Slave Empire - The Crystal Ship (17 page)

The Envoy
seemed to contract, his long appendages, buried deep in the Ship’s
flesh, sending a flood of pain into its highly developed nervous
system. Rayne’s suffering was nothing compared to the mind-bending
agony that suffused the Ship, and it vocalised its torment in a
huge, musical bellow that rushed through it on the warm wind of its
breath. Scrysalza’s agony transfixed Rayne, whose back arched and
limbs stiffened in helpless spasms. The Ship’s suffering seared
into every corner of her mind, burning it with a white-hot fire of
mental torment.

Luckily the
blood beasts kept Rayne’s head above the surface for the several
minutes the Ship’s agony lasted. When it ebbed, she lay gasping,
her mind scarred by the unbelievable pain that had burnt through
it. After several minutes, she rolled over and paddled for shore.
The Envoy seemed to have forgotten about her. The soldiers lay
twitching in the red sea, some sinking into it. Scrysalza had
retreated. She could not sense its mind at all, which worried her.
She was going to need help that only the Ship could provide.

Rayne pulled
herself onto the shore, breathless and shaking, her limbs as
rubbery as cooked spaghetti. The slimy fluid streamed off her,
running back into the sea. The shore seemed oddly empty, and she
realised that the females had fled into the many tunnels. The Envoy
remained acquiescent, perhaps a little sickened by the soldiers’
venom. She did not doubt that he would recover soon, however, and
his next attack would kill her. Hoping he was too distracted to
notice her, she crawled towards a tunnel.

The Envoy was
anchored in this chamber, so if she could escape it she would be
safe. She was halfway to a tunnel when a tentacle snaked around her
ankle. The Envoy dragged her backwards, and she turned to try to
prise the tentacle loose with bleeding hands. The appendage
tightened, and she gasped, receiving a wave of pleasure from the
Envoy. She opened herself to it, using his emotion to overpower her
pain, and reflecting it back at him.

The Envoy
squealed in distress, and the pain in her ankle increased, which
heightened his pleasure. The circle closed, locking her into a
destructive spiral of ever increasing mental distress. Her pain
brought him pleasure, but he had never before encountered an
empath, it seemed, for his pleasure, reflected back at him, brought
him great anguish. His only way out was to release her, but his
sadistic nature would not allow him to. His craving for the pain of
others drove him to inflict it, but his reflected pleasure could,
she sensed, destroy him.

Not fast
enough, she realised, as he dragged her towards a bunch of toothy
maws near his beached forepart. If he used them on her, she would
be dead before he came to any harm. She needed another weapon, but
the Ship did not appear to be listening. Like a beaten dog, it
cowered in a safe corner, unwilling to earn another reprimand.
Rayne called it again and again, but received only silence in
reply. The Envoy reeled her in like a fish, her struggles too puny
to bother him.

Help me,
she begged
Scrysalza.
If you want to be free, you
must help me now. Bring me a weapon, and I will defeat him.
Otherwise, he will kill me, and you will be his slave
forever.

Rayne sensed a
distant distress, as if Scrysalza heard her thoughts, but was too
afraid to act upon them. She also sensed another mind, and puzzled
at it. Someone else was involved in this weird battle, but she was
too filled with pain and the Envoy’s pleasure to perceive it
clearly. Scrysalza’s mind brushed against hers, searching for the
weapon she craved, then it was gone, flitting away from the Envoy’s
presence like a frightened deer. He had dragged her almost within
reach of the toothy maws now, and she dreaded the first touch of
their sharp fangs. The escalation of the pain-pleasure trap would
be an unbearable mind-bending experience she hoped to survive, if
she lived. Distantly, she wondered what Scrysalza had seen in her
mind, and what, if anything, it would do to save her.

Chapter Eight

Tarke glared
at the Crystal Ship, his dislike for it growing with each
unexpected blow it struck. Minutes ago, a wave of intense agony had
flooded from it, making him wince despite the strength of his
shields, which he had snapped into place at the first touch of
mental pain. It had been the same agony that had tortured his
people, so long ago. The same psychic torture had reduced them to
writhing, twitching, pain-racked creatures, beyond the aid of even
the most skilled healer. He had sensed it then, distantly, but now
he had experienced its true power. The Atlanteans would be worse
off than him. Few people possessed iron-hard mental shields like
his, cultivated and strengthened over the years. The white-hot
searing had left him shaken, but others would be stunned or
comatose from the shock.

The Crystal
Ship possessed a unique defence that would deter most enemies, if
not all, but that the Envoy had adapted to its own use, and
enjoyed. The Ship shared its pain with those around it, and any
harm done to it would be broadcast to its attackers with such
telepathic power that even one who possessed no psychic abilities
would receive it. In this case, the Envoy had inflicted the pain,
but Tarke knew that if the Atlanteans attacked the Ship, they would
share its agony and be defeated by it.

The Envoy’s
sadistic nature fed on the Ship’s pain, but more, he used it to
torture others, and fed on the psychic agony he inflicted through
the Ship. The alien’s bizarre and barbaric nature defied any to
defeat him, for his enemies brought about their own doom by harming
the Ship in which he dwelt. The Ship was his slave and his tool,
feeding him with the pain of others. The wave of agony told Tarke
that Rayne was doing something inside the Ship, and Shadowen had
reported that her biorhythms were agitated.

The space line
chimed, and he activated it. Tallyn’s pale, taut visage appeared on
it, his eyes brittle. “Any idea what the hell that was?”

“
The Crystal Ship’s defensive mechanism, activated by the
Envoy, I should imagine.”

“
That’s how it’s going to torture my people?”

He nodded.
“That’s how it tortured mine.”

Tallyn looked
haggard. “And if we attack it...”

“
We’ll all suffer.”

“
It’s diabolical.”

“
You just have to hope Rayne succeeds. If not, you’ll have to
wait until the Ship’s within Atlan’s atmosphere, then bomb
it.”

Tallyn’s
rigidly controlled expression twitched, betraying the strength of
his emotions. “If we do that, most of my people will die.”

“
As mine did. But rather a quick death than weeks of
agony.”

“
Why is it weaker in an atmosphere than it is in
space?”

Tarke
shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps its defences are weakened by its
need to keep itself from colliding with the planet’s surface. Or
maybe the Envoy’s torture prevents it from defending itself. It
might even be that it welcomes death as an escape from the pain it
suffers when the Envoy forces it to torture people. Your guess is
as good as mine.”

“
You have a lot more theories than I do. I’d like to get to
that damned Envoy and kill it. That seems to be the only way to
defeat this thing. But there’s no way to get aboard that ship, is
there?”

“
No.”

The Atlantean
commander nodded, and Tarke broke the connection. The Atlanteans’
willingness to co-operate, even to ask his advice, was a measure of
their desperation, and he pitied them. The fate his people had
suffered was something he would not wish upon his worst enemies,
and he did not consider the Atlanteans to be his enemies. As the
space line screen slid back into its slot, a voice spoke beside
him, making him start and swing around to face empty air.

“
Do not be alarmed, Shrike. My name is Endrix. I am the Golden
Child’s guide.”

Tarke’s hand
rested on the laser at his hip as he scanned the gloom. “The girl
told me about you.”

“
I know. I intended her to.”

“
I’ve been calling you for hours. Where are you?”

“
Several light minutes away. You can’t detect me.”

“
Can you get me aboard that ship?” Tarke nodded at the
crystalline entity that filled the screens with its weird
light.

“
No. Not directly. However, the Golden Child is in some
distress, and her victory is not assured. The battle has escalated
to a dangerous level, and she is in physical peril. You are her
guardian, self-appointed and predestined. It’s your task to help
her. She has begged the Ship for a weapon, and the entity now
searches for the man it saw in her mind: you.

“
In a matter of minutes, it will find you and transport you
into its central chamber, where the Envoy dwells. There you must
protect the Golden Child until the battle is won. My warning will
allow you to act swiftly upon your arrival. You will need to use
edged weapons in the battle; your laser will be useless. Compressed
light will not harm the Envoy.”

The Shrike
jumped up and strode along the short corridor to a cabin, where he
shucked his coat and donned a suit of torso armour. Yanking open a
locker, he plucked a long sword from its bracket, pocketed a number
of throwing stars and tucked several glass daggers into his belt.
After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled out a weirdly shaped weapon
with a razor edge and an arm clasp, which he slung over his
shoulder by its straps. As he closed the locker, Endrix’s voice
spoke beside him again.

“
Do not try to kill the Envoy. You cannot. All you must do is
protect the girl until she is able to defeat him. If you try to
kill him, you may doom both of you, and many others.”

Tarke took a
ration pack from a dispenser and pushed it into a pocket. “Why
don’t you help her?”

“
I cannot. I am an artificial entity trapped within a
protective shell. I have no physical form or weapons. I can form an
energy sphere, but the Envoy is immune to all forms of light
energy, including Net energy, as you call it.”

Tarke went
back to the bridge, stopping beside his chair to gaze at the
Crystal Ship. “Any other words of wisdom?”

“
Yes. You will need your mental shields. Be sure they are as
strong as you can make them. The amount of psychic energy in that
chamber would stun a normal man.”

Tarke glanced
at the empty air from which the words emanated. “Good thing I’m not
normal.”

“
Good luck.”

Tarke sensed
the sweep of the alien mind as it touched him and paused. Its
scrutiny was brief, then Scimarin’s alarms went off, and the ship’s
voice rose above them.

“
Proximity alarm. Collision avoidance in effect, brace for
lateral thrust.”

A spear of
ghostly white light lashed from the Crystal Ship, which filled the
screens, dangerously close. The light swept through Scimarin’s hull
in tangible beams of brilliance, touching him with icy tendrils
that sheathed and embraced him. He sensed himself slipping through
space and time, and braced himself for what was to come. The bridge
filled with cold white brilliance that forced him to close his
eyes.

Tallyn cursed
and jumped up, raising his voice above the hubbub of his officers’
excited exclamations. “What just happened?”

Marcon’s face
was a study of disbelief. “The Crystal Ship took the Shrike, just
like it did Rayne.”

Tallyn glared
at the screens, where he had just witnessed the lance of brilliance
reach out and draw the Shrike’s ship dangerously close to the
Crystal Ship, then release it. The black ship drifted away now, but
no one was aboard it anymore. The vast crystalline entity sailed
on, unperturbed.

“
Why?”

Marcon shook
his head. “I couldn’t begin to imagine.”

“
I don’t like this,” Tallyn muttered. “Not one little
bit.”

“
I’m sure the Shrike doesn’t either.”

Tarke
staggered as the brilliance released him, blinking away the spots
on his retinas. A powerful psychic storm gripped his skull in a
crushing bombardment that made him grimace. His mental shields gave
slightly under the barrage, and he struggled to strengthen them
further, raising a hand to his head as pain lanced through his
skull. After a few seconds he brought it under control, adjusting
his various mind shields to block out the particular frequency of
psychic torture that was being broadcast so powerfully.

A terrible
soup of pain-pleasure seeped into his mind, enough to incapacitate
a normal man. Tarke had experienced plenty of pain, however, and
the pleasure did not bother him, although he found the mixture
strange and unsettling. He thrust the nagging intrusion from the
forefront of his mind and turned his attention to the seething red
sea and the massive monster that wallowed in it.

The Envoy, he
guessed, struck by its ugliness and size. The glowing sea filled
the vast chamber with lurid light that cast a fuzzy haze over
everything. The girl lay nearby, caught by a tendril as thick as
his wrist. She was being dragged towards a clump of tubes tipped
with toothy mouths, the nearest almost nipping at her shoes. He
strode towards her, still absorbing the details of the weird
environment. The gravity was almost normal for him, indicating that
the Ship had a dense core, and the humid air had little oxygen. He
slipped, and walked more cautiously on the slimy floor.