Free Slave Empire - The Crystal Ship by T C Southwell Page B

not
knowing how to word his momentous news. “The Envoy has
appeared.”
    She looked
away, a frown puckering her brow and raw fear shining in her eyes.
When she looked at him again, a bitter smile twisted her lips. “He
has great timing.”
    “ You must prepare yourself. Put aside your anger for the
moment.”
    “ Prepare myself?” She gave a mirthless laugh. “For what? I
don’t even know what I’m supposed to do.”
    “ It will come to you, when you confront the Crystal
Ship.”
    “ How do you know that? Even Endrix doesn’t know that. How do
you know I won’t need the help of my guardian? The one you just
murdered.”
    “ I didn’t kill him, I swear. Maybe he isn’t dead. There was no
time to find out. Surely his ship, if it’s so intelligent, would
have transferred him out?”
    Rayne gasped
and closed her eyes, a faint smile curving her mouth as if she had
just remembered something vitally important that brought her
extreme comfort. “Did any of his ships explode?”
    “ No. We were in close proximity; such an explosion would have
shaken us badly, maybe even overloaded the shields.”
    She opened
eyes that glimmered. “Then he’s alive.”
    “ How do you know?”
    She studied
him as if unsure of whether or not she should tell him, but
apparently she failed to see what harm it could do. “If he dies,
his ship self-destructs. So will Shadowen, if I die.”
    “ I see.” Tallyn tried to hide his disappointment. “What
happened to you? Why were you so wet when I found you?”
    “ The Draycons put a mariner in my cell, but I was able to undo
the effects of its poison.”
    “ Did the Shrike know this?”
    She shrugged.
“Shadowen probably told him.”
    “ So that’s why he was in such a hurry. How did he know where
you were?”
    “ Shadowen. He can track me through the bio link. That’s how he
knew I’d been abducted in the first place. He followed Norvar when
she left Mansure.” She took a long swig from the bottle. “It was
the Shrike who led you to me, wasn’t it?”
    Tallyn nodded.
“If you’d still had the beacon -”
    “ But I didn’t, and he saved me. You were just on hand when he
freed me, otherwise Scimarin would have transferred us
out.”
    “ That’s something else I don’t understand. Three of his
cruisers synchronised their energy shells with Norvar’s. Why didn’t
he just transfer you out then?”
    “ I don’t know,” Rayne said. “I’ll ask Shadowen.” She closed
her eyes while she communed via her implant, then opened them. “I
was in a random waveform field. No one could transfer me out until
I’d been released from the cell. Shadowen detected the field’s
effect on my bio link, something he calls ‘fuzz’, and told the
Shrike I couldn’t be transferred.”
    “ I see. This ship of yours seems full of
surprises.”
    “ A good thing, too. Of course, he would have found out when he
tried to transfer me. It just saved him the time and effort. And
Shadowen isn’t my ship, he’s just on loan. Now that the Envoy’s
here, I’ll be giving him back soon.”
    “ You seem very calm,” he commented.
    “ It hasn’t sunk in yet. It probably won’t until I see the
damned thing, then I’ll most likely want to run.” She put down the
bottle and stood up. “I’d like to return to my ship now, and find
out how the Shrike is.”
    She held up a
hand when he frowned. “No matter what he’s done, he’s saved my life
more than once, so I owe him. The very least I can do is show some
concern. Also, I might need his help again, with the Envoy, so I’d
like to know when he’s going to be well enough.”
    “ You can communicate with your ship from here.”
    “ I enjoy my privacy. Right now, I’d like to be on my ship. Is
that a problem?”
    Tallyn sighed
as he rose to his feet. “No. Not really.”
    “ I’ll need to be on my ship when we encounter the Envoy,
anyway.”
    “ But you will follow us to Atlan?”
    She smiled.
“I’ll be there before