Prophecy

'Why not? Don't you want to see me captured and executed?'

'Captured, perhaps, but I don't want to be responsible for anyone's death.'

'Ah. How noble of you. You'd like to see me dead, but don't want it on your conscience. Fair enough, I suppose. Now, put on the dress, we must leave for the auction.' He rose to his feet and pulled on his glove.

Rayne fought a strong urge to beg him not to sell her, for she longed to stay and discover his secrets. The more she learnt about him, the more he fascinated her, and for all his apparent ruthlessness and barbaric trade, he spoke and acted with no hint of malice or cruelty. It might all be an elaborate facade, but she sensed a deeper mystery within him, something dangerous and complicated. Then there was his all too strong attraction. He marched out, and, as the door slid closed behind him, the room seemed empty all of a sudden.

Picking up the dress, she studied it, then stripped off the functional black suit and slipped into its shimmering folds before gazing in the mirror. It clung to her slight curves, and, unlike the brazen gown Drevina had dressed her in, made her look like a princess. She found a pair of delicate white sandals, which complemented the dress, and the final effect was quite stunning. A silly idea flitted through her head, that perhaps he would not want to sell her once he had seen her in it. She snorted at her stupidity, wondering where such foolish romantic notions came from, and settled down on the couch to await his return.

When the door slid open, two guards stood outside, and her heart sank. She realised that she might never see him again, and found the prospect unpleasant. With a mixture of trepidation and regret, she followed the guards back into the building where she had seen the black ship. As they passed the office in the first hangar, the guard ahead of her stopped so abruptly she almost bumped into him.

Curious, she peered around him. The Shrike stood several metres away, in a tableau that had apparently only just happened. A slave woman knelt at his feet, gripping the edge of his coat as she shook with sobs and wept unintelligible words. He gazed down at her, his hands at his sides. Then he jerked his head at a couple of matronly, uniformed women, who came forward, gripped the woman's arms and helped her to her feet, leading her away.

At first, Rayne thought the woman might be Layalia, but she was a stranger with copper-gold skin, an alien of surpassing beauty. She stared after the woman, whose wails of woe reached Rayne until the guard behind her prodded her forward. The Shrike glanced at her as she approached, then signalled to the guards, who escorted her past him into the next hangar, where the black ship was berthed. The guards strode past it into the hangar where the slaves had been, now empty save for a single shuttle parked on the far side. The men guided her to it and escorted her aboard, strapping her into a seat before sitting on either side of her.

Rayne sat numbly, disturbed and dismayed by what she had witnessed. The scene had displayed the Shrike’s cruelty and dashed her supposition that he was a gentle man. Whatever the slave had been begging for, freedom or life, he had not granted it. Her naive notion that he might be good man, even if he was a slaver, was reduced to ashes, and just as well, she thought. His gentle treatment of her was doubtless an oddity, perhaps to win her co- operation in his bid to sell her at a profit.

Certainly prospective buyers would pay more for a tame, sweet-tempered slave than a frightened, defiant hell cat. Now she longed to rip off the traitorous dress, but the prospect of being sold in the nude, as he had threatened, prevented her. Not only would it be cold, but nothing was more humiliating than being naked when others were clad.

A perceptible reduction in gravity told her that they had left the planet and were on their way to the ship. Within minutes, the shuttle door opened and her guards led her into a smooth room. From there, they took her to a small, but comfortable room, and left her alone. She paced its confines for a while, then settled down to wait. When the door opened again, the same guards escorted her back down the short corridor to the shuttle bay. They led her to a circular sheet of shiny metal, made her stand in the middle of it, and stepped back.

The golden shimmer of an energy shell engulfed her, and when it dispersed, she gazed around at her bizarre surroundings with a twinge of fear. She stood within a glass cube at the centre of a vast dark room. Spotlights shone down on her, trapping her in a pool of light and making the rest of the room darker. She peered into the gloom, shading her eyes against the glare, and made out an approaching shape.

Its alien form became clear as it approached the light, and she swallowed bile. The creature stood on a single rippling foot, like a snail's, its skin a mottled grey and green, a metallic robe hiding its middle portion. From the top of the robe, a sinuous neck protruded, topped with a round head with a parrot-like beak and four antennae tipped with tiny, intensely blue eyes.

It did not appear to have arms, and stopped close to the glass to study her with two eyes. Apparently satisfied, it turned as another alien approached, this one a humanoid with slate-grey skin and tusks protruding from an undershot jaw. He stopped beside the first alien and examined her with close-set dark eyes above a flattened nose and a wattled neck. His garb matched his skin almost exactly, giving him the rather revolting appearance of being naked. He possessed disproportionately large hands and feet, and claw-tipped fingers.

The second alien walked around her glass box, his eyes roving over her with what she interpreted as a greedy glint. He spoke to the first alien in a gargling language, and she concentrated on placing their species. The first had to be a Rentarian, a race that had left its swampy home world centuries ago and made their homes now on other worlds. The second appeared to be a Mar'Ashan, native to a hot, humid world colonised by a hostile, but advanced race that had raised them up to a civilised level, then died out from a mysterious disease.

Many blamed the Mar'Ashan for the demise of the warlike Agrebe people, but few considered it a punishable offense, since it could be seen as an act of self-defence, for the Mar'Ashan had been the Agrebe's slaves. The Mar'Ashan had taken over the Agrebe's technology, but lacked the intelligence to add to it, and some thought their society was slipping back into savagery as the machines broke down and no one could fix them. Fortunately for them, the Mar'Ashan's home world was rich in rare, valuable minerals, which allowed them to purchase new machines and hire technicians.

Slaves, too, Rayne thought as she watched her prospective buyer sizing her up. He gargled to the Rentarian again, then made a peculiar gesture and pulled what looked like a communications device from his pocket, tapping buttons. The Rentarian gargled back, weaving its neck, and turned away. As it slithered off, she glimpsed movement in the darkness, the faintest hint of something there, and her eyes were jerked towards it. The Mar'Ashan studied his device, frowning. Rayne gasped as a familiar figure stepped into the light and stopped. The Mar'Ashan became aware of the Shrike and swung around, his jaw dropping.

'You!' he said in Atlantean.

'Hello, Jamdar. Welcome to my trap,' the Shrike spoke in a soft, dangerous tone.

Jamdar glanced around, but the Rentarian had vanished into the gloom. 'Urquat helped you? He betrayed me?'

'I would have thought that was obvious, but then, you Mar'Ashan aren't very bright, are you?'

Jamdar held up his hands, one of which still clutched the device. 'I want no trouble with you, Shrike. If you want the female, take her. I'll cancel the sale.'

'No deal, Jamdar. This is my trap, and she's my bait. Haven't you even figured that out? You've been surprisingly difficult to corner, but then, you don't have to be clever to be cunning. Now you're outside your territory, with nowhere to run.'

'This isn't your territory either! You're breaking the laws!'

'Laws!” Tarke snorted. “There are no laws in outlaw territory. That’s what ‘outlaw’ means, you stupid shit. Just because you and a few other idiots have come up with some rules, you think everyone abides by them? Even your cronies don’t, and who will you tell, once you're dead?'

'You can't do this!'

'Sue me.'

Jamdar dropped the communications device and reached for the sleek weapon clipped to his belt. A flash of laser light illuminated the room and pierced his chest with a vicious buzz. It seemed to originate from thin air, but then Tarke lowered his arm and returned his weapon to his belt, studying his fallen foe. The Mar'Ashan had a neat hole burnt through the right side of his chest, and purple blood oozed from the wound as his skin turned white and started to flake off. Rayne swung away, fighting a wave of dizziness and nausea.

Urquat emerged from the gloom on his rippling foot. Two of his eyes examined the corpse, while the other two turned to Tarke. Urquat pulled a cone-shaped crystal from his robe with a thin, vine-like tentacle and held it to the side of his head. A halting, hollow voice spoke Atlantean in a nasal whine.

'A satisfactory outcome, although I might have profited more from your demise, Grey Shrike.'