Slave Empire - Prophecy (26 page)

After sinking
waist deep into drifts twice, she reached the edge of one of the
broken spires and touched the frigid crystal. Aware that its razor
edges could rip her suit, she moved around it and slogged towards
the mountain. It rose high above her in a vaguely dome-like curve,
its under parts either flattened or forced into the ground by the
force of its impact or its sheer weight. Certainly something so
massive and constructed largely of crystal had to be extremely
heavy. Whatever shape it had had when alive was hard to determine
now. Decades of atrophy had caused it to sink and buckle, and
summer thaws had allowed parts to rot. Something told her it had
been much larger when it had been alive, and even now, it was so
huge that to view it in its entirety was impossible unless she
could hover a couple of kilometres in the air.

Radiating
lines of buried crystal columns hinted at a vast array of wing-like
structures whose purpose she could only guess at. The columns
stretched away into the distance, swallowed by snow and mist, but
she estimated that they must be hundreds of kilometres long. She
climbed up the steeply sloping snow banked against the sides of the
mountain, her legs aching by the time she reached an area where it
appeared to be thinner.

After resting
for a while, she scraped the snow away, hoping to dig through to
the skin of this amazing space beast. The snow covering it was a
metre deep, and she was sweating by the time her glove scraped
crystal. Her suit link warned her that the humidity within it was
becoming dangerous, and it vented clouds of steam. Cursing it, she
knelt to peer into the hole, where crystal glinted in the grey
depths. As her guide had said, there was little to see, and finding
a way in would take months and a great deal of machinery. She sat
back with a sigh, her visor fogging.

"Okay, you
win. Take me back."

The transfer
Net deposited her in the scout ship, and, with the help of another
energy sphere, she stripped off the suit, eager to quit its
sauna-like confines. Free of it, she revelled in the sweet cool air
and towelled the moisture from her face. As her damp clothes dried,
she sat on the couch and stared at the grey planet on the main
screen.

"What happened
to Elliadaren?"

"It was the
first, and only planet in this galaxy to be attacked by an
Envoy."

She sighed.
The voice seemed clearer now. Evidently the guide ship had found a
more suitable waveform to transmit on. "What's an Envoy?"

"That is a
long and complicated narrative."

"I'm all
ears." She rose and fetched a cool drink from the refreshment
dispenser, then settled back on the couch.

"You are
tired. You should sleep."

Rayne yawned
and put the glass down before it slipped from her fingers. The
black abyss of sleep dragged her into its dark embrace, and she
fought against it with every iota of her will.

"Is it safe?"
she mumbled.

"I will guard
you."

Her eyes slammed shut, and she sank into darkness.
She floated in space, stars glinting in the
distance. Within its utter, frigid silence she was at peace,
watching the tiny specks of light with god-like knowing. The
trailing arm of a spiral galaxy embraced her in a tenuous clasp of
tiny suns. It was her galaxy, she realised, and she could even
pin-point the brittle glimmer of the yellow star that was Earth's,
insignificant against the backdrop of a million greater suns. She
could almost reach out and touch it with a celestial hand of pure
thought. Utterly peaceful, perfectly still, the endless universe
filled her spirit with an all-encompassing glory, a masterful
creation that moved to the ageless harmony of a silent song of
invisible waves and speeding light.

A wave
trembled and shattered on an imperceptible barrier that cut through
the void. A portal tore into a dimension of golden light, and a
sparkling stranger birthed itself into the universe. Golden
energies crawled over and through it, dispersing. A crystal ship
sailed into the darkness, gathered the light of a billion stars and
harnessed it.

The ship
radiated shafts of lambent energy. Light shattered in its facets
and danced like shining water along vast butterfly wings of
delicate filigree. Never had she seen anything so utterly
indescribable, for there were no words to define its awesome power
and grace. Its wings seemed to harness solar winds, and she turned
to follow its trajectory.

It sailed
towards a blue and white globe orbiting a yellow dwarf star. Her
heart ached, but the oddly-shaped landmasses and two moons told her
that this was not Earth. Time seemed to speed up, and within
moments it reached the planet’s atmosphere and the tips of several
immense spines entered it, fire sprouting from their edges. The
ship dwarfed the moons, its wings almost spanning the gap between
them and the planet.

Her view
shrank until the world’s sunlit surface replaced the universe. She
looked down on forests and oceans, white beaches and rolling
grasslands. Networks of simple dwellings patterned the emerald
green around tall cities, and ships sailed the blue depths between
floating communities. The crystal ship descended until its wings
almost touched the ground, and the strange envoy fascinated the
populace.

The space
creature reached out to the people of Elliadaren and touched them
with a powerful telepathic message that at first brought intense
joy. Then the crystal light darkened, and she sensed the malice of
those who dwelt within this intelligent, harmless creature and
controlled it. Their malevolence used the ship's vast power to turn
joy into the thing those who commanded it sought, and fed off.
Pain. Millions of people cried out in agony and fell to their
knees, bowed under the cruel force of a telepathic suffering too
vast to be denied, and the beings within the ship revelled in their
torment and drank it in. The pain flooded through Rayne, filling
every part of her being with anguish that made her long for
death.

Rayne sat up
with a gasp, a choked cry echoing in her ears. Her eyes swept over
dull walls and winking consoles as the terror drained away. She
waited until her hammering heart slowed, then went to the dispenser
and poured another drink, casting a dark glance over her shoulder
at the main screen with its view of the grey world.

"Are you still
there? You'd better be."

"Of
course."

She sank back
onto the couch with a sigh, sipping the drink. "Do you have a
name?"

"Not really.
My creators imbued me with several of their personalities combined,
so I can lay claim to no one name. However, if you wish an
appellation with which to refer to me, you may call me Endrix."

"What does
that mean?"

"Nothing, it
is a name my masters used to use."

"And just
exactly who are your masters?" She held up a hand. "No, forget that
for now. What I meant to ask was, what happened to Elliadaren? The
dream didn't explain everything. Where did the Envoy come
from?"

"I do not know
for certain, but I suspect another universe, since I have never
encountered anything else like it in this one."

Rayne refused
to be side-tracked by that statement's insinuation that Endrix had
explored the entire universe. Sticking to the subject, she asked,
"And these creatures who lived inside the Envoy? What were
they?"

"No, you
misunderstand. The crystalline creature was not the Envoy, the
being it carried was."

"Ah. There was
just one on board?"

"No. From what
I could learn of their society during the ship's flight here, they
are a form of hive creature, but ruled by a male. There were about
fifteen thousand creatures on the Crystal Ship, and the dominant
male was the Envoy. I will not detail their reproductive cycle
-"

"Please
don't," she muttered.

"But their
society was primitive and cannibalistic. What they did to each
other, however, pales into insignificance when compared to the
atrocities they have visited upon other intelligent beings, in
particular the crystal ships. From studying this one's metabolism,
I deduced that the ships usually live in a gaseous nebula, where
they feed on gas and sunlight.

"They are
incapable of landing on a planet, although they can hover, as you
saw. But their structure is too massive and delicate - if you will
forgive the contradiction - to withstand gravity. They are deep
space creatures, and utterly harmless unless harnessed by an Envoy.
What you experienced while asleep was not a dream, but a segment of
my memory broadcast into your brain. You woke yourself before the
end, however."

"It was
painful," she said, setting aside her empty glass and returning to
the dispenser for a sandwich.

"Unfortunately, I cannot delete sensations from my memories."

She turned in
surprise. "You felt that pain?"

"I experienced
the same sensations as the populace, yes, but my brain does not
perceive pain as you do."

"So, just tell
me what happened next, but I think I know." She perched on the edge
of the couch and nibbled the sandwich. "A ship called Night Hawk
arrived in orbit, and when he saw what was going on, he dropped a
nuclear arsenal - which I have no idea how he had - then left when
the Atlanteans arrived."

"Not exactly.
Elliadaren suffered for seventeen days before that ship arrived,
and all the others that were orbiting it crashed on the
surface."

"Why?"

"The pain
drove them insane. They either lost control of their ships or
deliberately crashed them to escape the suffering. Ultimately, they
would have died of dehydration or shock, anyway. Elliadaren was not
a busy planet. Ships came here rarely. Only a few commercial
traders a year. Night Hawk did not go into orbit. If he had, he
would have succumbed too, but even at the distance where he
stopped, the pain must have been bad. He watched the planet for two
days, and I understood his anguish, for he was Antian."

"How do you
know all this?" Rayne waved the sandwich. "Did you read his
mind?"

"Yes. He was a
smuggler, carrying a cargo of nuclear warheads when he decided to
return to his home world, since he was passing close by. He had not
intended to stay, but when he saw what was happening, he eventually
did the only thing he could, and used the Net to transfer his cargo
to the surface, where he triggered it. Then he waited for over a
month until the planet's light speed distress signal was
answered."

"Why?"

"Perhaps to
see who came, or maybe to mourn his people. I did not pry into his
thoughts after he set off the bombs."

She finished
the sandwich and rose to fetch another. "So the Antians didn't
possess Net technology?"

"No. They
preferred culture and religion. They had no wish to leave their
world."

"The pilot of
Night Hawk, did you learn his true name?"

"I did not pry
deeply into his mind. He was able to shield his thoughts quite
well, but I sensed a great deal of suffering there, not only
because of his world's fate. Now he calls himself the Shrike, as
you know."

She frowned.
"Have you been prying into my mind as well?"

"A
little."

"Why didn't
you do something to help them?"

"I could not.
I have no weapons."

"Presumably
this all has something to do with the prophecy?" Rayne asked.

"Yes. Unless
you stop it, an Envoy will destroy Atlan."

"Now how the
hell do you know that?" she demanded. "And what am I supposed to do
about it?"

"My masters
gave the prophecy to the Atlanteans. My masters travelled between
the universes, and encountered the Envoys."

"And who gave
it to the Draycons?"

"No one. They
learnt of the prophecy and knew that if Atlan fell, they would be
able to take over, so they made up a prophecy of their own. They
are deluding themselves, however, for the Envoys have no interest
in them, and will destroy them too."

Rayne put down
the half-eaten sandwich and rubbed her face, trying to assimilate
all this astounding information. Fatigue made her eyelids droop,
and her brain laboured to absorb everything. "Okay, so what am I
supposed to do about this Envoy?"

"I am not
certain, but my masters claimed that one such as you could stop
it."

"By warning
the Atlanteans?"

"No. I, or my
masters, could have done that. The Atlanteans will be helpless to
prevent the next crystal ship from entering their atmosphere. Their
weapons will be useless against it in space, and once in the
atmosphere, anything powerful enough to destroy the ship will also
wipe out the population, just like on Elliadaren."

"So what's so
special about me?" she asked, almost dreading the answer.

"I do not
know," Endrix replied.

"Well, that's
a first. All right, tell me about your masters. Do I get to meet
them?"

"No. That is a
long and even more complicated tale. If you wish to hear it, I
recommend we travel to my masters' world. I do not believe you
should attempt that now, in this ship, however. I will return you
to the Cerebilus Moons, then you can return to Atlan. But I must
urge you to do something to arm yourself for your coming conflict
with the Envoy."

"What?"

"Seek out the
Shrike and befriend him. Only he can provide you with a ship that
will be able to take you where you need to go and help you in your
battle with the Envoy."

Rayne sat bolt
upright, her fatigue banished. "Are you nuts? He's a damned slaver!
A murderer! An outlaw! He'll never help me, and he's..."

"He has
already helped you, and he will again, if you are pleasant to
him."

"Pleasant..."
She scowled. "I never want to see him again."