StarCraft

by Timothy Zahn

  As was said, we call them adostra, Zagara said. We believe the word means dreamer in the language of the xel’naga. But their dreams are not like yours or mine. Their dreams reach deep into the psionic power of their species. They call out to life wherever it lies, whether in fields, in streams, or even deep within stone. That life is stirred, and encouraged, and nurtured, until it is finally and fully awake.

  “Wait a minute,” Valerian said, frowning. “Are you saying Gystt’s new plant life is the result of some animals thinking or dreaming about it?”

  Animals whose very cores are composed of xel’naga essence, Zagara reminded him. The legends speak of the xel’naga seeding the galaxy with life. Is it so hard to believe this ability was innate within them and not something merely learned over millennia of study?

  Valerian rubbed his cheek. Certainly it fit with the protoss’ own legends of their interactions with the xel’naga. And the idea that adostra dreams were responsible for Gystt’s explosion of life—however the hell that worked—could also explain the pattern that Dr. Wyland had first spotted. Not a wind pattern, but simply the plants in some strange way reflecting the direction of their inspiration source. “So what went wrong? Did they go rogue somehow?”

  That cannot be what happened, Zagara insisted. The adostra are not in any way hostile.

  “Are you sure?” Valerian countered, shifting his gaze to Abathur. “Did you watch everything Abathur did as he worked?”

  He was monitored at all times.

  “By zerg who knew as much about genetic manipulation as he did?”

  No such zerg exist, Abathur said with clear pride.

  He is correct, Zagara said. But he is loyal to me.

  “Then maybe he made a mistake,” Valerian suggested. “Could there have been some genetic time bomb in the adostra that no one expected, something that caused them to transform into psyolisks?”

  Zagara tilted her head. Yet what could cause such a transformation?

  “He’s the evolution master,” Valerian said, gesturing to Abathur. “Ask him.”

  No, Abathur said flatly. No possibility. Far easier to believe terrans are lying.

  Valerian pursed his lips. Stalemate. “All right, let’s try it from another direction. You said all the broodmothers were loyal to you, Overqueen. Are you sure about that?”

  You refer to the attack on your survey team before their entrance into the adostra cocooning structure.

  “Yes,” Valerian said. “According to Ulavu, they were well within the local broodmother’s territory by then.”

  The broodmother insists she neither ordered nor condoned any such attack.

  “Let’s assume she’s right,” Valerian said, wondering briefly just how truthful the broodmothers had to be to their Overqueen, and whether Zagara would even know if they were lying. “You said the adostra had psionic powers. Could they have taken over the zerg outside their cocoons and made them attack the survey team?”

  No, Zagara said. The adostra are nonviolent. They would not have been part of an attack.

  “But it is possible?”

  No.

  Valerian scowled. Again, stalemate. “All right,” he said. “What we need—what we’re missing—are facts and evidence. Let me call the survey team and see if they can pull tissue samples from whatever’s left in the cocooning area.”

  He’d had the sense that Zagara was finally letting go of some of her anger. Now the flow pattern reversed itself. The Overqueen’s body stiffened, once again filling Valerian’s senses with that stifling feeling of alienness. From the ashes of their own destruction.

  Which the team had deemed both necessary and prudent. But Valerian had no intention of bringing that up. It was easy to second-guess a commander’s on-the-ground decision, especially when Zagara had been so furious and horrified to hear about the cocooning’s destruction. But defending the decision—or even agreeing with Zagara’s judgment—would again get them nowhere. “I’ll call them now,” he said instead. “We’ve got a mystery here. Let’s see if we can make a start at unraveling it.”

  —

  “Understood, Colonel,” Dizz said, his nose wrinkling a little.

  Which was, Erin suspected, not a good sign. Her experience with the Dominion military was admittedly sparse, but she was pretty sure junior officers were supposed to show more respect than that to their seniors. Given the circumstances, she suspected that whatever orders Cruikshank was passing on, she wasn’t going to like them.

  She was right.

  “Orders from the, quote, ‘highest level,’ unquote,” Dizz said sourly. “By which I assume Cruikshank means Valerian himself. We need to go back inside and look—”

  “We need to what?” Whist interrupted.

  “Go back inside and look for tissue samples,” Dizz finished. “By which I mean pieces of the psyolisks. By which I mean not a chance in hell.”

  Erin felt her stomach tighten. Watching the funeral pyre Dizz had set up had been bad enough. Even though she knew the creatures had tried to kill them—even though she knew that zerg at that level were little more than animals—it had felt eerie and primal and as uncivilized as anything she’d ever been part of.

  Was this the sort of thing that happened in war? Probably. She’d missed most of the uglier parts of the war years, safely ensconced in her lab with nothing but tissue samples, chemical samples, and occasionally partial carcasses to remind her of what was happening out there. Now, suddenly, she was getting all of it at once: the combat, the fear, the adrenaline rush, the carnage, and, yes, the bitter-edged psychological aftermath of everything else.

  And now they wanted her to dig tissue samples out of the ashes?

  “What’s the problem?” Tanya asked. “Is it still too hot in there?”

  “Oh, it’s plenty hot,” Dizz assured her. “My armor won’t handle it—too light, and many open places—and you and Ulavu are definitely out. But those CMC-400s are pretty good, even with the damage Whist took, so he and Erin should be fine. My point is that there isn’t going to be anything left worth digging out.”

  “I suppose we should at least try,” Whist said. He looked at Erin and raised his eyebrows. “You game?”

  Not really, Erin wanted to say. But he was right. “Sure,” she said, trying to put some heartiness into her voice.

  “We’ll keep watch out here,” Dizz said as the two of them headed toward the gap in the tree palisade. “If anything goes wrong, give us a holler.”

  “And what, you’ll send Tanya in?” Whist asked pointedly.

  “Mm. Point. So just make sure nothing goes wrong.”

  “Right. Thanks for the tip.”

  “You’re welcome,” Dizz said. “And watch yourselves—Cruikshank wants real-time, so we need to leave the psi blocks off.”

  “Yeah, you watch yourselves,” Whist said. “All the zerg in there are already dead. Not so much out here.”

  There were still a few pockets of fire blazing away where the pods had once been. But for the most part, the pyre had died down to smoke. Keeping one eye on Whist and the other on her footing, Erin picked her way across the floor, glad that her air system kept her from having to smell any of it.

  They reached the pods to discover that, as Dizz had predicted, there was very little left. “What a mess,” Whist commented. He leaned over the nearest pod, peering past the shattered top and into the bits of smoldering material inside. “How do you want to do this?”

  Erin looked down the entire line of pods, or at least as many of them as she could see through the drifting smoke. “We go to each one and look for something that’s not completely blackened.”

  “And if we don’t find anything?”

  “I’ll take a few samples of anything that’s not ash,” Erin said.

  “Okay.” He pointed to the top tier. “I’ll start up there; you start down here, and we’ll meet in the middle. Let’s get this over with.”

  Swallowing her discomfort, Erin got to work.

 
The first eight pods were identical to the one she’d looked into earlier: bits of blackened flesh amid the broken debris of the chitin structure the pods had been encased in, all spattered with stains from whatever liquid had been inside. A little poking into the carbonized remains revealed occasional bones, the sight of which added an extra edge to her general queasiness.

  She was about to suggest to Whist that they just give up when she reached the ninth pod.

  “Whist?” she called, staring through the broken casing. “Would you come here a minute?”

  “Find something?” the marine called back, picking his way carefully down from the top tier.

  “No, just the opposite.” She waited until he landed on the floor beside her, and then she pointed. “Nothing.”

  “Damn,” he muttered, craning his neck to look. “One of ’em got out?”

  “I don’t think so,” Erin said. “There’s no flesh or bone, but there’s also no discoloration from the liquid on either the insides of the pod or the insides of the organic plumbing. I don’t think there was ever anything here.”

  “That’s crazy,” Dizz’s puzzled voice said in her earphone. “All the pods were…I’m pretty sure they were all sealed.”

  “They were,” Tanya confirmed tightly. “That was the first thing I checked after the battle. They all looked exactly alike.”

  “So why was one empty?” Dizz asked.

  “And are we sure it was just one?” Tanya added.

  “Let’s find out,” Whist said.

  The survey was quick. The final number was—

  “Six?” Dizz said, sounding floored. “You’re saying a full ten percent of the pods were empty?”

  “And were never occupied,” Erin reminded him. Somehow, that fact was the one that dug the deepest into her brain.

  “Or at least had been empty for a while,” Whist added. “Like Erin said, no liquid residue.”

  “But there was liquid in all of them,” Tanya insisted. “I looked.”

  “Maybe it just looked like there was,” Erin said. “Or—no, wait. If the baby psyolisks were being fed or otherwise supported by the liquid, it was probably mostly organics, or at least it had some complex-molecule components. That’s what would have charred and stained the pods when Dizz started the fire.”

  “So the empty pods could have just been filled with water?” Whist asked.

  “That, or something else simple and inorganic,” Erin said.

  “You’re suggesting they were decoys?” a new voice put in.

  Erin frowned. New…but she had a strong feeling she’d heard it before. “Excuse me?” she asked. “Who is this?”

  “Emperor Valerian,” the voice came again. “I thought your discovery was important enough for Colonel Cruikshank to patch me into the conversation.”

  “My apologies, Emperor,” Erin stammered, feeling her face redden as she silently cursed herself. Preoccupied or not, she should have instantly recognized the Dominion leader’s voice.

  “Never mind that,” Valerian said. At least he was being gracious about it. “I need to know whether the empty pods might have been decoys.”

  “You mean decoys for us, Emperor?” Whist asked. “I suppose they could have been. But what would be the point? Who even knew we were coming here?”

  “That is indeed the question,” Valerian said. “Lieutenant Halkman, what’s the status of your team and resources?”

  “We’re good to go, Emperor,” Dizz assured him. “What do you need us to do?”

  “You have the locations of Dr. Wyland’s Focal Points Two and Three?”

  “Yes, Emperor.”

  “Good. I want you to go directly to Focal Point Three. If you find the same sort of pods there, we need a good, solid look and analysis of what’s inside.”

  “With all due respect, Emperor, there’s every indication the pods are growing the things that attacked us,” Whist pointed out.

  “I agree,” Valerian said, his voice going grim. “In which case we will want to burn every one of them down to their component atoms. But the first step is to make sure we know precisely what we’re dealing with. And to be sure that, if we get them, we get all of them.”

  “Understood, Emperor,” Dizz said. “Whist, Erin—back here on the double. We’ll leave as soon as you’re aboard.”

  Five minutes later, Erin once again found herself being pressed into her seat as Dizz blasted the dropship into the sky.

  “You all might as well settle in,” Dizz said as he reached altitude and leveled off. “Unsuit if you want to. Or not—your choice. Just remember that even at top speed, it’ll be about a seven-hour flight. There are mealbars, juices, and some colas in the survival kit if anyone’s hungry or thirsty. I think I saw some skalet jerky in there, too, if your jaw wants a challenge.”

  “Maybe later,” Whist said, peering at the map he’d pulled up on his display. “You know, Point Two was a hell of a lot closer than Three. Any idea why Valerian didn’t send us there?”

  “Yeah,” Dizz said grimly. “We got our hourly data drop before I turned the psi block back on. It seems Hierarch Artanis has sent a force of his own to take a look at that one.” He paused, and Erin saw his eyes flick to Ulavu. “And,” he added, “they’re under attack.”

  The warning klaxons were still hooting away in the Hyperion’s hangar. But inside the heavy armor and claustrophobic confines of a Warhound combat mech, the noise was reduced to a dull roar. Keeping one eye on the status pre-check and the other on the real-time orbital view of Focal Point Two, Cruikshank finished strapping into the cockpit and wondered when the orders would come.

  Wondered, too, what exactly those orders would consist of.

  The pre-check had turned green, and the klaxons had finally turned the hell off, when Horner’s image popped up on the comm display. “Okay, Emperor Valerian was finally able to get through to Artanis,” the admiral said. “The good news is that Artanis has agreed not to demolish Point Two without getting a good look and some decent samples.”

  Mentally, Cruikshank shook his head. The whole rationale behind getting Dominion boots on the ground had been that Valerian needed the protoss to hold back while he worked things out with Artanis. Cruikshank’s force was supposed to make sure they did exactly that, whether they liked it or not.

  He’d been looking forward to kicking some protoss butt. Now, apparently, that wasn’t going to happen.

  “The bad news,” Horner continued, “is that Artanis can’t get through to his troops. Their shuttle was hit by a couple of mutalisks on its way down, which apparently took out both its psionic boosters.”

  “You’re joking,” Cruikshank said, frowning. “Is that even possible?”

  “Well, it’s either that or Cray’s psyolisks are mucking with them,” Horner said. “Something seems to be mucking with their warp fields, too—they couldn’t get the warp prisms to work, which is why they used a shuttle. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that Artanis can’t get through to them, so you’re going down to deliver his message. Artanis has recorded it, and I’ve downloaded it to your Warhound.”

  “And if the protoss refuse to listen?” Cruikshank asked hopefully. Maybe there would be at least a little butt-kicking.

  “They shouldn’t,” Horner said. “Artanis put enough ID and clearance codes in his message to choke a leviathan.”

  “Understood, sir,” Cruikshank said. So if all they were doing was delivering a message, why was a third of his force heading to the surface? “So is the rest of the force standing down?”

  “You’re not seeing the big picture, Colonel,” Horner said grimly. “If for some reason the protoss do refuse to accept these new orders, we need to make sure they leave the chamber intact until our people can examine it.” He raised his eyebrows. “However we have to do that.”

  “Understood, sir,” Cruikshank said again, feeling his heart rate pick up. “Don’t worry. We’ll make sure we get to that chamber first.”

  “Good,” Horner said.
“Get down there. And good luck.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cruikshank turned and got the Warhound striding toward the dropship, a tight smile creasing his face. Protoss being the stubborn SOBs that they were, there was a good chance they wouldn’t believe he was really carrying their hierarch’s orders.

  In which case, he was going to get to do some butt-kicking after all.

  He could hardly wait.

  —

  They are creatures of beauty, Emperor Valerian Mengsk, Zagara said, her gravelly psionic voice sounding almost wistful. They have an awareness and sentience, but not in the way of terrans or zerg. They see to the core of existence, to the deepest level of life. Their purpose is to find and nurture that life. She seemed to grow a little taller. Your destruction of so many of them was a crime against the entire universe.

  “The lives of my people were at risk,” Valerian reminded her, trying to hold his temper. Zagara simply would not accept even the possibility that her adostra might have turned into killers. “Besides, you created this group. You surely still remember how to do that.”

  Our knowledge is of no use without xel’naga strands, she said. All were used. There is no more.

  “You can’t get the adostra to breed?”

  We do not yet know whether they can do so, she said. Abathur believes that, someday, they may develop that ability.

  “Your spawning pools and hatcheries don’t work?”

  They are designed for zerg and zerg variants, Zagara said. As yet, they have proved unable to re-create or generate xel’naga essence. The xel’naga had a depth of molecular and quantum complexity that we still do not understand.

  “I see,” Valerian murmured. So in theory, if the Dominion and the protoss could destroy all the adostra and psyolisks, that would be the end of it.