StarCraft

by Timothy Zahn

  “Which have been blown up and then exposed to vacuum,” Erin said. “A few clean ones can’t hurt.”

  “Point,” Dizz said. “While you do that, Ulavu can help me get that thing out of the hole.”

  Whist frowned. “What thing, and what hole?”

  “The thing wedged up into the ceiling hole,” Dizz said, pointing upward. “Tanya saw it. Didn’t you?”

  Tanya looked up at the hole. There was something up there, she saw now. “Huh.”

  “You mean you didn’t see it?” Dizz asked.

  “No,” Tanya admitted. “I thought you were just pointing out an emergency bolt-hole.”

  “Really?” Dizz asked, peering up at it. “Yeah, like any of us would fit through there. Well, you might. Anyway, looks to me like the best way to get to it is to cut it out of there, and for that I need our friendly local dark templar and his warp blades. If you’re up to it, I mean.”

  Of course I can assist, Ulavu said. Tell me what you wish me to do.

  “Nothing fancy,” Dizz said. “I’ll carry you up, hold you in place while you cut it out of whatever brackets or supports there are, and we bring it down here.”

  I will be happy to assist.

  “After I get these bandages on,” Whist said. “Speaking of warp blades, that flying disk thing of yours is a damn cool weapon. How come we’ve never seen one before?”

  They have only been recently perfected, Ulavu said. The disk utilizes warp-blade technology, though the projections are not warp blades precisely.

  “Well, I like it,” Whist said. “Anyone see where it ended up?”

  “It’s over there,” Tanya said as she spotted the disk lying near a pair of dead zerglings. “I’ll get it.”

  By the time she returned, Whist had finished his bandaging, Dizz and Ulavu had retrieved the object from its hidey-hole and set it on the floor, and the three of them were crouched around it. It was a small box-shaped lump of zerg bioconstruct: gray, with a flowing gratelike pattern on one side and a handful of what looked like strangely shaped switches. “Any idea what it is?” she asked as she handed the disk to Ulavu.

  “Oh, yeah,” Dizz said sourly. “Five’ll get you ten that this is one of the transmitters they’ve been using. One of Cruikshank’s data bursts had a slightly blurry picture of what they thought was the transmitter in Zagara’s conference building thingy.”

  “This is a transmitter?” Tanya asked, frowning at it. To her, it just looked like another chunk of organic zerg construct. “I didn’t know they used long-range comm systems.”

  The zerg queen Mukav also used one when she arrived at Korhal IV to ask for terran assistance, Ulavu said.

  “Okay, but why here?” Dizz asked. “These are zerg. Can’t Abathur just use their psionic connection?”

  “Not with the psyolisks,” Erin called from over by the pods. She had a small access panel open, Tanya saw, and was poking inside with some kind of probe. “Different level of psionics from xel’naga essence, remember?” She half turned and lifted a finger in sudden understanding. “The machinery noise I thought I heard coming from Point One,” she said. “Remember? The sound mixed in with singing?”

  “This thing isn’t exactly mechanical,” Dizz pointed out.

  “Adostra psionics isn’t exactly singing, either,” Whist countered. “Maybe she’s right. Maybe another of these things was in Point One as part of the mix.”

  “But there’s still no way you were hearing this—any of this—across that much distance,” Dizz persisted.

  “Maybe it was coming via the adostra,” Erin said. “If they’re aware of everything happening in their chamber—maybe everywhere on the planet—they could have woven the biomechanics of the transmitter into their song.”

  “Yes, but—” Dizz began.

  “Regardless, the thing is here,” Tanya interrupted. “Let’s focus on that. So. Abathur creates some transmitters and sets them up in the adostra chambers. They’re self-contained; they can cover the whole continent, and no one’s going to know he made up a few more on the side after he built the ones he gave to Zagara and Mukav.”

  “Which would imply the psyolisks can hear and understand language,” Whist said. “Damn. No wonder they knew we were faking it. We blabbed the whole plan right in front of them.”

  “They’d have figured it out eventually,” Dizz said. “Here’s the big question—”

  “Oh my God,” Tanya interrupted as a horrible thought suddenly struck her.

  Because if there’d been one of these same transmitters at Point One, then Abathur had known about her and her power. He’d known all along.

  No. Ulavu’s mental voice soothed her. He did not.

  But we talked about it, Tanya protested. We talked about my power after the battle, right out in the open.

  No, Ulavu repeated. All he knows is that you are a pyrokeet.

  Tanya blinked, that conversation suddenly snapping into full focus. He was right. The protoss had given the others her hated ghost nickname, and that was all.

  And neither Abathur nor any other zerg could possibly have the slightest idea what a pyrokeet was.

  With a start, she realized the others were looking at her expectantly. “Sorry,” she said. “Brain glitch. Go on.”

  “Okay,” Dizz said, peering closely at her. “Anyway, as I was saying, here’s the question. If Abathur designed these transmitters to work while the psyolisks are blazing away at full power, does that mean they’re immune to the psyolisks’ usual comm interference?”

  “Good time for that question,” Tanya said. The buzzing pressure in her brain was suddenly growing louder. “Because I think more of them are on the way.”

  I concur, Ulavu said. Their attack has begun anew.

  “Great,” Whist muttered. “Come on, Dizz, let’s go check the front door for company.”

  “At least this group will have to come at us one at a time,” Dizz said, popping a fresh mag into his P-45. “Unless they want to take the time to cut down all the rest of the trees.”

  And then, without warning, there was a booming thud from above them, a massive crash that shook the whole mesa. An instant later came a second earsplitting crash, this one a long, crunching, splintering sort of noise. “What the hell?” Dizz shouted through the cacophony.

  Whist swore. “That, my friends,” he bit out as the crunching faded away, “was the sound of a devourer, or something just as big, bouncing along the top of the mesa and tearing across the tree palisade. And knocking the whole thing the hell down.

  “They’re not coming in one at a time, Dizz. They’re all going to come in together.”

  The strategy of putting all the protoss in the center of the battle line and all the terran marines, reapers, and mechs at the flanks had worked out badly the first time Cruikshank and Alikka had tried it.

  So naturally, they were trying it again.

  Which probably looked odd, especially since the zerg were lining up for a massive, killing blow. A group of hydralisks had been gathered opposite the protoss in a spearhead formation, with only a thin line of zerglings stretched across the rest of the choke point to keep the terrans busy.

  It was a good strategy, one that the history of this battle would suggest was a winner. Once the hydralisks had cleared out all the protoss, they could turn both terran flanks and take them out.

  Cruikshank could only hope that the trick he and Alikka had come up with would make the difference for the allies.

  He frowned, his train of thought stumbling over the word. Allies. He’d never thought of the Dominion and the protoss as having that kind of relationship. Never wanted to, either. Yes, they’d fought together on a few occasions, but that was a far cry from being actual allies. At least in Cruikshank’s mind. Even after Emperor Valerian declared a cease-fire, Cruikshank had insisted on thinking of the protoss less as friends than as not-enemies. Fighting shoulder to shoulder with protoss was a new and not entirely pleasant experience for him.

  Still,
for all their arrogance and stiff-necked sense of superiority, he had to admit that Alikka, at least, could be made to see reason. Sometimes. When there was no other choice.

  It has begun, Alikka warned. The pressure has been increased.

  Cruikshank bared his teeth. And from the Warhound’s cockpit he could see the entire center of the protoss formation wavering as they took the full brunt of the psyolisks’ psionic attack. Any minute now, and the hydralisks would begin their charge.

  “G-Five?” he called into his comm. The man had a name, of course, but mech pilots came and went so quickly that it was easier just to think of him as Goliath Five. Even when the Goliath Five mech itself was out of commission.

  “We’re ready, Colonel,” Goliath Five said. “Well, I am, anyway. The others are—well, I’m sure they’re not actually drunk.”

  “That’s why you’re there,” Cruikshank said with a touch of grim satisfaction. Alikka hadn’t liked this part of the plan. Had hated it, in fact. But Cruikshank had insisted, and the protoss had eventually given in, and he should now be damn glad that he had. Not that he would likely ever admit it. “Get ready to fire on my signal. On my signal,” he added, just to make sure. Goliath Five was no more a fan of the protoss than was Cruikshank himself.

  “Roger that, Colonel.”

  They approach, Alikka said, his voice sounding even more strained.

  Cruikshank looked across the field. The hydralisk spearhead was on the move. “Get ready, everyone,” he called. He glanced at his rear display, at the phoenixes lying half crushed in the middle of the field. Was it too late, he wondered, to pull the line behind them?

  Probably. “Alikka, get your people moving…now.”

  For the first half second he thought that Alikka had missed his order or, worse, that the heightened buzzing in the protoss’ brains was drowning out everything else. Then, to his relief, the center of the battle line wavered and began to crumple, the protoss loping or staggering to the flanks, running away to cower behind the marines, reapers, and goliaths that were still standing against the enemy. Templar and Nerazim alike, caving before the psionic attack of the psyolisks and the threat of the oncoming hydralisks.

  Cruikshank held his breath. This was the make-or-break moment. If the enemy had abandoned the idea of getting more zerg to Point Three and instead decided to annihilate the terrans and protoss who had so inconveniently dedicated themselves to blocking their path, the hydralisks would mirror the protoss move and focus their attack on the flanks.

  But whoever was running the psyolisks still had their priorities straight. Redoubling their speed, the hydralisks arrowed straight for the wide gap that had opened up in front of them. Cruikshank could almost imagine the zerg commander smiling at the victory, or at least coming as close to a smile as a zerg could get.

  He took a deep breath. “G-Five…fire.”

  And with a crackling sizzle and a blanket static charge that straightened every hair on Cruikshank’s body, one of the phoenixes lying helpless on the ground behind the battle line opened up with its ion cannons.

  Protoss ion cannons were designed for anti-aircraft and anti-spacecraft combat. Cruikshank had never seen one used on the ground.

  It was a sight he would not soon forget. The collimated pulse of negative ions blasted through the gap where the protoss had been standing seconds earlier, the lower edge flash-charring the grass below it, the side edges tearing apart air molecules and throwing ripples of static charge across the goliaths, reapers, and marines a hundred meters away.

  And the zerg running straight into the center of the pulse simply disintegrated.

  It was as awesome a sight as Cruikshank had ever witnessed. The hydralisks didn’t explode as with grenades, or throw off splashes of blood as with gauss rifle spikes, or die in any of the usual ways zerg did on the battlefield. They simply came apart, like pieces of dried grass in a fire. Their carapaces peeled away; their claws and teeth and faces blurred and shattered and became dust in the wind. They went neatly, and in order, the ones in front blowing back into the ones behind, which then did the same. The first pulse made it all the way to the fourth file before it dissipated, and Cruikshank wondered briefly if the zerg commander would try to pull the attackers back or at least disperse them.

  They did neither. But then, they really didn’t have time. The first ion pulse had barely dissipated when Goliath Five fired his next shot, taking out the remaining three files.

  That second shot was the last. Alikka had warned that the damage to the phoenix extended to the power system, and that the capacitors had only limited storage capability.

  But with the hydralisks bunched together for a breakthrough, two shots were all Cruikshank needed. Even as the surviving zerg reeled under the static-charge aftereffects of the pulses, the marines and the goliaths opened fire from the ground while the reapers added their own rain of hypersonic metal from above. A few of the zerg reached the battle line, only to be slaughtered by the protoss.

  And in the end, the allies held the field.

  The psionic attack is fading, Alikka announced into the new silence, his relief clearly evident in his mental voice. I believe the psyolisks are pulling back.

  “You want us to go after them, Colonel?” Goliath One asked.

  Cruikshank eyed the forest, now devoid of visible zerg. It was a tempting thought.

  But there could be anything still lurking in there. And while goliaths were designed for maneuverability in tight quarters, even they had their limits. “Stand down,” he ordered. “Marines, pull back and regroup. Goliaths, keep an eye out for surprises. Reapers, hold altitude and log any movement. Alikka, are your people all okay?”

  They are, Alikka said. But for a time they were unable to focus properly. Combat would have been disastrous.

  “Even the phoenix command crew?” Cruikshank asked, perversely wanting the protoss commander to say it out loud.

  To his surprise, Alikka did. Even the command crew, he said. Perhaps even especially the command crew. You were right to insist that a terran handle the final aim and activation of the ion cannons.

  And to Cruikshank’s even greater surprise, Alikka’s admission didn’t feel nearly as satisfying as he’d expected it to. Was he actually getting too old to gloat?

  No. He was tired; that was all. Just tired. “I’m glad it worked,” he said.

  The yellow long-range-comm light winked on, and he tapped the switch. “Cruikshank.”

  “Horner,” the admiral’s voice came back. “Report.”

  “The field is ours, sir,” Cruikshank said. “We’ve won the day.”

  “Congratulations,” Horner said. “But the day’s not over. How mobile are you?”

  “We have four goliaths and a Warhound in fair to decent condition.”

  “Any chance of repairing or freeing any of the ships?”

  “No, sir, not down here,” Cruikshank said. “The warp fields still aren’t working, either.” He frowned, suddenly realizing where Horner was going with this. “Halkman’s team?”

  “Yes,” Horner said. “The tree palisade’s been knocked completely over—Abathur sent a devourer ramming into it—and there’s a mass of zerg gathering outside.”

  “How long?”

  “Probably not more than a few minutes.”

  Cruikshank mouthed a curse. And he and his force were fifteen klicks away, with some serious terrain between here and there. A soldier in fully functional combat armor could handle that kind of distance with ease, but every one of his marines and reapers had sustained battle damage to either their armor, their body, or both. “I’m sorry, Admiral,” Cruikshank said. “But there’s no way I can get enough of my force there in time to help.”

  “I know,” Horner said heavily. “Neither can we.”

  Across the field, Alikka was checking out his people. Cruikshank stared at him…“My force can’t get there, anyway, sir,” he said. “But there might be another option.”

  —

  F
or a long moment no one said anything. That alone was surprising; Erin would have expected at least some swearing. But for once, Whist and Dizz were silent.

  Maybe there were situations so serious that they superseded even marine and reaper vocabularies. That was a frightening thought.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  “You’re going to get those samples,” Whist said. “The rest of us are going to see what we can do to stop the zerg.”

  “Or at least slow them down,” Dizz added.

  Erin looked at her sample tube. “What good will it do to slow them down?”

  “All the good in the world,” Dizz said. “For the first time since we landed on this damn planet, Abathur’s missed a bet.” He pointed to the transmitter. “Like I said. If he uses this thing to talk to the psyolisks, it means their psi doesn’t block it.”

  Erin looked at the transmitter in sudden understanding. “So once I’ve got my readings, we can send them to the Hyperion?”

  “Exactly,” Whist said. “Ulavu, you think you can figure out how to work it?”

  It is of zerg construction, he said doubtfully. If it uses the same protocols as human Valkyrie comm systems, a terran would likely be better equipped to understand it.

  “Maybe,” Whist said. “But Erin’s busy, and I need Dizz and Tanya downstairs. So you’re elected. Get in gear and figure it out.” He nodded toward the archway. “Let’s go see what they’ve got planned this time.”

  Erin turned back to her work, her stomach knotting up. Getting their data to the Hyperion would be good. It might be the vital piece that would stop a war.

  But if it was, she would really like to be alive to see it.

  Blinking away thoughts of her own death, she got back to work.

  The return line from the pod was easy to spot. It was typical zerg organic construction, with a sheathing that should be capable of self-repair. Mentally crossing her fingers, she eased a syringe through the tube and extracted a few drops. She then eased the needle out, watching another drop ooze out through the hole…

  But just one. The needle hole had indeed closed up. Puffing out a sigh of relief, she injected the drops into the compact bioanalyzer and started fastening the access panel back into place.