“You promised us peace.”
“We feared you, so we destroyed you,” I explained.
“Die!” And the creature lunged again in its new and vaster and even more terrible form; and I lashed it with my tentacles.
A savage struggle ensued-I shall not describe it-and at the end of it, the Krakzios was ripped apart. Its body lay in two pieces. It whined and groaned.
“Your body will heal,” I explained to the Krakzios. “The pieces will rejoin. You will be as good as new. And then you will surrender your will to the Ka’un. Resistance is futile. You are defeated. We are all defeated. Our role is to endure our failure.”
“The Ka’un?” gasped the Krakzios.
“They are my masters, I am their willing servant,” I explained.
“If you had any pride,” gasped the Krakzios, lying in a pool of its own blood, watching the shit pour out of its sundered guts, “you would refuse to thus serve.”
“You speak well; she is a traitor to us all,” said a voice, and I recognised it as the voice of Fray, and I realised she was referring to me.
“Resistance,” I explained again to the bleeding beast, “merely prolongs the agony.”
I could remember vividly, oh so vividly, the day my beloved friend Fray first arrived on the Hell Ship.
She hated me of course. She tried to gore me with her tusks, but was trapped behind force fields that could barely contain her powerful bulk. So instead, she vented her rage upon me with bitter angry words. Words I had heard before so many times from other new ones; and which I readily forgave.
Fray already knew that she was the last of her kind. And although she was a brutal predator, whose people loved to eat their own young, her kind were also sophisticated and clever, and had developed a beautiful philosophy that treasured the harmony of the natural world.
The Frayskind had sent colony ships to the stars, at sub-luminal speeds; and there were two hundred billion of Fray’s people alive when the Hell Ship had come to their universe. A long war had taken place between the Ka’un and an aggressive species of sentients called the Mala. Fray’s kind had taken no part in this war.
The Mala had been exterminated by means of a virus seeded by the Ka’un on all their planets. The Mala had died, and yet all the other life on these planets had survived. It had then come down to a space battle to the death between the Mala fleet and the Hell Ship.
The Hell Ship had triumphed.
And after the extermination of the Mala, Fray’s kind had opened negotiations with the Hell Ship. A long contract of peace had been drafted. And Fray, who was a leader to a large section of the Frayskind, had been involved in writing it. (Frayskind were meticulous about legal matters, and although they had no hands they could use their tongues with great dexterity.)
When the final document had been drafted, the Hell Ship spewed out yet another planet-buster missile and fled, taking the stunned Fray as captive and slave. She blamed herself for her people’s demise of course; and came to believe they should have fought, and not sought peace.
And, in all honesty, she was correct in her belief.
Thus Fray had not been an easy creature to pacify, back then. She had tried to kill me; then she had tried to manipulate me with her subtle logic, and charismatic personality. Then she discovered she could dominate some of the smaller sentients on the ship, and used her power over them to foment a mutiny which, thankfully, I was able to thwart.
I explained to her, again and again, that resistance was futile. But Fray did not believe me.
So I had told her tales of my home world. I painted a picture in words of the great waterspout of Jragnall, and the joy of swimming in the depths of the ocean with the Kasdif and the Qauy.
And Fray told me her stories too. She talked of her homeland, a planet orbiting a double sun. It was a wild and windy and mountainous desert world and many of the animals were, like the Frayskind, huge, because they carried huge stores of water in their bodies which they replenished every two years when the rains came. They were in effect living oases.
And thus, over the space of a year, we became friends. She was in many ways my dearest and closest friend. I bathed her body with moisture squirted from my tentacles on a monthly basis; which for her kind, betokens the closest fondness possible outside of a sexual relationship.
Fray was my friend; and now my friend had called me traitor.
You did well, Sai-ias.
Thank you.
I am proud of you. But I fear What do you fear Minos?
That you are not so very proud of me.
Of course I am.
You lie, Sai-ias.
No!
Of course you do. You’d be a fool not to. I’m your evil oppressor, remember?
I don’t think of it that way, I protested with my thoughts.
I hope you don’t. For what I have told you is true. My kind are not the aggressors, we are the victims. Our only sin is hope; hope that one day we will find a species worthy of our respect.
We were such a species. We did not seek war with you.
For a moment Minos was silent; and I wondered if I had been too frank with him. But then he spoke, in gentle and humble tones:
Perhaps then we were wrong about your kind. Forgive me Sai-ias-no, of course you can’t forgive me. What we did was unforgivable!
Understand me then Sai-ias. If I could travel back in time I would save your entire planet and all your peoples. For now that I have met you I understand how wise and kind you are. You are truly worthy of our respect; the finest and the most honourable sentient creature we have ever encountered.
Sai-ias, will you not answer me? I have bared my soul after all.
I hear your apology, Minos. And I accept that things that are done cannot be undone.
A staggering cliche, my child; but true. Do you hate me?
No.
You’re lying again. Tell the truth. Do you hate me?
No.
Try one more time.
No. I did, once, I hated you with all my soul. But no longer.
That gladdens my heart, dear creature.
Minos Yes Sai-ias? What did you want to say?
Just this-if I may-forgive my candour Whatever is on your mind, Sai-ias, merely expectorate it forth.
Minos, thank you. From the depths of my heart, thank you! For I have at times been close to Despair. I have been lonely and desperate, in danger of losing my will to live.
But now, my dearest Minos, I have achieved contentment! I have realised that my destiny is to be, as my ancestors once were, the protector of creatures greater than ourselves; and that destiny has finally been fulfilled!
I am, in short, proud to serve you, Captain Minos.
Sai-ias, I am so deeply touched; your friendship exalts me; you are the only creature in all the universes that I can trust.
Ah Minos! You are my master! And, I hope, also my friend.
Minos believed my every thought.
That stupid gullible turds-for-brains fucking fool!
He did not realise that my kind were accustomed to existing in a state of mental duplicity. For centuries we were the symbiotes of the great coral-beasts who bred us, and controlled our very thoughts. And so we learned to hide our real feelings; it is a gift we possess.
“Ah Minos you are my master!” I said with my mind; but my thoughts said: “ Monster-who-deserves-to-die- with-agonising-pain, I will deceive you and defeat you, somehow! ”
