Prophecy

'Is it safe?' she mumbled.

'I will guard you.'

Her eyes slammed shut, and she sank into darkness. She floated in space, stars glinting in the distance. Within its utter, frigid silence she was at peace, watching the tiny specks of light with god-like knowing. The trailing arm of a spiral galaxy embraced her in a tenuous clasp of tiny suns. It was her galaxy, she realised, and she could even pin-point the brittle glimmer of the yellow star that was Earth's, insignificant against the backdrop of a million greater suns. She could almost reach out and touch it with a celestial hand of pure thought. Utterly peaceful, perfectly still, the endless universe filled her spirit with an all-encompassing glory, a masterful creation that moved to the ageless harmony of a silent song of invisible waves and speeding light.

A wave trembled and shattered on an imperceptible barrier that cut through the void. A portal tore into a dimension of golden light, and a sparkling stranger birthed itself into the universe. Golden energies crawled over and through it, dispersing. A crystal ship sailed into the darkness, gathered the light of a billion stars and harnessed it.

The ship radiated shafts of lambent energy. Light shattered in its facets and danced like shining water along vast butterfly wings of delicate filigree. Never had she seen anything so utterly indescribable, for there were no words to define its awesome power and grace. Its wings seemed to harness solar winds, and she turned to follow its trajectory.

It sailed towards a blue and white globe orbiting a yellow dwarf star. Her heart ached, but the oddly-shaped landmasses and two moons told her that this was not Earth. Time seemed to speed up, and within moments it reached the planet’s atmosphere and the tips of several immense spines entered it, fire sprouting from their edges. The ship dwarfed the moons, its wings almost spanning the gap between them and the planet.

Her view shrank until the world’s sunlit surface replaced the universe. She looked down on forests and oceans, white beaches and rolling grasslands. Networks of simple dwellings patterned the emerald green around tall cities, and ships sailed the blue depths between floating communities. The crystal ship descended until its wings almost touched the ground, and the strange envoy fascinated the populace.

The space creature reached out to the people of Elliadaren and touched them with a powerful telepathic message that at first brought intense joy. Then the crystal light darkened, and she sensed the malice of those who dwelt within this intelligent, harmless creature and controlled it. Their malevolence used the ship's vast power to turn joy into the thing those who commanded it sought, and fed off. Pain. Millions of people cried out in agony and fell to their knees, bowed under the cruel force of a telepathic suffering too vast to be denied, and the beings within the ship revelled in their torment and drank it in. The pain flooded through Rayne, filling every part of her being with anguish that made her long for death.

Rayne sat up with a gasp, a choked cry echoing in her ears. Her eyes swept over dull walls and winking consoles as the terror drained away. She waited until her hammering heart slowed, then went to the dispenser and poured another drink, casting a dark glance over her shoulder at the main screen with its view of the grey world.

'Are you still there? You'd better be.'

'Of course.'

She sank back onto the couch with a sigh, sipping the drink. 'Do you have a name?'

'Not really. My creators imbued me with several of their personalities combined, so I can lay claim to no one name. However, if you wish an appellation with which to refer to me, you may call me Endrix.'

'What does that mean?'

'Nothing, it is a name my masters used to use.'

'And just exactly who are your masters?' She held up a hand. 'No, forget that for now. What I meant to ask was, what happened to Elliadaren? The dream didn't explain everything. Where did the Envoy come from?'

'I do not know for certain, but I suspect another universe, since I have never encountered anything else like it in this one.'

Rayne refused to be side-tracked by that statement's insinuation that Endrix had explored the entire universe. Sticking to the subject, she asked, 'And these creatures who lived inside the Envoy? What were they?'

'No, you misunderstand. The crystalline creature was not the Envoy, the being it carried was.'

'Ah. There was just one on board?'

'No. From what I could learn of their society during the ship's flight here, they are a form of hive creature, but ruled by a male. There were about fifteen thousand creatures on the Crystal Ship, and the dominant male was the Envoy. I will not detail their reproductive cycle -'

'Please don't,' she muttered.

'But their society was primitive and cannibalistic. What they did to each other, however, pales into insignificance when compared to the atrocities they have visited upon other intelligent beings, in particular the crystal ships. From studying this one's metabolism, I deduced that the ships usually live in a gaseous nebula, where they feed on gas and sunlight.

'They are incapable of landing on a planet, although they can hover, as you saw. But their structure is too massive and delicate – if you will forgive the contradiction – to withstand gravity. They are deep space creatures, and utterly harmless unless harnessed by an Envoy. What you experienced while asleep was not a dream, but a segment of my memory broadcast into your brain. You woke yourself before the end, however.'

'It was painful,' she said, setting aside her empty glass and returning to the dispenser for a sandwich.

'Unfortunately, I cannot delete sensations from my memories.'

She turned in surprise. 'You felt that pain?'

'I experienced the same sensations as the populace, yes, but my brain does not perceive pain as you do.'

'So, just tell me what happened next, but I think I know.' She perched on the edge of the couch and nibbled the sandwich. 'A ship called Night Hawk arrived in orbit, and when he saw what was going on, he dropped a nuclear arsenal – which I have no idea how he had – then left when the Atlanteans arrived.'

'Not exactly. Elliadaren suffered for seventeen days before that ship arrived, and all the others that were orbiting it crashed on the surface.'

'Why?'

'The pain drove them insane. They either lost control of their ships or deliberately crashed them to escape the suffering. Ultimately, they would have died of dehydration or shock, anyway. Elliadaren was not a busy planet. Ships came here rarely. Only a few commercial traders a year. Night Hawk did not go into orbit. If he had, he would have succumbed too, but even at the distance where he stopped, the pain must have been bad. He watched the planet for two days, and I understood his anguish, for he was Antian.'

'How do you know all this?' Rayne waved the sandwich. 'Did you read his mind?'

'Yes. He was a smuggler, carrying a cargo of nuclear warheads when he decided to return to his home world, since he was passing close by. He had not intended to stay, but when he saw what was happening, he eventually did the only thing he could, and used the Net to transfer his cargo to the surface, where he triggered it. Then he waited for over a month until the planet's light speed distress signal was answered.'

'Why?'

'Perhaps to see who came, or maybe to mourn his people. I did not pry into his thoughts after he set off the bombs.'

She finished the sandwich and rose to fetch another. 'So the Antians didn't possess Net technology?'

'No. They preferred culture and religion. They had no wish to leave their world.'

'The pilot of Night Hawk, did you learn his true name?'

'I did not pry deeply into his mind. He was able to shield his thoughts quite well, but I sensed a great deal of suffering there, not only because of his world's fate. Now he calls himself the Shrike, as you know.'

She frowned. 'Have you been prying into my mind as well?'

'A little.'

'Why didn't you do something to help them?'

'I could not. I have no weapons.'

'Presumably this all has something to do with the prophecy?' Rayne asked.

'Yes. Unless you stop it, an Envoy will destroy Atlan.'