Slave Empire - Prophecy (15 page)

Mertar
snarled. Drevina raised a claw, and he subsided. "You've always
thrived on petty insults. They must be your speciality."

"Never as good
as yours. I always bow to your superiority."

Drevina
ignored the jibe. "You've been visiting the Chandra system a lot
recently. Any particular reason?"

"Chandra? Oh,
Ellath Three, you mean. Well, it's undergoing some interesting
changes, not that it's any of your business."

"You chased
four of my ships from there, four years ago, that's my
business."

"They had no
right to be there. Picking over the bones of fallen civilisations
may be your speciality, but that system falls within our
territory."

She showed her
teeth again. "The Chandra system has never been disputed, yet I
fail to see why you protect such a useless planet. My ships did not
change its fate. We did nothing to interfere, only took a few
materials."

"Well, you can
go there as much as you wish now. The atmosphere would fry even
you."

"Empress
Drevina, you have yet to state your business before the council,"
Vargon interrupted, his voice deceptively mild. "Fascinating though
your discourse with Commander Tallyn may be, we really should get
to the point, don't you think?"

Drevina glared
at Tallyn before facing the council again. "We're here to lay claim
to a new solar system in the Vega nebula. We discovered it several
weeks ago. Naturally, it's uninhabited, but we brought a recording
of it for you."

"How kind,"
Vargon muttered rather sarcastically as Mertar pulled a black box
from his belt. He detached two metal discs and placed them on the
floor, one on top of the other. He then aimed the black box at the
two discs, and the topmost one rose some five feet into the air.
Between the two, a holographic field sprang into existence. The
images were dull and rather hazy, but sufficiently clear to make
out a white dwarf and an aged orange sun in a binary system. Five
planets and a debris ring orbited the orange sun at widely spaced
intervals.

Drevina
gestured at the image. "Four of the planets are useless. The two
farthest are frozen mud and ammonia, the third planet is a gas
giant, and the one nearest the sun is extremely hot; a barren rock.
We're interested in the second planet." The hologram zoomed in on a
yellow world, the rest of the solar system vanishing. "It has
sulphur clouds and an ammonia-based atmosphere, but we can make it
habitable. Its orbit is good."

"I see."
Vargon nodded as the hologram vanished, then glanced around at the
rest of the council members. "I see no basis for objection. It's in
your territory and looks sufficiently hostile. Do you have an
observation, Commander Tallyn?"

"Yes, I'd like
to know the real reason for the Empress' visit. All this could have
been done on the space line; there was no need for a meeting."

Drevina said,
"We came here out of courtesy. There is no reason to accuse us of
lying."

"Courtesy!
You're not just here to flaunt your unsavoury goodies. You never
have before. Every other such agreement was achieved on a space
line, but now suddenly you're here in person. Are you perhaps
spying on us at the same time?"

"You never did
have any manners, but why would I want to spy on the Atlanteans?
You seldom do anything of interest, and when you do, you always
tell everyone about it first."

"Empress,
please," Vargon soothed. "Commander Tallyn's suspicions are his
own, kindly ignore him. We don't wish to start a dispute about it.
I'm sure your reasons for coming here are spawned purely by a
righteous wish to be polite to your friends."

"Friends!"
Drevina snorted, then caught herself and tore her glare from
Tallyn, who now wore a bland expression. "Yes, of course."

"Good. Now
that you have told us, it was nice seeing you again, and have a
safe journey home."

Drevina shot
Tallyn a last look of unadulterated hatred as she swept out, her
brother at her heels. When the brisk tapping of their feet had
faded to a distant echo, Vargon looked at Tallyn, shaking his head
in reprimand.

"You shouldn't
antagonise her, Commander. You know that Draycons have difficulty
in controlling their tempers. Pointing out the obvious was
unnecessary, and only served to anger them. Rest assured, whatever
they came here to spy on, they've been kept too far away to find
out anything. The orbit they were given is barely inside the third
moon."

"Good. But I'd
like to know what they're after. Since they lost the war, they've
been looking for a way to win the next one."

Vargon nodded.
"As we do. Have one of your scouts investigate the Vega system and
report. Now, tell me of your encounter with this black ship."
Vargon settled more comfortably in his hard-backed chair, and the
rest of the council members squirmed and stretched.

At the end of
Tallyn’s account, Vargon looked thoughtful, and the other council
members turned to one another in muttered consultation. When they
fell silent, Vargon roused from his reverie.

"So, the girl you found
is
the Golden Child. This is excellent news. You must
extend to her every courtesy, and grant her every wish, so long as
it doesn't put her in danger. All that remains now is to wait. Good
work, Commander."

Tallyn bowed
and retreated. Outside, Drevina waited with her escort, talking to
her brother in the strange, hissing Draycon tongue. She broke off
her conversation to approach Tallyn, surrounded by her guards, and
he stopped, eyeing her.

"One day,
Tallyn, I'm going to fix you, permanently."

"You've
already tried that. It didn't work, remember?"

She smiled,
her eyes filled with malice. "Next time it will. You're going to
pay for your insults."

"Is the
Drayconar Empire prepared for another war with Atlan? The last one,
as I recall, left you nursing a lot of wounds. You should be
careful what you say in public places. These walls have ears, and
eyes, too, sometimes."

Drevina
glanced around. "Our antagonism is well known, as is your
disrespect. The next war between our empires will result in your
defeat."

"Really? It's
lucky for you that we know how often you lie, or that might be
taken as a threat."

Her eyes
glinted. "You'll pay for that too, I promise."

Drevina spun
on her heel and swept away with her escort, Mertar trotting at her
side. Their red and black-clad forms radiated hatred, at odds with
the peaceful setting of the white pillared hall. He knew that
provoking Drevina was unwise; he was just never able to resist it.
She and her brother ruled the second largest empire after Atlan,
and the war had cost millions of Atlantean lives.

The Draycons
had attacked undefended planets and outposts, using biological and
chemical weapons. The war had ended in resounding defeat for the
Draycons when the Atlanteans had blown up their empress' palace on
Jandar One, killing her. Drevina, daughter of the dead empress,
still longed for vengeance. Ten years ago, she had started the
Saurian War, but that could never be proven, and the only reason
she informed Atlan of her discoveries was a lingering fear of the
empire that had killed her mother. Her presence on Atlan worried
him, for she seemed more confident than before, as if she had a
trump card she was about to play.

Draycons had
evolved in a distant galaxy, and moved closer to Atlan when their
sun died. The Atlanteans had helped them, but soon learnt the folly
of that. Draycon culture, morals and intellect were far more alien
than their forms, and to them, helping others was a sign of
weakness. Draycons believed that all victories were justified, no
matter how they were achieved. A saying had sprung up, which summed
up their mentality most succinctly, that a Draycon would stab you
in the back with the knife he had borrowed from you.

Nothing was
beneath them, if it gave them an advantage. Physically they were
tough, able to withstand extreme conditions and breathe poisonous
air. Those who had studied them had deduced that they originated on
an unstable, continually changing hellhole, like a planet with an
extended elliptical orbit, which became terribly hot as it passed
close to its sun, then freezing cold as it moved away. Now they
dwelt uncomfortably close, a mere fifteen light years distant, in
the Regal Galaxy.

Late afternoon
sunlight streamed in through the tall windows to dapple the tawny
carpet in Tallyn's study. He was away most of the time, and Rayne
and Rawn studied at his house, since travelling to the library was
no longer necessary now that they had completed the groundwork.
They spent more time on the vast data network that spanned the
planets in the system. She and Rawn had made many friends amongst
the users, most of whom were students. Rawn sat at Tallyn's desk,
engrossed in a conversation with an alien on the fifth planet.
Rayne lounged in a comfy chair beside a low table, studying the
dynamics of a binary system. A soft pop from the lounge made her
glance at Rawn, but he did not appear to have heard the noise. As
Rayne turned back to her screen, she noticed a slight, astringent
scent, then her eyelids slammed down.

Rayne woke in
a padded grey room, her head pounding and her vision blurry. Her
wrists were manacled, and a lacy dress that barely reached past her
crotch replaced her utilitarian suit. She clutched her head and
struggled to banish the terrible ache at the back of her skull,
tears of pain stinging her eyes. When she brought it under control,
she opened her eyes and looked around at a featureless cell that
did not even have a discernable door.

After several
minutes of trying to remember how she had got there, she gave up
and worried about what was in store for her. She wondered if Rawn
was in a similar predicament, or whether she had been the only
target. She was sure this had something to do with the prophecy,
although how anyone knew who she was remained a mystery. The
crewmen who had been on Vengeance's bridge during the encounter
with the black ship were all loyal to the Atlantean Empire. She
could not believe any of them was a spy; some of them were almost
fanatical in their fealty.

A door
appeared as it slid open, and a tall, angular woman with green eyes
and sharkskin entered, revealing pink teeth in a revolting grin.
Rayne recognised her race as Draycon, her heart sinking. The woman
studied Rayne, gloating, then spoke in Atlantean.

"So, little
pink thing. Frightened? Your sort has weak, stupid females, don't
you? Breeders. Humans. You were good at that, mind you. Bred
yourselves right into extinction. How could the gods choose one
like you to be the Golden Child?"

Her grin
widened as Rayne stifled a gasp. "Ah, yes, I know all about you.
You were supposed to have died on your miserable planet, but you
survived, hidden like an animal in the ground. Those bungling
idiots who said they had killed you have paid for their mistake.
Our seer knew you weren't dead. And I followed the trail of that
fool, Tallyn, to find you. This universe is filled with
incompetents. So I have to do the job myself, don't I?"

She put her
hands on her hips, running a red tongue over her lips. "Do you want
to know what's going to happen to you?"

"I suppose
you're going to kill me."

"No." The
woman chuckled, a grating sound. "That would be too easy, wouldn't
it? But you are going to die. Tempting though it is, I can't have
the pleasure of killing you myself, even though it would be so easy
to burn you and eject your body into space. Unfortunately, it's
only a matter of time before Tallyn finds out who took you, and
gives chase. Even if he never proves I killed you, he will find out
that I took you. Atlan's sensor grid will have logged my illegal
stopover.

"So, if I make
you disappear, it counts against me, for then the question of why
raises its ugly head. After all, if I didn't know who you were, I
wouldn't have killed you. By denying the prophecy and ensuring
Atlan's downfall, I will most certainly earn their wrath. Even the
suspicion would be enough for severe reprimands against my people.
But if I sell you, it's not such a crime at all. I just have to
ensure that I sell you to someone who's going to kill you, and
there are plenty of them. Don't think your pretty face will save
you either, there are many who hate such things, and long to
destroy them. A torturous death, which is what you deserve, that's
what awaits you."

Rayne failed
to repress a shiver, and the woman chuckled again. "I'll even
profit from the deal. Isn't that justice for you?"

"Tallyn will
find you."

"Oh, I'm sure
he will, stupid girl, but I'll be guilty of no more than slave
dealing, which, given my status, will be shrugged off. As far as he
knows, I simply snatched an unimportant human girl to sell as a
slave. Once you're sold, he'll never find you, and your destiny
will be lost. You won't live to fulfil it, and the Atlantean Empire
will fall, as it has been prophesied. Draycons will take over their
worlds and enslave them."

Rayne looked
away, unable to meet the woman's hateful, sneering eyes. The door
hissed shut, cutting off her grating chuckle.

The Draycon
ship emerged from its energy shell in a swirl of golden light,
approaching Gergonia. The unpleasant, barely habitable world was
technically a large moon orbiting a gas giant with huge ice rings.
Not quite large enough to become a sun, the gas giant gave off an
eerie red light that the rings reflected in a multi-coloured
display, unfortunately not visible from Gergonia's surface due to
the cloud cover. The planet's sulphur rich atmosphere was
breathable, but unpleasant. Gergonia's distant red giant sun gave
off plenty of heat, but little light, which barely reached the
surface through the thick yellow fog that enveloped the planet,
making it a twilight world. Dwarfish natives inhabited it, adapted
to the dimness and acidic atmosphere. They lived on a yellow fungus
that thrived in the sulphur-rich soil.