Slave Empire III - The Shrike (31 page)

“Bring us two
glasses of
drell
and the blusher,” he ordered.

The slave
scuttled away, and Gromall beamed at the Shrike. “If you see
anything you like, feel free to make an offer. Everything’s for
sale.”

“Even the
clients?”

“Except the
clients,” the slaver said. “Congratulations on your marriage, by
the way. The Golden Child, no less! But of course, you had to make
a prominent marriage. I’m surprised to see you back dealing again
so soon. I thought you’d still be making the most of her.”
Gromall’s elbow jabbed in Tarke’s direction, but he knew better
than to make contact. “I have a number of excellent sex slaves who
would do a wonderful job of keeping her happy while you’re away on
business. Fifty thousand regals for the best, and I’ll throw in a
sterilisation for free, so you can be sure anything she produces is
yours.”

Tarke sighed.
“Get on with it, Gromall. I don’t have all day.”

The slaver
clapped, and the serving slave sprinted back, a grav-tray following
him and a young man at his heels. The blond youth was pretty, in a
feminine way, and obviously cowed. Gromall handed Tarke a glass of
drell
.

“To business,
long may it be profitable.” The slaver raised his glass.

Tarke pressed
the rim of his glass to the mask’s aperture, which slid open to
admit the juice, channelling it into two evaporators next to the
air intakes. He never ingested anything a slaver handed him.
Gromall put down his glass, gripped the boy’s lead chain and
dragged him closer.

“Look at this.”
He slapped the youth’s face with a shocking report that made Tarke
jump. The boy’s cheek blossomed bright pink, and Gromall
glugged.

“See? Isn’t
that fun? He’s a real hit at parties. Get it? It works all over
him, too, look -”

“I’ve seen
enough,” Tarke said. “How much do you want?”

“Two hundred
and fifty thousand. He’s a speciality slave, very rare.”

“Two hundred
thousand.”

Gromall
harrumphed. “That’s a paltry sum, Shrike. He’s worth three hundred
thousand, easy.”

“Then sell him
to someone else.” Tarke turned away, unable to stomach the
desperate pleading in the boy’s eyes.

Tarke
.
Scimarin’s voice spoke through the Shrike’s implant, and he held up
a hand to stem Gromall’s reply.

What is
it?

A contact
request from Atlan, marked urgent.

Commander
Tallyn?

No, one of
the Council members, named Darvan,
Scimarin replied.

Tarke said to
Gromall, “I need a private room to accept a space line call.”

“Of course,
follow me.” The slaver headed across the room. “The boy?”

“Fine, I’ll
take him, and the other boys and girls. Put them with the
others.”

Gromall beamed
and showed him into a side room, and the door slid shut. Tarke
ordered Scimarin to relay the call and settled on a bright green
comfy chair as a space line screen slid from its slot. An elderly,
high-caste Atlantean appeared on it, his wrinkled neck pinched by a
stiff, ornate collar. His black eyes glittered and his copper-hued
skin gleamed against a backdrop of purple curtains. He looked
irritable, as if he had been waiting for some time, and
straightened, tugging at his royal blue robe.

“Shrike.”

“Councillor
Darvan. To what do I owe this honour?”

“We have your
wife.”

Tarke’s heart
thudded. “Do you now? Can you prove it?”

Darvan nodded
to someone off screen, and a small picture appeared in the crystal
beside him. It showed Rayne lying on a bed in a plain white room,
apparently asleep.

The Shrike
leant forward to peer at it, and then sat back. “Looks like you
tapped the security camera at her accommodations. She’s visiting
her brother, as I’m sure you know.”

“I assure you,
she’s in our custody.”

“Well now,”
Tarke said, “let’s say that I believe you. What do you intend to do
with her? You know you won’t get my image from her memory.”

“Not with a
telepathic probe, no, but there are other options. You brainwashed
her into marrying you, and we won’t tolerate it. The priesthood
wants her on Atlan. You’ll never see her again.”

“So you’ve
locked her up?” Tarke asked. “What crime has she committed?”

“She’s not a
prisoner.”

“If she can’t
leave, she’s a prisoner.”

“She’s where
she belongs,” Darvan said. “Once we’ve undone what you did to her,
she’ll realise that you’re a slaver who took her against her will.
Then I’m sure she’ll be happy to describe you.”

“So, you intend
to brainwash her.”

“You’re the one
who brainwashed her! We’ve saved her from you. And if you attack a
single Atlantean planet, or any of our allies, we will have to
speed up the process, and that means using drugs and hypnosis. You
can’t free her, either. She’s at a secure facility. It’s in an
oscillating -”

“Stress shield.
Yeah, yeah, I get it. You’re deluding yourself, though, if you
think you can make her betray me. It’s not going to happen. She
proved her loyalty last time.” Tarke pretended to sip his drink.
“So I’m not bothered. She was just a trophy, and we weren’t getting
along too well, anyhow. Now she’s your trophy. Keep her. Anything
else?”

Darvan frowned.
“So your offer to give yourself up last time was a lie? You would
have given us another decoy.”

“Of course. Do
I look stupid to you?” Tarke waved his drink. “Don’t answer that. I
was protecting my identity. Now I know you won’t succeed, so do
your damnedest.”

“Oh, I assure
you, we will.” Darvan’s eyes narrowed. “You’re supposed to be her
guardian. You helped her to fulfil the prophecy and took her to the
Crystal Ship so it could heal her, and now you expect me to believe
she means nothing to you?”

“Why do you
care? I didn’t want the prophecy coming true. You think I wanted to
have to deal with the damned Draycons? They’d have made my life a
misery. You lot, on the other hand, are such a namby-pamby bunch
you’re a pleasure to have as enemies. As for reviving her, well
hell, she’s my wife, and she wasn’t much good to me in the state
she was in. I’m not a sick shit like you.”

Darvan
glowered. “She’ll tell us what we want to know. Your days are
numbered, Shrike.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t
say that. My methods are foolproof, even against a bunch of fools
like your Council of Elders. Council of Senile Old Farts is more
like it. She’ll take my identity to her grave, but remember, I
swore a blood oath to avenge her, so if she dies Atlan will
pay.”

“We have no
intention of harming her.”

Tarke shrugged.
“Good. Now, if that’s it, I have business to attend to.”

“You’re going
to pay for what you did to her, you -”

Tarke
disconnected the space line, which faded to grey and slid back into
its slot. As soon as it vanished, he jumped up.
Scimarin,
transfer me aboard.

The Net shell
dispersed on the bridge, and he unclipped the mask to throw it down
on the pilot’s seat, running his hands through his hair. “Those
bastards
just won’t quit!”

“Something’s
happened?” Scimarin asked.

“They’ve taken
Rayne again.” Tarke paced up and down. “They’re going to try to
brainwash her.”

“There will be
a public outcry -”

“No, they’re
covering it up. The priesthood has given its blessing because she
disgraced herself by marrying me. They think they can make her
betray me.”

“Shadowen will
transfer her out.”

“Darvan said
she’s inside a random-pattern stress shield. If that’s true...” He
stopped and banged the console. “Contact Shadowen; I want a
report.”

A few seconds
ticked past, and then Scimarin said, “He has detected no
fluctuations in her biorhythms that indicate distress. He is in
geosynchronous orbit over her location. She is inside a fluctuating
stress shield, and appears to be asleep.”

“Damn it!”
Tarke leant on the console and bowed his head. “It was another
trap.”

“What will you
do?”

“Get her back,
of course.” Tarke raised his head and stared at the stars. “Tell
Shadowen to meet me at the Serian Stones. Go there now.”

The ship
undocked with a clunk and shudder and the stars outside wheeled as
it turned away from the space station. “Tarke -”

“You’re to tell
no one, especially Vidan.”

“This is
dangerous.”

“That’s called
pointing out the obvious, Scimarin.”

“If you’re
captured -”

“Enough! Just
take me to the Serian Stones.”

Tarke sank onto
the pilot’s chair and stared out at the stars beyond the crawling
tongues of Net energy. His heart still pounded and his throat was
tight. Judging by her image in the space line feed, Rayne had been
drugged. He had known that becoming his wife would put her in
danger, but had not thought it would be this bad, especially from
Atlan. She had imagined herself safe despite his warning. Just
because they now knew they could not get his image by probing her
mind, however, did not mean the Atlanteans would not try some other
underhand tactic. He had suspected that her brother’s accident had
been arranged, so she would rush to his side. Now he was sure of
it. Foolish, foolish girl. She did not understand how badly the
Atlantean Council of Elders wanted his head on a plate, and she was
the perfect bait. It would not risk her life again, he was sure,
but locking her up for the rest of it was almost as bad. The
Atlanteans would most likely feed her drugs to keep her docile, and
use hypnosis to try to brainwash her even if Tarke did not order
his warships to attack their planets.

The Atlantean
leadership was courting disaster, but they did not know it; they
did not understand how his empire worked. Their numerous attempts
to capture and execute him proved that they thought that once he
was dead his empire would just fall apart, since he had no
successor. That would have been true, had he been a slaver who paid
his captains to work for him. The Atlanteans had used the tactic
successfully on three slaver lords, each with a fleet of armed
ships that had disbanded when Atlan had executed its leader. Cut
off the head of the snake, and the body dies. It was a logical and
proven method of dealing with criminal empires large and small. The
Slave Empire, too, would collapse if he died, but not before it had
exacted the most terrible retribution. He did not consider it to be
his empire; the ex-slaves had built it; he only protected and led
it.

Imprisoning
Rayne achieved two important goals for the Council, over and above
the possibility that they could make her betray him. It ensured the
Golden Child no longer associated with Atlan’s arch enemy and
besmirched her good name by being the wife of a slaver lord, and it
demonstrated its power to take away what was his. The Council
members would, in all likelihood, tell the populace that Rayne had
returned of her own free will, to escape the depravities of her
slaver husband, and that he had abused her and forced her to marry
him. That would restore her to her former state of grace in the
eyes of the priesthood and the people, which he knew they longed to
do. It did not sit well with them that Rayne had betrayed them, in
effect, by marrying their enemy.

Last, but not
least, they hoped he would try to free her, so they would have a
chance to capture him. They would expect him to come to Atlan with
at least some warships, and probably had a fair portion of their
fleet waiting in orbit. Any real slaver lord in this situation
would send an assault force to try to free her, if, indeed, he
tried at all, since few would have the courage to take on the
Atlanteans. Sabre rattling would not persuade them to hand her
back, either, since they had already countered that with the threat
of drugs and hypnosis if his fleet attacked their planets. He hoped
he had convinced Darvan that he did not want her back; it might
keep her safe for a while. He intended to get her back quietly,
with minimal bloodshed.

The Shrike used
a pair of magnifiers to study the luxury complex from a
neighbouring knoll. Reaching this point had been easy. Shadowen had
brought him to Atlan unchallenged, since he was Rayne’s ship and
had been parked in orbit previously. If the Atlanteans wondered
where he had gone to, they gave no sign of it, and they did not try
to communicate with unpiloted ships, apparently. They had not even
scanned him. Locating the complex where Rayne was held had been
simple with Shadowen’s bio-link, and Tarke had transferred to
within a kilometre of it.

The graceful
white villa stood in a fairly large clearing, surrounded by lawns,
pools and hedges, and the oscillating stress shield formed a faint,
shimmering blue dome over it in the moonlight. The mask gave him
night vision, and he checked his equipment one last time. A laser
pistol was strapped to each thigh, space armour clad his torso, and
four daggers rode in his belt alongside his medical kit, a decoder,
ten shock grenades and a dozen power packs. The moon was almost at
its zenith, shining through Atlan’s endless clouds, and dawn was
four hours away.

Tarke moved
around the knoll and sprinted for the nearest hedge, dodging from
bush to hedge across the garden. Shadowen had scanned the complex
and located ten guards, all of whom he could avoid except for the
two outside Rayne’s room. The rest patrolled the villa and grounds.
Arriving at the stress shield, he hunted up and down it for a
portal. After five minutes of fruitless searching, he concluded
that the Atlanteans had taken the portal primer with them, so
would-be rescuers could not use it. He contacted Shadowen and told
him to transfer down the portal primer he had brought with him. It
appeared a few metres away in a flash of golden radiance, and he
crouched behind a bush for a while, just in case a guard had seen
the light. When he was sure no one was coming, he approached the
stress shield again.