by Jeff Grubb
“Your point?” Duke kept a stone face.
Mike checked the other screens. Another Wraith attack had dispersed the mutalisks, but the flying starfish looked to be made of tougher stuff.
“I’m giving you a choice,” Mengsk said smoothly. “You can go back to the Confederacy and lose, or you can join us and help save our entire race from being overrun by the Zerg.”
“You expect me to answer that?”
“I don’t think it’s a difficult decision.” A small smile appeared beneath Mengsk’s gray-spattered mustache.
“I’m a general, for God’s sake,” Duke exploded.
“Oh yeah,” said Mike. “Congratulations. Shall we put it on your tombstone?”
“Michael, please,” said Mengsk. “Duke, you’re a general without an army. I’m offering you a position on my staff, in my cabinet, not just some backwater post where they shelved you before the war.”
“I don’t know . . .” said Duke, and Mike saw the warrior waver for a moment. Mengsk had him. Poor Duke, he had been hooked. He just didn’t know it yet.
“Don’t test my patience, Edmund,” said Mengsk. Somewhere beyond the bulkheads, something exploded near the ship. Almost as if it had been planned to punctuate Mengsk’s comment.
Duke held the moment for a decorous beat, then said, “All right, Mengsk. You’ve got a deal.”
“You’ve made the right choice . . . General Duke,” said Mengsk. “Captain Raynor?”
“Yes, sir?” Raynor was scowling now.
“Escort the general’s supporters and equipment to a safe location.” As Mengsk spoke, Duke enabled the ship’s self-destruct. In twenty minutes they would be klicks away, and the Norad II would be a thermonuclear fireball.
“I hope it takes a lot of Zergs with it,” said Mike, as the bridge started to clear very, very fast.
Later, Mike was back at Mengsk’s communications center. With the explosion of the Norad II, there had been a lull in the fighting. Confederate troops, including the neurally resocialized ones, had switched sides easily with official permission, and now the only enemies to deal with were inhuman.
The downside was that there was no shortage of these.
Mike wrapped up a report on the Norad II rescue and shot it into the net. He leaned back and ran a hand through his hair. It felt thinner than before.
A pack of cigarettes, slightly crushed, dropped onto the console, followed by a foil container of matches. Raynor said, “One of the crew of the Norad says you’re even now.”
“Excellent,” said Mike, drawing out a coffin nail.
“Sending another report to nowhere?”
“I thought Kerrigan was the mind reader. But yeah. Old habits die hard, though I have the fantasy that someone finds these reports years later and appreciates all the sacrifice of men and women against these things. And all the stupidity as well.”
Raynor settled down into a chair across from him as Mike lit up. “Unlikely. Like Mengsk says, the victors write the histories. Losing memoirs are deleted like yesterday’s data.”
Mike took a deep draw and coughed, making a face. “What did they marinate these in, cat urine?”
Raynor raised his hands. “Best I could find, under the circumstances. Story of our lives.”
“You betcha,” said Mike. “Speaking of the uber-Mengsk, how did your talk with Arcturus go?”
“I told him that Duke was a snake.” Raynor sighed. “And he said . . .”
“That he was our snake, right?”
Raynor shook his head in disbelief. “I believe in Mengsk’s cause, that the Confederacy has to go, and he did get me out of stir, but, man. Some of the deals he’s making. Some of the things he’s asking us to do. . .”
“Don’t go following causes,” said Mike, taking a painful puff. “They’ll just break your heart. When idealism meets reality, it’s rarely reality that backs down. I’ve seen more good government types turn into political hacks than I’ve seen zerglings. And I’ve seen a lot of zerglings.”
There was a silence between the two men. In the background the muted comm units spoke of mutalisks and Wraiths, of Goliaths and hydralisks, and the starfish things, which they were calling Zerg queens. And death. They spoke incessantly of death.
“I tell you I was married once?” Raynor volunteered.
The chasm of personal interaction yawned wide and deep at Mike’s feet. “It hasn’t come up,” he said calmly, hoping that he was not expected to share back.
“Married. Had a kid. He was ‘gifted,’ they said.”
“I heard the quotation marks around that. Gifted like in ghost material? Psionic powers? Telepathic?”
“Uh-huh. Sent him off to a special school. Government scholarship. A few months later, we got a letter. There had been an ‘incident’ at the school.”
Mike had heard of such letters. They were unfortunately as common as grass when dealing with telepaths. Another of the Confederacy’s dirty little secrets, rarely broadcast. “I’m sorry,” Mike said, because that was all he could say.
“Yeah. Liddy never recovered. She just sort of wasted away, that winter she went down with the flu. And afterwards, I threw myself into my work. Found out I liked working alone.”
“It’s an easy trap to fall into, hiding in your work,” said Mike, looking at the transmit light of his commlink, which meant his report was being sent out into the void.
“Anyway, I wanted you to know,” said Raynor. “You may have thought I was being hard on Kerrigan for being a telepath. Maybe I was. But I have my reasons.”
“She’s got her own problems, you know. Like everybody else, and like no one you’ve ever met. You might want to cut her a little slack.”
“It’s kind of hard, when she knows what you’re really thinking.”
“Kerrigan seems to be a good soldier,” said Mike, the image of her as a death-dealing dervish rising unbidden to his mind. “She may be wound a little tight, that’s all.”
“I think she’s dangerous,” said Raynor. “Dangerous to the troops around her. Dangerous to Mengsk. And dangerous to herself.”
Mike shrugged, unsure how much he could comfortably reveal to the ex-marshal. He settled at last for “She’s had a tough life.”
“And we’ve had it easy so far?”
“All the more reason to keep an eye on her. Watch her back. Whether she knows it or not, though she probably will. We all need guardian angels.”
The conversation shifted after that to questions of what worlds were in rebellion and what effect Duke’s defection would have on other military leaders. Finally Raynor took his leave and abandoned Mike to the soft urgency of the communications room.
Mike looked at the half-empty pack of cigarettes. The taste of the first one was still pungent in his mouth.
“Hell,” he said, reaching for the pack and the matches. “I guess, around here, you can learn to tolerate just about anything.”
CHAPTER 11
CHESS
I played chess with Arcturus Mengsk. I lost regularly, by the way. Someday I’ll probably be dragged before some high justice and told that this was a crime against the state, but I will have no defense. Other than losing more times than I won. More often than not, Mengsk would dangle some bait in front of me in a game, and I would snap at it, only to discover too late that I had been distracted from the trap he was setting.
The entire human campaign against the Zerg was similar, consisting of a series of defeats, each one more galling than the last because each time we ignored what was really going on. Our first warning that the Zerg were planetside came usually too late, when the creep appeared at our doorsteps or the Protoss warped in with the thunder-god ships.
We thought we could escape it. Some of us, including Mengsk himself, thought we could control it. But we were all pawns in a greater game.
No, not pawns. Dominos. Each falling in turn, planet after planet, person after person, until we reached the biggest domino of them all, the one called Tarsonis.<
br />
—THE LIBERTY MANIFESTO
“THE COMPARISON HAS BEEN MADE BETWEEN war and chess,” said Arcturus Mengsk, forking his knight to threaten both Mike’s queen and his bishop.
“You’re very good at both,” said Mike, moving his queen to take Mengsk’s rook.
“Actually, I find the comparison to be false,” said the terrorist, moving his knight to take the bishop. “Checkmate, by the way.”
Mike blinked at the board. Mengsk’s strategy was obvious now, in the same way that it had been totally opaque mere seconds before. The reporter mentally kicked himself and reached for his brandy snifter. In the background, the lost tunes of ancient Miller and Goodman warbled out of the comm unit. The ashtray to one side of the board was filled with butts, all of them Mike’s. They smelled faintly of cat urine.
They were on board the Hyperion, resting in a hidden hanger on Antiga Prime. Duke was off reorganizing the rebel troops into something that was more Confederate in nature. Raynor was off trying to keep Duke from making a complete mess of things. Mike had no idea where Kerrigan was, but that was normal for Kerrigan.
“Chess is not like war?” Mike asked.
“Once, perhaps, it was,” said Mengsk. “On Old Earth, back in the mists of time. Two equal opponents, with equal forces, on a level playing field.”
“And that’s not the case. Not anymore.”
“Hardly,” said the terrorist, warming to his own discussion. “First, the opponents are hardly ever truly even. The Confederacy of Man had Apocalypse-class missiles and my homeworld did not; the Confederacy played that card until Korhal IV was a blackened glass sphere hanging in space. Hardly even. Similarly, our little rebellion seemed at first to be undermanned and underfunded, but with each new revolt the Confederacy loses more of its will to fight. It is ancient and rotten, and all it needs is a good push to cave it in. You don’t see that in chess.
“Second,” Mengsk continued, “is the idea of equal forces. I mentioned the missiles, so effective in my father’s time, yet mere pinpricks in the light of the forces being wielded today. Forces continue to evolve—nukes, telepaths, now Zerg being raised by the Confederacy.”
“War is supposed to increase development,” said Mike.
“Yes, but most people use the guns and armor analogy: one side gets a better gun, the other side gets better armor, which inspires a still better gun, and so on. The truth is that a better gun inspires a chemical counterweapon, which then inspires a telepathic strike, which then brings about an artificial intelligence guiding the weapon. The pressure of war does bring about growth, but it is never the neat, linear growth that you learn about in the classroom.”
“Or read about in the papers.”
Mengsk smiled. “Third is the idea of a level playing field. The chessboard is limited to an eight-by-eight grid. There is nothing beyond this little universe. No ninth rank. No green pieces that suddenly sweep onto the board to attack both black and white. No pawns that suddenly become bishops.”
“A pawn can become a queen,” Mike noted.
“But only by advancing through all the spaces of its row, under fire the entire time. It doesn’t suddenly blossom into a queen by its own volition. No, chess is nothing like war, which is one of the reasons I play it. It’s so much simpler than real life.”
Not for the first or last time, Mike thought about Mengsk’s almost supernatural ability to warp reality around himself. “You think that the Confederacy is going to be able to come up with a weapon against these latest attacks? Against the Protoss and the Zerg?”
“Unlikely, though they are pulling out all the stops. Doing what they do best right now: propaganda and silencing those who speak out. Those are their best weapons, and they have never hesitated to use them before. But they’re just throwing spitwads at a bull elephant that’s bearing down on them. Hang on, I’ve got something here I wanted to show you.” Mengsk pressed numerous buttons on a remote control. He stared at it, as if trying to remember a secret code.
“I thought you once said that the Confederacy was breeding the Zerg. Doesn’t that make the Zerg their weapons?” Mike asked.
“Originally I thought so as well.” Mengsk pressed a few more buttons, then paused. “And though I may be incorrect in the assumption, as far as our propaganda is concerned, that’s our story, and we’re sticking with it. Nothing undermines faith in the government faster than realizing that they’ve been developing deadly alien menaces in their spare time.”
“But the truth really is?” Mike prompted.
“The truth is as malleable as ever.” Mengsk grinned. “Yes, the Confederacy has been studying the Zerg for years, and the ones in the Sara system were deliberately brought there by Confederate agents. Yes, they were a big weapons test. But no, they didn’t create the Zerg. No, they had a much worse plan in mind. It was on those disks that you and Raynor brought back from the Jacobs Installation. Here we go. You’ll appreciate this.”
He hit a button, and the screen sprang to scratchy life. When the distortion had cleared, Mike could see a string of low buttes and mesas beneath an orange-brown sky. The scene could have been anywhere on Antiga Prime. The familiar UNN logo perched along one side, and multiplanetary stock prices crawled across the bottom of the screen.
Then a frighteningly familiar voice spoke over the panorama. “This is Michael Liberty, reporting from Antiga Prime.”
Mike blinked. That was his voice, part of his last transmission out. But he had never sent this particular footage. Had they pulled it from a file somewhere?
The camera continued to pan, then settled on the speaker. He was dressed in a neat duster (much neater than the one that currently hung in Mike’s locker), his blond hair pulled back to cover a bald spot, his features hard-chiseled and experienced, his eyes deep and soulful.
It was Michael Liberty, but not Mike. This Michael Liberty looked almost like an idealized version of Mike himself.
The figure on the screen continued, “This reporter has just escaped captivity at the hands of the infamous terrorist Arcturus Mengsk. I was captured on Mar Sara by the rebels shortly before the reptilian Protoss destroyed the planet, and have only made it to safety now.”
“That’s not me,” said Mike.
“I know,” said Mengsk. “And the Protoss aren’t reptiles, as far as we know. But keep watching.”
“During my captivity I learned that Mengsk and the Sons of Korhal are in control of powerful mind-control drugs, which they have been using freely on the populace,” continued the flat-screen Mike Liberty. “Hundreds have died as a result of indiscriminate spraying, which can only be described as chemical attacks against innocent citizens. Others have been warped into strange mutagenic shapes as a result of side effects of these drugs.”
Mengsk made a rude noise, but the figure on the screen continued, “Mengsk sent a saboteur aboard the Norad II and exposed the crew to a virulent toxin. The result was the recent crash of that ship. Agents of the Sons of Korhal captured those affected by the mind-control drugs, and left the rest to die at the hands of their Zerg allies.”
“Zerg allies? Who’s writing that crap?” Mike snapped at the screen.
“It is much of muchness,” Mengsk said calmly. “Laying it on a bit thick and all.”
“I believe that General Edmund Duke, scion of the Duke Family of Tarsonis, has fallen prey to these mind-control devices, and now has been reduced to a mentally reprogrammed zombie in the service of the terrorists. In this way Mengsk and his inhuman allies hope to confuse the brave warriors of the Confederacy and cause them to lose faith in their leaders.”
“Brave warriors of the . . . I used that line in a filler piece I did on the Norad II!” said Mike. “And the bit about ‘virulent toxins.’ That rings another bell.”
“Groundwater pollution outside a middle school,” said Mengsk. “One of your better early pieces, if I remember right.”
“Only by eternal vigilance can we root out such terrorists as Mengsk and his mind-con
trolled minions,” said the figure on the screen. “As I speak a massive Confederate blockade is surrounding Antiga Prime, and the terrorist should be destroyed within a few days. This is Michael Daniel Liberty for UNN.”
Mengsk hit another button. Michael Daniel Liberty froze into silence on the screen.
“Did you see that!?” Mike shouted, jumping up from his seat. “That wasn’t me!”
“I hope not,” Mengsk said with a calm grin. “You seem like such a rational and truthful reporter, most of the time.”
“What did they do?”
“You’ve never been edited before?” Mengsk raised an eyebrow.
“Of course!” Mike snapped, then added quickly, “I mean for time, or if the facts couldn’t be confirmed, or the legal department had a problem, or a sponsor raised a stink. I mean, I’ve had things cut before, and sometimes they’ve slid in images that took the tone of the story in a different direction. But this is a . . . a . . .”
“Lie?”
“Fabrication,” Mike said, frowning.
“Indeed. Clipped together from bits of previous reporting, using another actor as a stand-in, a shuffling of pixels. Mind you, it’s easy enough on a flat screen—damned impossible with a true hologram. That’s why I prefer the latter, you know. This is just enough to fool someone just catching the news, to remind them that you’re alive and well and fighting the good fight for UNN and the Confederacy.”
“But my reports . . .” Mike sputtered.
“Grist that they took apart and reassembled as they saw fit.”
Mike slouched back into his chair. “I’m going to kill Anderson.”
“Your Anderson may already be dead, I’m afraid,” said the terrorist. “If he’s as devoted a reporter as you.”
Mike snorted.
“Or,” Mengsk reconsidered, “he may be acquiescing to the current power structure, though he knows it’s a horrible idea. Maybe that’s why the ‘toxic poisons’ line is in there—a bit of internal sabotage, a desperate cry for help. I mean, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense: Why would mind-control drugs be poisons? Of course, it did let them lift an entire sentence verbatim.”
