Slave Empire - The Crystal Ship Read online

  Tallyn nodded. “If you’d still had the beacon -”

  “But I didn’t, and he saved me. You were just on hand when he freed me, otherwise Scimarin would have transferred us out.”

  “That’s something else I don’t understand. Three of his cruisers synchronised their energy shells with Norvar’s. Why didn’t he just transfer you out then?”

  “I don’t know,” Rayne said. “I’ll ask Shadowen.” She closed her eyes while she communed via her implant, then opened them. “I was in a random waveform field. No one could transfer me out until I’d been released from the cell. Shadowen detected the field’s effect on my bio link, something he calls ‘fuzz’, and told the Shrike I couldn’t be transferred.”

  “I see. This ship of yours seems full of surprises.”

  “A good thing, too. Of course, he would have found out when he tried to transfer me. It just saved him the time and effort. And Shadowen isn’t my ship, he’s just on loan. Now that the Envoy’s here, I’ll be giving him back soon.”

  “You seem very calm,” he commented.

  “It hasn’t sunk in yet. It probably won’t until I see the damned thing, then I’ll most likely want to run.” She put down the bottle and stood up. “I’d like to return to my ship now, and find out how the Shrike is.”

  She held up a hand when he frowned. “No matter what he’s done, he’s saved my life more than once, so I owe him. The very least I can do is show some concern. Also, I might need his help again, with the Envoy, so I’d like to know when he’s going to be well enough.”

  “You can communicate with your ship from here.”

  “I enjoy my privacy. Right now, I’d like to be on my ship. Is that a problem?”

  Tallyn sighed as he rose to his feet. “No. Not really.”

  “I’ll need to be on my ship when we encounter the Envoy, anyway.”

  “But you will follow us to Atlan?”

  She smiled. “I’ll be there before you.”

  Chapter Five

  Rayne stared blindly at Shadowen’s screens, reliving the last few seconds on the Draycon ship. The intensity of her anguish had startled her. How could she feel so much for a man whose face she had never seen? Why had he risked his life to save her?

  She addressed the ship. “Shadowen, can you find out how the Shrike is?”

  “Of course.”

  Several moments passed, and then Shadowen said, “The Shrike is undergoing surgery at Dermoin, his nearest outpost. His condition is serious, and he is unconscious.”

  “Does he have healers on Dermoin?”

  “No, but he has competent doctors and surgeons.”

  “I could heal him.”

  “You would not be allowed to see him.”

  “Why not?” she asked, surprised.

  “You would be considered a security risk.”

  She snorted. “Of course. But he’s going to be okay?”

  “His prognosis is good.”

  “Can you find out what’s happening at Atlan?”

  “I tap the Atlanteans’ communications as a matter of course. They’re sending warships to intercept the crystalline entity that appeared close to the planet a short while ago.”

  Rayne raked a hand through her damp hair. Endrix had said the Crystal Ship could not be destroyed in space. She sighed. “How long before we reach Atlan?”

  “Seven and a half hours.”

  Vidan gazed at the Shrike, trying to remember how many times he had stood at his bedside after a dangerous confrontation, battle or semi-suicidal mission had left him wounded. For as long as he had been Tarke’s second-in-command, the man with no face had risked his life with frightening regularity, despite his importance to the millions of people who relied on him to save and shelter them. This was not the first time he had led his ships into battle to save slaves, but never before had it been only one. The harsh rasp of Tarke’s breathing was reassuring, and Vidan scanned the holographic readouts of the various machines that monitored him. Blood seeped from the edge of the mask, pooling on the pillow. The readouts showed a strong heartbeat, laboured breathing and dangerously low blood pressure. A bag of blood replacement fluid was hooked up to a needle in his arm. The hospital had become a hive of activity since his arrival, and orderlies, nurses and medics rushed around on urgent errands.

  Dermion’s top trauma surgeon, a middle-aged man with a receding hairline named Grayal, peeled off Tarke’s space armour and blood-soaked shirt, revealing a black-edged wound. A second doctor cut away the Shrike’s trousers and probed the shrapnel wounds in his hips and thighs. Nurses clustered behind them, awaiting orders, their expressions tense.

  Grayal shot a concerned glance at the blood that oozed onto the pillow. The resilient, flexible and almost indestructible plycon material of the mask and skullcap was undamaged. Vidan wondered if Graval would suggest removing it, but few were keen to undergo the mind-wipe afterwards to remove the memory of Tarke’s face. Vidan knew how unpleasant it was, from experience. Unless Tarke stopped breathing, the mask would remain in place.

  Grayal positioned a surgical robot over the injury and took up his post at its controls. The web of old scars on Tarke’s chest gleamed in the harsh lights. An alarm sounded, and the second doctor glanced at the holograms.

  “He’s regaining consciousness. Prepare the sleep inducer.”

  A medic moved a saucer-shaped instrument over Tarke’s head, but Vidan held up a hand to prevent her switching it on. The Shrike’s wheezing breath caught, and he tensed. He turned his head towards Vidan, who leant closer.

  “The girl?”

  “The Atlanteans took her. She’s safe.”

  Vidan nodded to the medic, who turned on the sleep inducer, and Tarke relaxed. Vidan hovered while the surgeons closed the wound.

  Rayne sipped a cup of Atlantean coffee, called najad, and stared at the stars beyond the energy shell’s crawling fire. After five hours of induced sleep, she had eaten and enquired about Tarke’s health again. He was out of surgery and asleep, apparently. She had sent a message telling the Atlanteans not to attack the Envoy, but Endrix had not responded to her calls, making her wonder if he would show up. Her stomach was a tight knot, threatening to squirt the najad she had just swallowed back up her throat. Shadowen interrupted her thoughts, making her jump.

  “I am decelerating towards Atlan. I will stop close to the alien ship.”

  “Not too close.”

  “There are many ships in the vicinity.”

  “What are they doing?” she asked.

  “Not much. The alien ship is moving towards the planet, but at this range I cannot scan it in any detail. It is almost the size of a moon, and causing some strange distortions in the spacial fabric.”

  Rayne wished she knew what lay ahead, so she could prepare. How was she supposed to fight this monster, and with what? She tensed as a flicker of prickles passed across her mind, like a sweep of pins in her brain. The strange sensation was unsettling, and she checked the holograms. Whatever it was, Shadowen was apparently unable to detect it.

  As she relaxed, Rayne became aware of a strange tickling sensation at the back of her skull. Someone, or something, was trying to read her mind. She raised the weak mental shields she had tried so hard to cultivate, but the sensation increased, becoming a faint hiss of alien thoughts. Her alarm grew as she experienced a flash of telepathic sight; a seething chamber filled with a rosy glow, snakes of Net power, or something like it, sliding down dark walls.

  Rayne jerked back as the vision vanished, gasping. Reality returned, and she longed to order Shadowen to flee, certain it was the Envoy that had probed her mind. The sensation returned, but stronger, filling her head with alien sentience, so strange she could make no sense of it. Another flash of the rosy chamber was followed by a brief vision of Atlan, then a dull pain throbbed through her, as if she was bruised all over. The creature suffered, and shared a tiny part of its pain with her and everyone else who could hear it.

  The alien mind touch
receded, leaving her stunned. She stared at the writhing golden fire on the screens. Shadowen still decelerated prior to shedding the energy shell, so only seconds had passed, but she had learnt something of what she faced. She was certain the mind that had touched hers did not belong to an enemy. It had sought something within hers, which it evidently had not found, and had gone on to touch others. What would happen when, or if, it found what it was searching for?

  Rayne recalled Endrix’s description of the Crystal Ship’s attack on Tarke’s home world, how it had broadcast friendship and goodwill, tricking the people into welcoming it. Not that they could have stopped it, but it had prevented any form of defensive measures that might have harmed it. This one would do the same thing, yet she sensed, in its brief contact with her, that whatever controlled it had not yet commanded it. The realisation struck her like a bucket of cold water. The mind that had touched hers was not the Envoy’s, but the Crystal Ship’s.

  Driven by some obscure instinct, and not certain she was doing the right thing, she reached out with her mind, striving to touch the entity. It rushed into her mind again, eager, seeking, crying out to be heard and understood, to share its pain and despair, to find someone or something that could understand it. Rayne opened herself to it, allowed its pain to permeate her and responded to its sadness with a deep wellspring of sympathy. It engulfed her, frightening in its intensity, but softening its hold when it sensed her fear.

  A line of communications opened, and she sank into the soft embrace of a powerful psyche. A rush of warm thoughts suffused her mind with a vast cauldron of information. She sorted through it, trying to make sense of alien thoughts and perceptions, half of which were beyond her ken. One overriding sensation came clearly from the glut of alien knowledge. The creature was a slave. It called itself by an unpronounceable name; the closest she could come to it was Scrysalza, but that was only a fraction of its true appellation. Its pain and despair made her loathe those that lived within it like parasites, like worms in an animal’s gut, bringing it sickness and pain.

  Kill them, she told it, cast them out. It could not, it said, it had tried many times and failed. As a youngster it had fought the invasion of these things, but they had taken control of it, and now to rebel was to suffer. It asked for her help, and, although she had no idea how, or if, she could, she agreed. The alien mind receded, and she became aware of her surroundings again as reality returned.

  Shadowen was shedding the energy shell, and the crawling fire leeched away from the windows as the stars settled into their places. The bridge’s silent gloom was soothing in its normality, and she gazed out of the clearing windows, eager for her first glimpse of the alien ship. An alarm beeped in her ear.

  Shadowen said, “Ship dead ahead. Collision proximity. Shields up. Repellers on maximum.”

  Rayne gripped the arms of her chair as the last of the golden haze faded.

  The alien entity filled the screens with a dreadful, awesome beauty. Scintillating crystal spears radiated from it, and refracted light weaved webs of brilliance through the space around it. Immense beyond imagination, alien beyond belief, it scattered shards of radiance from numberless crystalline facets. No form or shape confined it; no words could accurately describe it. Vast webs of crystal surrounded it in huge butterfly wings of gossamer glass ablaze with liquid light.

  The Crystal Ship.

  Rayne was oblivious to Shadowen’s attempts to analyse and categorise it. It had an awful fascination about it, a radiant, glorious splendour that drove the breath from her lungs and captivated her. She sat frozen, unable to tear her eyes away from its brilliant beauty.

  Shadowen’s words impinged, and she shook off her enthralment to listen to him.

  “Net link broken; unable to restore. Powering down all non-essential functions. Ship ahead, structure crystalline and biological, outer skin particles over two millions years old, sentient, alien life forms aboard, race unknown, language unknown, origin unknown -”

  Rayne shouted, “Endrix!”

  Silence answered her, and she asked Shadowen, “Where is he? He must be somewhere close by. He wouldn’t abandon me now.”

  The consoles flared with sparkling light, like shoals of glowing fish crossing a black sea. “I can find no trace of the ship you call Endrix. We are no longer in the normal space-time continuum.”

  “Then where the hell are we?”

  “I cannot formulate an answer from the data available.”

  Rayne stared at the awe-inspiring spectacle outside, amazed that she had touched the mind of this beautiful, massive creature. Undoubtedly that was what had made it transfer them all into this other place, wherever this was. The Crystal Ship rotated slowly, shafts of light slashing the blackness around it. She wondered how long it would be before it renewed its contact, and whether its masters had realised that something was amiss. What could she do to help this alien creature? How was she supposed to rid it of the creatures that infested it when it could not?

  Shadowen broke into her thoughts. “The ship you call Endrix has just appeared off my starboard bow.”

  She searched the blackness, but he was invisible against the starless space. “Endrix?”

  “I am here.” His voice spoke from the air beside her.

  “I was beginning to think I’d have to do this alone.”

  “You do.”

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Ultimate space, I’m afraid. It’s what my masters call the third dimension.”

  “The one where no energy exists, only void?”

  “Correct. The Crystal Ship has entrapped you in an energy net much like the one you use, and is preventing the void from tearing your ship apart. I assume you have made contact with it.”

  Rayne watched the Crystal Ship rotating in gargantuan incandescence. “Yes.”

  “Good, now you must wait and see what it does next. But bear in mind that it has you at its mercy. Although the Ship itself is not hostile, it is under the Envoy’s influence. The Ship cannot disobey its master easily, so be careful not to alert the Envoy.”

  Still gazing at the mind-numbing spectacle outside, Rayne wondered what was going to happen next. The Crystal Ship hung in space like a bizarre jewel of immeasurable immensity.

  “Is the Envoy asleep or something?”

  “Or something. Its attention has not yet focussed on you. In fact, it does not even know the Ship has changed course.”

  “Changed course! It’s gone into another dimension.”

  “To one of these creatures, the dimensions are like your different modes of travel. The second dimension would be like a road, easy to traverse, requiring little energy. The first dimension is like an ocean, a little more difficult to navigate, but easy enough. This, the third dimension, is like air, much harder to fly, requiring a lot of energy, but it can see the other two, like a bird flying along a beach. The universe, with all its dimensions, is to this creature what your world is to you. It finds nothing dangerous or strange about it. Even the worst space storm or energy vortex cannot harm it.”

  “Why has it brought me here?”

  “You would know that better than me,” Endrix said. “You were in communication with it.”

  “It was seeking help, trying to find some way to get rid of the Envoy. The Ship regards the Envoy as a parasite. It asked me to help it. But I fail to see why that would make it bring us here.”

  “Probably to isolate you, so it can concentrate on you.”

  Rayne shivered. “I hope I did the right thing.”

  “I’m sure you did. It’s your destiny.”

  “It may be my destiny to confront this damned thing, but there’s no guarantee I won’t muck it up. For all I know, I might have landed myself in the poo.”

  “Just follow your instincts. It’s why you were chosen.”

  Rayne was quite sure time was passing; she could sense the seconds ticking past and becoming minutes, but when she looked at the holographic readout that kept the ship’s time
, it had stopped.

  “Did the last Crystal Ship ask you for help, before it went to the planet?”

  “Yes. I think they ask that question of every creature they meet, but they rarely get a reply. I could do nothing to help the last Ship, nor can I help this one.”

  “How can I?” she cried. “I know even less than you.”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps you will find out soon.”

  Rayne thought about Tarke, wounded because of her, and unable to help her now. “Should my guardian be here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Rayne made a feeble gesture towards the Ship. “Why can’t I see the energy shell you say it has? All I see is raw space.”

  “Low-grade energy shells are visible, but the Ship is using an energy shell of such intensity that it is invisible, as Net energy becomes when it’s very dense. This creature has Net energy running through it like blood. It’s saturated with it. Even I can only remain in the third dimension for a short duration. It could stay here for decades.”

  “So that’s why I can’t see you, either.”

  “Yes,” Endrix replied. “Of necessity, my shell is also intense.”

  Rayne became aware that the light from the Crystal Ship was changing, no longer slashing aimlessly through space, but congealing, forming into long streamers of tangible brilliance that reached out towards her.

  She tensed. “What’s happening?”

  “I believe it is about to transfer you within itself.”

  “I don’t want to do this!” she wailed, pushing herself back in the chair.

  “It means you no harm.”

  “It may not, but the Envoy does!”

  “Whether or not the Envoy can harm you without the Ship’s help remains to be seen. No one has ever encountered an Envoy in person, so to speak.”

  “That’s a great comfort!”

  The light was all around her now. It came through the Shadowen’s hull as if it did not exist and spread across her skin in icy rays. Cold sank into her, and she shivered.