Chapter Fourteen
Over the next four hours, Tallyn put Rayne through several simulated flights, which she managed fairly well until he sprang an emergency on her, then she panicked and failed miserably. He coached her until she learnt to control her panic a little better, encouraging her with lavish praise. He was a good teacher, motivating her when she wanted to give up, until her skills improved sufficiently to satisfy him. When at last he allowed her to leave the simulator, she was tired and shaky.
The worst part was linking her cyber implant with the ship’s neural net and being bombarded with masses of information whilst in the grey no-place of the net. The scout ship normally had a crew of two, so they could fly it in shifts, but she would have no such luxury. Tallyn wanted her to sleep before she left, but a sense of urgency consumed her, and she only ate a hurried meal before insisting on going to the spaceport. Tallyn seemed to admire her resolve, but she was certain that if she delayed she would lose her nerve and not go at all.
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 guessed. She forced a smile. “Well, let’s get this show on the road then.”
“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 look.
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 reclined on 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 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, she hurtled through space at several hundred 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 sixteen 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 remai
ned 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, 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 sat 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 power, the screen filled with solid golden light. When it faded, new stars appeared.
“You used the transfer Net!” she said.
“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 adjusted the camera until a grey orb came into view on the screen. “What planet is that?”
“It is called Elliadaren.”
Rayne’s mind reeled. What was she doing at Tarke’s long-dead home world? What did it have to do with the prophecy? It made no sense.
The guide’s voice broke into her reverie. “You are distressed.”
She shook her head. “No, just tired. I’ll go and find a spacesuit, 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 coms 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 tinted 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. An 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 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. A heating unit clicked on, and the patches of mist shrank. She tried to make sense of the view.
Giant spires of crystal thrust up from the 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 metres of snow, and she shivered.
“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?” she asked.
“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 protested. “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.
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, maybe thousands. 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 pinpoint 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, a choked cry echoing in her ears. Her eyes swept over grey walls and twinkling 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 returned to the couch, 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 set aside her empty glass and returned to the dispenser for a sandwich.
“Unfortunately, I cannot delete sensations from my memories.”
She was surprised. “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 distress signal was answered.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps to see who came, or 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 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. 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. “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 shook her head. “I never want to see him again.”
“That is not true. He did not murder his people. He saved them from untold suffering. He has killed many men, it is true, but they deserved to die. As for the rest, I recommend you ask him about it. His answers, if he is truthful, may surprise you.”
“Why would he help me, anyway?”
“Look at the planet on your screen,” Endrix replied, and she gazed at the grey world. “That is his world, destroyed by an Envoy. If for no other reason, he will do it for vengeance.”
“Couldn’t you help me? Talk to him?”
“No. In this instance you do not require my aid, nor would he welcome my interference.”
She sighed, slumping. “Okay, answer this question, if you can. Why the hell are these sadistic, cannibalistic monsters called Envoys?”
“Since we have never communicated with them, we have no idea what they call themselves. My masters named them Envoys because, even in their own universe, they come from deep space, where few ever venture. They fall upon a planet broadcasting peace and love, just as an emissary would, and only when they have gained access do they show their true natures.”
“More like a Trojan Horse,” she said.
“The Trojan Horse of your history was a gift from a warring king, which turned out to be a trick. This is not an accurate description of their actions. They come as envoys, but consume their hosts.”
“Parasites.”
“In a sense.”
A short silence fell as she pondered this last bit of information, and, after a few minutes, Endrix said, “I think it is time to return you to the Cerebilus Moons, and for you to return to Atlan. Your next priority should be to seek out the Shrike. The time of the Envoy’s coming draws near.”
She stifled a yawn, clamping a hand over her mouth. “I have to sleep. I’m pooped.”
“Pooped?”
“Tired.”
“Would it help if I returned you to Atlan? My appearance may cause some consternation.”
She waved a hand. “Don’t worry about that. I’d be most grateful. I have absolutely no wish to be hooked up to that damned neural net ever again.”
“Very well.”
The crawling golden fire engulfed the screen in a solid curtain, and when it faded, Atlan’s pearly orb hung there.