by Jeff Grubb
“Observer? Sentry?” Kerrigan guessed, and for the first time Mike caught a bit of fear in the unshakable Sarah Kerrigan’s voice. Feedback loop, he reminded himself. He willed himself to calm down. Otherwise they would get themselves killed.
“What does it feel like?” he asked, as they edged past the shredded meat of the eye-thing. Mike noticed that there was creep along the floors and walls of the passage.
“What?” said Kerrigan, distracted by the ichor.
“You said it felt strange down here. Strange?”
Kerrigan was silent for a moment, and Mike felt she was trying to regain her emotional strength. “It’s tough to describe to a hard-shell, sorry, a nontelepath. It’s like you’re in a hotel hallway and there’s a party in one of the rooms. As you pass it, you hear that there’s a party, but it’s not yours. You don’t make out anything distinct, but there’s a babble of voices. That’s what it feels like.”
“Maybe psionic power on a different channel?” Mike suggested.
“Maybe, but it’s larger. Like standing on a street outside a theater where there’s a concert. You hear something organized, but all you make out is blather. It’s maddening.” She paused for a moment. “Oh my God. Mike, come here.”
The passage opened out to the right, into a larger cavern, before continuing upward. Mike could feel fresher air on his face from the passage across the way. They must be near the surface.
The larger cavern was filled with creep. Vague pouches hung from the walls, and things that might have been organs dotted the grayish fungus. Along the wall was a scattering of centipede-like creatures moving among a field of toadstools.
“Maggots,” said Mike. “I saw them at Anthem Base, on Mar Sara.” He shot an image of the bar there to Kerrigan, and noticed her shudder. “Is this a garbage dump for the Zerg? What are they eating?”
“They’re not eating. They’re nursemaids. They’re tending the eggs.”
What Mike had first thought of as toadstools were really eggs, green with reddish speckles, that sat on stands of piled creep. The eggs pulsed with their own heartbeats. As Mike watched, the skeletal face of a hydralisk appeared beneath the murky surface of the nearest egg, like a drowned creature in a tidal pool. The egg quivered a little, as if the beast within knew of their presence.
The maggots were busy building up piles of the creep. Then one climbed the pile, curled in on itself, and wove a thick spider-silk cocoon around itself. The cocoon hardened, and the maggot became an egg.
“Crap,” said Mike, suddenly realizing what the maggots were.
“Larvae. They’re the basic building units of the Zerg. Larvae to eggs to monsters. That’s why the Confederates never got anywhere breeding the suckers, despite what Mengsk said. The zerglings and hydralisks can’t breed—they all come from the same genetic stock, served up to order from some higher power.”
Mike nodded, and the hydralisk face in the egg turned toward him. The egg started to vibrate violently as the beast within tried to force itself out.
“Head toward the fresh air,” said Kerrigan, unslinging her canister rifle. “I’ll be along in a moment.”
Grunting under the load of the emitter, Mike continued up the corridor. When he heard the whirring noise of the canister rifle’s feed and the sliding ratchet of its pump action, he started running. Behind him now was the hammering chatter of the rifle’s sharp-tipped bullets strafing the egg chamber. Then there was silence.
The air grew fresher, and he saw natural light up ahead. Mike’s legs felt like lead weights, but he forced them forward. Ten more yards, then five, then two. Then up to the surface, into the early evening air, and . . .
Face-to-face with his reflection in the mirrored surface of a Confederate marine’s combat visor. Despite himself, Mike yelped and almost fell backward. A sentry from the Confederate forces was posted at the entrance.
The sentry lumbered a step toward the reporter, and Mike realized that something was wrong with the man. His knees were bent oddly, and his arms seemed to belong to separate entities. One hand raised a gauss rifle uncertainly, while the other touched something at the base of its armor.
The mirrored visor slid back to reveal a face from hell. Half of it had been eaten away to the yellow-stained skull, which oozed a thick grayish creep from a useless eyehole. The other half, the greenish shade of rot, was studded with rock-like extrusions that broke the skin like short daggers.
It was a sentry, but not for the Confederates. It had once been human, but not now. It had once been sane, but not now. Now it only lived to protect the nest. It brought up its gauss rifle and let out a cry as if coins were caught in its throat. The creature’s good eye seemed to weep blood.
Mike heard the whine of the canister rifle behind him and threw himself to the ground, twisting to cushion the emitter as he toppled. An instant later the air where he had been was filled with live rounds. A few of the rounds shredded the edge of his coat.
The transformed Confederate sentry was transfixed by the rifle fire, but only for a moment. Then its gauss rifle slowly spilled from its hand and it fell backward, its armor in tatters. What lay beneath the armor was no longer human, but it reacted to the canister shot in the same fashion.
Kerrigan ran up and tugged hard on Mike’s collar. “Are you okay?”
Spots danced in front of Mike’s eyes, but he refused to succumb to the bitter bile rising in his throat. “What was that?”
“The Zerg are master biologists. That’s probably what they want to do with humanity. Turn it into another experiment. Another servant race.”
Mike took a deep breath, looking at the lacerated, rotting meat, and said, “It doesn’t look like a successful experiment.”
Kerrigan gave an exhausted shrug. “Maybe if they had better material to work with. You volunteering? I’m sure they need a reporter.” She managed a tight, chiding grin, and despite himself, Mike let out a chuckle.
Breaking the feedback loop, he thought. Foxhole jokes. Gallows humor in the face of the obscenity of war.
If Kerrigan read those thoughts, she did not let on. “Feel like running for a while?” she asked.
“How far?”
“As far as we can.”
“You start, I’ll follow,” said Mike, hoisting the emitter in front of him.
They were lucky. They were on the edge of the creep. Yet even from their vantage point Mike could see a line of towers in the direction opposite their line of travel. They looked like great, misshapen flowers from some giant’s garden, and the cannon-like mutalisks danced among them. There were other flying monsters as well, including the starfish squids, the lobster-jellyfishes, and the great flying crabs.
“They’re winning,” said Mike. “The Zerg. They’re getting more powerful every damned planet they take over.”
“Try not to think about it.” Kerrigan touched her wrist. “I just sent out a short pulse-message. If Arcturus is listening, at least he’ll know we’re still alive.”
Travel was easy now, for even as the sun set there was strong reflected light from the gas giant above. To their left there were more flashes along the horizon, and the sound of distant thunder.
“You say you heard about other ghosts going MIA. You hear from them?” Mike asked.
Kerrigan’s lips made a firm line, and she shook her head. “Most telepaths avoid one another. I don’t even talk to the ones in Duke’s command. It’s bad enough being around the continual chatter of normal people. Being with another telepath is a hundred times worse. People can’t control their thoughts, at least not very well. Ghosts read other ghosts very well, and form their own feedback loops. Most need psionic dampers to keep them sane. That’s like the neural resocialization, but much, much worse.”
“But you don’t have any psionic dampers.”
“I still have some, but most of them are gone. Arcturus . . .” She paused for a moment, then said, “You don’t like him, you know.”
“Never would have guessed. But you t
hink the world of him.”
“He . . .” She paused again. “He broke me out, I guess that’s the best way to put it. He rescued me, freed me, roke me of the dampers and the guards and the horror. I owe him my life. More important, I owe him my soul.”
As if in response to her comment, the comm link beeped. Mike scanned the horizon for movement. Nothing. Kerrigan popped open a small screen, and Mike could envision Mengsk’s smiling face there.
“Good to know you’re alive,” said the rebel leader. “Your position puts you a klick south of where you need to be. No bogeys between you and the Confederate camp. We’re drawing off their reserves.”
“We were delayed,” said Kerrigan. “The Zerg. There are a lot of them already here.”
“And there will be more when you set off our little surprise. They’ll keep our Confederate friends busy while we escape.”
A frown crossed Kerrigan’s features. “They’ll be wiped out, Arcturus.” Static crossed the line. “Arcturus? Do you read? The Zerg don’t take prisoners.”
“Kerrigan!” said Mengsk, and Mike could imagine the stern-father look on the terrorist’s face. “We didn’t invent the emitters, but if we don’t use them, we will all die, lockaded by the Confederates. And if we die, all hope of humanity dies with us.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Remember how much I trust you. And say hello to Mr. Liberty for me, eh?”
Kerrigan closed the screen and turned north. Mike picked up the emitter and followed.
Mike was silent for a while, then said, “I think they’re afraid.”
“Who? The people in charge of the ghosts?”
“Yeah. They don’t want you to be able to communicate your experiences to other telepaths. Conspire against them. That’s why the psionic dampers and the training.”
Kerrigan shrugged. “That’s likely. I think it’s also to keep their investments in one piece. The casualty rate is incredibly high among the ghosts.”
“I thought you’d be lionized, after all that investment. Like Wraith pilots or destroyer captains.”
Kerrigan let out a horrible laugh. “Lionized? God, even the child molesters they put in the marines get better treatment than we do. The criminals in the marines are just medicated and indoctrinated to follow their leaders. We’re given the living nightmare of pushing against our restraints constantly, knowing that if we break them, we’ll spin out into insanity because we can’t keep others’ minds out of our own.”
“Easy, Lieutenant. I didn’t mean—”
“Of course you didn’t mean anything,” Kerrigan said hotly. “That’s what drives us crazy. Your words mean one thing, but your mind’s broadcasting something completely different. Raynor’s all gung-ho, but I can feel his unease, his disgust. And I know he’s watching, even when my back’s turned. It’s knowing what’s on the tip of everyone’s mind without being able to respond.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know,” said Kerrigan, softening a little. “That’s one of the things I do like about you, Michael Liberty. You’re all surface. Don’t take that the wrong way. You think of something, and you say it. Your only defense is when you’re asking questions, playing the hard-nosed reporter. It makes you easier to tolerate than most humans.”
She paused for a moment as they crested a hill. In the distance rose the ruined towers of the Confederates’ outer perimeter. There was no fire from the towers; Mengsk’s troops had drawn them off.
“You know what the final exam is to get into ghost training?” she asked suddenly. Mike shook his head, knowing better than to interrupt.
“They have a guard with a gun,” she said, and her eyes seemed to mist over. She herself was elsewhere. “The guard takes the gun and presses it against your forehead, or the forehead of someone you care about. You have to kill the guard before he pulls the trigger.” Her eyes refocused, and she looked at Mike hard. “I was twelve at the time.”
Mike blanched, and despite himself, thought of Raynor’s son. The “gifted” child who had experienced an “incident.”
Kerrigan reacted as if Mike had slapped her. She sank to one knee and gripped her forehead with her hand. After a while she said, “Christ.”
Mike said quickly, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to tell you, it just slipped out.”
“Christ,” she repeated. “I should have guessed. I just didn’t know.”
Mike shook his head. “You’re a telepath. How can you not know?”
Kerrigan looked up, and there were tears at the corners of her eyes. “Telepaths don’t dig down into your thoughts, at least if they want to stay sane. We hear all the surface chatter, all the stuff that’s on the top. What you’re thinking about. Errant thoughts. Whether that woman has a nice set of legs. All the stupid crap. Not the stuff they keep buried. Not the important crap.” She was silent for a moment, then asked, “He say when it happened?”
Mike shook his head and turned away, partly to keep an eye out for Confederate patrols, partly to give the lieutenant a chance to pull herself together.
She probably knew that, but when Mike turned back she was on her feet and her eyes were dry. “Let’s plant this thing. Base of one of those towers should do it.”
They reached the shell of the gun emplacement without difficulty, and Mike surrendered the burden he had been lugging for the past few kilometers. With deft, practiced hands, Kerrigan began setting up the psi emitter that she had never handled before. Mike realized that she must have gotten the instructions in a burst of telepathy when she picked up the device.
It was a lash-up, and it took a few minutes for the lieutenant to uncoil all the packing material and check all the leads. Then she pulled out what looked like a starfish-shaped headset and placed in on her head. A crown of delicate copper filigree was lost among her red tresses.
“The transplanar psionic waveform emitter,” explained Kerrigan, “is like the sound box of a violin. It will capture, amplify, and then propagate the psychic beacon that is fed into it. That’s why we’re here—it needs a ghost to activate it.”
She flipped a few switches, pressed a toggle, and then took off the headset. Her face looked strained. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“That’s it?”
“You wanted an airhorn and bright light? A chime from above? Or a big clock with a countdown? Sorry.” Kerrigan’s face was ashen now, and Mike suddenly realized that, even though he couldn’t feel it, Kerrigan could, and it was getting “louder” all the time.
“Right,” Kerrigan said. “Let’s go.”
Mike and Kerrigan headed along the line of abandoned tower emplacements, each one a shattered monument to the battle of Antiga Prime. She had to pause, wincing from the unheard noise. It was as if she could hear nails on a chalkboard, a grating sound that Mike was deaf to.
They made it to the fourth tower, where the pain seemed to ease. By the sixth tower she was almost normal again. She popped open the small screen on her wrist. “Psi emitter in place,” she said.
Mengsk’s unseen face said, “Excellent, Sarah, I knew you could do it. We’ve got to get you out before every Zerg on Antiga gets there. Dropship en route.”
“I know,” Kerrigan said, breathing hard. Her lips formed a thin line, then she said, “Promise me . . . Promise me we’ll never do anything like this again.”
“Sarah.” Mike could imagine Mengsk shaking his head over the line. “We will do whatever it takes to save humanity. Our responsibility is too great to do any less.”
And he was gone again, the great wise leader on the far side of the electronic channel, directing the war from the safety of his brandy and chess games.
“Why do you trust him?” Mike asked. The thought had crossed his mind and he said it. “Why do you follow him?”
Sarah managed a weary smile. “He saved my soul.”
“And you’ve been killing for him ever since. Don’t the scales ever balance? Aren’t you due your own freedom?”
“It’s . . . complex. Mengsk is
a lot like you. Okay, I’m sorry, he’s actually the complete opposite. You’re all surface, like a sheet of newsprint. He’s all depth. He tells you what he thinks, and he’s so convinced of it, down to the core of his being, that the effect is very much the same. He inspires me to believe.”
“He’s a politician. If you look deep enough, you’ll find that out. There’s a bottom to that swamp of his soul.”
“And will that change anything? Do I want to look?”
“Sometimes looking isn’t a bad thing. If you looked a little harder, then maybe Raynor wouldn’t seem like such a jackass.”
Kerrigan opened her mouth to say something, then stopped and nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. At least with Raynor. I guess I owe that much to the jackass.”
“Our responsibility is too great to do any less,” quoted Mike.
Kerrigan let out a laugh, a short giggle. It was unexpected and unplanned and very human.
Mike let out a long breath and wondered which would arrive first, the Zerg from the nearby colony or Mengsk’s promised dropship.
CHAPTER 13
SOUL-SEARCHING
Through the lens of history, war seems to function with a frightening punctuality, like a murderous music box. Battles are no more than clockwork mechanisms of death, a drama of destruction with each act flowing naturally into the next, until one side or the other is vanquished. In retrospect, the fall of the Confederacy seems like a logical slide that, once begun, leaves no question as to its conclusion.
For those of us trapped in the middle of the war, there was nothing but raw panic broken by periods of total exhaustion. No one, not even those who supposedly did the planning, had any clear idea of the forces we were dealing with, until it was too late to change.
Clockwork? Perhaps. But I prefer to think of it as a timer on a bomb we were feverishly disarming, hoping we could finish before the damned thing exploded in our collective faces.
—THE LIBERTY MANIFESTO
THE DROPSHIP WOULD REJOIN THE HYPERION IN low Antigan orbit. Mengsk had left the surface as soon as the emitter was activated, but he didn’t want to try to run the Confederate blockade above without gathering all his wandering, barefoot children home. At least that’s how it seemed to Mike.
