Slave Empire - The Crystal Ship Read online

  Slave Empire II

  The Crystal Ship

  T C Southwell

  Published by T C Southwell at Smashwords

  Copyright © 2012 by T C Southwell

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter One

  The red giant was in the last throes of its long life, and Rayne studied the dying solar system that surrounded it. The ancient star’s ruddy light bathed seven planets, giving them pink auras. Its heat was such that the three planets nearest to it were molten. The next two were hot and barren, and the sixth was a sickly yellow and orange gas giant. The planets all lined up, orbiting their sun in perfect synchrony.

  The black ship orbited the seventh planet, and she was able to get a good look at it for the first time. As it had been at Earth, Endrix was a black ovoid devoid of reflections, appearing as a featureless area, even now. A week ago, she had left the Shrike’s station and headed off into the unknown, not knowing where she was going, only that she wanted to find Endrix again and get some answers. For three days her calls, on various frequencies, had received no reply, then a slaver had appeared, and she had been forced to flee.

  Disheartened, she had slowed to sub-light and resumed her calls, until finally her guide had dropped out of the transfer Net right next to her, to Shadowen’s alarm. Endrix had agreed to take her to his masters’ world, then led her into Quadrant Forty-Four. His presence had reassured her, and she suspected that Endrix himself might be responsible for the quadrant’s reputation. According to Shadowen, they were now almost at the very centre of it.

  Shadowen went into orbit near the black ship, and she surveyed the pale green world. According to the holographic readouts scrolling up from the consoles, this planet was not as hostile as she had first imagined. Its atmosphere was breathable, although hot and humid, despite the dearth of clouds. Its lack of a metallic core made its gravity almost Earth normal, even though it was twice the size. The huge ship was almost invisible against space.

  Endrix had not spoken since instructing her to follow him, and she wondered why. What awaited her on this strange planet, and why were there no signs of civilisation on the surface? If this was his masters’ world, where did they live? She did not doubt his friendship, only wondered what weirdness she might find down there.

  She addressed the ship. “I think I’d like you to land, Shadowen. Somehow, the prospect of going down there alone is unpleasant. Call me chicken if you like, but I’d rather have you close by.”

  “I agree. This place appears to be abandoned, and although you insist that this ship is not hostile, I find its age and construction to be unsettling.”

  When Shadowen had first scanned the black ship with his various instruments, of which he had an impressive array, he had informed her that Endrix was several million years old, which had astounded Rayne as much as it had astonished Shadowen. His analysis of Endrix’s construction had raised a great many questions, for he could not identify the substance from which the black ship was built. Considering Shadowen’s vast database, this was also cause for amazement. He was now rather wary of Endrix, and inclined to be suspicious.

  Shadowen sank through the thin cloud layer and into an atmosphere tinged with violet. Below them, the emerald-green expanse stretched away with billiard table flatness, broken only by occasional circular lakes of purplish water. Drops of moisture formed on the screens, testifying to the dampness outside.

  The ship levelled off a few metres above the surface and glided along on its anti-gravity. Water ran down the screens, condensing on the ship’s icy skin, which the utter cold of space had frozen. According to the information in the scrolling holograms, the humidity was uncomfortable and the heat stifling. A blemish came into view on the endless green, and Shadowen changed course towards it. He approached a tall stone monolith and came to a stop a few metres away.

  Rayne said, “I think this will be a good place to disembark. What do you say, Shadowen?”

  “I’d rather return to Ironia, personally,” the ship grumped.

  “I was invited here, although my host seems to have made himself scarce. I think I can manage without him, if this is some sort of test.”

  The ship sank lower, hovering bare centimetres off the ground, so the steps could deploy. Rayne gazed out at the alien monolith in its strange landscape, on this nameless world lighted by a dying sun, and wondered at the weirdness of it all. If the scenery was not bad enough, there was the enigmatic black ship orbiting above, which named himself Endrix, but she was certain he was not a living being. Mustering her courage, she walked along the short corridor to the door, which slid open with a soft hiss and clunk. Hot, damp air rushed in, carrying a stench of decay and a perfume of cloying sweetness mingled in a horrendous stink. She recoiled, disgusted, then forced herself to ignore it, or at least bear it, and descended the steps.

  Rayne stepped into a calm, deathly silent world. Her flat-heeled black boots sank into the emerald-green moss that covered everything in a thick carpet, unmarred by any feature other than the pools and the monolith. This world was a golf course owner’s dream, she mused; all he would have to do was dig a few little holes and stick flags in them.

  The utter silence hung like a shroud, well suited to a planet that lacked a hot core to thrust up mountains, or weather to stir its stale air. No life other than the moss would ever exist here, and she suspected that the moss was not indigenous. The heat made sweat pop out all over her in a sticky rash, and her hair wilted in the dampness. She pushed it behind her ears and plucked at her damp clothes, glad she wore a plain dark grey sleeveless top and black stretch jeans.

  Pink clouds sat quite still in a deep magenta sky and a moon drifted like a silver Frisbee above the flat horizon. The dying sun glared down like a great red eye, with only the moss to challenge its monotone colour scheme.

  Shadowen spoke through her implant, which was located just behind her left ear. Are you all right?

  “Fine, just admiring the scenery,” she said.

  Rayne approached the black-streaked golden monolith, whose weathered appearance was incongruous on a planet that had none. The emerald moss made a valiant attempt to cover this last bastion of bareness, and had succeeded in climbing about half a metre up the stone. There it had died from lack of moisture, its dried grey remains crumbling. The monolith stood about three metres tall, and an oblong of hairline cracks outlined what appeared to be a featureless door at its base. It swung inwards when she pushed on it, revealing a room lighted by a golden glow that reminded her of the energy sphere Endrix had used aboard the scout ship. She stepped inside, and the floor dropped beneath her. After a moment of disquiet, she realised it must be a kind of lift. Featureless walls rose on all sides, and the pink glow of the doorway receded to a tiny rectangle high above.

  Another door appeared at floor level and
rose to head height before the lift stopped, and she peered out into a vast hall lighted by the same golden glow. Cool, arid air dried her sweat and clothes and made her shiver.

  Rayne stepped into a chamber of celestial proportions and monkish plainness, a simple corridor of unembellished grey stone that stretched away to a pair of vast doors at its end. As she strode along the echoing expanse, centuries of dust stirred under her feet, undisturbed until now. She wondered how long her footprints would remain here after she was gone, perhaps until the end of time. From the look of this place, it had been here since the beginning. The silver doors appeared to be made from an impervious alloy, as smooth and shiny as the day they had been made.

  Stopping in front of them, she found nothing that looked like a handle or interface that might open the giant portal. The doors were probably a metre thick and built to withstand a supernova, so she did not think banging on them would do any good.

  “Endrix, I’m here. Are you going to let me in?”

  A soft grating was followed by a whine of ancient machinery. The doors swung inwards, drawn back by two vast arms that became visible as they opened. Bright light flooded out, making her squint. Just inside the doors, a force field of milky light reached from floor to ceiling. Whoever, or whatever, had built this place had intended it to be impregnable.

  “Now what, Endrix?” she enquired.

  The force field vanished with a hiss, and a familiar voice spoke from within.

  “Welcome.”

  Although not large, the room gave the impression of vastness and antiquity, perhaps because of the dozens of cathedral-like columns of glowing crystal that reached to the ceiling. They were linked by brilliant laser beams to a facetted, spherical diamond a metre in diameter, sitting atop a squat column of pitch-black rock. It shone with golden Net energy, filaments of power crawling through it in a web of scintillating light. The smooth white floor was spotless.

  The ancient entity, which she assumed was Endrix, could be compared to nothing she had ever encountered before. The lasers flicked from one crystal column to another, lighting each as they touched it. Behind the diamond sphere, two more huge crystal columns blazed with green light, and the conduits of brilliance that linked these to the sphere were unwavering. Rayne recognised the crystals as the kind used to store power, pale blue when empty; green when filled with Net power. The core crystal that powered Shadowen when he was not linked to the Net was only a fraction of the size of one of these, so there must be enough power here to last for several centuries. At the same time, she was certain this entity had a permanent link to the Net.

  Rayne’s gaze came to rest on the sphere. “Endrix?”

  “Indeed. Welcome to Farlaw.” His voice now issued from the sphere, banishing the last of her doubts.

  “What are you?”

  “Ah, a good question. You could describe me as a bodiless being, an incorporeal entity, or even a ghost in a machine. I am not a machine, however, or a robot, and certainly not a computer. My consciousness came into existence three million, seven hundred and fifty-five thousand, one hundred and eighty-four years ago. I cannot describe myself any more accurately to you, just as you cannot define your own spiritual existence.

  “Perhaps I am a soul without a body, summoned from the ethers of beyond by my masters. Or perhaps I am a creation of their collective consciousness, brought into being by their willpower. I have been content even without a name, until you asked me, for I was just me, and satisfied with that. Now you have given me something else to ponder. Perhaps in a couple of million years I will be able to answer that question.”

  “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to start such a dilemma.”

  “No need to apologise. When someone asks you that question, you say, ‘I am a human’. You gave yourselves that name, and it defines you, but to others it is meaningless. I, on the other hand, must offer some sort of explanation for my existence, which is pretty impossible, since I don’t know. Perhaps I will just say, ‘I am an Endrix’, and that will be the end of the dilemma.”

  Rayne nodded, eager to get off such a touchy subject. “Fine. So where are your masters? Why is there no civilisation on the surface? This is a dead planet. People couldn’t live here for long.”

  “You are right, of course. Farlaw is uninhabited by any living being but me, and whether or not I am truly alive is debatable, but I choose to think of myself as being so endowed. I did not say that you could meet my masters, only that I would tell you about them, which I will. I can, however, show you the few who are left, but they are not alive. Would you like to see them?”

  Rayne suppressed a shiver and nodded. Lasers flicked from the sphere across the crystal columns, and a faint whine came from the wall on her right. The entire wall slid aside to reveal a vast chamber beyond, filled with strange paraphernalia. She walked closer, eyeing the odd equipment. Some of it looked vaguely like medical paraphernalia, and a padded table stood in the middle of the room. The illumination increased as she entered the room, and her eyes were drawn to several cylindrical caskets against the walls. She approached one, which seemed to be made of clear crystal or glass, and bent to wipe a thin layer of frost from it.

  The face beneath the glass had pale grey skin mottled by frost, and it appeared to be hairless, although whether that was the way they were or if they had shaved for their freezing, she had no way of knowing. Its eyes would have been large, when open, and it possessed a pointed chin. The mouth was a lipless slit, and tiny ears lay flat against its skull. The most prominent and human feature was its nose, which continued from the brow, high bridged and straight, with small nostrils.

  Rayne wondered if humans would have looked like this after a couple of million years of evolution, and noted the five other caskets with dismay. “This is all of them?”

  “These are the ones who chose to remain and face a possible future amongst the races that have evolved since their culture reached the end of its evolution. The rest chose to die.”

  She returned to the sphere, and the wall closed behind her. “What happened to them?”

  The sphere’s lasers flitted across the crystal columns. “My masters were the most advanced beings in the galaxy, perhaps even the universe, but they reached the end of their evolutionary road and learnt their final lesson: despair. It seems that when nature can no longer improve upon a design, it discards it, and so it was with my masters. They became sterile, and, although adults could live almost indefinitely, the number of years dictated by the individual’s wish, their inability to have offspring grieved them greatly, and most chose to end their lives.

  “All other life was primitive then, still evolving. Many great civilisations had risen and fallen during my masters’ evolution, but, at the time of their ending, no others were on an equal footing. As your new ship has discovered, I am over three million years old, yet I was created at the end of the Sharvan civilisation. They searched the galaxy for another race with which they might be able to breed, thereby allowing their race to survive, even if in a diluted form.

  “Unfortunately, there was no race that was compatible, so they were forced to mingle their genes with an unrelated, but similar life form. The result was a primitive entity little better than an animal, but one that would evolve swiftly, given the genes it possessed.

  “I have watched over the seeds my masters planted, and they have spread far and wide, branching out into an impressive family of beings, all of which are compatible with the Sharvan. The oldest, and most advanced of these are the Atlanteans, although some may argue that the Antians were more evolved in some ways. Unfortunately, they are now officially extinct, since one male cannot repopulate his species.

  “These six chose to wait for a time when their descendants were almost their equals, when they might take wives from amongst them and know the joy of having children again. Any child of such a union would far surpass his mother, for compared to your people, the Sharvan are like what you would call gods. I was created to take care of them and
guard them, which I am more than capable of doing, with the ship to help me. When this sun dies, I will awaken them.”

  “Did any others choose not to die, but went off exploring, perhaps?” Rayne asked.

  “They might have done. I have no detailed records of the activities of individuals before I was created, so it is possible.”

  “And where did the Sharvan come from? This certainly isn’t their original world.”

  “No. Their home world was the first planet, Ivandar, but about two million years ago, the sun began to expand. The first planet became too hot, so I moved them to the third planet. But the sun continued to expand, against my predictions, so I was forced to move them to the fifth planet as it thawed out. Again, my predictions were in error, and the fifth planet grew too hot and unstable, so I brought them here to Farlaw. We are safe here. The sun has stopped expanding, and stabilised for a while. In another thousand years, I predict that it will go supernova, but we’ll be gone by then.”

  “So their entire civilisation is still on the first planet?”

  “Yes. When they lived on Ivandar, this was an ice world; now it is the only one cool enough.”

  “Why did all the ships that came into Quadrant Forty-Four disappear?” Rayne enquired.

  “I could not allow them to find the Sharvan. Such an advanced species would be perceived as a threat, and others would have been sent to destroy them. I had to protect my masters. It is my purpose.”