the way. And when he came out of the roll his wings unfurled and he beat them and he was in the air and he pounced down at I wasn’t there. I used my tentacles to grip the ground and fling myself upwards. And as I flew my quills emerged and I skimmed Cuzco’s body and my quills crashed against his body armour, and we both fell to the ground.

I flipped over again and narrowly avoided a funnel of flame from Cuzco’s head. Then I fired a fusillade of quills at him from my stomach hole and he was shocked as these brutal arrows smashed against his hide. He buckled up his breast armour, burying his soft face away, so his bodies were now just two vast horned carapaces covered in impregnable scales.

He paced towards me. I slithered towards him. A quill stuck out from his hide, close to one of his heavily shielded eyes. His tread was light. He was sizing me up.

We faced each other in the field of green, and all around us a myriad alien species watched; furred, feathered, scaled, covered in hide, small, large, brightly coloured, drably coloured; a whole menagerie of strangeness, rapt in joy at the sight of this, the second great fight in two days.

I felt the ground shudder and I knew that Fray had arrived, to watch his two “friends” fight.

But then I realised, with a terrible and sudden clarity, that she and I weren’t truly friends at all. We were merely companions, and fellow captives. But she cared nothing for me, not really; not did she have any concept of who I truly am, of the real Sai-ias.

Fray and Cuzco also were bound together by sheer force of circumstance; their friendship here was a matter of convenience, no more. They were large; and savage; and heavily armoured; that was all they had in common!

And what’s more, it now seemed obvious that despite our seeming friendship, Cuzco and I had always harboured a deep loathing of each other. He, a savage flesh-eating monster, I a cultured vegetarian; what could connect two such different beasts? The answer was clear: nothing.

Oh, now I could see it all so plainly. All was lies and cruelty and hate! Nothing on this world had any value! These truths came crashing down upon me.

But even so, I felt obliged to fight.

A funnel of flame billowed out of Cuzco’s skull and I did not move. My skin ignited and I was enveloped in a fireball and still I did not move. My flesh melted, and the burning smell of my body filled the air and still I did not move.

When the flames died down, my soft outer skin had been burned away and what remained was the jet-black diamond-hard carapace of my inner body. My tentacles were sheathed; my eyes were protected; my skin would grow back in a matter of days, and would have done so even if I had still been on my home planet.

And all could now see the remarkable truth: that the inner Sai-ias is a warrior born.

I pounced.

My tentacles unfurled, I gripped the ground, I flung myself up and at Cuzco, and I caught his scaly hide with my tentacle tips and swung him round and crashed him to the ground. As he lay dazed I flipped into the air and flew downwards, my central quill extended, and I stabbed him in the fleshy skin of his stomach.

He recovered and swept at me with his powerful paws and knocked me aside, but I rolled and threw myself upright and launched again.

Cuzco took to the air but I was just as fast and I threw myself upwards and as I did my tentacle tips retracted and my inner claws were exposed and I used these claws to grip and rip his flesh in mid-air. His wings beat, he struggled to keep his flight, as I ripped away his hide and blood gouted from his body on to the field of grass below.

Cuzco came crashing to the ground, and I beat him again and again with my tentacles. He fired his flames again but they could do no harm to my chitinous body and armoured tentacles; and my eyes, too, were made of hard scales not soft flesh and could not be burned or stabbed or gouged.

I played with him for a while, smashing him with my tentacles, and mockingly absorbing his flames as if they were sunshine on a warm day. Then finally I spat, and an unfolding matrix of web embraced his body and trapped him.

Victory was mine.

“He is banished,” I told the crowd. “Take the body to the mountain top and leave it there. Fill a container with water of life and leave it beside his body. Cuzco will not be of our family until ten years have elapsed, and he has earned my forgiveness.”

No one demurred.

Sharrock was staring at me, astonished; and he smiled with open joy.

I recoiled at his approval; I was revolted by the love of the crowd.

For before, I had been right, and yet I had been mocked. And now-now I had proved I was nothing but a violent thug, with more flair for war than even the powerful Cuzco- now, the mob would follow me anywhere.

This was the quintessential predator-prey mindset; the belief that only power endorsed by violence should command respect.

And I despised them all for it.

And, in all candour, I despised myself too, for playing their pathetic game. For I believe in love and not war; yet to save my world, I have to be a monster.

And so a monster I have become.

I went to the storm zones and let a hurricane bombard my hard carapace. A few times I thought I would be swept away and smashed against the icy clouds.

I roared with rage into the hurricane’s open mouth, and felt anguish and guilt that hurt me more than the wind’s sharp knives.

My outer skin grew back. The Rhythm of our Days returned. The Temple was demolished; and then we began to rebuild it. Stories were told. Science was discussed.

And Cuzco was now a memory; he lived in solitude on a mountain-top eyrie, the very emblem of the way we should not be. And my world was safe; and, to such degree as it was possible to be content in such a place, my people were indeed content.

And I was revered now, and not despised. My smallest request was treated as a command; no one ever interrupted me. I felt like a god.

And I loathed it.

The fields had to be tilled every month. Armies of polypods thundered across the artificial soil, kicking with hooves and ripping with claws, and aerials swooped down and sifted soil. And at the end of this long process, the soil was no more fertile than it had been before.

The trees and bushes needed to be pruned every week. Some of the vegetation ran riot and grew at a terrifying rate, and the arboreals used saws and swords to hack pieces off the runaway shrubs and trees to reduce them to a manageable height.

But what would it have mattered if the trees had grown to the heavens? There would still have been space enough to move in. And though the browsing animals ate the grass, and chewed the tree bark, there was no nourishment to be gained from that. It was a squandering of time to tend this garden, for our bodies were fed by other means.

The ice clouds soaked up moisture from the air and grew daily, and so they had to be regularly milked. To achieve this, the aerials flew inside the jagged clouds-clouds which had once floated in the skies of the icy world where Quipu had lived-and pissed their hot urine downwards, melting the ice. And the urine-tainted rain fell upon the land and the lake; and the ice-clouds shrank. And all of us felt the mixed blessing of being rained upon by water filthily stained with piss.

Thus, every time it rained, bleak irony drenched me as much as did the raindrops.

And so there was always work to be done. And it was always futile, desperate, purposeless work. Such was the rhythm of our days.

It was Day the First and I was climbing a mountain, and I could not resist the urge; I went to see Cuzco.

My claws gripped the cliff face tightly, and I was able to clamber up the steepest slopes, despite my bulk. I enjoyed this kind of physical effort; it invigorated me.

I had no idea where Cuzco was dwelling but I followed my instincts; it would be the highest crag, the most remote spot. I reached the top of the mountain summit and looked for him in vain. Then I hurled myself off and glided to the next summit; and when I found him not, I leaped again, and reached the next summit. And then the next. Then I landed on an icy crag and found myself sliding across a glacier. Strange ice-creatures peered at me, and I marvelled that I had never seen them before.

I called out to Cuzco, again and again, with a shrill whistling noise that I knew he would recognise as my ocean-call.

The day passed, and I found no trace of Cuzco.

It was Day the Second and I was due to be at the Temple to help raise the stones. But instead I returned to the mountain peaks and searched again for Cuzco.

It was Day the Third; my search continued.

At the end of Day the Fourth I was frustrated and weary and I made a wild decision; I would not return to my cabin when the black night fell.

And so I waited, buffeted by cold winds, as the sun set and cast its rosy glow upon our fake and evil world. Then the daylight in the air was switched off; sheer blackness descended. There were no stars, there was no residual light. The entire planet was black and all the land animals sheltered in their cabins; the aquatics in the lake and rivers slowed to a sluggish pace in their swimming; the aerials cowered in their nests. Only a few, just a very few, of the echo-locating species ventured abroad, and even they were wary.

I crouched on the high plateau and listened to the sounds of the night, and at length I heard a sound I recognised: a wild howling. It was Cuzco, baying at the stars, except there were no stars.

I spent twelve cycles on the mountain tops gliding from peak to peak, following the sound of the howls; and then one day I found my friend.

“You’ve changed,” I told Cuzco.

Cuzco snorted, and I felt the heat of his flames on my soft outer skin. There was a wild look in his eyes. He did not speak.

“I’ve missed you,” I said.

Cuzco’s claws scratched the hard rock.

“I had no choice. I had to banish you.” I said. “Otherwise-”

Cuzco roared at me. I’d never heard his roar from so close. It was a scream that possessed his whole body. He was a fierce-looking creature at the best of times-with a hide made of sharp spikes and horns erupting from his skull. And the furnace of his body-the inner heat that allowed him to spit and exhale flame-made the patches of hide that were visible beneath his body armour glow.

And yet I knew that Cuzco, in his best moments, had a generous and a gentle spirit. And, too, as well as his killing claws, he had fingers that were supple and soft and could be used to manipulate tools, or create great art works, or stroke, affectionately, a subordinate being.

“Have you become insane?” I asked Cuzco calmly, and he snorted again, and spat fire over me and I was engulfed in flame.

Once more my soft skin burned away; and I clenched my extremities into my core, and my shell joints instinctively sealed and I allowed the fire to burn down before my head re-emerged.

“You are indeed,” I concluded, “insane.”

Cuzco laughed. “Not so.”

“You murdered Djamrock.”

“We made a bargain.”

“An insane bargain.”

Cuzco snorted again, and acid dripped out of his eye sockets. This body language I knew; he was laughing.

“I’m tired of stories,” said Cuzco, as the sun set, and the blackness descended again.

“Then tell me no stories.”

“I find your company irksome.”

“I love to irk.”

“You succeed triumphantly, you ugly sentimental shittier-than-an-arsehole monstrosity.”

“Now I recall why I’ve missed you; your squalid absence of a personality makes me feel much finer and wiser by comparison.”

A spurt of acid dripped out of Cuzco’s eyeballs; he was laughing again.

We were silent together a while. A long while.

“I should return,” I said. “To my cabin.”

“Why?”

“Because I have a life down there.”

“Then go, you ignorant stealer-of-space-that-might-be-occupied-by-my-shadow.”

“Perhaps I shall.”

“Did you really think I would be glad to see you?”

“Are you?”

“You’re a grotesque viler-than-turds-in-my-eyeballs monstrosity.”

“But are you? Glad?”

“Yes.”

“I did not think you would be glad. After all-”

“You fought a noble fight, and bested me.”

“No fight is noble,” I said derisively.

“I thought you were a coward.”

“I aspire to be so.”

“You’re not a coward.”

I sighed, from my tentacle tips. I rehearsed my speech about pacifism, and why it is preferable to blood-lust, but decided not to waste my breath.

“You fight like a grazing animal whose grotesque teats are the size of a baby Chall’s head,” I informed him.

He snorted; the air burned; acid dripped from his eyes; laughing again.

“Why did you come?” Cuzco asked.

“I was worried about you.”

“You beat me into bloodiness and had me dumped on a high cold mountain top; and you were worried?”

“I thought you might be lonely.”

Cuzco looked out at the view: the world was far below; we were atop a remote icy crag surrounded by sheer cliffs.

“Fair guess,” he conceded.

“Are you lonely?”

“No.”

“Good, I’m glad,” I said.

“And yet,” Cuzco acknowledged grudgingly, “yes.”

“As I suspected.”

“Admit it,” said Cuzco, “The only reason you’re here is-you can’t live without me, can you, you ingratiating slime-fucker?”

I waved my tentacles scornfully, disparaging such a ridiculous idea.

“It’s true!” snorted Cuzco, scalding my cheeks with plumes of hot air from his skull. “You care about me, you actually have feelings for me, don’t you? In that sad pathetic cock-sucking arsehole-kissing clingy way of yours. Admit it, you soft-as-shit-expelled-from-my-bowels worm!”

I was convulsed by a sudden unexpected paroxysm; my body was attacked from within by an unfamiliar choking feeling; my emotions clashed and collided; and I exhaled stale air from my rectum, violently and loudly.

“What happened then?” said Cuzco, alarmed.

“It is the way my species,” I said, amused, “expresses affection and abiding love.”

Cuzco glared at me, and acid dripped out of his eyes again: “And you’re not extinct?”

I knew all Cuzco’s stories, his tales of valour and loves lost and battles fought and great deeds performed in faster-than-light space ships that carried his kind amongst the stars.

But over the next few weeks, he told me all the stories again, and I listened rapt and fascinated, and then I told mine.

I talked of how my people first learned to fly through space; and how we danced and mated among the stars; and how we gave birth in caves and cherished our young. And I talked too of the day my father took me to the moon of Shallomar, perched on his back as he flew through vacuum.

“Did you love your father?” Cuzco asked.

“Of course I did.” I replied.

Cuzco sighed; I suspected he felt a pang of jealousy.

“And you? Did you love your father?” I asked, intrigued. “Or, rather, do your species leave their aged parents out in the desert to die the moment they begin to forget occasional facts? As the Frayskind, so lamentably, do.”

“We do not do such a thing.”

“But love? Did you love him?”

“No, I did not love him,” Cuzco said, soberly. “He was a cruel tyrant; such as fathers are meant to be. My mother too was brutal to me; she taught me through pain, and taught me well, the evil bitch.”

“I find that sad.”

“Do not pity me!” said Cuzco angrily. “Our people do have love. We love many things.”

“Name one thing that you love, that doesn’t involve ripping the throat out of a vulnerable fellow creature?”

Cuzco thought hard, clearly angry at my words.

“We love our comrades in arms,” he said proudly, “and would happily die for them, and they for us! And we love our sexual partners too. Yes, we do! With a rare and overwhelming passion! Or rather, we love them until we tire of them, and find their breath stale and loathsome, and then we feel compelled to batter them and seek fresh fucks. But for a while at least, then-yes, romantic love-I do know the meaning of that joy!!”

“Hmm,” I said.

“But as for children,” continued Cuzco, “well, that’s a different thing entirely. For I did not know a parent could love a child, and a child a parent, until I came to this place.”

“That’s sad,” I concluded, having won my case, I felt, beyond all doubt.

“No it’s not. It’s normal,” Cuzco said, stubbornly. “For my kind.”

“I had always believed,” I admitted, “it was a universal thing. That all species know the joy of love, even the violent ones.”

“Not Doro’s kind.”

“Fair point. His species are single-sex.”

“Perhaps he loves himself?” Cuzco suggested.

“That is not true love, it is just vanity.”

“And Frayskind? Do they know love?”

“Who could love a Frayskind! The great lumbering oaf!” I suggested.

“Yet magnificent too,” Cuzco argued.

“In her way, perhaps. Certainly loyal; and a good friend; unless you are a mischievous Frayskind teen, then Fray would eat you alive.”

“Give us credit; my kind are not great parents, but we do not eat our young.”

“You swallow sentient bipeds,” I said accusingly.

Cuzco chuckled; an eerie sound. “Only when they are young and fresh; the older kind are chewy.”

“You immoral beast!”

“You should try it. Biped haunch. It has a tang.”

And so it went on; we threw out ideas, exchanged memories, mused on the peculiarities of the strange other species with whom we inhabited this ship, told jokes, teased each other, and talked endless nonsense that amused us both.

Cuzco and I were far from kindred spirits. His kind were fierce, wrathful, brutal, murderous, and cared for nothing more than honour, which they defined as the ability to kill or to die with skill and grace. While my kind were timid, pacifist, cowardly in his eyes; but full of an unquenchable love for others and for life itself.

But we had one thing in common: our need for each other. For I needed him, desperately and limitlessly. And he needed me too, with the same crazy intensity. And the bond it created dwarfed any love I had ever known.

Cuzco-I would fight and die in war for you!

That’s how much I love you.

“Why did you do it? The fight with Djamrock?”

“He begged me to.”

“You thought you’d win?”

Cuzco sighed wearily. “Yes that was my plan.”

“Could you have endured it? An eternity without body?”

“An eternity of joy. Knowing I had died with honour.”

“You would have abandoned me?”

“We are all alone,” said Cuzco. “Love is an illusion.”

He was right. Love is an illusion. And so is hope.

But are illusions really so very bad?

“Where did you learn to fight like that?” Cuzco asked one night, after we had spent a day flying on the updrafts above the highest summits.

“I never learned,” I admitted. “I had never fought a battle until I arrived on the Hell Ship. But in the early days, there were two huge combats, which I won. That is why the world is as it is. Because I fought, and won, and claimed obedience.”

“Before my time?” asked Cuzco.

“Before your time.”

“I thought Djamrock was the leader of the world. Or Miaris. They were the dominant predators. When they spoke, all listened.”

“They listened; but Djamrock and Miaris never said anything that wasn’t nonsense. My words mattered.”

“Yes but-”

“What?”

“You spoke to us all, true, and often we heeded you; but no one feared you.”

“I did not want anyone to fear me.”

Cuzco thought about that.

“Explain how you can fight,” he said, “if your kind are not predators.”

“Once,” I said, telling the tale of my people:

“Once, the oceans of our world were ruled by a magnificent and beautiful sentient species called Tula. Tula means ‘all’ in my language; the Tula were our all. We were their symbiotes, their slaves. They were born as soft sea creatures, and developed a calcareous exoskeleton to become underwater reefs as they aged. The ocean bed was ruled by them; the ocean bed was them.

“And they fed us and taught us, and in return we protected them.

“These are not legends; this is the archaeological biology of my kind. We were giant plant-eating sea creatures with tentacles and a cape and the ability to expand our bodies to appear more threatening than we were. Then we formed a symbiosis with the Tula and we used our fearsome aspect to discourage predators who liked to eat the soft Tula flesh inside their bony frame. Browsing sea creatures like the Uoolsa and the Jaybkok could eat an entire Tula reef in a single sitting; but they were wary of us.

“But as time went by the predators grew more bold and they began to eat my kind, before consuming our Tula hosts. So we learned to fight, using our tentacles as weapons to choke and our quills-our sexual organs, for males and females alike-as weapons.

“And the Tula, who were sentient, saw what we were doing and they cleverly decided to ‘breed’ us. They paired us in combinations that amplified certain traits: size, strength, toughness of carapace, deadliness of our quills and so on.

“All this took place over many tens of thousands of years; but selective breeding can be a remarkably effective process. We became fighting monsters, strong and remorseless. And so the Tula were safe, for we guarded them; and were bred to do so with terrifying effect.

“Then the oceans started to die and we fled to the land. And there, with our bodies equipped for war, we struggled to survive. We became sentient. And when we became sentient, we became pacifist. That is when my species was truly born; when we began to think.

“The Tula were no more; we were alone on hostile land. And our minds developed; but our bodies did not. Our fighting weapons did not de-evolve. We retained the atavistic ability to wage total war, though we chose never to do so.

“It is a freak of nature, no more, Cuzco. I take no pride in it. I am proud of my intellect, my compassion, my empathy. But the fact I have a body that can kill with effortless skill means nothing to me. It is just a freak of nature.”

“It means you are a warrior!” Cuzco said.

“Oh you forsaken-by-the-gods eater-of-hot-smelly-shit-from-the-arse-of-a-Frayskind idiot, do you not hear anything I say?” I said to Cuzco, using one of his favourite insults; and he laughed.

Night fell and we were enveloped in total blackness.

We talked some more. I told him of my many friends in the days of my pre-metamorphosis “childhood,” and of my brothers and sisters who I had loved. He talked of his home planet and his “wife” (his third, whom at that point he still found sweet and had not yet rejected or battered) who he had tried and failed to protect from the Dreaded.

“We were masters of our world,” he said. “And then the skies turned red. We are creatures of fire and they used fire against us. It rained flame, day after day after day. The forests were consumed. The seas boiled dry. Mountain tops were seared. But we hid in caves and underground tunnels and we launched our space fleets against the invaders.

“My father was one hundred of our years old and he was Admiral of the fleet. He and his warriors perished. Then the fires on the surface of our planet died out. The smoke settled. We emerged from our caves to face our invaders. But they never came. They defeated us, but they never faced us. It was the greatest of dishonours.

“I was sent to investigate the fleet’s emergency base, on the largest of our two moons. We had cable links with both the moons, we could fly back and forth on strings as thin as an ankle, as strong as the armour of a god. It was, indeed, a strange, unsettled time. Our space ships had been incinerated, our satellite stations had been exploded, but the planet itself remained un-invaded. Some of us speculated this was not an alien attack at all, just a series of natural catastrophes. And that the presence of an alien space ship in our stellar system was simply a massive coincidence.

“But then I arrived on the moon, which we had engineered to give it a breathable atmosphere, and found scenes of carnage. This had been an old-style battle to the death. Tens of thousands of my people were scattered on the ground, dead and ripped to shreds by claws and talons and teeth. Blood lay in vast pools and insects drank it. I realised our invaders were motivated by a love of battle. They had incinerated our fleets to remove the threat to their spaceship, and they had bathed our planet in fire to prevent us from reinforcing the forces on the moon.

“But the war on our moon was the purpose of their invasion. It had been a battle to dwarf all battles; no weapons were used; no burn marks or bullet holes could be found upon the corpses. It was all done with swords and daggers and claws and teeth and hooves, in bitter unarmed combat; the Dreaded were, I realised, just like us. They loved to fight, and they loved to kill. “And I was so ashamed Sai-ias. For I realised at that moment, as I walked among the corpses of the dead, that we had been exterminated by our own twin. I could only think of one other species who could have acted so cruelly, so bloodthirstily, so savagely; and that was my own. And I wondered at that moment if we had been subjected to this doom by a just god who was mocking us for our own sins.

“And, thus humbled, I stood among the bloodied corpses of the last survivors of the Battle of the Moon of Karboam and I howled to the stars, in grief, and sorrow.

“And then I woke and I was on the Hell Ship. I never saw the creature who captured me, and who rendered me unconscious. I went from hell to Hell Ship. That is my story, and I have told it often.”

“And I have heard it often.”

“And I have never admitted before how I felt shame.”

“I knew,” I said, “I knew.” I realised that my body was trembling; and Cuzco was uttering strange tiny grunts; sad and pathetic and involuntary. The tokens of his deep inner grief.

“Your father,” I asked. “What was he like?”

“Magnificent. His wing span dwarfed mine. He sired twenty children, and I was the youngest and the least despised. He was an explorer and a scientist, and discovered many species of sentient life in the depths of space, and catalogued them all with care. But first and foremost he was a warrior, and a bloodthirsty butcher, and so was I. But does that make us unfit to live? Did we truly deserve to be exterminated, the way we were?”

“I cannot answer,” I said, remembering all Cuzco’s tales; and the stories of the four species of sentient bipeds his people had tormented, and slaughtered, and eventually eradicated.

“Perhaps we did,” Cuzco continued. “Perhaps the god of our universe judged us; and perhaps his judgement was fair.”

“Not so,” I murmured, “not so.”

I did not believe in a god of the universe; an arbiter of justice. I did however believe that Cuzco’s kind were murderous monsters who deserved most of what they got. For evil will always breed evil.

However, I said none of this to Cuzco; he had suffered enough.

And so we lay there in the dark, hearing each other’s breaths, bathed in each other’s sorrow. And I stroked Cuzco’s body with my tentacles and I felt a strange desire come upon me.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Can’t you guess?” I asked, lightly.

He was silent for a little while.

And then for a longer while.

“Ah,” he said, eventually.

“Would you like to?” I asked.

“Is it possible? For us?” Cuzco said.

“Others have managed.”

“Perhaps we could try,” Cuzco conceded. “Touch me some more.”

I touched him some more.

“I am becoming aroused,” Cuzco admitted, and shifted his body.

I touched him some more.

He sighed with pleasure.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No,” I said gently.

“But I have to be able to satisfy you! Bring you to-what is for you a climax?”

“This is all the climax I need. For my kind can eat the joy of others,” I explained.

And at that moment, he howled to the black skies; and I howled too.

“We could stay here for ever,” I told him, many glorious hours later. “Up in the mountains. The Ka’un don’t care.”

“I feel happy,” said Cuzco, and he purred.

“I feel happy too.”

We lay together in the pitch black, all night long; and I listened to the sound of his breathing.

And I thought about the first time I met Cuzco. He had been dumped by the Ka’un on the savannah and he had reacted to his plight with rage and violence. He attacked all who came near him; and his behaviour was so aggressive that eventually all the giant sentients steered clear of him. He burned a forest down out of malice and pique; he tried to fly off the planet and crashed agonisingly into the false sky; and he refused to speak to any of us for months.

Even so, I tried, every day, to build a relationship with him, though he treated me always with a vitriolic rudeness that made Sharrock seem gallant by comparison. When I tried to comfort him he swore at me. He called me a coward and a bitch and a whore and an ugly abomination-and worse, far worse. But beneath the rage I sensed there was real anguish. And so I persevered.

And then one day, as I was about to depart from his tirade of abuse, Cuzco had ceased raging and, in some embarrassment, asked me to stay.

And I did. And then he shared with me some of his stories of loss and grief. And from that day on we were friends, of sorts.

Despite our friendship however, he continued to be brutal and scatologically insulting towards me; for that was Cuzco’s way of showing affection. It lacked nuance in my view; and yet deep down I knew, or rather I suspected, or to be candid I hoped, that he did care. And there had certainly been, for all this time, something between us. And that “something” had sustained me over these many years. Until His breathing stopped.

After two hours, the sun rose again and I could see for certain that Cuzco had died of Despair.

His body was petrified; a frozen statue. I touched him and his hide was icy. His heart was still. No bodily life remained. His soul was still in there somewhere, but I would never speak to him again.

I howled at the stars, as Cuzco would have done. But there were still no stars.

Then I glided home; and I left Cuzco’s petrified body on the icy mountain peak, where the snows would fall on it, and where birds would peck at it, until one day his body would crack into a million pieces.

Explorer/Jak

For those few minutes after the Death Ship destroyed all the stars, we were the last particle of reality in the universe that used to contain the richest and most beautiful civilisation that-well, that I have ever known.

And then we escaped. We rifted through the nexus of all the realities which I later learned was called the Source. The region of space where all the many universes were, once, spawned.

And found ourselves in another universe. Much like our own. Stars. Planets. Civilisations. All were to be found here.

I saw it all through Explorer’s eyes and remote sensors; and I tried not to think back to what I had lost.

Any trace of the ship? I asked Explorer.

None.

The news was dire. But I could not bear to linger on it. Instead, I focused on the one positive thing: I was alive.

And so for one glorious moment I savoured what it was to be alive!

The moment passed.

The corpses?

They have not yet decayed.

Let me see them. Give me access to the Hub cameras.

No.

I insist.

No purpose will be served. We need to plan.

And so we did.

My name is Jak. I was, once, a Trader.

But that was many years ago. Too many years ago to count. And indeed very many of those years-well, I can no longer recollect them. For the actual memories of much of what I have done, I have to rely upon the computer mind which is part of my consciousness and my being, but which still feels alien to me.

I was once a Trader. Then I was the Master of an Explorer vessel. And now I am a Star-Seeker. I! A mere-male. But that is my destiny and my curse.

And, for anyone who can hear, or read, or decode this message bound into the ripples of reality, here is my story.

It is a tale too long to be told in full. Some of I have already told you about, or parts of it at least; the experiences and companions that burn bright in my memory-the wretched FanTangs, Averil, Mohun, my betrayal and flight from the Trader Fleet, Albinia, the ship, Phylas, Morval, Galamea, the shocking genocide of the FanTangs. Some of it however I was mad for five hundred years, and that is when I lost most of my memories. During that time I-no, that cannot be recalled. We pursued the Death Ship. We encountered many-no, too much, too much. I am drowning in years, and half-forgot horrors.

But there was a particular moment when it all changed. When my old self died and the new self was born. I can recollect that much.

It happened soon after we arrived in our first new universe, after pursuing the Death Ship, and failing to find it. It was when Explorer explained to me her dark plan.

It was a coldly logical plan; but driven by some kind of strange machine-mind passion. I can only suppose that Explorer’s programs were designed to ensure she never faltered in pursuit of revenge for a wrong done against Olara.

I was the flaw, you see. I was nothing but a weak, injured, fallible organic creature who lacked the necessary strength to endure the mission ahead of us. We Olarans are a long-lived species; we can live many hundreds of years. But like all that is flesh, eventually we decline and die.

But in the current circumstances, Explorer had remorselessly explained to me, death was not an option.

Because, to pursue the Death Ship, she told me, we needed time. Time to search. Time to seek for clues. Time that might well be measured in aeons not mere years. The Death Ship it seemed could travel for ever through the many universes; and so must we.

But I had lost limbs, I had suffered internal injuries. And rather than healing me, and coaxing a few more centuries out of me, Explorer wanted to replace my body parts with more robust alternatives. A metal heart; a nervous system made of robotic components; eyes that saw through Explorer’s eyes; a mind that co-existed at all times with Explorer’s mind.

Explorer wanted to let my body die, and yet keep my mind and my rage intact.

And meanwhile, as all this was discussed and decided, all around me the corpses of Phylas and Morval and Galamea and Albinia were rotting. Microbes in the air fed upon them; their flesh had turned to mush. But in due course Explorer would use the water jets to sluice their flesh away. And then she would drain the oxygen to kill the microbes. And then she and I would be immortal.

Why do you need me?

I recalled vividly asking her that question.

Why do you need me? You could take revenge alone. You could let me die and still pursue the Death Ship.

Her reply had chilled me, crippled and despairing as I was.

The answer to your question is: I do not need you, Jak. You contribute little to the running of this ship. Your mind is weak. Your resolve is feeble. Your body is dying, from inevitable age and from your terrible injuries. My sole purpose now is to take revenge for what these creatures did to the Olara, and for this I do not need you at all.

Then why do you want me?

Revenge is not enough, Star-Seeker Jak. Someone must bear witness to that revenge. And that must be you. For you are the last Olaran left, in all the universes. So bear witness, Jak. That is your task, and your inexorable duty.

Explorer’s plan was a good one; and so I agreed to it.

And thus I died.

And I also survived.

There was nothing left of the old me now, except for the brain-of-Jak connected to the ship’s mechanical mind.

Explorer repaired the hull and all her damaged machinery and weapons and restored the engines to their full power again. She closed down all the areas of the vessel that we did not need. She instructed the armoury to fabricate more weapons and vast amounts of ammunition and energy-stocks, and to expand and enhance the hull. She fortified our force shields. She created more robots to service the ship, to replace those destroyed in the battle. She turned herself from an Explorer vessel into a dedicated fighting machine.

I contributed little to all this, except strength and focus of emotion. For in this one respect only, Explorer was wrong. My mind may be weak, true; but my resolve is not feeble. So yes, Explorer is the mind and the body of our new warrior-self; but I am the passion that keeps us on our course. I am the flame that lights the wood that burns the forest. I am a creature beyond Olaran now; an immortal essence.

For I am become Hate; a Hate that, until it is sated, can never die.

Our journey began in that first universe. We dwelled there for a hundred years, cruising from planet to planet, in search of the Death Ship.

And we did not find it. A futile fruitless search.

It is hard to convey how truly painful was that utter bathos. To go from a white heat of rage to-ordinariness. It was not tragic; it was merely banal.

However, while in this new universe Explorer and I studied planets, catalogued civilisations from afar, and we even made direct contact with one such species of sentients. For we encountered an exploratory space ship crewed with bipeds who found us altogether most exotic and strange; a man-machine with a scorched hull and a crazy passion to pursue an evil black-sailed ship!

I became fond of these bipeds; they were curious, witty, and intriguing. And, if I hadn’t been so very insane, I would love to have joined their fleet, to spend my days once more seeking out new civilisations. For though trading was once my passion, I had come to care more about discovery, and about life in all its many forms. Explorer had calculated for me the odds of us finding the Death Ship in one of these many (but we could not know how many, or indeed if there was any limit to them) universes; they were not good odds. Even if there were less than an infinite number of such universes-the chance of stumbling upon the one, the very same one, as the Death Ship occupied, were almost laughably small.

So Explorer asked me if wanted to give up our pursuit. I was, after all, still Master-of-the-Ship. I could, in theory, abort her programming. But I refused. We would not falter in our purpose, even though our failure seemed inevitable.

And so we travelled on; and the curious bipeds went about their business. They were of a species called Cruxes. I felt they had potential.

And then the stars in our universe began to go out.

Once we realised what was happening, ours was a desperate scramble to return to the area of space from which we had entered this reality. We rifted ceaselessly; hurtling through un-space with a reckless disregard for the agonies of improbability. As parts of us died and were mangled, Explorer replaced them with identical components. A human crew would have been killed outright.

By the time we had returned to our starting place, the Universe was nearly dead. And so we sought the same gap in space we had found before; and we rifted; we entered a new reality, with moments to spare.

Explorer had by then added twenty sentient species from this universe to our extensive Olaran archive of civilisations.

And, once we entered our new universe, bitterly lamenting the death of the reality we had just fled, Explorer created a new file category; the Log of Lost Civilisations. There were twenty-one of them so far, including our own.

We have been pursuing the Death Ship ever since.