utterly and flawlessly. I had lured Explorer onwards; and Minos allowed me to do so; time and again letting me roam “free” in the rooms of the exterior hull in order to make my radio calls. Then he destroyed the ship he called Nemesis, and Jak with it. It had been a plan carefully nurtured; Minos had allowed me to befriend Jak, so he could slay him.
I no longer had any hope left. My former friends hated me; and many of them like Fray had no memory of our good times together. They only ever knew me when I was masquerading as the evil bitch who freely served the Ka’un.
I knew that by this stage no one would ever believe that my actions had all been a pretence, in pursuit of my plan to overthrow the Ka’un. For that plan of course had now failed. The pretence had turned out to be the reality; I had simply been deceiving myself.
Thus I was left with nothing.
Then one day I felt a flutter of wings near my head, and saw Lirilla.
“Sai-ias,” she said.
“Yes?” I said. Lirilla no longer considered herself my friend, after witnessing me vanquish and humiliate the Krakzios; but she was at least speaking to me.
“Sharrock back, dead,” she said, and flew away.
I was consumed with fear at her words.
I began to lope with my tentacles; I saw crowds near the lake, and hurried towards them.
And I saw a muscular body lying there. It took me a moment, but then I recognised it as Sharrock. He was damp, possibly drowned, and had been flayed. His eyes stared blankly from his fleshless face.
Fray saw me and growled in her throat. But I ignored her, and pushed my way through. And I touched Sharrock with a tentacle tip and felt his pulse, and there was none.
So I thrust my tentacle tip down his throat until it was nearly in his gut, and then wrenched it out. He vomited water and he began to breathe once again.
I lifted him up, and carried him swiftly on my back to the well of the water of life and laid him down there. He slept there for an hour, and emerged spluttering.
The new-born Fray and my former friend Quipu gathered with me, as I looked down upon Sharrock.
“Will you take him back?” said Quipu One.
I stared at him blankly, not comprehending.
“He has escaped,” Quipu Two clarified. “Surely it is your job to betray us once more.”
I shuddered with shame at his words; though I did not blame him for uttering them.
“Who is he?” asked Fray, staring with puzzlement at the naked, flayed Maxolun.
“Oh Fray,” said Quipu One. “If only you knew! Your previous self followed this one to glorious defeat and death. Sharrock is-he was-”
“He tried to destroy the Ka’un; he failed,” I said.
“He’s awake,” said Quipu Four.
Sharrock was indeed awake; and looked up at us. And he spoke.
But his words were a babble; we could not understand him.
“How?” I cried. “Surely we should still understand him?”
“My guess is that the Ka’un have deleted his language from our paklas,” said Quipu One.
“Paklas?” asked Fray, baffled.
Sharrock whimpered with frustration at our inability to understand him. He pointed, to his head; then he stood up and touched the heads of Quipu.
We stared at him blankly.
Sharrock roared with rage. Never had I seen him so helpless, so frustrated; nor so wretchedly vulnerable, stripped as he was of all skin.
But then Sharrock paused, and was clearly lost in thought.
Then he stood up tall. And he no longer looked defeated; he looked like a warrior about to go into battle.
And what then followed was theatre, as Quipu later called it, of the magnificently absurd; a mime show that spoke louder than words.
We saw Sharrock, bound and tortured; we saw Sharrock fighting with his bonds; then Sharrock free; Sharrock running down a corridor; and finally, Sharrock destroying something, we knew not what.
At the end of it all, Sharrock took up a tree branch and he thrust it into my middle segment. Hard. And again. And again. I did not move or recoil, I was trying to fathom his meaning.
Finally my body spasmed and a deadly quill emerged from my middle segment; Sharrock had seen me do this in the battle against Cuzco.
Sharrock then touched my quill with his flayed hands and pointed to the heavens; then mimed a penetrating thrust.
Eventually, I understood.
Later that day I told my tale to Quipu and Fray; the story of my long and ultimately futile deception of Minos. I talked of Star-Seeker Jak and his failed attempt to destroy the Hell Ship.
“He tried for so many thousands of years to take revenge-and then died in just a moment,” I said.
“This story-” said Quipu One.
“-could just be another lie,” said Quipu Two.
“Trust me or not, I don’t care,” I said. “There is about to be a war; prepare yourself for it.”
And then I told them what Sharrock wanted me to do.
“Is it possible?” said Quipu One after I had finished my account.
“Sharrock knows my powers,” I said. “He knows the powers of all of you. He has studied us all and he has planned; and it is the best plan any of us have yet conceived.
“In short, we have a chance,” I said. “Minos is no longer in my head; and I know from this that the pakla-link has been broken, for that evil bastard loves to haunt me and to spy on me. He thinks I do not know he is there; but I can always tell.
“But now Minos has gone; my mind is truly my own again; and this Sharrock has achieved.
“Now, the rest is up to us.”
I made my way down to the cargo bay, where the hull-hatch was located. Many times we had toppled stone corpses out through this gateway to the stars. But today we had another purpose in mind.
I squeezed myself into the hatchway, and Quipu manipulated the controls. An outer door opened, and I squeezed through; an inner door then closed, protecting the air in the cargo hold from the emptiness of space.
Then the outer door opened too and I fell out and was among stars.
Below me the Hell Ship floated, huge and beautiful and black-sailed. It was a cylinder of a vessel, elegantly curved, culminating in a triangle tip, and dazzlingly illuminated with lights buried in the metal. But the hull looked old now, and was coated with strange growths, like living beasts; save for a large patch of clear metal which I recognised as the spot where Explorer 410: Property of the Olaran Trader Fleet had sent a missile into the hull.
I unfurled my cape to its fullest extent, and hurled an ear frond at the ship until it touched metal and connected; and so I was now being pulled along with the Hell Ship on its effortlessly swift course through space.
I thought about Minos, and all that he had told me of himself. How much of it was true? I wondered. I knew of course that he had lied to me about many things. But had there been any honesty at all in his words? Did he ever actually have qualms about what he and his evil crew had done?
I doubted it. Whatever he had once been, Minos was now simply malign: beyond remorse and compassion, hate incarnate. I longed to kill him.
And so I would.
I fired air from my gills, and flew closer to the Hell Ship.
Then I clung to the hull with my body, gripping with my claws, embracing it like a bird smothering its prey.
And with a powerful jolt, I buried my centre quill in the hull.
It dug in deep-I felt pain rip through my body-then I pulled myself off, leaving a broad circular hole in the hull.
