by Jeff Grubb
“That, and more. Look at this. These are readings on the Zerg going back months.”
“But that’s impossible,” said Raynor. “Unless . . .”
“Unless the Confederates knew about the Zerg all the time. They knew they were here. Hell, they may have brought them here.”
“Samuel J. Houston on a bicycle,” said Raynor. Mike assumed that was a curse. Then Raynor added, “Get the disk and let’s move out.”
“Working,” said Mike. The disk burner chugged for a few minutes, then ejected a silvery wafer. “Got it. Let’s go!”
The moment Mike plucked the disk from the machine, the lighting suddenly went red. From above them a female voice intoned, “Self-destruct sequence initiated.”
“Crap!” cursed Mike. “It must have been booby-trapped!”
“Let’s move!” said Raynor. “Don’t make any wrong turns!”
Mike, in his lighter armor, led, now unafraid of running into any other surprises. They encountered nothing but the dead on their way out, the soft tones above them warning them, “Ten seconds to detonation,” then “Five seconds to detonation.”
Then they were outside, beneath the rotten-orange sky. Mike kept running, intending not to stop until he reached the dropship.
Raynor caught up with him and threw him to the ground.
Mike bellowed a curse at the marshal, but it was drowned out by the explosion.
The entire side of the mountain rippled from the detonation, focusing a single blast from the mouth of the installation. A listering hot wave washed over Liberty and the prostrate marines, and the top of the mountain fell in on itself. Mike hugged the bucking earth and prayed. And once it stopped, he realized that if he had been standing, he would have been blown away in the blast.
“Thanks,” he said to Raynor.
“Seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” said the former lawman. “Come on, let’s get back before the Zerg find us here.”
Mengsk was waiting for them on the bridge of his own command ship, the Hyperion. Compared to the bridge of the Norad II, this bridge was smaller and cozier, more of a den/library than the nerve center of a fleet. The perimeter of the room was dotted by technicians speaking softly into comm units. A large screen dominated one wall.
Of Lieutenant Kerrigan, Mike noticed, there was no sign.
“There were Zerg there!” said Raynor, handing over the disk. “The Confederates have been studying the damned aliens for months!”
“Years,” said Mengsk, unsurprised. “I saw Zerg in Confederate holding pens myself, and that was over a year ago. It’s clear the Confederates have known of these creatures for some time. For all we know, they could be breeding them.”
Mike said nothing. The bottom had dropped out of the Confederate secrets market. There was nothing that they did that would surprise him now.
Raynor’s jaw dropped open. “You mean, they’ve been using my planet as some sort of laboratory for these . . . things?”
“Your planet and your sister world,” said Mengsk. “And gods know how many more Fringe Worlds. They’ve sowed the wind, my friends, and now they are reaping the whirlwind.”
For the first time, Raynor was stopped in his tracks. The enormity of the crime, Mike thought, was just too much for his local law-enforcement rain. Who do you arrest when the crime is genocide? How do you punish for such crimes?
Mike spoke up. “I’ve got a report to file. Summarizes everything we’ve found so far.”
“We have a scrambled comm setup for your use,” said Mengsk. “But you know they’ll never run the story.”
“I have to take that chance,” Mike admitted, but inwardly he had to agree with Mengsk. If the Old Families of Tarsonis were paranoid enough to threaten a scandalmonger like him over a construction scandal, how willing were they to admit to dealing with planet-devouring aliens?
Mike was suddenly glad that the mind reader wasn’t present.
A soft bell chimed, and one of the technicians announced, “We’re getting warp signatures at mark four-point-five-point-seven.
“Pull back to a safe distance, scan on maximum,” said Mengsk. “Gentlemen, you may remain if you want to see the last act of this particularly tawdry passion play.”
Neither Mike nor Raynor moved, and Mengsk turned back to the screen. The huge orange ball of Mar Sara loomed over them, a few white clouds scattered high across its northern hemisphere. Yet most of that orange surface was now mottled, spoiled. Overrun by the creep, and the things that lived in it.
The very surface of the land seemed to pulsate and bubble, heaving like a living thing. The creep had even spread over the oceans in broad mats, writhing like living carpets of algae.
There was nothing human left on the planet. Not alive, at any rate.
A flash blossomed to one side of the planetary disk, and Mike knew that the Protoss had arrived. Their lightning ships warped into being. A flash of blue-white electricity, and then they were there. The golden carriers with their moth attendants, and metallic bat-winged creations that wove among the larger ships. They were breathtaking and deadly, forces of war raised to the level of an art form.
Mengsk spoke softly into his throat mike, and Mike could feel the engines engage. The terrorist leader was prepared to get out at the first sign that the Protoss had noticed them.
He need not have worried. The Protoss were completely intent on the diseased planet beneath them. Hatchways opened up in the bottoms of the larger ships, and great beams of energy, so intense as to be colorless, lanced downward toward the surface. The aliens laid down a withering barrage against the planet beneath.
Where the energy beams struck, they burned. The sky itself curdled as the beams pierced through the atmospheric envelope. Air itself was torn away from the planet by the force of the blows.
And where the beams struck the surface, they erupted, boiling the ground where they struck, uprooting both the creep-infested lands and those that had not yet been infected. Deadly rainbow radiation, more brilliant than Mike had ever seen, spiraled out from the impact points, churning earth and water mercilessly, distorting the matter of the planet itself.
Then other ships began firing thinner beams with surgical accuracy, adding to the barrage in places. The cities, Mike realized. They were targeting the cities and making sure that nothing could survive there. Any place of human settlement. Including, he knew, the Jacobs Installation itself.
They had cut their timing very close indeed, he thought, and his stomach gave an uneasy lurch.
One of the pulsing beams punched through the crust itself, and the ground erupted in a volcanic upwelling. Magma pushed to the surface, consuming everything that had been uprooted by the energy beams. Most of the world’s atmosphere was burning now, torn away from the orb in a veil that trailed it in orbit, and what was left spiraled in hurricanes and tornadoes, until destroyed by more beams.
Now red volcanic glows covered the northern hemisphere of Mar Sara like welts. The remainder of the land heaved in a deadly rainbow. Nothing could survive the assault, human or otherwise.
“Exterminators,” said Mike softly. “They’re cosmic exterminators.”
“Indeed,” said Mengsk. “And they can’t or won’t tell the difference between us and the Zerg. Maybe to them there is no difference. We should prepare for departure. They may notice us at any time.”
Mike looked at Raynor. The former marshal was stone-faced and grim, his hands clutching the railing in front of him. In the light of screens that showed the blue lightning of the Protoss ships, he looked like a statue. Only his eyes were alive, and they were filled with infinite sadness.
“Raynor?” said Mike. “Jim? Are you all right?”
“No,” said Jim Raynor softly. “I mean, can any of us be all right after this?”
Mike had no response, and sat there as the planet died and Arcturus Mengsk spoke softly into his throat mike. After a moment, the terrorist leader said, “We are ready for departure.”
“All right,” said Raynor, his eyes never leaving the screen. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 9
MARSHAL AND GHOST
James Raynor was the most decent man I ever encountered during the fall of the Confederacy. Everyone else, I can safely say, was either a victim or a villain, or quite often both.
At first wash, Raynor seems like a backwoods cowboy, one of those good old boys that you see in the bars swapping lies about the days gone by. There’s a cocksureness, an overconfidence about him that just makes you bridle initially. Yet over time you come to see him as a valuable ally and—dare I say it?—a friend.
It all comes from belief. Jim Raynor believed in himself, and he believed in those around him. And from that belief came the strength that allowed him and those who followed him to survive everything else the universe threw at him.
Jim Raynor was a most decent and honorable man. I suppose that’s why his is the greatest tragedy of this godforsaken war.
—THE LIBERTY MANIFESTO
MENGSK STRUCK LIBERTY AS JUST ANOTHER politician. For all the ghosts that supposedly haunted the man, his motivations were as apparent as those of the lowest ward heeler on Tarsonis. He was still gathering his power, and unwilling to pass on any potential ally. It was, Mike realized, why he knew the man would keep his word—he was still in a position where it would be dangerous for him if it got around that he did not.
Mengsk made Raynor a captain for his troubles, and Liberty was granted a series of one-on-one interviews. Mike avoided the level of propaganda that Mengsk apparently desired, but that made the charismatic leader even more available to Mike’s questions. Mike’s own resistance made his approval more desirable to the rebel commander.
Slowly, Mike found himself agreeing more and more with Mengsk’s opinions of the Confederates. Hell, he himself had said many of the same things, though in a more cautious fashion, in various reports over the years. The Confederacy of Man was a criminal bureaucracy, filled to the brim with career politicos and grafters whose battle cry was “Where’s Mine?”
And Mengsk was right about another matter. UNN never ran anything of his report on the destruction of Mar Sara, or of the Confederate culpability in the attack. They did get around to telling the people that there was not one but two hostile enemy threats out in the universe, the subversive Zerg and the sky-blasting Protoss. Both were presented as implacable foes of humanity, and the only solution was to group together beneath the Confederate flag to repulse them.
“Such is the nature of tyrants,” said Mengsk late one evening on the Hyperion’s observation deck, his snifter of randy untouched on the table between them. Liberty’s glass had long since been drained and set down empty beside a chess set of which the white king had been toppled. Mengsk played black as habit, Liberty usually lost as white. An unused ashtray rested at the far end of the table. Michael had given up smoking again, but Mengsk made it available to him nonetheless.
Mengsk continued, “Tyrants can only survive by presenting a greater tyrant as a threat. The Confederacy does not realize the danger of the other tyrants that it has now called down upon all of us.”
“Before the Protoss and Zerg,” Mike noted, “their favorite threat was you.”
Mengsk chuckled. “I must admit that I feel that the best form of government is benevolent despotism. I don’t think the oligarchs in charge agree with that.”
“And are you pointing at greater tyrants to cover your own abuses?” Mike asked.
“Of course I am,” said Arcturus Mengsk. “But it does help that our foes are greater tyrants than we are. Or ever intend to be.” He picked up Mike’s toppled king from the board. “Another game, perhaps?”
Mike saw nothing of Kerrigan, and when asked, Mengsk only said, “My trusted lieutenant works best in the field.” Mike took that to mean that she was out sizing up another planet ripe for rebellion.
He was right. Two days later Mengsk called both Liberty and Raynor to his observation deck. A graphic display showed another world, this one a ruddy brown. Behind it a gas giant loomed like an overprotective parent.
“Antiga Prime,” said Mengsk, tapping the screen. “Border colony of the Confederacy of Man. Its people are very, very tired of the Confederate military, which has gotten a bit heavy-handed since the Protoss and Zerg first appeared. I want Captain Raynor to help the Antigans get their revolt off the ground. That means dealing with a unit of Alpha Squadron they’ve got baby-sitting the major road on the ground.”
“My pleasure, sir,” said Raynor. Mike noted that Raynor seemed calmer, more controlled now than he had when they left the Sara system. Incorporating his own unit’s survivors with Mengsk’s Sons of Korhal apparently helped see him through the loss of Mar Sara, and his bold, razen nature was bubbling once more to the surface. He was itching for action.
Mengsk turned. “And Mr. Liberty, if you want to accompany his unit?”
“You may have overlooked this fact, Arcturus,” said Liberty, “but I’m still not working for you.”
“You’re not working for anyone at the moment, it seems,” replied Mengsk. “The UNN has been noticeably devoid of your illustrious presence. I only thought you would be professionally interested . . .”
“And . . . ?” prompted Liberty.
“And your glib tongue and clever notepad might e enough to encourage the Antigans to cast off their shackles.” He smiled a slightly shamefaced grin, and Mike knew that he was going planetside.
Antiga Prime had once been a water world, but the oceans had left without leaving a forwarding address. All that remained were hard mudflats and low, flat mesas covered with a native shrub with purple blossoms. Occasionally the whitened bones of some fossilized sea creatures rippled out of the surrounding strata, the only reminder that life larger than humans had once been here. Pretty in an arid, lifeless sort of way.
The dropship brought them down on a low plateau that looked like every other low plateau on Antiga.
Mengsk had mentioned that his scout would contact them once they were on the ground. Mike had no doubt who that scout would be. As the rebels set up a perimeter around the ship, he kept the comm link open to Mengsk and the regional commanders.
Kerrigan appeared out of nowhere, despite the fact that there was no cover around. She was dressed in ghost armor—a hostile environment suit—and had a canister rifle slung across her back. Her helmet was off, and her red hair flashed in Antiga’s too-bright sun.
Kerrigan snapped off a quick salute. “Captain Raynor, I’ve finished scouting out the area and . . . You pig!”
Mike quickly turned down the volume on his comm unit. Raynor lurched backward as if struck.
“What?” he said. “I haven’t even said anything to you yet!”
Kerrigan’s too-wide lips turned into a nasty sneer. “Yeah, but you were thinking it.”
“Oh yeah, you’re a telepath,” said Raynor, shooting Mike a look that even the reporter could read. And why didn’t you warn me about this? To the lieutenant he said, “Look, let’s just get on with this, okay?”
Kerrigan snorted. “Right. The command center is a couple klicks due west, up on one of those mesas. Alpha Squad, but no Duke. Sorry, boys. We take them out, and the indigenous forces would be willing to rise in rebellion. There are some towers that need to come down if I’m to get in.”
“Right,” said Raynor, frowning. “I don’t need to tell you to move out.”
“No, you don’t,” said Kerrigan, a touch too hotly. “But there’s another thing.”
“Go ahead, Lieutenant,” said Raynor. “I don’t read minds.”
“There have been increasing reports of xenomorphs in the area.” Kerrigan almost smiled at the reaction to her words.
Raynor frowned deeply.
Mike nearly jumped in his seat. “Xenomorphs? Zerg? Here?”
“Cattle mutilations, mysterious disappearances, bug-eyed monsters,” confirmed Kerrigan. “The usual suspects. Not a lot, but enough.”
“Crap
,” muttered Raynor. “Confederates and Zerg. They seem to go hand in hand. Okay, now let’s roll out.”
The wide, dried mudflats of Antiga Prime were ideal for speed and lousy for cover. Twice marine scouts appeared to the south, distracting Raynor in his Vulture to deal with them as Kerrigan, Raynor’s troops, and Mike slowly crept up on the mesa. They were about three hundred yards shy when a tower cannon opened up on them.
Mike’s comm link crackled. “Dammit,” said Kerrigan. “They’ve got sensors out the buttcheeks on that thing. I can’t even sneeze without it picking me up. Can you get reinforcements on that blower?”
“Working on it,” snapped Mike as another shell bounded into the outcropping above him. “Raynor! It’s Liberty! We’re pinned down! Need your firepower, muy pronto.”
Mike was unsure that the former marshal had gotten the message, until he heard the high-pitched whine of Raynor’s Vulture engines. The captain topped a nearby rise in a single hop, closing as the tower tried to traverse its gun to the new target. It was too slow, and with a resounding thump a volley of frag grenades shot from under the vehicle’s front hood. Blossoms of flame erupted at the base of the tower.
Kerrigan gave a cry, and the remaining pinned troops rolled out of their hiding places and lacerated the tower with spike fire. Raynor passed for another blitz, but it was overkill: by the time a second string of explosions lossomed at the base, the tower was already listing, and as Raynor sped off, it toppled completely in his wake.
Mike’s private line crackled. “Next time, make it something important, buddy!” said the captain.
“What did he say?” Kerrigan asked, then added, “Never mind. He’s a pig, but he’s a pretty competent pig.”
Mike shook his head. “Captain Raynor is one of the most upright, moral men I’ve met since leaving Tarsonis.”
“Yeah, he’s that way on the surface,” said Kerrigan. “Everything’s under real tight control. It’s underneath that he’s a pig, like most people. Trust me on this.”
Mike didn’t know what to say. Eventually he managed, “He has been under a lot of stress lately.”
