StarCraft

by Timothy Zahn

  And in the lower edge of his vision, Whist saw the reaper’s hands ball into fists.

  Deliberately, Whist kept his own hands loose. At ten-to-one odds, the last thing he could afford was to let Blumquist goad him into throwing the first punch, or even looking like he was about to do so.

  The problem was that with these odds, not taking out one or two of them right at the start pretty much guaranteed he would quickly be on the wrong end of a dogpile.

  But he had no choice. He hadn’t given Blumquist his name, but reaper heads-up goggles had a record feature, and all ten of them undoubtedly had his face by now. Even if Whist won the brawl, the entire marine food chain would quickly make its own dogpile. The only way he was going to get out of here was to let Blumquist attack first, and hope he could survive until the squad got tired of beating on him—

  “Ten-hut!”

  Blumquist spun around toward the rooftop door, stumbling a little as the weight of his jump pack threw his balance off. Striding toward them was Dizz, a dark expression on his face, a set of lieutenant’s bars glittering on his collar.

  Bars, Whist noted, that hadn’t been there before. “Lieutenant Halkman, 122nd Reapers,” Dizz announced tersely. “What the hell’s going on here, Sergeant?”

  “I—” Blumquist floundered for a second. “This man interfered in our exercise, sir,” he managed, gesturing back to Whist. “He also refused to give his name—”

  “He interfered?” Dizz cut in. “He interfered? From here?”

  “He—he commed while I was trying to run a drill,” Blumquist said. “Argued about my technique. Distracted me while—”

  “If all it takes is a comm call to distract you, Sergeant, you have no business in the field,” Dizz again cut in. “Was his criticism valid?”

  “It—” Blumquist glanced sideways toward one of his troops. “It might have been, sir, yes.”

  “Then take it, act on it, and resolve it,” Dizz said. “And get your butts back in the air. Now.”

  Blumquist stiffened to attention. “Yes, sir. Squad, return to training locus. By numbers: execute.”

  In pairs, the trainees lifted off from the roof and headed back toward the patch of sky they’d been working earlier. Blumquist was the last to leave, still at attention as he lifted.

  “Well, that was a lot of nothing,” Whist commented as they watched the trainees drive away into the night.

  “Don’t you believe it,” Dizz said grimly. “Once he realized he didn’t have a leg to stand on, his only way to get out without looking foolish was to goad you into attacking him.”

  “Yeah, I got that,” Whist said. “Thanks for coming back, by the way.”

  “Oh, that was always the plan,” Dizz assured him. “I know Blumquist. I just wanted to wait until he’d dug himself in too deep to get out before cutting him off at the knees.”

  “To make him look foolish?”

  “To make him look incompetent,” Dizz said, an edge of bitterness in his voice. “I saw way too many good men and women die because of sergeants and lieutenants who charged in without thinking or observing. If we’re lucky, idiots like Blumquist will have been put on desk duty by the time the next war starts.”

  “If there is one.”

  “There will be,” Dizz said tiredly. “There always is.” He nodded back behind him. “I left your bottle inside the door. I gather you were going to drink to Grounder?”

  “To him and everyone else,” Whist said. In all the excitement, he’d almost forgotten about the bottle.

  “Let’s go get it,” Dizz said, gesturing toward the door. “And then head down to the Officers’ Club. It’s warmer, and they’ve got some nice couches. Perfect place to tie one on.”

  “I thought all the clubs were closed.”

  “Do I look like I care?”

  “Not really,” Whist admitted. So did expertise at getting past locks mean Dizz had been a robbery or breaking-and-entering specialist? “I’m game if you are.”

  “Good.” Dizz grinned. “And who knows? You’re obviously wondering what I did that landed me in the reapers. Get me drunk enough, maybe I’ll tell you.”

  “Well, then, let’s get started,” Whist said, inclining his head. “After you. Sir.”

  The war was over.

  It was time to move on.

  Provided, Tanya Caulfield knew, she was willing to pay the price.

  Lying awake in the darkness, she had to smile. The price. Those were usually words connected to warfare, not peacetime. Or so she’d always assumed.

  But then, peacetime wasn’t a phenomenon Tanya was really familiar with. What with the Guild Wars, the rebellion against the Confederacy, the establishment of the Dominion, and the zerg and the Amon invasions, most of her life had been spent against the backdrop of conflict and death.

  Maybe now the peoples of the Koprulu sector finally had a chance.

  But in the meantime…

  Tanya Caulfield? Are you troubled?

  She twitched at the sudden voice in her head. It was Ulavu, of course—the tone of a protoss mental contact was highly distinctive. Besides, even if one of the other telepaths in their wing had sensed her wakefulness, none would have cared enough to check on her. I’m fine, Ulavu, she thought back.

  There was a short silence, and Tanya could sense him touching the other ghosts’ minds in their temporary Augustgrad quarters. Probably reassuring himself that he wasn’t alone. Ulavu didn’t like being alone. Is there any way in which I can assist you?

  There’s no need for assistance, Tanya assured him again. I’m fine.

  I accept your declaration, he thought back. But there is an unusual tone to your thoughts tonight. That was why I was concerned.

  Tanya shook her head, taking care that the thought and accompanying emotion didn’t make it to the surface where Ulavu could read them. Even two floors away, he was attuned enough to her that he could usually distinguish among her moods. There’s nothing to be concerned about. Go back to sleep, and I’ll see you in the morning.

  Very well. Sleep deeply, my friend.

  The contact faded, and Tanya sensed the subtle change as Ulavu’s mind returned to its alien thought pattern.

  But even though he’d withdrawn from all the terrans surrounding him, she could still feel his continued light touch against her mind. Rather like a cat nestling up beside its owner, she’d often thought.

  Another thought and image she’d been very careful to keep locked away in a private section of her mind. Ulavu was as friendly and cooperative as any protoss she’d ever met, but two and a quarter meters of proud, noble, and telepathic alien was not someone you wanted to let think he was being laughed at. Especially a protoss who’d grown as close to Tanya as Ulavu had.

  Therein, of course, was the rub. And the price.

  Because when she left, he would have only the others. And none of them cared about him nearly as much as she did.

  Carefully, she closed off her thought line against the cozy touch of Ulavu’s mind and ran the memory of the letter she’d received late that afternoon.

  From: Commandant, Ghost Academy

  To: Agent X39562B

  Re: Petition to resign from ghost program

  As of 15:00 today, your petition has been approved by Dominion Military Command. Your resignation will be formally accepted ten days from this date at 13:00 in the office of Colonel Davis Hartwell.

  Your service to the Dominion has been greatly appreciated and will be sorely missed. Should you wish to rescind your resignation, you may do so at Colonel Hartwell’s office anytime before that date.

  Best wishes for your future success,

  Commandant Barris Schmidt

  And that was it. One short letter, ten more days of sitting on her hands while the bureaucrats loaded the Dominion’s computers with a little more useless datawork, and her life would change forever.

  It was time. Past time, really. In her twenty years with the ghost program, despite the wording of Schmidt’
s obvious form letter, she’d never done a lick of service for either the program or the Dominion in general. In fact, she hadn’t been deployed in so much as a single operation.

  She’d never been completely sure how she felt about that. On the one hand, she certainly understood the logic behind it. She wasn’t particularly powerful—her psi index was a fairly lackluster 5.1—but her gift was incredibly rare. Rare enough, or so she’d been told, that it made up for her barely there telepathic ability and her complete lack of the enhanced strength and stealth that were usually part of the ghost package. It only made sense to wait to spring her on the zerg at the most opportune moment.

  Except that the moment had never come. When the Queen of Blades and her zerg Swarm began carving a deadly swath across both terran and protoss planets, Tanya was pulled out of the ghost headquarters on Ursa and sent to a remote location. Then had come Amon and his attack, and still Tanya had remained in hiding.

  She didn’t know why she hadn’t been used in one or the other of those desperate situations. Her only guess was that she’d simply been forgotten, or else had fallen through the bureaucratic cracks.

  At any rate, when the dust finally settled, she’d been brought back, with the understanding that when the next invasion came, she would be deployed against it.

  Only that invasion hadn’t happened. There were a lot of rumors about the ultimate fates of both the Queen of Blades and Amon, but there were supposedly only a small number of people who knew the truth, and they weren’t talking.

  So on the one hand, Tanya felt like she’d been wasted. On the other, given how many ghosts had been killed on the war’s countless battlefields, she had to admit there was a quiet relief that she’d been kept out of it.

  But her safety had come at a price. Every mission she hadn’t been sent on was a mission someone else had had to take.

  How many men and women, she wondered, had died in her place?

  She felt a small stirring in the presence that was Ulavu. He’d probably noticed the shifting of her thoughts and was having his doubts as to whether she was really as okay as she’d claimed. A stray thought came on top of the presence, a sort of distant voice…

  What the hell are you doing here?

  Tanya stiffened, her drifting mind snapping to full wakefulness. Ulavu wasn’t in his room at all.

  He was running loose on the streets of Korhal.

  And from the tone of the voice that had been filtered through the protoss’s mind, it sounded like he’d wandered someplace where he was very much not wanted.

  Ulavu, where are you? she thought at him as she grabbed her clothes, straining to pull something—anything—from his mind. But her telepathic power was too weak. He must have taken his psionic booster with him for his thoughts to be this clear.

  Unfortunately, the presence of a psionic booster meant he could be halfway around the planet. Ulavu, tell me where you are.

  It is an establishment for partaking of food and drink, the answer came. In the background of his connection, she had the sense of more voices, and their tone was growing steadily angrier.

  Where’s your guard? Are they there?

  I wished to be alone tonight, he thought back. I left without them.

  Tanya mouthed a curse. So he’d somehow slipped his military escort, the people who were supposed to keep this exact thing from happening. Terrific. Did you see a sign in the window when you went in? she asked, sealing her jumpsuit and scooping up her boots. Belatedly, she wondered if her ghost uniform might have been a better choice—air of authority and all that. But time was of the essence, and it was too late to change now. Or above the door?

  There is a sign. The image on it is three concentric circles.

  Are there any words?

  Yes, two. Dante’s Circle.

  Tanya made a face. The good news was that at least he was still in Augustgrad. The bad news was that Dante’s Circle was a low-rent tavern run by and catering to men and women who’d had relatives and friends on Chau Sara when the planet was incinerated by the protoss.

  In other words, it was about the last place on Korhal where a protoss would be welcome.

  Damn it all. She and others had warned Commandant Schmidt that moving the academy here from their usual base on Ursa, even temporarily, was a bad idea. Up there, they had Ulavu contained and controlled. Here, one simple back-door sneak-out, and he had a whole planet to wander around.

  And unless she did something fast, there was likely to be a very serious incident.

  Ulavu, you need to get out of there right now, she said, hopping awkwardly down the corridor on her right foot as she pulled on her left boot. Can you do that?

  That would not be polite. I believe the owners and guests wish me to stay. Some have indicated they want to speak further with me.

  I’ll just bet they have, Tanya bit out, running quickly through her options. The obvious one was to alert the guards who were supposed to be riding herd on him. But under the circumstances, she wasn’t feeling wildly confident of their abilities. She could try the police instead, but their response time wasn’t great this late at night, and most of them wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do with a wayward protoss anyway. Ditto for the regular MPs.

  Besides, no one on Korhal knew Ulavu as well as Tanya. The only way this would end well would be for her to do it herself.

  Dante’s Circle was a good klick and a half away from their temporary barracks. Luckily, Jeff Cristofer always left his hoverbike parked at the side door, and she’d long since sussed out the starter code. Two minutes and about twenty broken traffic regs later, she was there.

  She’d never seen the inside of Dante’s, but from its rep she’d always imagined it would be dark and gloomy, with a pervading vibe of anger and resentment and brooding. She’d also expected that the clientele would be a match for the décor, with big, angry men drinking to numb the distant pain of their loss.

  She was right on all counts. The only thing she’d missed was the haze of drifting smoke from the open grill.

  In fact, the thought struck her as she eased her way through the crowd, Dante’s might very well be someone’s reconstruction of what it would be like to sit in a bar on an incinerated planet.

  A deliberate attempt to play to the customers’ pain? Possibly. It probably didn’t hurt the drink sales, either.

  She’d half expected to find Ulavu in the middle of a full-bore melee. To her relief, he was standing calmly with his back to the bar, stiff and motionless, the top of his head just below the level of the exposed ceiling beams, faced by a triple semicircle of muttering men.

  Muttering, but also motionless.

  Tanya couldn’t blame them. A protoss, even a calm, nonthreatening one, was a hell of an intimidating sight. Tall and slender, his eyes glittering from his long, noseless and mouthless head, Ulavu seemed to radiate the sheer presence and ancient dignity of his race. His hands, two-fingered with a pair of flanking opposable thumbs, could twist a terran arm out of its socket or crush a terran throat. His legs were bent slightly at the back-jointed knees, his large, three-toed feet planted in a stable stance like small trees. He was wearing his usual outfit of a long civilian tunic and leg wrappings, the slender cylinder that was his psionic booster hanging from his waist sash.

  There was no threat there, nor even a hint of the fearsome warrior that most terrans visualized when they thought of protoss. But still the mob hesitated. They might not like protoss, but apparently no one was willing to throw the first punch against something that outweighed and outsized them by that much.

  Yet the stalemate might be about to come to an end. Standing just inside the inner circle, visible in glimpses as the crowd shuffled back and forth, was a man who might well be big enough to take down even a protoss. And judging by the slurring of his curses, he was drunk enough to try.

  Ghosts often worked the battlefield alone, with little need for formal command training. But Tanya had picked up a few pointers along the way. Time to see
if they worked.

  “All right, clear the way, clear the way,” she called over the muttering and garbled curses, pitching her voice as deep as she could and biting out the words like a marine sergeant she’d once met. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  For a second she thought it was actually going to work. The two outer rings magically peeled back as she strode toward them, opening a path toward the confrontation.

  But the inner ring was made up of men who were slower, were drunker, or had used those extra couple of moments of lead time to stifle the automatic obedience to authority that the late emperor Arcturus Mengsk had worked so hard to instill in his subjects. Tanya had to physically shoulder her way through that last line, which cost her several seconds, a fair amount of effort, and whatever edge of authority she’d managed to build.

  Unfortunately, none of that erosion was lost on the big drunk. Even as she broke her way into the open area, he turned and gave her the hard-edged glare he’d just been giving Ulavu. “Who th’ hell are you?” he demanded. “His keeper?” His lip twisted. “His pet?”

  “I’m just a friend,” Tanya said, keeping her voice calm. Even with her limited teep ability, it was clear that she and Ulavu were sitting on a powder keg. A single wrong word, a single wrong move, and the place could erupt. “I sympathize with your loss. I really do. But Ulavu had nothing to do with Chau Sara. He’s an academician, a researcher of—”

  “How th’ hell you know wha’ we lost?” the big man demanded. “You think jus’ ’cause—?” He broke off, his red face going even redder. “Ah, damn. You a ghos’? You a bloody damn ghos’.”

  An unpleasant ripple went through the crowd, both verbal and mental, dark with fear and anger and resentment. The ghosts had been Emperor Arcturus’s personal assassin corps, nearly mythic beings who hit their targets and then faded into the night.

  Tanya sighed. So much for keeping a low profile.

  “Watch it, Rylan,” someone in the crowd warned.

  “Yeah, like hell I will,” Rylan growled back. “They don’t walk ’round killin’ anymore. Emperor Val says so.”