Monolith Cocktail Blog

The Monolith Cocktail Serialises Andrew C. Kidd’s Tennyson Imbued Opus

Dabbling over the decade with showcasing exciting, sometimes improbable, intriguing work from new and aspiring writers, the Monolith Cocktail has played host to serialisations of stories by Rick Clarke (of Vukover and The Tearless Life infamy) and Ayfer Simms (the Franco-Istanbul writer, and for a few years, an integral member of the MC team offering various reviews and conducting interviews).

Furnishing the site since Covid with review pieces and the odd feature, Glaswegian-based writer Andrew C. Kidd now adds his name to this list, sharing his grand interstellar opus with the MC readers through an epic serialisation. In the last couple of months we’ve published the Prologue, Part One and Part Two of The Violin, and, together, Parts 1 & 2 of the Hic Sunt Leones Et Corvi suite. We now set a course for the next chapter in this vast odyssey, with the concluding chapters from Hic Sunt Leones Et Corvi.

Part 3

Crone had received a warning that only he as Captain could receive.

He excused himself from his sub-officers on the bridge, claiming that the array of Radioman’s random amplitudes were uninterpretable. The amplitudes on his monitor were indeed indecipherable, but only to those who did not possess the 14- to 30-Hz read-out.

Those like Crone who commanded these interstellar vessels had been trained to interpret subtle forewarnings. The β-waves of an EEG could contain such information. A signal buried within these waves may well be their salvation. It may also forecast their downfall.

Once in the stateroom of the fo’c’sle, Crone walked over to the wall and opened a hatch hidden from view. He removed a small container that contained the means to disentangle the β-waves contained within the electroencephalograph on his display unit.

Although it was disputed (but never disproved), Crone knew that the human brain was capable of presentiment. It had been obvious to him after years of observing the outputs of the radiomen and radiowomen on his vessels. He was well aware that the aural skills of these foreseers were variable. Crone knew that the Radioman on this particular vessel was an especially adroit technician.

He lay down on the bench in the stateroom. The container in his hand was matt-grey. Dimensionally it was no larger than a small cup.

After attaching the monitors that would read his vital signs, he exhaled slowly. His pulse remained too fast; he would have to slow his ventricular rate. Placidity was a perquisite for the success of this procedure. He ingested three caplets to induce a temporary somnolence.

Upon his bald dome he placed a thin cap. Electrodes of all colours budded out of the headgear, travelling out as small wires, terminating in the grey device. He manoeuvred a glass screen that angled towards him. His index finger pressed a small icon on the semi-transparent display.

The conveyance had begun.

As he slipped into a semi-conscious state, Crone’s mind wondered across different planes. Heavy, leaden and unhelpful, the thoughts in the lower rungs were anxiety-ridden. He climbed a vaporous ladder to seek a higher plane.

As he ascended into a deeper trance, he drifted upwards where the air was lighter. Listing weightlessly in atmospheric bliss, he was now lighter. It was in these higher planes where Crone listened to the susurrous plasma wind. The sound of sterility, of solitude. It was here that he saw them.

All seven of them.

Static pops and crackles of comets ellipsed around him. His mind focused on their icy forms, their rock-pocked appearance, their plainness.

He slipped into a small crater of one of these as their belt unbuckled. Jettisoned by Neptune, Crone journeyed with the seven ice-stones as they hurtled silently, and outwardly, towards the Heliosphere. He wished to remain with them on their million-year journey. All the star forms. Every whorl of the gas clouds. The secrets of the multiverse would be shown to them.

But this voyage was to be a short one, ending abruptly in an ear-splitting and clangourous conclusion.

Crone peered over the lip of the crater as it approached an epochal vessel. To the left and right of him, the seven comets were on a collision course with its starboard side. The hit would be direct.

Digging hard, his nails split. He was trying to burrow deeper into the centre of the crater. A sudden jolt pushed him hard up against its stony interior. He tumbled around until he was thrown from the comet.

His limp body assumed a star-shape, cartwheeling into the lightless void. As he sank into the depths, he watched as the epochal vessel disintegrated.

The bridge had been struck first. Pressure from the comet had caused it to cave in. The bodies of those inside had exploded instantly. Three escape pods that had managed to depart from the mainbody of the vessel had also been hit. The largest of the comets slammed into its side with such force that it split the grand ship in two. Its remaining crew spilled out in all directions.

This astral vessel bled out slowly in an abysmal haemorrhage.

The chances of such an impact were almost null…

The architects of these grand ships had made no provision to bolster their exterior to protect against such a zero-chance event. Crone returned to the fateful scene and closed his eyes and let his body float disconnectedly into the darkness.

His mind was guided in semi-consciousness. The device attached to his head proffered the visions of the Radioman. Interpretation was difficult. It may have been a past event. Crone had not recognised the ship that was destroyed. It was the largest vessel he had ever encountered, but flagless.

The pennant number! The stern… it’ll be located there…

Crone managed to re-position himself so that he could grapple with the largest remaining portion of the devastated vessel. He could visualise one letter: ἐ.

After hauling himself inside one of the puncture holes, he sought to locate its last known coordinates. He quickly found himself on the bridge. It had been completely destroyed. He sought to locate the control panels. If he could not determine its last known coordinates, he could at least ascertain what trajectory it was travelling.

The lop-sided segment of a glass panel hung defectively before him. It was translucent. No power propagated through this. Any hope of obtaining access to the navigational systems had faded.

The remnant of the ship was in freefall. He knew that its axes in space were incalculable, its orbit indeterminate. No celestial bodies were forthcoming. His position could not be extrapolated. He turned around wretchedly, observing his battered surroundings.

He woke to a blinking monitor in the stateroom. His pulse rate had accelerated. His overalls were saturated in sweat.

Crone walked down the steps from the bridge into the fo’c’sle to stand on the other side of the metal wall that housed his Radioman.

He imagined what the inside of the chamber would look like. He had never actually observed one. His only reference was the images shown to him during his training many years ago. He knew that he could not get inside the listening chamber. Such an action was forbidden, unforgivable even. He simply stood on the other side of the cross-legged Radioman and listened to the totality of pure silence.

Crone spoke privately but assuredly.

‘I know that you can hear me. I have seen what you have seen. The coordinates, its trajectory, I… I couldn’t obtain these data.’

He held his thoughts for a brief second before speaking again, enquiring endlessly about what he had been shown, about what it meant for him and his crew.

Impassivity persisted. The wall made no reply.

Crone eventually returned to the bridge. He summoned the Commissar. The hour was late.

‘The letter ἐ, epsilon, on a ship’s bow… what class of vessel contains these characters?’, he asked bluntly.

A broad-faced man stood attentively before him. His brows closed in. Crone could see from the awkward posturing that the Commissar knew exactly what he was talking about.

‘Well… spit it out!’, Crone pressed.

‘I am afraid that I am not at liberty to provide this information, Cap’n’, the burly man blurted out. ‘I am bound by confidentiality of the Order of Orbis…’

‘On this vessel you are under my authority–’ Crone cut his man short. ‘I shall ask you once again.’

‘Sir–’

‘That is quite enough. Do as I ask.’

The Commissar played awkwardly with the cuffs of his tunic. He gave Crone little eye contact.

‘She is an epochal vessel’, he puffed. ‘A new class of ship. Albeit imminent, I am not aware of any having been launched yet. The communiqués that I received from Orbis have alluded to their significance–’

‘Significance?’, Crone mimicked.

‘Significant, invaluable – however you would like to phrase it.’

‘You elected to use the word “significant”. So, it is “invaluable” now? What is it, man?! Speak clearly.’

Crone stood stolidly. His gaze remained resolutely on the avoidant eyes of the Commissar.

‘Crone… Cap’n, this is all the information I have received. Orbis have divulged nothing further.’

‘Well, I must say, this is all rather elusive’, the Second Officer interrupted without diverting her gaze from the chart table.

‘We are a research vessel’, the Commissar dictated. ‘The mission given to us by Orbis is to seek safe passage through the Heliosphere, to pave a future for humanity.’

‘Yes, yes–’, Crone nodded cagily at the Commissar, his mind now evidently distracted. ‘That will be all.’

He sighed to himself as he vacated the bridge to return to the stateroom.

After donning the wire cap again, he ingested another three caplets to cross the brain-bridge to his Radioman. β-waves, unsystematic in their flickering, were ignored by the navigational officers observing the EEG output on the bridge.

Crone, dwarfed again by the towering letter ἐ that emblazoned the stern of this unknown vessel, clung to its fractured body. He clambered into its lower decks and made his way upwards to enter its command station.

The passage of time had meant that the ship had disintegrated further since he had last entered it. Very little was left of the engine room. All the glass was gone. Such rapid decline of the imagined wreck was due to the fallibility of foresight. This frailty of forecasting had also meant that the gap that he had scrambled through to gain access to the vessel was not in the same place as it had been previously. Although the memory of the Radioman was fragmented, Crone continued to have faith that his second sight would cast a light upon what he needed to see.

Determining the intersection point of the comets and this blighted vessel was crucial. This was what the Radioman was trying to tell him. Crone knew that all interstellar ships travelled in the direction of Pausanias.

If only the direction of the comets were travelling relative to the ship could be revealed…

He located the panel in the engine room that communicated with the dynamic positioning apparatus. This inertial navigational system was non-functional. The pressure sensors had blown. Even if they had been intact, the ship was powerless. At this Heliospheric boundary, the weak signal from Earth meant that he could not locate himself using the equatorial coordinate system.

Crone knew that he would have to find another way.

Space is timeless. The absence of satellites beyond the Heliosphere (natural and unnatural) made distances difficult to interpret. Triangulation of his own position was the only feasible method he could employ. The coordinates of Pausanias were known because his vessel was following the same ballistic path. This exoplanet would serve as his X coordinate.

He recounted the celestial road that he and his crew had travelled along from the sub-station that orbited around Neptune and its angular distance from the Vernal Equinox – this would be his Y coordinate.

Crone just needed a body, a celestial point of reference, for his Z coordinate.

Theorists postulated that the stars Adrastus and Arion would shine the brightest after the Heliopause had been crossed. The former was left-angled to the plane of the Solar System, and the latter, right-angled.

Crone, tiring in his drug-induced state, squinted at the ringed coruscations of the two stars that would serve to guide him. Adrastus was indeed the brighter of the two. Arion seemed to race away, blinking indistinctly into the distance before rearing its head again, fleetingly.

Drawing a circular line as an arc that inflexed his surroundings, he calculated the angle that they shared with one another. But he remained effectively blind. There was nothing obvious that could serve as a reference point along this stellar circumference.

The ship continued to disintegrate in the memory of the Radioman. Its position was soon to be lost in the immensity of deepening space. Crone cursed for he knew that had precious little time to find this crucial point to complete his triangulation.

He inhaled slowly. After studying the hastily-calculated coordinates displayed on his helmet visor, Crone settled on a new approach. A simpler one.

He would serve as the final reference point on the triangle.

A marker was placed on the wall of the stricken ship so that he could track its current position. After jettisoning himself from the vessel, the small thrusters built into his survival suit propelled him forward. Crone slipped into the darkness between his two guide stars.

His mind wandered as he shot along this axis. He thought of his crew: the sardonic Second Officer; the anxious Commissar; the inexperienced ratings; the Radioman he remained inter-connected to. Their brains bridged effortlessly in this mysterious place. Crone wondered why the Radioman had been given these visions, and by whom.

After intersecting his drawn circle, the ship was so far away that he could no longer see its broken form. Adrastus and Arion were equidistant to him, their light fading by the hour.

In these deeper reaches, he had started to drift. The blackness of space was beginning to lighten. His surroundings took on a charcoal tone. The effect of his caplets was wearing off.

A short while later, Crone woke to a jolt. Cosmic dust had brushed against his arm. He was lost in the depths of the unknown. Space was now fossil-grey and lightening by the minute. Adrastus and Arion stars were invisible to him. His plan had failed! He drifted away.

He opened his eyes again and was back on the stricken ship. It had disintegrated even further. He lay on the shorn section of one of its wings.

Crone knew that he was travelling deeper into the subconscious of the Radioman. Space had moved along the tone-gradient. Silver-grey had become cloud-grey until everything was blindingly bright. He could no longer see, but he could hear.

A repetitive scratching sound bored into his psyche. Its frequency was somewhere in the highest ranges. It pierced and pulsed, revolving around a rotational axis. He knew that he was near a pulsar.

It was evident that many years had passed since the crash. A debris field was orbiting around the vessel. As he listened to the dust and detritus that circled the ship, Crone thought that he could hear a figure walking through the shrilling pulsar. He leant forward on the broken wing of the ship. The energy that this solitary soul emitted was faint, but there was no doubting he or she or it was there. An apparition, a phantasm, a chimaera – whatever it was, it cut a dimmed shadow through the caterwauling waves of the pulsar.

Above the din, Crone concentrated. The rapid rotations of these neutron stars emitted stable frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. Their photonic signals meant that they could be considered celestial lighthouses. As the different frequencies scintillated through the interstellar medium, he was shown the final position of the stricken vessel. He could not explain how this had been revealed to him. There was no way he could never have known his distance to the pulsar.

He continued to lie on the wing of the vessel in a semi-conscious state. The calculations based on the speed and brightness of light that travelled to him were not his own. He thought of the Radioman as an invisible hand that had guided him here.

Space had reverted from its blinding brightness to transform into a darkening penumbra. The grey dusked towards darkness, and eventually, an impenetrable umbra.

Static had already crept into Crone’s ears. This white noise fizzled and popped. The shadow that had shaded through the bright frequencies of the pulsar had begun to fade. His mind wandered.

Bodies. Celestial bodies, echoes within space-time. Interference…

Crone resolved to being unresolved. He could feel his body rotating like the pulsar that spun on its axis. Semi-centrifugal forces pulled him slowly towards them, until – the enigmatic energy suddenly stopped. He was thrown from the wing of the ship to slip into endless tenebrosity.

The time that proceeded was unilluminated for Crone. He moved between consciousness and insentience, returning to his peregrination on the cratered comet, and the faint haloes of Adrastus and Arion which he had observed from the starboard side of the wrecked ship travelling in the direction of Draco on the North Ecliptic Pole.

The light filtering through the visor was now searing. Space was opening. He would soon wake up.

Crone squinted at his helmet display and the drawn coordinates. A small mark was placed at the points the lines of travelling destroyed vessel and comets met. It would be at this exact point that the ship would meet its end.

Having exited this barren place, Crone found himself in the infirmary. An oxygen mask misted his vision. The blurry outlines of the Second Officer and those from of medical team slowly came into focus.

‘We thought we had lost you.’ The Second Officer smiled nervously.

Crone turned his head to observe representatives of Commissar the rifling through his possessions. He had made meticulous recordings. Two boxes, emptied of the pills he had ingested to return to the mind of the Radioman, were in the hands of the burly Commissar.

‘By the Order of Orbis, under the Sub-Article pertaining to Medicamento Usus, I am hereby relieving you of command of this vessel.’

Crone flitted in and out of consciousness over the proceeding days. He was moved back to his quarters where he remained under arrest. His subconscious recollections returned to him slowly. The were made blurry by a throbbing headache and the vice-like grip of nausea. He reminded himself that the epochal vessel had yet to inhabit the location in space that had been conveyed to him. Those nomadic rocks of his nightmare visions had yet to intersect with it.

‘Significant’ had been the adjective used by the Commissar to describe this flagship. Crone had been a witness to how magnificent this epsilon-marked vessel was. She was indeed ‘invaluable’.

His mission was to save her.

Part 4

Remnants of comets, normally shining as zodiacal light, had dissipated. Night finally capitulated to dawn. It was a true dawn this time.

Light fluorescence besieged the room in which Crone had been imprisoned. A guard lay dead on the floor.

After ascending the steps from his quarters, he manipulated the systems that coded the opening of the bridge doors. His actions had resulted in an emergency alarm being triggered, alerting those on the sub-level of the bridge to rush towards the escape pods in the main deck.

Two sub-officers manned the steering controls and navigational systems. Crone approached them with the plasma pistol of the murdered guard in his hand.

‘Out!’, he uttered forcibly.

They cleared the bridge. His gun tracked them to the port door which clicked shut. There could be no attempts at re-entry other than by force. Crone had finally barricaded himself in.

He recalled the visions of the clay-grey rocks that he had clung onto during his cerebral connection with the Radioman. This time they were tangible. It was no longer an imagined scenario.

Crone used the sounding radar to locate closely clustered comet group. The low operating frequency mapped out their stony, ball-like structures. There were indeed seven of them, just as he been shown deep in reverie.

He moved over to the steering controls and his hand pressed down on a towering glass screen. It had been translucent until touched. The image of a large wheel slowly came into focus. Using his two hands, he pushed away on the surface of the glass to turn it counterclockwise from its north west 315° position. An automated voice confirmed the new coordinates:

run.bearing change. . .

*/command ( bearing south, 135° )

*/command ( correction for west-south-west, minus 60°)

*/outcome( Azimuth change minus 75° )

*/outcome ( new course from north 0°: 240° )

*/. . .

The compass star eventually faded on the navigational screen.

Crew members had started to assemble outside of the glass-encased bridge. They rushed down to the exit and made the necessary preparations to evacuate. The two sub-officers who had been muscled out had alerted the Commissar. A group dressed in interstellar survival suits had rushed up the stairs to challenge the Captain.

The Commissar was the first to thump repeatedly on the glass. He had observed the new co-ordinates set by Crone.

‘He must be neutralised at all costs. I repea…’

The Second Officer was stopped mid-sentence by the panicked shriek of the Chief Navigational Officer. A sounding radar had confirmed that the ship was being manoeuvred to intersect the path travelled by the seven unmarked objects.

‘Lampworks at the ready’, the Second Officer intoned methodically.

One of the Lieutenants, already masked and holding the heating apparatus, stepped forward and commenced work to melt the glass door. Crone turned around to observe these actions. The insouciant Second Officer stood stock-still with her arms folded.

A gentle thudding noise thrummed rhythmically behind him. The glass was thick. It would take several hours to break through it, even with a probe directing 500°C at it.

Crone walked over to address those on the other side of the door.

‘Ready the escape shuttles for you and the crew. It is time to abandon ship.’

The Second Officer stood calmly on the opposing side. She casually turned to walk away, laughing quietly.

‘I cannot let you destroy this ship. You know that as well as I do.’

Crone knew that the chances of survival in the escape shuttles on this side of the Heliosphere were effectively zero. He observed the sardonic mask that his Second Officer so often bore. They had travelled many lightyears together. Her mordant and oratorical affectations had served her well in that time. Her personality had always shone brightest in moments of crisis. Yet Crone could discern worry in her face. He had taken a deeply violent and chaotic course. She knew that everyone on this vessel was oarless and fast approaching a precipice. Her wide-eyed gaze had demonstrated to Crone that the reality of the present situation flooded into her like a torrent.

‘You also know that I am bound by law to ask that you desist from your present course of action.’ Her voice was sure enough. She smiled caustically at him.

‘However, I am equally aware that this action that you have so suddenly taken upon yourself will be executed regardless of our counteractions.’

Her tone had shifted from an acidic antagonism to a more alkaline amity.

Crone stepped back from the glass. He reluctantly elected not to reply to the Second Officer who remained anchored to the spot as other crew members paraded around in angst. The bright light from the heating probe lit up behind him.

‘Crone’, the breathless Commissar broke through on the radio. ‘I implore you to reconsider this calamitous enterprise. Please stop this madness for the sake of your crew!’

Crone had never wished for a conclusion as devastating as this. Death was a fate accepted by most spacefaring souls. Their predilection was for a glorious one, although few could define what they meant by that. He knew that no death was ever glorious, and the situation that he and his crew found themselves in was far from glorious. It was cruel despite its predetermination. He felt an unfathomable shame as he observed the seven comets come into view at the bow window.

In the immediate seconds before impact, Crone stood by with his hands by his side. He felt a cold comfort that his crew were with him, albeit acutely aware that they had not voluntarily acquiesced their lives for a greater cause. He also ruminated on the condition of the Radioman in the bowsprit. After all, it had been his visions that had led to this moment.

The pumice-like appearance of the comets moved within touching distance. They were just as they had been shown to him. Their exterior took on a shellacked appearance as the rays of the Sun touched them. These roving ice-rocks were ordinances that would detonate everything that he had ever known.

To those inside, the impact was a sonorous and terrifying affair. To the dying stars on the outside, a silent scene ensued.

*                      *                      *

Flames leapt variably in the far end of the ship. It had taken hold in the quarterdeck and spread rapidly towards the bridge and main deck. The fire would soon spread to the galley, and eventually, the fo’c’sle.

An old man woke up suddenly. He touched a band of sweat that stretched across his hairless head. His figure silhouetted against the sickening brightness of a wall-projection that darted and danced agitatedly. Birds of all colours and feathers and forms sang and bobbed and pecked away.

The forms on the display were invisible to him. The white-opaqueness of his eyes, keratin-filled as cataracts, were made even brighter by the brilliance of the stars. His life had been a long one. His lips parted in a passive smile.

Cawwww!

Black bodies seemed to fly out of the monitor. He listened to their cackle. A deafening crescendo of sound elevated into the sky. Their calls were harsh and grating.

He tried to stand but his hand slipped down one arm of the chair. The vessels in his head thrummed. He let out a shriek as the visions of his youth made an uninvited return.

The larger body had already carried out its murderous act. After his comrade had fallen, it positioned itself with the rest of the dark circle. Their collective cawing intensified and filled the evening air. They sung a mournful half-song. Their black hearts spilled out dry.

A cacophony of sound circled up into the very heavens of their world. Rain fell like tears from that ethereal and unknowable place.

The fate of another of one of the dark figures had been decided. Its body was smaller, but equally as black and mysterious as the rest. Wings had started to flap in slow-motion. Wet feathers glossed against the falling light. It had darted off into the rain.

The old man watched it rise and climb until – crack! It was struck down after a sudden flash. A bolt from the heavens had javelined its way through its heart. Lightning lit all around it.

Its descent was short. After hitting a branch of a low-lying tree, it spun uncontrollably and landed violently in the mud. Convulsing in unconscious terror, the rain-soaked ground swelled to saturate its broken body. Like the first of the black figures to die, it too had become mud-stuck. Its nictitating membranes slid halfway across its eyes, thus exiting the world through a vacant stare.

Although these visions were not new to him, the old Radioman still repented at this memory. He recalled the long nights in the Solar System spent in the listening chambers and the tremors felt onboard his ship as it passed through the Heliosphere. In deeper space, thousands of souls had been dashed against the ice-rocks that were bound for his vessel, the magnificent, the significant, the invaluable Theban. His subconscious action had led to the demise of the Menoecean which opened its chest to receive a comet-bound death.

The old man was helped to his feet by a nurse. He stooped over, fumbling for the handle of his walking stick. He coughed, pausing to wipe the side of his mouth with a handkerchief. A small tear trickled down his face and glistened in the fluorescent light of the projected screen. This tear was shed for the lightning-struck Capaneus.

He lamented its fate. These later visions had not arrived in enough time for him to warn its crew.

*                      *                      *

Modular undulations hissed and crackled quietly. The radio of the rescue personnel welcomed an incoming voice that enunciated in popping susurrus. Collectively, they listened to the familiar hiss. Voices slowly appeared from the static shadows like spectres from the past.

Switch to Ka-band. Repeat, Ka-band. Over.

Transmission received, Theban. This is CA445. Capaneus. Repeat CA445. Switching to Ka-band. Over.

Transmission received on Ka-band. Frequency reading 40 GHz. What is your position? Over.

Heading on trajectory__  apex. Right asc… on __ degrees, declination -30 degrees. Over.

Radio static had spliced the broadcast.

Capaneus, transmission partly received. Change frequency reading to 35 GHz. Repeat last transmission. Over.

Tra–––ion re–––d… ency… reading__ . Heading on traj––– sol…

The crackling persisted in the transceivers of the recue party. It eventually trailed off as the Adjutant stopped the recording.

‘Nothing further was received from this point.’

The Overseer nodded in quiet affirmation. Perhaps the conveyance had been interrupted as it transitioned through the Heliosphere?

‘Have you communicated this to the Theban?’

‘Yes, Madam. According to the Cosmic Cartage, the Capaneus was registered as a warship. She was presumed lost two-years ago’, the Adjutant replied candidly.

*                      *                      *

The bridge of the Capaneus had been a glass orb. Star systems were visible to its occupants from every angle. A stalky figure stood with her hands clasped behind her back and observed the endless abyss from the clear globe. Their navigation of the Heliosphere had been uneventful. The bow-shock had been shockless.

‘These data are over one-year old.’ Her reply had been dismissive. ‘The Menoecean self-destructed’, she concluded, unmoved from her standing position.

‘That was the theory, Cap’n’, replied the Second Officer who remained seated. ‘But I have presented to you the analyses of the historical data…’

‘Yes… you have’. The reply was barbed. ‘But I must ask you to recount what actions you took at that time’, she interjected. ‘No–’ she sought to assess the situation from a different angle ‘–before that, you explained…’

‘I know damn well what I explained to you!’

The Captain quickly swung around to look at the broad face of her Second Officer.

‘You informed me that you had momentarily – “momentarily!”, I must emphasise – observed seven objects. And that you considered these objects to be pirate vessels in our immediate vicinity. And, I must add further, you were unable to discern what their call signs were despite repeated attempts to do so.’

The Second Officer stared blankly at her.

‘Your actions led the Principal Gunnery Officer to prime our plasma cannons. How did you explain that again…’ She was thinking out aloud.

‘Ah yes, you explained that this was a… a…’ She tapered off again blankly.

‘–a precautionary measure’, the Second Officer eventually posited.

‘Indeed. “A precautionary measure”. And as I recall, these actions delayed our attempts to locate what remained of the Menoecean, did they not?’ Her tone was firm.

‘We remained in a state of readiness over the proceeding days – days which we know now were wasted because no encounter was ever made with a hostile element.’

The Second Officer had been calm in his explanation. Those inside the glass orb of the bridge settled into a brief silence. This was broken by a long sigh of the Captain.

‘If I may, the subsequent analysis of these data suggest the possibility of a comet…’

‘A trans-Neptunian object strike is a zero-chance event!’, the Captain interrupted her Second Officer. ‘What will you proffer next? A sonic irregularity caused by an electromagnetic storm. That… that this could not be tempered by its lead-lining through some defect?’

The Captain paused for a moment, shaking her head despondently. ‘The Menoecean was effectively infallible.’

She turned to face the black obscurity beyond the glass. Her equivocate mind wandered. Those on the bridge had considered her last remark to be far from convincing.

Deep inside the body of the Capaneus, miles of intricate and colourful circuitry ran in parallel with one another. Accessory wires, some thick, others thin, expertly hidden from view by its architects, peeled off at varying angles to channel electricity to power the smallest light sensors and the largest turbines that cooled the fusion reactors of this warship. These reactors propelled her into days that yielded to nights that forfeited to days again. They pushed her into the Heliosphere.

It had been after this final hurdle that the Capaneus listed awkwardly. The cause of its departure from this world had been an innocuous one. A simple malfunction in her maze of wires.

The flaming tide that tore through the length of her internal body eventually balled-out in fiery fury. Its crew had tried to make their inevitable rush to escape. Those in the engine room perished instantly from the fires that burned. Its thick walls had served as a crematorium leaving those inside to whorl as ashes.

The bridge had descended into chaos. Distress calls flickered out from its transmitter in successive volleys in the hope that this would be picked up by nearby support vessels. Attempts to douse the fires that rolled through her decks had been futile. The casings of its weaponry melted in the heat. Once ignited, the vessel and all its crew disappeared in a world-ending explosion.

*                      *                      *

One of the Auxiliaries of the rescue personnel spoke into his radio set as they were decamping from the destroyed Menoecean.

‘Tukdam–’

The Overseer turned around to face the Auxiliary. The helmet nose-bar obscured most of his face. She looked into his dispassionate eyes as he continued:

‘–the preservation of consciousness even after the body has ceased functioning.’

Her phlegmatic inferior had placed his hand on the port door casing to steady himself. Leaning forward, he had motioned to continue further. The Overseer raised her gloved hand in a show of immediate interjection.

‘The Radioman is dead’, she stated. ‘Lost to space. We shall leave him within the confines of his listening chamber. In pace.’

The Adjutant left the stateroom. As he floated past the listening chamber, he looked over his shoulder for the final time at the closed eyes of the cross-legged Radioman. He was the last of the rescue personnel to alight from the Menoecean. The thrusters of their ship burned like two bright eyes, blinking as they faded into the depths of space.

*                      *                      *

In the separated bowsprit, the whistling sound that had been so intense had now resolved to fade. This high frequency sound had become fainter, thinned out by the lack of air. The Radioman knew that he had been lampooned on the broken portion of the Menoecean.

As the flames engulfed his vessel, he had listened to the drama that unfolded beyond the walls of his chamber. The shouting, the crying – the growling.

He sat closed-eyed and returned to the arid landscape of his mind as the flames edged closer. Having crawled through the dry grasses, his hands met the base of the acacia tree. A deepening growl vibrated through his body. He could not see their whiskered heads. Their forms were hidden in the darkness of the shade on the other side of this small hill.

He remained motionless. Beads of sweat trickled down his temples and neck to saturate the collar of his tunic. The vibrating intensified further as the white-hot knuckles of fire rapped at the walls of the bowsprit.

The Radioman rested against the tree, acutely aware that the forms on the other side were now solely focused on him. He could hear their paws scratch in the sand as they stood up and stretched out.

He gazed out at the red hue that had appeared at the horizon line. Night was coming to an end. Light was beginning to spill out across this dusty landscape. It illuminated his feet then his legs. His entire body would soon be revealed in a flood of rippling brightness.

He listened to the growling forms as they made their way towards the tree.

A small discoid brightness disappeared in the morning sky. It could have been a thumb-print impression of the Moon or the white-hot thrusters of a departing ship. As the whiskered shadows grew behind him, he smiled at those who had made their escape.

Andrew C. Kidd