Slave Empire III - The Shrike (7 page)

“It’s a ruse!
He’s a clever bastard!”

“What if it’s
not?”

“Shut up,
Marcon,” Tallyn said. “Whose side are you on?”

“The side of
life, not unending war. I believe him, sir. He’s sworn an oath, and
I reckon he’s going to keep it. It seems to be important to him.
He’s Antian, and you know what that means.”

Several
officers muttered and nodded, and Tallyn frowned at them.

“He can swear
all the oaths he wants, make threats and offer phony deals; it
won’t work. Even if he means it, she’s not going to die. How many
times must I say it?”

“Maybe until
you convince yourself.”

Chapter Three

Rayne stared at
the white ceiling, her mind drifting in a pleasant fog of
drug-induced detachment. An Atlantean woman had joined the team of
specialists assigned to tend to her. Instead of holding her down so
the telepath could clamp a hand to her brow and read her, they had
sedated her. A clutch of beeping machines monitored her vitals, and
the telepath looked distinctly worried.

The four had
been huddled in a muttering group for several minutes, but had
evidently reached a decision, for they approached her. The elderly
doctor smiled, his dark eyes gentle. She could no longer sense his
emotions; the drug had robbed her of her ability to do so without
touching him. He peered at her, then nodded at the telepath.

The younger man
came forward, wiping sweaty palms on his white suit. His
nervousness pleased her. It made up for his previous pomposity. At
least now he seemed to appreciate that he was dealing with someone
special. She tried to recall what they wanted and why she was here,
but she could not even remember where she was.

The telepath
sat on a chair beside her and laid a hand on her brow, casting her
a tense smile. She smiled back dreamily, sensing his nervousness
and unease. He had brown and blond hair, and his metallic skin had
a silvery sheen, more common than the golden or bronze varieties.
He was not of a high caste, yet he had acted quite superior before.
The three years she had spent living amongst Atlanteans had taught
her a great deal about their society and its quirks.

Perhaps being a
powerful telepath earned him privileges. A prickle of disquiet went
through her as she sensed the intrusion of his mind. It seeped into
hers like a thief sneaking into a dark house in search of the
family jewels. He was a thief, and the discovery of Tarke’s image
would lead to his downfall. They would hunt him until they caught
him, and then they would kill him.

Numbness
nibbled at the edges of her sanity. For so long, she had kept it at
bay, but that was because she had found something for which to
live. Even if he never showed her anything but friendship, it would
have been enough. Just to be with him, to own the unique privilege
of knowing the man behind the mask, would have been enough. She did
not call his image into her mind, for that would have given it away
to the prowling telepath who rifled through her memories.

Again the
blankness impinged, washing away a little of her reason. With what
was left, she realised that her only weapon lay within the
emptiness the Envoy had bestowed. Her only escape from the
telepath’s prying mind was to allow the howling void that had dwelt
within her for so long to swallow her, to throw open all the doors
and welcome its dark embrace. With it, however, she wanted one last
victory. She found the telepath’s oozing psyche in the bottom of
one of her memories, casting aside images of her childhood. Here
she had hidden Tarke’s face, and she thought she glimpsed his nose
on one of her childhood friends.

The telepath
would find it soon, and put it together with all the pieces he had
seen that did not fit where they were. She confronted him, and her
presence startled him, but he was not unduly alarmed. The sedative
made her too dull to throw him out or raise shields, even if she
had any. He exuded false friendship, trying to fool her empathy
with lying thoughts, but she sensed his fear and duplicity, and
understood the cold nature of his mind. As she had once spoken to
Scrysalza, she spoke to him in the wordless language that every
thinking creature shared when their thoughts were mingled.

I warned
you,
she thought.
I told you not to come. But you’re here,
like a thief, come to steal my most precious memory. Let me show
you the horrors of my past; share them with me.
She sent him a
powerful image of the Envoy in all his massive repulsiveness, and
jabbed him with the memory of the parasite’s sharp mind, whose
razor thoughts had flayed hers and left it raw and bleeding. She
filled his head with the grinding roar of the Envoy’s wordless
language, and bathed it with the memory of the agony she had
suffered.

Endrin frowned
at the telepath, perplexed. His eyes had opened wide and his back
was arched in a spasm. The younger doctor, Jadon, checked the
telepath’s pulse and cast a concerned glance at Endrin.

“He appears to
be in some distress. His heart is racing.”

“I’m sure he
can deal with it.”

The telepath’s
increasing pallor and clenched jaws told Endrin that something was
amiss, and he waited for further developments. Jin groaned and
writhed, his eyes rolled back. Whatever was happening to him was
getting worse, and Endrin’s alarm grew. The telepath shuddered,
clearly in distress. Signalling to his young colleague to help,
Endrin tried to pull the convulsing man away from the peaceful,
blank-eyed girl. Jin grabbed her neck, ensuring they could not
prise him free without strangling her.

Jadon hunted
through the cabinet for a sedative powerful enough to incapacitate
the girl. He found one with a cry of triumph, then dropped the
injector, and Endrin stepped on it. The monitor’s steady beep
speeded up, and a soft alarm droned.

Semil stared at
the machines’ changing readouts. “Do something!”

Endrin cursed
and punched the telepath, trying to knock him unconscious. “She’s
trapped him.”

“How can she?
She’s only an empath. Do something!”

“She’s more
than an empath,” Endrin said. “An empath couldn’t do this to a
telepath. Whatever she touched on that ship, it’s made her like
it.”

“The Envoy was
an empath, so was the Crystal Ship.”

“No, they were
more. Much more. The Crystal Ship was able to broadcast its pain.
She’s not an empath. She’s something else; something we’ve never
seen before. She uses the skills of others against them. That’s
what makes her the Golden Child.” He tried to drag the telepath
away as the man convulsed again, froth bubbling from his lips.

“What can we
do?” Jadon demanded.

Endrin shook
his head. “I don’t know. She’s killing him, just like she killed
the Envoy. Sedate her, quick!”

Semil shook her
head. “No, don’t. She’s dying.”

“She can’t
be!”

“Look for
yourself.”

Endrin glanced
at the machines’ readouts, cursing. “We’ve got to save her.”

“How?” Jadon
asked.

Tarke’s head
jerked around as Scimarin said, “A message from Shadowen. Rayne’s
biorhythms are becoming erratic.”

He thumped the
arm of his chair. “Damn them!”

Jumping up, he
leant on the console, glaring at the stars beyond the energy shell.
“And for the blood of my wife,” he murmured, “your land shall run
red with the blood of all your kinsmen, and the killing shall not
end until my blood has mingled with the earth and my last breath
has passed from my lips.”

Rayne sat in
front of the telepath’s psyche, imagining herself as a young child
with long golden hair.
Know me,
she thought.
I am the
Golden Child. I am the greatest weapon ever born, to defeat the
ultimate evil and save you. Witness the power that fills me, the
legends that surround me. You will not steal the image of the one I
love; he is more precious to me than life. Ask the question that
fills your mind, I see it as clear as day.

I will kill
you just as I killed the Envoy. I am an empath, and more, I have
learnt the skills of the Envoys, and I also have his scars and his
hatred. Ask me. Yes, I lived for my love, and yes, I will die for
him. Here is what you seek, look at it; it’s the last thing you’ll
ever see.
She filled her mind with the memory of Tarke’s face.
The telepath squirmed, trying to break free, but she held him.

Endrin and
Jadon struggled to pull the telepath’s hands away from the girl’s
neck, but he hung on. His face contorted and foam dripped from his
lips while he shook uncontrollably. The girl seemed to be in a
trance, staring at the ceiling with an impassive expression. Endrin
watched the monitors with despair as the readings fell or rose to
dangerous levels. Her heartbeat had slowed almost to a halt and her
temperature had dropped while her brain activity was off the
charts. Another alarm sounded, and he grabbed an injector, forcing
a powerful stimulant into Rayne’s blood with a hiss, then looked at
the monitors again.

“Come on, come
on!
Live
, damn you!”

“We’ve got to
do something,” Jadon said. “If she dies...”

“I know!”

Another alarm
joined the growing cacophony, and Endrin picked up another injector
and turned to the girl. Blood mixed with the froth on the
telepath’s lips as he bit his tongue, shaking violently.

Rayne allowed
the numbness to nibble at her again, fighting the urge to stave it
off. The telepath struggled, but she held him and prevented him
from speaking.
You wanted to kill the Shrike,
she thought.
You would have executed him for a crime he did not commit. I
won’t let you. I’ll show you the meaning of pain and despair. I’ll
lead you down the path of suffering the scars of my anguish bound.
So you’ll learn to fear death, and embrace it as the only friend
that can save you from the pain. You’ll bathe in the tears that
fill my lake of sadness, and you’ll know what it is to be reborn
out of agony and live again with hatred.

There will be
no saviour for you, however. No gentle man with beautiful eyes to
find you and give you his hand. He will not lead you from the path
of destruction and show you joy. Here we both will end. You have
yet to see the ultimate pain of my battle, the scars that only the
Crystal Ship could heal. They have festered again, because of your
uncaring world, and he tried so hard to stop them from swallowing
me. But you have ensured they do, and so you’ll suffer the same
fate.

Here,
she said,
see what I fear more than anything, which will unleash
my demons upon us both.
She imagined Tarke stretched out on an
Atlantean execution block, his arms shackled to the edges. He gazed
at the blade that would kill him as it plunged into his heart. She
shuddered from the shock, imagining his dead face and blind
eyes.

Rayne flung
open all the doors within her mind. The Envoy’s void rushed in and
the howling emptiness engulfed her, sweeping away the telepath’s
mind like chaff in a cyclone. For a moment longer she clung to
sanity, but the massive void was too powerful for her to push back
anymore. It swept into every crevice of her mind, snuffed out every
thought, filled her head with darkness and banished all the light.
Scrysalza’s seals perished in the blankness, its healing succumbed
to the pain, and the howling emptiness swallowed Rayne.

Semil cried out
as the telepath released the girl and collapsed.

Jadon examined
him. “He’s dead.”

“Of course he
is.” Endrin watched the holograms, an injector ready. “My god, no
one dreamt she was so powerful, but we should have realised she was
different. No one could survive what killed the Envoy, and we were
fools to try. That poor fool paid with his life, but at least she’s
still alive, that’s more important.”

A buzzing alarm
made Semil swing to stare at one of the screens. “Not anymore.”

The monitor’s
readout had dropped to a flat line, and Endrin scowled at it in
horror.

“Brain function
has ceased,” Jadon said.

“Give me a
neural stimulator!”

Endrin pushed
Semil aside and leant over the girl’s head, holding out his hand
for the instrument Jadon slapped into it. He pressed the pad to her
temple and activated it. The girl’s eyes fluttered closed, and she
gasped. The doctor moved the stimulator over her head, making her
twitch as it stimulated various parts of her brain. The others
stared at the monitor. It remained flat, and, after several
fruitless minutes, Endrin straightened, his heart heavy with
weariness and defeat.

“It’s
hopeless.”

“Her vital
signs have steadied.” Jadon indicated the green lights of the other
machines’ readings. “They’re all back to normal.”

“She’s brain
dead,” Semil said.

“But she’s
still alive,” Jadon said, as if they had not really failed as long
as she still breathed.

Endrin turned
away, his shoulders slumped. “There’s nothing more we can do for
her. She’ll never wake up again. She might as well be dead.”

“That’s not a
certainty.”

The older
doctor swung around. “This should never have been attempted!”

Tarke raised
his head as Scimarin broke the silence. “A message from Shadowen:
Rayne’s biorhythms have returned to normal.”

The Shrike
straightened and ran a hand through his hair. “So, maybe they
weren’t as stupid as I thought. How long to Darmon?”

“Twenty-seven
minutes.”

“Let me know as
soon as she’s back on board Shadowen. I need a drink.”

Tarke went to
the cabin and poured himself a glass of spicy Travin liquor, downed
it in a gulp and gasped for several seconds. When the burning in
his throat eased, he splashed his face in the bathroom before
returning to the bridge. The holographic clock told him that ten
minutes had passed, and the ship was decelerating towards Darmon.
He stared at the energy-sheathed screens, thinking about what he
would say to her.