Slave Empire III - The Shrike (32 page)

The portal
primer was a collapsible, flexible length of terrium-drathin
reflective alloy with tiny circulators around its edge, which
reversed the charge of the air molecules in the shield, forming a
gap. The domed stress shield was emitted by polarity generators at
its base and a disc-shaped one on an anti-gravity unit above the
villa, and a confinement field shaped it. He pulled the portal
primer open, and it expanded to a metre-wide circle. Tarke placed
it on the shield and waited while the circulators picked up the
compressed, stressed air molecules’ frequency and circulated them.
The shield inside the circle grew weaker, then flickered out. The
rest of the shield held the portal in place, and he stepped through
it, leaving it there for his exit. A portal was far more difficult
to set up from the inside, where the shield was concave. Reaching
the back door, he pressed a decoder to the lock and within seconds
its light turned green. He stepped into a dark interior and walked
along a corridor to a tastefully furnished lounge with
floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the garden. Shadowen gave
him directions via his implant, guiding him to a door at the far
end of the lounge, where two helmeted, armour-clad guards armed
with laser cannons stood. They appeared to be alert, and he drew a
laser with a soft snick. Luckily, he was a crack shot.

The first guard
died with a choked gurgle as the laser beam sliced through his
neck, and the second collapsed as he raised his weapon, his throat
pierced. Tarke trotted across the lounge and pressed the decoder to
the door lock, which clicked an instant later. All he had to do now
was avoid the two guards who patrolled inside the villa and take
Rayne outside where Shadowen could transfer them. It seemed too
easy, but then, the Council would not expect him to come to rescue
her himself, alone. They probably did not expect him to try
anything at all, after his performance for Darvan. The door slid
aside to reveal a pale, dimly lighted room, and he strode over to
the bed at the far side of it, where his wife lay on pale silk
sheets, clad in a white nightgown.

Holstering the
laser, he sat beside her and checked the pulse in her neck, which
was slow and strong. Pulling off his right glove, he ran his
fingers down her cheek, then leant forward. “Rayne. Wake up.”

Her lack of
response made his throat close and his heart pound. It brought back
painful memories of sitting beside her and holding her hand every
day over the course of her five-year coma. He picked up her hand
and rubbed it, pinching her skin, but whatever drug they had given
her was potent. He checked the position of the guards with
Shadowen, then bent and scooped Rayne up, cradling her against his
chest.

Tarke,
Shadowen said in his mind,
there are two men in the lounge now,
no, three... four… five. I don’t know where they’re coming from.
Ten of them now. Is there another exit?

The Shrike
scanned the windowless room, tension clenching his gut. Of course
there was no other exit. The soldiers must have been hidden in a
shielded basement, so Shadowen’s scanners could not detect them.
The Atlanteans had set a sophisticated trap, which meant they had
been planning this for some time. It surprised him somewhat that
they would go to such lengths to catch a man who was unlikely to be
the Shrike. Unless they were merely ensuring he could not free her,
but then, they could have kept her in a more secure location. The
fact that they had made it easy for him to reach her indicated that
they wanted to capture her would-be rescuers. Perhaps they just
wanted to humiliate him with his failure and execute his men.

Tarke lowered
Rayne onto the bed and sat beside her again. At least the
Atlanteans would have no reason to imprison her once he was dead.
She would regain her freedom when his fleet arrived a few hours
after Scimarin self-destructed, following his execution. There was
no way he could have freed her, he realised now. Atlan had made
sure of it. Even a sizeable strike force would have failed, for
there were more than a hundred warships in orbit. If he had waited
for their vigilance to wane and the warships to leave, they would
have moved her to an impregnable location. He would have had to
start a war to save her from the Atlanteans’ abuse, and, even then,
they would have had time to do some damage. He could not allow
that. They had forced him to choose between the lives and freedom
of millions of ex-slaves and the girl he loved, and his attempt to
save both had failed.

Tarke could not
ask his people to lay down their lives to free her, and nor did he
want to live without her. That was why he had chosen to come here
himself, to free her or die trying. Self-reliance had always been
his credo, but he knew his people would have tried to save her
without him asking them to, at a terrible cost in lives. He could
not prevent them taking revenge, however. Executing him would be
the worst mistake Atlan ever made, and its last. The Slave Empire
would destroy the Atlantean Empire, and be destroyed in turn. A few
ships might survive, and maybe continue his legacy.

Perhaps his
only hope now was to pretend to be the Shrike’s soldier, although
the prospect repelled him. Or he could try to fight his way out,
with Shadowen’s help. He was well armed and armoured, and it held
more appeal than removing his mask and trying to pass himself off
as a soldier slave. That would only work until they found his
discarded mask. If Rayne woke in a confused state she might
identify him. She would call him by his true name, though, which
the Atlanteans did not know. Still, they would know from her
thoughts if they had a telepath nearby and allowed her to wake with
Tarke beside her. There were so many possibilities, all fraught
with peril. The prospect of being manhandled by soldiers and
possibly tortured, then executed for being the Shrike’s agent held
the least appeal. With Shadowen to back him up, he could try to
fight his way out. They would not be expecting that, and, if it
failed and he survived, he could still try the other options. In
any event, his death was a certainty.

Shadowen,
get down here,
he ordered.

Tarke took hold
of Rayne’s hand and clasped it to his chest, a lump of sadness
clogging his throat. He had wanted to share so much with her, but
instead her glimpse of his past had driven her away, straight into
the clutches of his enemies. His refusal to tell her the truth had
made her run from him last time, and now revealing it had had the
same effect. He was damned if he did and damned if he did not, just
as Vidan had said. Not that he blamed her in the least. Rayne was a
runner; that was how she dealt with her fears. He remembered the
first time he had seen her, racing along a filthy street on her
dying world, dodging rusty wrecks, her hair streaming out behind
her. The sight of the men chasing her had angered him, and he had
almost ordered Shadowen to target them.

The Atlanteans’
presence and the spy-cam that followed her had made him pause to
consider the wisdom of that action, and he had also wanted to
intervene personally. He had wanted her to know that someone had
helped her. That someone cared. The universe was rife with cruel,
uncaring people, and he was not one of them. It had not worked,
however. The despair and terror in her eyes when she had looked at
him had appalled him. He had intended to take her from her dying
world, or, at least, give her the option. He had already summoned a
cruiser with decontamination facilities when the Atlanteans had
picked her up, and then he had thought she would be better off with
them.

Vengeance’s
action had surprised him; the Atlanteans were not known for their
helpfulness when it came to doomed civilisations on dying planets.
They had a non-interference policy. All they had ever done for
Earth was protect it from slavers like the Draycons, although some
had probably slipped in and stolen a few humans from time to time.
He had only found out about Earth a few days earlier, since it was
deep in Atlantean territory, beyond their home world, where he
never went. Had he found out sooner, he would have been able to
save more, but by the time he got there, the survivors were already
doomed, according to his scans. Only Rayne and her brother had been
healthy.

Now he would
pay the price for the subterfuge that had been necessary to save
slaves, and for ending Elliadaren’s torment. Just when he might
have found the happiness he had not believed possible, his life was
over. Then again, she was better off without him. He bent and
kissed her brow.

“Goodbye, my
reyanne
,” he whispered. “I love you.”

The door burst
open and soldiers boiled in. Tarke shoved Rayne off the far side of
the bed, where its bulk would protect her, then threw himself
sideways, drawing his weapons. Laser fire webbed the room with blue
brilliance and filled the air with buzzing hums, and three soldiers
fell with holes in their necks. They, too, wore armour and helmets,
and he aimed for their necks and legs.

“Don’t kill
him!” someone shouted.

Laser shots
cracked into the walls and floor beside him, and a jolt in his
shoulder preceded a lance of pain, but adrenalin dulled it. It
would take Shadowen at least ten minutes to descend through the
atmosphere, and he cursed, but he could hardly have brought him
beforehand. He was a little bit big to hide behind a bush. The only
furniture in the room was the bed, and he could not use it for
cover without endangering Rayne. He rolled across the floor, firing
at the soldiers who poured into the room and spread out, and
another shot hit his leg as a third tore into his forearm. His hand
went numb and the laser clattered to the floor. He kept firing with
his remaining weapon until it ran out of power, and he could not
reload with only one hand. Tarke swore and dropped it, groped on
his belt for a shock grenade and hurled it at the soldiers. Most
leapt aside to avoid the flash of blinding light and deafening
concussion, which his mask filtered out, but one man went down. The
rest charged him, and something cracked into his skullcap, making
stars dance in his eyes. Boots thudded into his ribs and hands
gripped his arms, pinning them. Another boot cracked against the
side of his head, and everything went black.

Shouts from the
garden drew Sergeant Brammel’s attention from the masked man who
lay on the floor, trussed and unconscious. He ran to the back door
and stepped out, glancing around, then up. A pitch-black spaceship
descended through the clouds, the speed of her fall leaving a hole
in them. Hatches slid open in her sleek hull and glowing laser
cannons emerged from hidden compartments, aimed at the villa. The
hawk-like silver emblems on her flanks left him in no doubt as to
her hostility. She bounced on her anti-gravity, leaving a
ship-shaped depression in the ground, and her nose dipped as she
accelerated towards the villa.

“Prepare to
transfer to Vengeance,” Brammel bellowed over his shoulder.

The black ship
opened fire, and a line of explosions tore into the ground towards
him as brilliant blue beams shot from her forward laser cannons.
Brammel ducked into the house as the lasers hit the stress shield,
which shredded them. It would not hold for long against a warship’s
cannons, though. Already it blazed, approaching overload under the
fierce barrage. Most of his soldiers were already on the transfer
pad in the lounge. The masked man lay at their feet and one carried
the girl. Brammel joined them and deactivated the stress shield,
and the golden haze of a transfer shell engulfed them.

Tallyn
approached the group of soldiers that stepped off the transfer pad
in docking bay twelve. The men removed their helmets and mopped
their brows. A man who looked an awful lot like his arch enemy, the
Shrike, lay on the floor, and a soldier carried Rayne.

Sergeant
Brammel saluted. “We got him, sir.”

Tallyn nodded,
studying the masked man. “At least, you got someone wearing a copy
of his mask, Sergeant. How is the Golden Child?”

“Fine, sir. Not
a scratch on her.”

“Good. Take her
to the hospital.” Tallyn squatted beside the prisoner, wondering if
they had really captured the Shrike this time. He tugged at the
mask, but it was solidly attached to the skullcap that sheathed the
unconscious man’s head. “How hard did you idiots hit him?”

“He put up a
hell of a fight, sir.”

Tallyn eyed the
blood that seeped from the man’s shirt and leg. “Get him to the
hospital, on the double.”

“Sir,” Brammel
said, “the Golden Child’s ship attacked us. It’s probably still
razing the villa to the ground.”

“Of course it
did, you put her in danger. I warned the Council, but those old
idiots never listen. It knows where she is, though, so it will be
on its way here now, I would imagine. I expect it has also sent a
distress message to the Shrike’s nearest base. The Council has
started something it might regret.”

“But we
captured the Shrike.”

“That remains
to be seen. And if we did, I think we’re going to regret it.”

Tallyn waited
while the soldiers loaded the prisoner onto a floating stretcher,
and then followed it to the hospital, where two medics came over as
the man was placed on a bed.

“Make sure he
stays unconscious,” Tallyn ordered.

One medic
nodded and filled a syringe, injecting the prisoner, while the
other doctor stripped off the man’s gloves and coat. Under his
black shirt, the captive wore a blood-soaked grey vest. Tallyn
moved to the head of the bed and bent to inspect the mask, which
looked hi-tech. It had vents on the cheeks that were probably air
filters, and tiny microphones next to the man’s ears to provide
enhanced audio. He noticed a miniature DNA sensor on either side of
the mask, just above where the man’s ears would be. Picking up the
captive’s right hand, he pressed the index finger to the sensor.
The mask clicked, and one side of it unsealed. Tallyn repeated the
process with the prisoner’s left hand, and pulled the mask off. His
immediate suspicions at the sight of the handsome face behind it
were confirmed by a glance at the captive’s scarred chest when the
medic cut off his vest.