Slave Empire - The Crystal Ship (13 page)

Scrysalza
described two friends who had grown so close they had meshed their
wings and become one, quite literally. This, however, did not
please the Envoys, and the parasites had forced them apart. The
Ship’s mind link was a limited one, however, and since it had left
the nebula, it had lost contact with the others and grown lonely.
Rayne shared the loneliness of the dark emptiness of space, cold
and inhospitable after Scrysalza’s warm nebula. She sent it
sympathy, and was rewarded with a flood of new thoughts, which she
sorted through.

The Ship liked
her. It found her to be friendly and sympathetic, unlike the harsh,
domineering Envoy. It had therefore decided to keep her safely away
from the Envoy, so she would not be harmed. A brief vision of the
seething rosy chamber hinted that it was far away, near the Ship’s
core, and so she was safe where she was. Rayne drew several
conclusions from this. Scrysalza was a creature with a short
attention span, one that, although it did not forget, quickly
forgave prior abuses. When Rayne had first encountered it, the
Envoy had recently hurt it, forcing it to bring him to Atlan.

That was
fading now, however. The Envoy had been dormant for many hours, and
already the Ship had forgiven him. When Rayne suggested that
Scrysalza should return to the nebula, she received only blank
fear, which told her all she needed to know. The Ship had been
trained. It knew that disobeying the Envoy would bring punishment,
and would not risk it. Its lack of initiative also warned her that
Scrysalza was not very intelligent, or if it was, its character was
so gentle it appeared to be stupid.

Either that,
or a worse possibility, that the Envoy could inflict so much pain
that to disobey him would result in the kind of suffering no
sentient being would willingly endure. She tried to insist that
Scrysalza take her to the Envoy, but received only shocked refusal.
Even reminding the Ship of why it had brought her aboard would not
sway it. It had decided that she was a pleasant companion, and
would not put her at risk.

Tarke stared
at the energy-sheathed screens as Scimarin decelerated towards
Atlan. Vidan’s concern was not without foundation, but he had been
here before, and it was possible to venture this close without
being detected. Scimarin transmitted the identity signature of an
Atlantean freighter called Parnal, and only a visual scrutiny would
reveal his true identity. The Atlanteans were distracted by recent
events, and, after a brief challenge, ignored him.

The vast fleet
that surrounded the area where the Crystal Ship had disappeared did
not bother him; Scimarin could outrun any of them with ease. What
did bother him was the growing sensation of helplessness that sat
in the pit of his stomach. The prospect that he might not be able
to find Rayne unsettled him, for although he had been in hopeless
situations more times than he cared to remember, they had never
involved the safety of anyone other than himself.

As Scimarin
drifted past the area where Shadowen and the Crystal Ship had
vanished, Tarke studied the information scrolling up on the various
holographic readouts. Nothing appeared to be unusual about the
area. No anomalies offered any explanation for the disappearance of
the two ships. He ordered Scimarin to make his deceleration as slow
as possible, allowing more time to study the area and probe it with
his impressive array of sensors. Tarke’s gloom deepened as test
after test came up blank.

A Net link,
even for a transfer, left behind a distinct signature of ionised
plasma, which could be detected even days after the link had been
broken or moved away. Such trails could be followed. He could track
a ship like that, provided he could distinguish a particular trail
from all the others, which was not easy. This area was rife with
ionised plasma, since it was heavily trafficked, yet no other
tell-tale sign revealed the method by which the Crystal Ship had
stolen Shadowen. If the Ship had acted alone, she might be safe for
now, but if the Envoy had ordered her abduction, he doubted that
she would survive unless he found her.

A readout
flashed, drawing his attention. The numbers it displayed did not
make sense at first, and he frowned. “What’s this, Scimarin?”

“
An anomaly detected in the coded yellow spectrum, a residue
of a sort, but not created by any ship I know.”

“
Where?”

“
In the centre of the suspect area, but at a distance of
several light minutes.”

Tarke tapped
the arm of his chair. “How’s that possible?”

“
It’s in another dimension. The residue is a continuous
stream, like smoke from a fire. It’s rising into this dimension
from the one below, if it can be described like that. The coded
yellow light is the result of vast amounts of dimension energy
being burnt in a void.”

Tarke
considered the readout again. “Coded yellow light is not a
recognised residue of dimension energy, only ionised plasma.”

“
In this dimension. The dimension this seems to be emanating
from must be so devoid of any matter that the ionised plasma itself
is consumed, and the coded yellow light is the result of
that.”

“
I see. Send your report back to base. Tell the scientists to
make something of it, then find a way to follow that
trail.”

The console
lights flashed, then steadied into a different pattern. Tarke
wondered why he drew such pleasure from watching those superfluous
lights, put there solely for his entertainment, to show that the
ship was doing something when it was silent.

Scimarin said,
“I have sent the data, but following the trail, as you so blithely
put it, is impossible.”

“
Why?”

“
The dimension it’s emanating from would consume me in about a
second.”

“
Then how is the Crystal Ship able to survive there, or
Shadowen?” Tarke enquired.

“
Shadowen’s fate is unknown, but the crystalline entity is
using dimension energy to build a massive shield, I would assume,
to protect itself from the ravages of the void dimension. That
would account for the trace of coded yellow light that’s filtering
back.”

The Shrike
jumped up and paced the short curving space in front of his chair.
“What about a transfer into the Crystal Ship?”

“
We don’t have its co-ordinates, and a transfer into a third
dimension might not work.”

“
What’s the possibility of it working, if we can pinpoint the
Crystal Ship’s location from the coded yellow light?”

“
Even if we could estimate the Crystal Ship’s co-ordinates,
which would be difficult, since we can’t detect this third
dimension, I can’t project such a conclusion based on non-existent
data.”

The Shrike
eyed a console. “Sometimes you can be really irritating.”

“
My personality is based on yours.”

“
And nothing is more frustrating than arguing with
oneself.”

“
Or as pointless.”

He snorted.
“Thank you for that gem of wisdom.”

“
Several Atlantean ships are becoming interested in our
extremely slow deceleration, which is almost a standstill. They’re
asking if we require assistance.”

“
Tell them we’re working on the problem. It’s not a serious
one, just a constipated computer.”

“
I am offended, Tarke. I’m not a computer.”

The Shrike
returned to his chair, rubbing the ache in his chest. “Then use
some of that vast artificial intellect and logical capacity to find
a way to reach the Crystal Ship, or at least contact Shadowen.”

Rayne paused
to rub her legs as the endless plodding took its toll. For several
hours she had walked in darkness, trudging along a sticky floor
that now curved downwards. When Scrysalza had refused to take her
to the Envoy, she had decided to go there under her own steam.
Since she knew the Envoy dwelt somewhere close to the ship’s core,
she had taken one of the tunnels out of the breathing chamber and
followed it.

Common sense,
coupled with the Ship’s alarm at her move, told her the oxygen
chamber was close to the Ship’s skin, and the tunnels would take
her to its core. Her fear seemed to have taken a back seat to
curiosity and a determination to help this massive creature. Its
gentle nature appealed to her and its previous cry for help still
echoed in her mind, along with the strong sense that it would
suffer again, soon, unless she killed the Envoy. The problem of how
she would kill the Envoy still bothered her.

The slope
steepened and became slipperier, and she skidded several times,
arms wind milling to keep her balance. When she slipped and landed
on her bottom, she stayed there and slid along, using her hands, at
first to push herself, then to slow her slide. Her alarm grew as
she gathered speed and even digging in her fingers did not help to
slow her much. The Ship told her to turn back before it was too
late, flashing the seething chamber onto her inner eye. She gritted
her teeth and strived to navigate the slope at a reasonable
speed.

The warm wind
blew from behind, pushing against her fragile hold until Rayne lost
her grip and slid wailing down the tunnel, arms and legs
outstretched in a futile bid to slow her descent. She soon became
coated in the walls’ slime, which gummed her eyes closed and filled
her mouth. The slime was tasteless, but made her stomach heave
because it was from an alien’s insides.

Several
minutes later, Rayne cannoned into a soft membrane and bounced off.
She sat for a while, gathered her wits and got her bearings as she
waited for her heart to stop trying to hammer its way out of her
chest, wiping goo off her face. For her, several minutes passed in
this timeless dimension before she realised that she had found the
rosy glow. Her triumph was mingled with trepidation as she stood up
on a level, slimy floor and approached the source. It came from a
wall several metres away, and as she got closer her curiosity
grew.

A section of
the wall was translucent, and a strange procession of glowing red
things moved within it. When there was no reaction to her presence,
she crept closer still, aware of the Ship’s sentience crouched like
a puzzled beast in the corner of her mind. When she was close
enough to touch the wall, the things within it could be seen quite
clearly. There was a river of them, flowing along a tunnel like the
one she was in, only they filled it to capacity, and they swam.
Peering into the tunnel, she made out individual, glowing bodies,
each resembling a tadpole with a lashing tail. Startled, she
stepped back.

Scrysalza’s
amusement filled her mind with bizarre laughter, which she would
not have recognised without the underlying emotion. She waited for
the Ship’s hilarity to fade before asking if the creatures in the
tunnel were parasites. The amazing fact that the Ship could feel
amusement passed her by. Scrysalza’s answer was immediate and
definite; the creatures were not parasites at all. They were, it
explained, the creatures that carried light, warmth and energy from
its outer peripheries to its core. Rayne was fascinated, and she
gazed into the tunnel, entranced.

Essentially,
the glowing red tadpoles were the ship’s blood, swimming through
its arteries and veins to deliver their burdens to its furthest
reaches. Her fascination at the alien anatomy prompted the Ship to
explain in detail, using pictures to describe the creatures’ simple
life cycle. They were not intelligent, but lived on a portion of
the goodness they carried in a symbiotic relationship. The blood
beasts congregated in vast pools to breed and rest, their dead
broken down in the Ship’s massive cesspit to provide a bacterial
broth for the generation of other life-giving components the Ship
required. From the outside world it fed on light, warmth and
various gasses as well as cosmic dust, scooping its needs from
space with its vast crystal wings like whales sieved plankton from
the sea. Without the dust, a ship would cease to grow, but only if
denied light and heat for several decades would it eventually
die.

Rayne watched
the swimming tadpoles and wondered about the other facets of the
Ship’s system that she had not yet encountered. If it was anything
like a human body, there should be creatures with more dangerous
functions living within it. The Ship assured her there were many
other creatures, some of which patrolled its tunnels hunting
dangerous intruders, but it controlled them. She asked why it had
not used these guardians to oust the parasites, but it replied that
it had tried, without success. Any attack on the parasites caused
the Envoy to punish the Ship, forcing it to leave them alone. That
made Rayne wonder how she was supposed to kill the Envoy when her
attack would undoubtedly trigger an identical response, and she did
not doubt that Scrysalza could control her as easily as it could
its guardians.

Turning away
from the transparent wall, she considered her options again. The
heat was now oppressive, and she loosened her collar, wiping sweat
from her brow. The slime on her skin had dried to a brittle coating
that rubbed off easily. To reach the core, she had to keep going
down, and she wondered how much hotter and stuffier it was going to
get. Still, she had little choice, she reflected with a sigh; she
had to find the Envoy. Ignoring the Ship’s urging to climb back up
the tunnel, she searched for another tunnel going down.

The dull red
glow from the translucent areas on the walls provided a little
light, but it still took a while to find another tunnel. When she
did, it was quite by accident, and rather fortunate, for she
doubted she would have had the courage to take such a speedy route
had she had a choice in the matter. She inadvertently stepped onto
a thin membrane that opened under her weight, sending her
plummeting downwards with a wail of shock and fear.