Slave Empire - The Crystal Ship by Southwell T C

Author:Southwell, T C
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: free ebooks, science fiction series, t c southwell books

Rayne backed away from the seething, glowing red sea. This was a far larger chamber than the one she had been in before. The blood beasts roiled in a veritable ocean, their lurid light filling the massive space. The presence of the Envoy mere metres away horrified her. He appeared to be dormant, his massive bulk, larger than four conjoined blue whales, languishing in the red sea. The thick air was full of mist and odours, dominated by a musky stench that was unmistakably male.

The Envoy’s sleek, glistening hide was stretched over a shapeless bulk, rather like a seal, but lacking any of that creature’s charm. She could not make out a head or tail, or even limbs. The Envoy seemed to be a featureless slug. Other creatures crawled over him, stroked and soothed him with long, tentacle-tipped limbs with multiple joints. The females, she guessed. A fraction of his size, they were long tubes of rubbery flesh sprouting spidery limbs in random places. They also lacked features, but sucked up the blood beasts through the open end of their tube bodies. Her hand itched for a laser, and she wished for one with all her heart.

The gentle touch of the Ship’s mind was puzzled by her strange thought, not understanding the concept of a weapon. She tried to calm her frightened thoughts, not wanting to alarm the Ship. A sound behind her made her whirl to peer into the red dimness where tube bodies crawled on thin limbs. Thousands of them infested the chamber, piled atop one another in an obscene orgy of stroking, sliding sliminess. She stood on an oasis of bare flesh, surrounded by females.

Rayne suppressed a shudder, noting several tunnels through which the females crawled in and out. Some of the tunnels appeared to have been chewed through the Ship’s flesh. She questioned it, and the answer added to her horror. The Envoy used the Ship’s blood to procreate, releasing sperm into the fluid in which the blood beasts lived. The females laid their eggs in it too, and the young hatched in the deep tunnels of the ship’s circulatory system. From there, the young females chewed through the walls and migrated to this chamber to lay their eggs in the fluid.

The damage they caused hurt the Ship, but there was nothing it could do about it. Rayne wondered how Scrysalza had become infected with the parasites, and it explained that it had happened when it had been young, in what it called ‘the days of its hunger’. During a rapid growth phase in its youth, it had scooped up tonnes of cosmic dust to feed its growing body, and, in the process, had unwittingly consumed the hard, spore-like eggs released from dead ships the parasites had killed.

One had hatched into a male, which had lain acquiescent while he grew, not triggering the Ship’s defences. By the time he was large enough to take control, it had been too late to kill him. This was how all young ships were infected.

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