The HMS Hemlock Stone, a relatively small and insignificant part of the Fleet, especially when one considers the enormity of the HMS Westminster and the HMS Solent, the latter being the flagship of the Royal Navy, occupied a geosynchronous orbit directly above The Great Red Spot of Jupiter whilst her crew who were, quite frankly, far from being the most elite of sailors, stood guard over the many mining colonies littered about the Jovian system.

It was a noble and worthy assignment. Of course it was. The water and minerals taken from those moons meant the human race remained hydrated and that new homes could be built, planetside.

It was, however, somewhat lacking in excitement, a topic that was raised at every given opportunity aboard the vessel by everyone from the XO to Arnie, the chap who scrubbed the shit out of the toilet bowls.

As luck would have it, because sometimes timing really is simply that perfect, such a conversation was taking place in the Officer's Mess at that very moment.

"Look, Dave... I mean I'm not trying to be a prick or anything, but I didn't enlist to babysit a group of kids playing with their fucking Meccano sets."

Dave looked up from the newspaper, a three-week old copy of The Sun, and shrugged.

"I know that, Barry," he replied, slowly. He regularly had the Michael extracted due to the fact he liked reading the paper, rather than finding out about goings on in the System on the Wire like everyone else and the rest of the crew took great pleasure in giving him half-stories, knowing full well that he would not discover the truth until three weeks after the event when the post arrived. "Thing is, just like the rest of us you didn't get higher than a D in your astrophysics GCSE, so it's tough shit."

"Just want some fucking excitement Dave, y'know? A bit of fucking action!"

"You and every other lost fucking soul on this bucket of bolts, Barry, but..."

Dave was cut short when over the tannoy, a throat was cleared, followed by the voice of a man who really did not sound very sure of himself in the slightest.

"Erm..." A pause, during which that same throat was cleared rather vigorously. "Erm... Ladies and gentlemen. I am afraid to say that we have just been, erm, reassigned, and must rendezvous with the, erm, rest of the Fleet at, erm, Mars. Erm... Thank you."

That announcement was followed by one of far greater confidence and wherewithal, from the HMS Hemlock Stone's Executive Officer, Mark Watt.

"Buckle up, folks. We're going full burn and you all know what happens to this poor excuse for a space worthy vessel when she pulls more than a few G's so hold on tight, and pray that the sweet scent of a ripe and ready punani is gonna' permeate your nostrils at least one more time before you feel the cold embrace of the vacuum just on the other side of the twelve inch wall beside your heads."

"XO seems in good form," said Barry, chuckling. "Well you heard him, Dave. We'd better get strapped in."

"Yeah," he sighed, dropping the newspaper to the low coffee table. He had just made it to the sport section, too.

The two men headed for the wall, facing the exterior wall and placed their backs to the cold steel before each reaching up and pulling down the individual mesh casing that would hold them steady. They were joined by three other individuals, a man and two women, who were also permitted access to the Officer's Mess, and soon all five were tucked in tight.

Whilst the mesh would keep them still and prevent injury as a result of being thrown around the room as the HMS Hemlock Stone touched speeds at which she really was not capable of travelling, it would not prevent the bubbly tummy from which at least one of them was all but guaranteed to suffer.

That was just the way things were. When aboard a vessel pulling a lot of G's, one in five people wretched their guts up. It was an unavoidable side-effect of high speed space travel.

***

Four hours later the HMS Hemlock Stone began to slow as she approached the Red Planet and as she did so, the mesh harnesses holding her crew in place released and a handful of said crew made their way hastily to the nearest bathroom.

"Smoke?" Barry asked, proffering the open packet in Dave's direction.

"Definitely," the man replied, and having lit their cigarettes they made their way towards the viewing gallery, an area cordoned by plexiglass directly behind the bridge which allowed personnel who were perhaps not essential at a given moment to keep up to speed with events, just in case they suddenly became essential.

"Jesus Christ, Dave," said Barry as he glanced at the viewing gallery's large monitor. "We've got the Yanks here, too, and the bloody Koreans!"

"Must be pretty serious then, whatever it is," Dave replied with an almost nonchalant shrug. "We're still a few clicks out so we're not gonna'..."

"There's something else there, coming out of the Dead Zone," Barry continued. "A ship... Jesus Christ that's fucking enormous..."

The Dead Zone was the unofficial term for Mars and the space immediately surrounding it. Due to the fact the planet was used as a dumping ground for radioactive core cells back in the early days of space exploration it was completely and totally uninhabited.

"We need to pull back." Dave activated his comm and spoke as quickly and clearly as he could. "XO, something isn't right here. I don't know whose that bigass ship is but they've got almost the entire Earth Fleet in the same place."

"If we pull back then we're disobeying a direct order from Fleet Command," Mark replied, though there was most definitely a hint of dubiousness about his response.

"Fuck Fleet Command. If we don't pull back, we're gonna'... shit!"

But as almost the entire Earth Fleet exploded thanks to what was probably some kind of advanced thermonuclear superbomb, something incredibly odd happened.

The deathwave that was making its way towards the HMS Hemlock Stone, tearing through the rest of the Fleet as it did so, stopped, and so did the dozens upon dozens of explosions that were in the midst of taking place.

Even more bizarre, perhaps, was that everyone on board the HMS Hemlock Stone, at the very same instant as the superbomb deathwave ceased all motion and those explosions paused, as if someone had hit such a button on a remote control because they really, really needed to urinate and simply could not wait any longer, died.

Well, everyone except...

"What the spaceshit is going on, XO?" Dave demanded, though he was not entirely sure what kind of an answer he was expecting Mark to proffer.

"Atmospherics are all within normal levels," said Barry, glancing at the screen to his left. "We should join the XO on the bridge, try and work a few things out."

And so they did just that. With everyone else on board the vessel dead, the only signs of life, had anyone attempted to take a reading from the outside, were to be found upon the bridge.

"It looks like some kind of, I dunno," Mark said, quietly, as the three of them surveyed the scenes outside the vessel by way of several live video feeds. "I wanna' say time dilation but that's not possible..."

"I reckon we've gotta' be open to the distinct possibility that at this very moment, XO, every-damn-thing is possible."

"Dave's right," said Barry, nodding. "I don't think it's time dilation though. At least, I don't think it's just time dilation..."

"Why d'you say that, Barry?" Dave asked.

"Because, and I know I only managed to pull an E-plus in astrophysics, but I'm pretty sure it takes several millennia for stars to move - or, y'know, appear to move."

"Yeah, so?" asked the XO.

"OK so taking all of that into consideration, how likely is it that within the course of a few seconds, the stars could align themselves into such a formation that spells out, 'the devil made me do it,' all in lowercase..?"

"I've never seen anything like that before," the XO muttered.

"Pretty sure no one's seen anything like that before, XO," said Dave who, just like his companions, was quite unable to tear his eyes away from the sight.

"How well do you guys know the history of the Hemlock Stone?"

"Started life as a troop transport, XO," said Barry, recalling information given whilst touring the vessel for the first time. "'Course, that was before the refurb..."

"No, not the HMS Hemlock Stone," said Mark, shaking his head slowly though his eyes had not adjusted at all. "The Hemlock Stone, the monolith from which this vessel takes its moniker."

"Other than it being a monolith, which apparently it is," said Dave, shrugging. "Nothing at all, XO."

And so whilst all three men continued to stare at one or the other of the HMS Hemlock Stone's many screens, Mark Watt briefly recalled the legend, about the village of Castleton in Derbyshire, and how the Devil lifted the stone out of the earth and threw it a county over, into Nottinghamshire, due to his anger at what were apparently incredibly loud and annoying church bells.

"That's just a bullshit legend, XO," Barry scoffed. "Though I guess it's kinda' nice to know where this old girl takes her name from."

***

And the Devil grinned a toothy grin as he took the HMS Hemlock Stone in hand and with the ease and grace one might expect an entity such as he to exhibit, he threw the vessel into the very core of Mars.

With his great and mighty wings he protected the Earth Fleet, enveloping each and every halfway-exploded vessel from the blast as the nuclear planet went critical and imploded with as much ceremony as such a thing can display, destroying the alien vessel in the process.

And with a wink and a nod and a smile, he saved the Earth Fleet, putting out fires, rebuilding bulkheads and welding hulls with nothing more than a superheated glare.

Never again would there be a vessel named the HMS Hemlock Stone. At least, never again, until giving the Devil something to throw was the only way to save mankind. He did it once before, crushing the man-eating slug monster beneath the Hemlock Stone all of those centuries ago and he would do it again when the children of his father faced a threat too great for them to face alone.

As far as the human race was concerned, it was the HMS Hemlock Stone and her crew who had saved their lives and they would forever be remembered for the incredible act of selflessness and bravery that was using their own momentum to destroy Mars and in the process, the alien aggressors.

No one would ever ask how the HMS Hemlock Stone was able to reach a velocity capable of doing such a thing, of course they wouldn't, for that would tarnish the memories and ruin the legend and we couldn't have that, could we?