Slave Empire III - The Shrike (9 page)

“Because we
dared to be together when all of you wanted me dead? If you hadn’t
given her to the Atlanteans she’d be all right now. I tried to save
her. Where were you when she needed you? Hating her empathy;
finding happiness with your wife. But you forgot about your sister,
didn’t you? If she’d been happy, I would have left her alone.”

“What are you
going to do with us?” Rawn asked.

Tarke shrugged,
turning away again. “Nothing. I wanted to see your faces, to know
the people who did this to her. If she dies, so will you. So will
millions of Atlanteans. My vengeance is not meted out in small
amounts. It will be profound, or it will be nothing. Remember that.
If I really was the monster you all think I am, I’d have you killed
anyway. But then, if I was that monster, do you think the Golden
Child would have loved me enough to die for me?”

The Shrike
headed for the door, leaving the prisoners staring after him, his
last words echoing in their minds, he hoped.

Chapter Four

The Shrike sat
beside his wife and held her hand. As he had done almost every day
during the five years since her abduction, he told her what had
happened that day. She looked like a sleeping princess awaiting a
handsome prince to awaken her with a kiss. Her hair nearly reached
her waist now, and her skin had become paler, almost
translucent.

Tarke recounted
a meeting with a slaver, almost word for word. Although the doctors
had assured him that she could not hear him, he took comfort in
telling her these things. He told her how much he missed her, and
how he wished she had been at his side for the meeting. It made the
marriage, he thought bitterly, almost as good as it had been
before, except she no longer took part in the conversations and he
spent more time with her. Sometimes he would imagine her reactions
and respond as if she had spoken, but he longed to hear her voice
again, to see her open her eyes and smile.

The initial
flood of doctors, healers and other experts had dwindled to a
trickle after two years. Now it had dried up completely, despite
the huge reward he offered to anyone who could help her. The sum
exceeded the total reward for his death, and many had tried to
claim it. He refused to allow any kind of surgery, and few had
lingered once they had touched the howling emptiness inside her
skull. A Shyanese had teleported directly from her home world, and
he recalled the stark terror in her eyes when she had left. He knew
the sensation well. He had not dared to touch Rayne’s mind since
the day she had been returned to him.

After six
months, Tarke had gone to Farlaw to speak to Endrix, even though
Shadowen had warned him against it. According to the ship, anyone
entering Quadrant Forty-Four without the entity’s permission would
be destroyed, and Tarke was not immune to his displeasure. Endrix
was primarily his people’s guardian, and had only been Rayne’s
guide while the Envoy threatened Atlan. Now that the danger was
past, even she might not be welcome in his domain.

Tarke had
chosen to take Shadowen into the forty-fourth quadrant because he
was Rayne’s ship. He took his wife with him, too, so Endrix could
heal her if possible. He had found Farlaw and orbited the
apparently abandoned planet for several days, waiting for Endrix to
return or acknowledge his presence. When neither had happened, he
had landed and tried to enter through the stone monolith Rayne had
used, but it had not allowed him in.

Eventually,
Rayne’s deteriorating condition had forced him to return to base.
She required constant, specialised care. He had settled for calling
Endrix instead, but had not received a response. Either the entity
could not help, or did not care to. Tarke had also tried to find a
way to travel to Scrysalza’s cosmos, hoping the ship could help
Rayne. No one even knew which galaxy the crystal ships dwelt in,
however, so that had proven hopeless. Now his only hope was the
slight one that one day she would find her way back, perhaps
hearing his calls. So every day he stroked her face, held her hand
and spoke her name, begging her to return.

Tarke sighed
and bowed his head to kiss the back of her hand. The door chimed,
and he clipped the mask on before unlocking it.

Vidan entered,
casting a sad glance at the comatose girl. “How is she?”

“The same.”
Tarke stood up, replacing her hand on her chest. “What is it?”

Vidan held out
a scribe pad. “Another request from her brother, to see her.”

“No.”

“It can’t do
any harm.”

“Or any
good.”

“He divorced
his wife five years ago.”

The Shrike
shrugged. “It makes no difference. He gave up his rights when he
let the Atlanteans take her from his house.”

“He couldn’t
have stopped them.”

“He didn’t
try.”

Vidan was sure
Tarke knew perfectly well that he was being unreasonable, but could
not blame him. He had a right to be bitter about what had happened,
and he was the least vengeful man Vidan knew. Tarke probably blamed
himself most of all, and he did not deserve the burden of guilt on
top of his sorrow at her loss. Of all the people Vidan had ever
known, his boss deserved happiness the most. Fate had been
particularly cruel to him, and now Vidan almost wished Tarke had
never found Rayne. At least then he would not be going through this
now. He had already suffered enough. Vidan contemplated the
plethora of paraphernalia in the room. Some of it was necessary,
some experimental, left behind by the hopeful doctors who had
brought it. Soft lights bathed her, a machine produced additional
oxygen, and humidity and temperature were controlled, while fans
circulated the air.

A bevy of
attendants saw to her every need, fed and bathed her, stretched,
massaged and stimulated her muscles with electrical apparatus.
Tarke refused to put her on life support, insisting that she was
cared for by hand and partaking in her care himself. Because of the
excellent care she had received, she showed no sign of atrophy. She
looked as she had done when she had arrived, and as she probably
would in five hundred years’ time. Her arrival was etched in
Vidan’s memory forever. The sight of Tarke emerging from the ship,
carrying her, had brought tears to his eyes. Tarke’s devotion did
not surprise him in the least. Antians remained loyal to their
spouses even after their death.

Tarke spent two
hours with her every day. The Shrike’s people still wore black
armbands to signify their mourning, but, since he wore mostly black
anyway, he had not needed one.

The old
freighter approached Atlan in maximum deceleration, her Mansurian
captain watching the scrolling holographic readouts. Two of the
three crewmembers gazed out of the thick screens that gave a
restricted view of Atlan’s pearly orb, which they had seen
countless times before. One man yawned and scratched a two-day
stubble; the other stretched and rubbed his neck. They had made
this trip so many times they knew exactly which orbit they would
end up in, and even who their neighbours might be. Only the pilot
was busy, stretched out on his couch, his hand in the sensor slot
that connected him with the ship’s neural net.

The youngest
crewmember watched a holographic readout that twitched and
flickered, wishing Captain Drogar would get it fixed. The trouble
with hauling low-grade ore, Solon mused, was that it hardly paid
the bills, and the ship badly needed a refit. One day the failing
repeller on the starboard side would give up, and then they would
be in trouble. The young Mansurian’s focus sharpened as a clot of
unusual figures formed a bright spot on the hologram. The pilot was
oblivious, locked into the ship’s neural net. The numbers increased
at an unbelievable rate, and turned red as they reached
astronomical amounts, the sort of readings a sun would give. The
youngster was about to draw the captain’s attention to the problem
when the screens filled with light.

Solon leapt to
his feet with a shout of alarm. Captain Drogar gripped the arms of
his chair and stared. A vast globe of Net energy formed in space
ahead, blazing like a sun. A proximity alarm wailed, and the
pilot’s features stretched in a grimace of pain. The ship’s
repellers found something solid ahead, and it lurched. The sudden
change of direction overloaded the inertial compensators and threw
the crew to the floor. All but the pilot, strapped to his couch,
his brow furrowed.

The old
freighter’s hull creaked and groaned under the massive strain of
the acute deceleration and turn, the forces threatening to tear her
apart. A resounding bang told them that part of the hull had
buckled under the tremendous force of the starboard repeller. As
the crewmen staggered to their feet, fighting the pull of false
gravity, the vast ball of Net energy dispersed, revealing a
massive, scintillating crystalline entity. It blazed like a crystal
star, beams of radiance slashing the darkness around it. The medley
of colours that filled it shimmered, making it resemble a mammoth,
filigree diamond.

Drogar gaped at
it, his bearded face a study of wonder and terror. The whooping
cacophony of alarms almost drowned out his words.

“A crystal
ship!”

Another urgent,
beeping alarm joined the screaming threnody, and Solon glanced at a
holographic readout, his heart thudding. “The starboard repeller’s
failed!”

The false
gravity vanished, making them reel again as the ship fell towards
the entity. The captain bellowed orders, and the pilot twitched and
groaned as he tried to force the ship to turn. The freighter’s Net
link was not designed for high-speed manoeuvring, however, and its
change of course was sluggish. Solon stared with stunned terror at
the alien ship that filled the screens, knowing the fate that
awaited them if they could not turn away. More proximity alarms
whooped, and the ship’s dulcet voice spoke in its calm, artificial
tones.

“Collision
alert. Collision alert. Dangerous proximity. Abandon ship.
Collision in two minutes.”

Drogar pushed
Solon towards the door, yelling, “Get to the life pod!” He shook
the pilot, then pulled his hand from the sensor slot, breaking his
link with the ship.

“Get out!” he
shouted. “Get to the pod!”

As the pilot
headed for the exit, searing brilliance enveloped the ship, making
Solon cringe and close his eyes. He cried out and stumbled around,
groping for the door. The light vanished, and the young crewman
looked at the screens with watering eyes. The alarms fell silent,
and the ship’s neural net clicked and hummed. The lights on the
consoles flashed, most turning green.

Atlan’s pearly
globe filled the screens, and they appeared to be in orbit. The
captain hurried to a console and slapped his hand on the sensor
pad, turning the exterior sensors until an image appeared on a
screen. The Crystal Ship hung in space, several hundred thousand
kilometres away, beyond the orbit of the furthest moon.

“What the hell
happened, Captain?” the pilot demanded.

“At a guess, I
would say that thing moved us out of harm’s way. It’s put us into
orbit.” He scanned the readouts. “Looks stable, too.”

They stared at
the screen, watching the points of golden brilliance that were
Net-linked ships draw close to the Crystal Ship and stop.

Tallyn could
hardly believe his eyes. It was like a bad dream, one he had, on
occasion, been unfortunate enough to have. Vengeance had returned
to Atlan from only a few light minutes away, where she had been
accelerating on a routine trip to Vasdurn. The emergency recall had
not given a reason, but now it was clear.

He looked at
Marcon, who seemed entranced. “When did that damned thing
appear?”

“Fourteen
minutes ago.”

“Has it made
any hostile moves?”

“No.” Marcon
consulted his readouts. “It’s not moving at all. It’s just sitting
there. It dropped out of the energy dimension exactly where it is
now. It caused quite a stir, and one freighter almost collided with
it. Her repellers failed, and the ship put her into orbit.”

“Put her?”

“Well, it moved
the ship into orbit. It was decelerating, and -”

“I get the
picture. Now I need to know if it’s the same ship returned, or is
it another, with an Envoy on board?”

Marcon’s brows
rose. “How do we find that out?”

“Good
question.”

Tallyn glanced
around at his officers, many of whom had been with him during the
humiliating encounter with the Shrike five years ago. Never before
had an Atlantean warship been so quickly disabled, or so much
damage done in the space of a few minutes. The engineers who had
repaired Vengeance had estimated that the Shrike’s weapons were at
least twice as powerful as Vengeance’s, and the Council had wanted
to know how that was possible. During the refit, they had tried to
increase the energy shell’s power, but that had made it unstable,
which was why it had not been increased in the past.

The Shrike’s
little ships had far more powerful energy shells, and Tallyn
suspected that this was due to their size. His brush with the
outlaw had provided them with vital information about the Shrike’s
weapons, and, in light of this, the Council had not reprimanded him
for his part in antagonising its enemy. More diplomacy was
recommended in future dealings with the slaver, however. The
Council did not believe in paying for pointless, but expensive
conflicts. The fact that Vengeance had not scored a single hit on
the Shrike’s ship had only added insult to injury.

Many of his
officers looked away when his eyes flicked over them, and he knew
what they were thinking. The Golden Child could no longer help them
if this ship was hostile. They had destroyed the only weapon that
could defeat an Envoy in a useless bid to capture her husband.