Slave Empire - Prophecy (25 page)

The scout ship
parked on the spaceport apron was a tiny, ovoid silver craft
bristling with sensor arrays and one energy weapon. They climbed
into the cramped interior, bumping into each other and equipment
that had been fitted in the most inconvenient places. While Rayne
and Rawn watched, Tallyn lay down on the pilot's couch and hooked
himself into the ship's neural net, inputting the co-ordinates and
instructions it would need to leave the atmosphere and fly to the
Cerebilus Moons, then return.

Tallyn could
have assigned the task to another pilot, and Rayne was flattered
that he did it himself. Curious spaceport personnel watched from
the hatchway, amazed at the breach of regulations that was being
perpetrated with the council's approval. Such acts were unknown to
Atlanteans, and the ground crew was horrified and fascinated. When
at last Tallyn was satisfied, he turned to her, his expression
schooled to hide the anxiety she sensed.

"Once out of
the atmosphere," he said, "you must hook yourself into the neural
net. The ship will follow its programme and fly to the Cerebilus
Moons, but you must be alert for any problems. The repellers will
deflect debris and asteroids, space junk and such, but there are
other things, like space storms, which will endanger your link with
the Net, or void fields, which may pull you off course. The neural
net can be re-initiated if that happens, and will then compensate
for the mistake, but you must be there to do it. If you're not
linked to the ship, you won't even know it's happened. If all else
fails, terminate the Net link and activate the distress beacon.
We'll come and pick you up. Also, if you need any other
instructions, you can call me on the space line."

She nodded,
her stomach a cold knot. "How long is the flight going to be?"

"About four
hours. It's a long way."

Rayne nodded
again, avoiding his intense scrutiny, which searched her face for
signs of excessive stress. She forced a smile and glanced at Rawn.
"Well, let's get this show on the road then."

Tallyn said,
"You should have been trained for this. We should have realised
this might happen. When you get back, I'll put you both on a
course."

"Well, nothing
like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted," she
quipped, which earned her a stern glance.

Rawn hugged
her, then Tallyn touched a crystal and they left the ship. The
hatch closed with a hiss and clunk, sealing her in the tiny craft.
She sank into a luxuriously padded acceleration couch as gravity
increased, but it did not grow uncomfortable as the scout floated
up on its antigravity, then switched to repellers. The scout had
inertial compensators, but they were only powerful enough to reduce
the effects of inertia. Since pilots were strapped into their
couches and the ship had no other crew, larger ones were deemed
unnecessary.

The ship
lacked any luxuries apart from the two comfortable pilot couches,
and made alarming noises. The simulator had not clunked and
groaned, hummed and whined like this ship did. She lay back and
forced herself to relax, closing her eyes to block out the plethora
of winking lights around her, few of which she knew anything about.
The ship was trusted to fly itself, and Tallyn had assured her that
it was a new, advanced craft, unlikely to malfunction.

With its
powerful repellers, the chances of her having an accident were slim
- repellers were inclined to make ships as slippery as eels.
However, she pondered as she drifted up through Atlan's atmosphere,
there were a number of things that could go wrong. Any damage to
the Net link could result in the ship's stores of energy being
depleted, which would cause all its systems, including the
repellers, to fail. In that event, the chances of its surviving for
long were not good, even if her air did not run out before a piece
of space junk punched a hole in the hull.

When she
opened her eyes again, Atlan's milky orb was a pearl on the main
screen and Net energy crawled over the hull. The screen winked off,
and she inserted her hand into the sensor slot beside the seat.
Instantly the grey no-place of the ship's neural net swallowed her
senses, and the data bombardment began. Most of it was
incomprehensible, a mass of scrolling black figures, but Tallyn had
told her to ignore those and concentrate only on the other colours
when they appeared. A statement in green flicked past, telling her
the link was successful and the ship was in super light. A column
of white figures counted her increasing speed, and a line of orange
letters listed her co-ordinates.

A window
filled with blue lines opened, displaying the stars and planets
they passed. A flashing red dot whizzed past, warning her of a
passing ship on a parallel course, heading for Atlan. A yellow
diagram identified a nearby planetary system, and a mauve overlay
plotted the commercial space lanes. The daunting stream of data was
exhausting, and her mind seemed to grow hot as she strived to
digest it all and make sense of it. Fortunately, nothing seemed to
require her undivided attention, for there was so much to take
in.

Rayne watched
the data scroll, whiz, flash and flicker through her brain, numbed
by it all. The energy conduits' soft hum was the only sound, and,
if she opened her eyes, the consoles' flashing lights illuminated
the bridge in a flickering glow that mixed horribly with the data
in her brain. According to the neural net, they hurtled through
space at fifteen times the speed of light, flashing past solar
systems in the blink of an eye.

Lost in the
data stream, she waited as the hours passed and she drew closer to
her destination and whatever lay in store for her. The scout would
travel the sixty point four light years through clouds of gas that
were unborn suns, past quasars and asteroids, pulsars and glowing
nebulas of fluorescent gas.

A flashing
orange statement caught her attention in the midst of the chaotic
data. The ship was decelerating, and she noticed a lot of the other
figures changed as her speed decreased. The figures rolled back,
hurrying towards zero, the programmed destination and her current
co-ordinates growing closer and closer to matching. The dizzying
dance of words and figures took on a final frenzy, then the numbers
froze in their correct results and the neural net announced its
termination of the Net link. Rayne pulled her hand out of the
sensor slot and sat up with a gasp, almost falling off the couch as
her brain emptied and the grey walls spun.

Gulping
burning bile, she raised a trembling hand to wipe the cold sweat
from her brow. Four hours linked to the neural net was more than
she could stand easily. The gush of information had disorientated
her, and she fought to push aside the ghostly after-images of
scrolling numbers and whizzing data. No wonder ships' crews rotated
so regularly. Four hours was a long shift, even for an experienced
pilot. For her, it had been pure torture.

Rayne tottered
to a refreshment dispenser and ordered a strong drink, which she
gulped down. Braced, she went back to the couch and gazed at the
main screen. The Cerebilus Moons were a strange collection of
planetoids orbiting each other in a destructive, collapsing sunless
system. They were called moons because of their size and orbits,
which appeared to indicate that the planet they had once orbited
had vanished, leaving the moons, like lost sheep, to endlessly
wander through their diminishing circles until they crashed into
each other. Of the eighteen original planetoids, only eleven
remained amid a spreading debris field.

Closing her
eyes, she wondered if she would be able to get some badly needed
sleep. Her ordeal with the neural net had exhausted her, and her
eyelids were leaden.

"Welcome,
Golden Child."

Rayne sat bolt
upright with a gasp, her eyes scanning the main screen. Thrusting
her hand into the sensor slot, she closed her eyes as the data
washed through her mind again. The ship was close, in fact, a red
proximity warning flashed. Jerking her hand out again, she stared
at the main screen.

"I... What do
you want?"

"To show you
something. You must prepare for your meeting with the one who
comes."

"Who's
that?"

"I will show
you. I will take you to a world that has known one before."

She shook her
head. "No, I can't. I don't know how to fly this ship."

"Then I
shall."

"Wait!" She
jumped up, then grabbed a bulkhead as the moons whirled on the
screen. Her gravity remained steady, but the screen gave the
sensation of spinning, and she looked away. "Wait! I can't leave
here. This ship is programmed to return to Atlan from here."

"Then I will
bring you back."

Rayne sank
down on the couch, staring at the screen again as the vast energies
of a transfer Net crawled over it. Instead of the ragged, branching
lines of crackling power, the screen filled with solid golden
light. When it faded, new stars appeared.

She gasped in
astonishment. "You used the transfer Net!"

"Of
course."

"No, I mean
you went into the energy dimension!"

"Yes."

She shook her
head. "I've got a lot of questions for you."

"Later. I want
you to go down to the planet below. You must wear protective
attire."

Rayne glanced
at the screen, adjusting the camera until a dull grey orb came into
view. "What planet is that?"

"It is called
Elliadaren."

Rayne stared
at it for a long time, her mind reeling.

The guide's
voice broke into her reverie. "You are distressed."

She shook her
head. "No, just tired. I'll go and find a space suit, if there is
one."

"It is in the
locker at the back of the cabin."

With a
suspicious glance at the empty air whence the voice issued, she
went to the locker. The bulky suit inside was too big for her, even
when she adjusted it. She struggled into it, finding herself
entombed and almost immobile. The final catches defeated her, and
she sighed with frustration.

"This isn't
going well. Can you help?"

A fuzzy ball
of golden light appeared beside her, and she staggered away from it
in alarm.

"Do not be
afraid, it will not harm you." The voice sounded much closer now,
and a lot smaller, to her relief. It seemed to come from inside her
helmet, through the communications relay next to her ear.

"What the hell
is that?"

"An energy
sphere. I will seal the suit for you."

The ball of
light swirled and formed two tendrils, the tips of which solidified
into three-fingered pincers. She forced herself to stand still as
the pincers fastened the suit seals, then they became tenuous again
and shrank back into the sphere. With a flick of her thoughts, she
switched on the suit's air and took a deep breath as the stale
smell of canned air rushed into her nose. The two tanks on her back
contained enough liquid air to last for several hours, and the
suit's sensors fed a readout into her brain. The energy sphere
vanished, and she glanced at the main screen through the suit's
plasglass visor.

"I'm ready, I
think. But wait a minute. Isn't Elliadaren radioactive?"

"Yes, but the
suit will shield you."

"Right,
okay."

Even as she
wondered if she could trust this alien entity that claimed to be
her guide, an energy shell engulfed her, then dispersed. Her boots
sank into a thin layer of bitter, greyish snow, and she tottered,
struggling to keep her footing on a slippery surface. Legs braced,
she regained her balance and look around. A dull, almost uniformly
grey landscape stretched away to distant hills and a jagged jumble
that could have been the ruins of a city. The sun was a dim glow
beyond a dull blanket of clouds that almost blocked it out. A
bitter wind tugged at her, and her breath fogged the inside of her
visor. The sensor feed in her brain informed her that the air
outside was well below freezing, and a heating circuit activated,
sending warmth down her spine.

"Okay, I'm
here. What am I supposed to see?"

"Turn
around."

With great
care, she shuffled around, and gasped. The visor fogged, and she
tried to wipe it, cursing when she realised that the mist was on
the inside. She waited, breathing slowly, for the fog to clear. The
patches of mist shrank, and she tried to make sense of the
view.

Giant spires
of crystal thrust up from the grey snow, towering kilometres into
the air. The crystal glinted with a medley of colours, mostly soft
blue, mauve and pink with glimmers of yellow and green. The crystal
was, for the most part, clear, and the colours came from refracted
light. The faceted columns were broken, their tapering tips lying
smashed beneath the snow. The jagged, oddly-shaped mountain from
which the spires sprouted had to contain something the size of a
moon hidden under several feet of snow, and she shivered as she
stared at it.

"What is
it?"

"A ship of
sorts. It was a sentient crystalline beast capable of using the
transfer Net far more efficiently than any man-made ship."

"What's it
doing here?"

"Its master
forced it to partially enter the planet's atmosphere, and it was
employed in his work when nuclear fire razed the planet. It is the
only instance in which one such has been... killed."

"Why are you
showing it to me?"

"I will
explain that in due time. I will return you to your ship."

"Wait a
minute!" Rayne cried. "Can't I have a closer look?"

"There is
nothing more to see. The creature has been dead for fifty years. It
is frozen solid, and there is no portal through which you could
enter."

"Still, I want
a closer look." She plodded towards the mountain, the stiff, heavy
suit and slippery ice underfoot making progress difficult.