Slave Empire - The Crystal Ship (15 page)

Of course,
Rayne mused, she should have known that all along, but she had been
under the impression that time literally stopped in the third and
first dimensions. Not so, the Ship assured her, it merely did not
exist in a measurable form. It did not pass in a continuum, as it
did in the real universe. She pondered this for a while, fascinated
by the ramifications and possibilities this concept offered. If
they re-emerged a million years in the past, would she cease to
exist, since she had not existed then? No, the Ship replied, her
personal time would be unaffected.

In that case,
she could return to Earth two thousand years ago, and live there
amongst her people, before it grew polluted and sick. The prospect
brought a pang of sadness and longing. It was a bittersweet
possibility, for, although she could return to Earth in the days of
its beauty, she would have to leave behind her brother, her
friends, and Tarke. She would not be happy, Scrysalza told her. She
would be out of her time, and, although she would know what the
future held, she would not be able to change it. If she told people
who she was and where she was from, they would think she was insane
and lock her up. Time travel, Scrysalza explained, was extremely
dangerous, and to be avoided whenever possible.

Rayne sighed
and toyed with the frothy green moss on which she sat, trying to
ignore her gut’s hungry rumbles. She did not want to stay here for
decades, she thought, growing older while time outside stood still.
Scrysalza was stealing her life from her, and had no right to do
so. At this thought, the Ship’s warm presence fled, and she sensed
its distress as it departed. Scrysalza did not want to harm its
friend, but nor did it want to return to reality and allow the
Envoy to awaken so soon. How many times, she wondered, had the Ship
stolen time from the Envoy in this manner, earning decades of peace
while it slept.

Yet the
Envoy’s personal time must be passing, just as hers was, so why did
he not awaken? Her common sense told her the Envoy would not sleep
for decades while in the third dimension, he would awaken soon. Not
soon enough for her, however. She wanted this to be over with, to
return to her life and pursue her dreams. This was, quite
literally, a waste of time. Yet if she could not find the Envoy,
how could she awaken him? Her dread of the confrontation had now
become a strong urge to get it over with, to fight and maybe die,
anything but this useless limbo. She rose to her feet, gazing
around at the outlandish, misty scenery.

“
Scrysalza!” she bellowed. “Scrysalza! Wake up that damned
parasite! I don’t want to stay here any longer! I will kill him,
Scrysalza! I promise you, if you wake up the parasite, I’ll kill
him, and you can return to your nebula, free! Isn’t that what you
want? Aren’t you my friend?”

The wind’s
distant moaning in the tunnels answered her, and she bellowed in
another direction. “Scrysalza! I know you can hear me! Take us back
to the second dimension, now!”

The parasite will kill you,
came a
whisper in her mind. The Ship’s sentience was barely in contact, a
brush against the fringes of her mind.

He won’t,
she denied.
I will kill him; it’s what I’m here to do. It’s
my destiny. Come back,
she
pleaded
, talk to me.

The Ship’s
presence flooded back, longing for the touch of another’s mind.
Rayne welcomed it and fed it sympathy and compassion, the emotions
that seemed to nourish it, just as pain fed the Envoy’s mind. She
explained that she wanted to go home, just as Scrysalza longed to
return to its nebula, and that she had friends and family waiting,
just as the ship did.

Scrysalza
sympathised, shying away from these longings a little. They had
each other, it offered; they could comfort each other in lieu of
their kin. It was not the same, Rayne replied, they were different
species, different psyches, and besides, she needed to eat and
there was no food on the Ship. She would die soon, she told it,
unless she was returned to her world. The Ship tried to persuade
her that she could eat what it made for her, but she refused. She
wanted to kill the Envoy, or leave; that was the choice she gave
it, and it shied away from the decision.

It did not
want to lose her company, which meant so much to it after its
loneliness, and was hurt that she wished to leave. Rayne assured it
that she did not want to leave, but neither could she stay
indefinitely. She had her life to lead, and Scrysalza had its
nebula to return to, once it was free. The Ship yearned for its
home, and she used the thought of it like a carrot.

Wake up the parasite,
Rayne
urged,
then you can go home to your kin,
free forever.

Scrysalza
responded with a rush of intense sorrow that made her weep. In
reply, she fed it images of the nebula it had shown her, a warm
flux of bright stars and glowing gasses, through which crystal
ships sailed like bits of fluff on the wind, sparkling in the light
of many suns. The Ship’s sorrow turned to anguish and an intense
longing for its home.

Her blatant coercion shamed her, but her wish to help this
gentle alien entity goaded her.
Wake up
the parasite,
she insisted.
Take me to him so I can kill him; return to the
second dimension.

The Ship gave
a wordless cry of longing, and she sensed space and time warp as it
obeyed. Brilliance surrounded her, and she shut her eyes against
its blinding glare. Spots danced on her retinas when she opened
them again, and she blinked. She stood in a dim, rosy chamber
beside a sea of seething redness.

“
Collision alert.” Scimarin’s warning broke into Tarke’s
reverie, along with several alarms. The ship surged, the stars
wheeling outside as it twisted away from the massive entity that
rose into being like a whale rising from the ocean’s blue depths.
The Crystal Ship appeared like a ghost, taking form in the
blackness, solidifying into being as it broke through into the
second dimension.

The Shrike
gripped the arms of his chair as the artificial gravity responded
to the sudden appearance of a massive object so close by. The
repellers pushed the ship away from it, causing a sideways pull
that almost made him fall out of his seat. Streams of lambent light
pierced the ship’s hull and illuminated the bridge with lurid beams
of pure energy. The vast, scintillating crystal entity slid past
the screens and disappeared as Scimarin turned away, spinning
through space.

“
Stabilise!” Tarke ordered. “Re-orientate!”

Golden light
crawled over the screens as the ship used Net energy to swing to
face the Crystal Ship. The massive, sparkling creature’s weird
brilliance made him squint. Several Atlantean cruisers tumbled away
from the Ship, thrust aside by the shockwaves of its rising. Energy
shells sheathed them, and most shot away to a safe distance.
Tarke’s heart pounded from the shock of the Crystal Ship’s sudden
appearance. He sensed the beacon-like sweep of a powerful mind
reaching out to touch those around it, and slammed his shields into
place.

Its colossal
crystal wings extended, spears sliding out to form an even greater
span as it spread them in the solar winds and sailed towards Atlan.
Its size now had to be around five or six hundred thousand
kilometres across, three hundred thousand of which were its wings.
He wondered what had happened aboard it to cause it to re-emerge.
Had Rayne failed, and if so, why was she still alive? Shadowen’s
continued existence assured him of that, but the Ship’s ominous
flight towards Atlan indicated that she had not won, either.

“
The Atlantean ships are preparing to fire,” Scimarin informed
him, and he cursed.

“
Open a space line to Tallyn.”

The screen
slid from its slot with impossible torpidity, and it seemed like
minutes before the link was established and Tallyn’s saturnine face
appeared on it.

“
What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Tarke demanded.
“You can’t attack the Ship. If you do, I will
retaliate.”

Tallyn
gestured to someone off the screen. “You’ll retaliate? Who do you
think you are? You’ve got one ship, so I’d say your position is
precarious at best. She’s failed. We must defend the planet.”

“
Don’t be a fool! You can’t harm a crystal ship in space. It’s
too powerful. What do you think you can do to it? Look at it, it’s
as big as one of your moons, and it uses Net energy like the sun
produces heat. The girl’s still alive. She might still defeat the
Envoy, but your interference could jeopardise that.”

Tallyn glanced
sideways, probably at one of his screens, Tarke guessed, then faced
him again. “Can her ship contact her, find out what’s going
on?”

“
Scimarin?” Tarke addressed the console in front of
him.

“
Shadowen’s communications with her are still blocked,” the
ship replied.

Tarke said to
Tallyn, “No, we have no contact, but you’ve got to give her a
chance. You can’t harm the Ship in space anyway. It’s futile to
try. You’ll have to wait until it’s entered the atmosphere. I’d
advise you to start evacuating the population instead.”

Tallyn shook
his head. “We won’t have time to evacuate more than a
fraction.”

“
That’s better than none.”

“
How do you know the Ship can’t be destroyed in
space?”

“
Didn’t she tell you?” Tarke asked.

“
She might be wrong.”

“
I doubt it. She has an impeccable source.”

“
Endrix.” Tallyn rubbed his brow. “Very well, we’ll wait a few
hours, but no more. I have orders to try to destroy that thing
before it reaches Atlan.”

“
You can’t.” Tarke broke the link.

For several
minutes, he stared at the gargantuan entity, an impossible glass
ship sailing through space on a gust of solar wind, then addressed
Scimarin.

“
Can you transfer me aboard that thing?”

“
No. The crystalline entity is saturated with Net energy. Its
waveforms are erratic and unpredictable. I can’t match
them.”

“
There has to be a way to get aboard. I suppose you can’t get
close to it, either.”

“
No,” Scimarin replied. “It has invisible energy shields so
strong they bend light. Nothing would get close unless the entity
wanted it to.”

“
Can you contact it?”

“
I have no idea what sort of communications it uses, or what
language.”

Tarke sighed.
“Call Endrix, then. Maybe he can help. He should. He’s supposed to
be her guide. He must be hanging around here somewhere,
watching.”

Tarke sensed
the beacon of thought sweep through the ship, skip across his
shields, and vanish. In that moment, he wished he had not created
such strong mental shields, or used them to such good effect. The
mind touch, he realised, came from the Crystal Ship. Whether it was
the Envoy or the entity itself, it offered a way to communicate,
and he cursed his tardiness in realising it. All he could do was
open his mind and hope it tried again. He filled his mind with an
image of the human girl, showing his friendship towards her and his
wish to help her, and waited.

Rayne backed
away from the seething, glowing red sea. This was a far larger
chamber than the one she had been in before. The blood beasts
roiled in a veritable ocean, their lurid light filling the massive
space. The presence of the Envoy mere metres away horrified her. He
appeared to be dormant, his massive bulk, larger than four
conjoined blue whales, languishing in the red sea. The thick air
was full of mist and odours, dominated by a musky stench that was
unmistakably male.

The Envoy’s
sleek, glistening hide was stretched over a shapeless bulk, rather
like a seal, but lacking any of that creature’s charm. She could
not make out a head or tail, or even limbs. The Envoy seemed to be
a featureless slug. Other creatures crawled over him, stroked and
soothed him with long, tentacle-tipped limbs with multiple joints.
The females, she guessed. A fraction of his size, they were long
tubes of rubbery flesh sprouting spidery limbs in random places.
They also lacked features, but sucked up the blood beasts through
the open end of their tube bodies. Her hand itched for a laser, and
she wished for one with all her heart.

The gentle
touch of the Ship’s mind was puzzled by her strange thought, not
understanding the concept of a weapon. She tried to calm her
frightened thoughts, not wanting to alarm the Ship. A sound behind
her made her whirl to peer into the red dimness where tube bodies
crawled on thin limbs. Thousands of them infested the chamber,
piled atop one another in an obscene orgy of stroking, sliding
sliminess. She stood on an oasis of bare flesh, surrounded by
females.

Rayne
suppressed a shudder, noting several tunnels through which the
females crawled in and out. Some of the tunnels appeared to have
been chewed through the Ship’s flesh. She questioned it, and the
answer added to her horror. The Envoy used the Ship’s blood to
procreate, releasing sperm into the fluid in which the blood beasts
lived. The females laid their eggs in it too, and the young hatched
in the deep tunnels of the ship’s circulatory system. From there,
the young females chewed through the walls and migrated to this
chamber to lay their eggs in the fluid.

The damage
they caused hurt the Ship, but there was nothing it could do about
it. Rayne wondered how Scrysalza had become infected with the
parasites, and it explained that it had happened when it had been
young, in what it called ‘the days of its hunger’. During a rapid
growth phase in its youth, it had scooped up tonnes of cosmic dust
to feed its growing body, and, in the process, had unwittingly
consumed the hard, spore-like eggs released from dead ships the
parasites had killed.