'Oh, I'm sure he will, stupid girl, but I'll be guilty of no more than slave dealing, which, given my status, will be shrugged off. As far as he knows, I simply snatched an unimportant human girl to sell as a slave. Once you're sold, he'll never find you, and your destiny will be lost. You won't live to fulfil it, and the Atlantean Empire will fall, as it has been prophesied. Draycons will take over their worlds and enslave them.'
Rayne looked away, unable to meet the woman's hateful, sneering eyes. The door hissed shut, cutting off her grating chuckle.
The Draycon ship emerged from its energy shell in a swirl of golden light, approaching Gergonia. The unpleasant, barely habitable world was technically a large moon orbiting a gas giant with huge ice rings. Not quite large enough to become a sun, the gas giant gave off an eerie red light that the rings reflected in a multi-coloured display, unfortunately not visible from Gergonia's surface due to the cloud cover. The planet's sulphur rich atmosphere was breathable, but unpleasant. Gergonia's distant red giant sun gave off plenty of heat, but little light, which barely reached the surface through the thick yellow fog that enveloped the planet, making it a twilight world. Dwarfish natives inhabited it, adapted to the dimness and acidic atmosphere. They lived on a yellow fungus that thrived in the sulphur-rich soil.
The people of Gergonia rarely ventured outside, living in sealed dwellings with filters to eradicate the stench, the buildings joined by an underground system of travel. Entertainment of the worst kind flourished; gambling, whorehouses, drug dens, pain parlours and the buying and selling of stolen property. The clientele was made up entirely of crooks, petty tyrants and wealthy psychopaths. No one asked questions on Gergonia, and merchandise sold there rarely surfaced on law-abiding worlds. The residents who ran the markets and pleasure houses originated on some of the most obscure planets, had arrived on Gergonia by unpleasant means, and cared nothing for anyone else's misfortune.
The Draycon ship docked amongst the assortment of converted freighters, battered explorers, old fighters bought from defeated dictators and a smattering of modern ships. Two armoured Draycon guards manhandled Rayne from her cell, and a sting on the side of her neck warned her that they had given her a drug. As they hustled her down a passage to a smooth docking bay with a shuttle parked in it, a wave of vertigo washed over her, followed by a strange detachment. She barely registered the trip to the surface, and walked between the guards when they dragged her from the shuttle.
A room, a corridor and a busy chamber followed each other in a blur; voices spoke in strange languages she did not understand. She was led into a dim room filled with the stench of sweat and fear, a strong sensation of misery pervading the air. She tried to rouse herself sufficiently to take in her surroundings, noticing that the Draycons now wore masks.
After a hissed conversation with a blue-skinned man, the guards took her into an empty area, leaving the other two Draycons behind. The blue-skinned man followed, armed with a gavel, and mounted a podium. Rayne shook her head to try to clear the fog and gazed around with dazed, unfocussed eyes. The short, tubby blue man whose bald pate gleamed under the bright lights stood on a podium to one side. He clasped chubby hands and smiled down from his pedestal.
Rayne started when she noticed the crowd seated in tiers of seats before him. A sea of masks stared up at the stage on which she stood. She shivered, aware of how little clothing she wore, and the horror of her situation seeped into her dull brain. Closing her eyes to block out the bright lights and weird masks, she swayed in her guards' grip. They kept her upright when she would have fallen, and the auctioneer's loud, brash voice jabbed her brain, reviving her enough to understand his fluent Atlantean.
'Lords and majesties, crooks and cutthroats! I present to you a special piece of merchandise. A human! One of only two left in the universe; a lovely creature. Obviously reluctant, but then some of you prefer them that way.'
A wave of chuckling swept the audience. The auctioneer stepped down beside Rayne and gripped her hair to lift her face to the light. She kept her eyes closed, too numb to fight.
The man's strident voice rang out. 'Look at her! What a beauty! Descended from Atlantean intervention; a rare success. Who will start the bidding at twenty thousand? She's worth much more. Look at the hair, the figure, the face! Come along gentlemen, imagine all the fun you can have taming her! And if you can't tame her, have some fun killing her! You have money to burn! Give me thirty thousand, yes! Over there, fifty! Thank you sir, sixty there… yes? Seventy thousand I am bid. Eighty! Thank you sir, ninety over there… good, ninety-five? Yes! Any more? Come along gentlemen. Any more than ninety-five? Look at her! Any more bids?'
The auctioneer paused, evidently waiting for those who had not quite made up their mind yet. Distant mutters mingled with the swish of a door closing and footsteps that approached her, and Rayne opened her eyes. A tall, black-clad figure with a dark grey coat and an intricate mask sauntered to the front of the audience. People stepped from his path, but she sensed it was not because of the two men in black and silver uniforms who followed him. A hawk-like silver emblem glinted on his chest as he stopped before the stage to gaze up at her. The auctioneer stared at him, and the stranger nodded.
'Sold! For one hundred thousand regals!' The auctioneer banged his gavel. 'To the Shrike!'
The Shrike raised a gloved hand, and his men climbed onto the stage to relieve the Draycon guards of their captive.
Chapter Ten
The men pulled Rayne along, supporting her when her legs buckled, their shoes tapping on a hard floor. Strange sensations penetrated her dazed mind. A smell of burning oil, a pungent odour she could not identify, and the passing of a nearby hum. Ephemeral bright lights glowed through her eyelids, but she could not open them. A door hissed open, and she was pushed onto a soft chair, which, she discovered when she slipped sideways, was a couch. Alarms jangled in her numb brain, but she could do nothing about it, for her limbs refused to obey her. Her worries could not keep her awake, nor could she summon the willpower to use her healing to oust the drug that held her in its thrall, and sleep washed her away on a black tide.
Rayne woke with a start, and sat up to find everything back in focus. Pale walls surrounded her, a thick maroon carpet covered the floor, and some rather ugly paintings hung on the walls. For a moment she thought she was back on Earth, for the room lacked the Atlantean technology and propensity for flora. The faint but unmistakeable smell of rotten eggs reminded her of where she was, and memories of her recent ordeal rushed back. Thoughts of escape hammered at her brain, and she rose to examine her prison.
When she discovered that the door would not open and the room lacked any other exit, she went back to the couch and sat down. Several minutes later, a tall, black-clad man entered and paused, as if to gauge her reaction, but she merely stared at him. A grey coat relieved his sable garb, which included gloves with silver emblems on the back and a strangely designed mask that covered his head and neck. His well-cut suit clung to a whipcord figure with broad shoulders and narrow hips. The suit's seams were ridged in the Atlantean manner, concealing its fastenings. Nothing hinted at his race other than his form, which appeared to be human, Atlantean, or one of many other races that shared the humanoid physique.
Rayne's fears multiplied as a dozen unsavoury prospects invaded her still-raw mind. Tension curdled her stomach, and a sour taste crept into her mouth. The Draycon woman's words shouted from her memory, drawing dark images in her flinching mind. The man broke his immobile stance to clasp his hands behind his back, and his action pushed back his coat to reveal a weapon clipped to his belt. She wondered if this was deliberate.
Rayne licked her lips. 'Who are you?' It came out as a croak, and she swallowed to try to alleviate her dry throat. Her fuzzy recollection of the auction supplied the name the auctioneer had given him: the Shrike. It sounded ominous.
The Shrike picked up a suit of clothes from a table by the door and threw them onto the couch beside her, then left. Realising that she still wore the scanty garment in which the Draycons had dressed her, she changed into the black one-piece suit with a silver hawk emblem on the right side of the chest. After throwing the dress into a corner, she sat down again and tried to figure out what she should do now. Perhaps her new captor would listen to reason and return her to Atlan if she offered him a reward.
Whether or not the council paid it was irrelevant, as long as she got back to Atlan. He unnerved her, and,
