StarCraft II: Devil's Due

by Christie Golden

  “From this side? Not without the key code or an override command. We’ve got to get to the main control center and reactivate things from there,” he said, keeping his voice equally low. In the near darkness, his eyes and ears strained for information. “Might as well head that way. I think I can get us there from here.” Tychus used to tease him about the hours he would spend poring over maps. Jim had always said it would come in handy, and it seemed that now was that time.

  “Besides,” he added, “we’ll need to get there anyway to find out where the logs are. Might as well complete the mission while we’re—”

  Tychus chuckled, a low, somehow angry sound that made the hairs on the back of Jim’s neck stand up, even though he was Tychus’s best friend.

  “Oh, Jimmy, you’re still so naïve. I don’t rightly know who sprung the trap—we’ve pissed a lot of people off—but I can tell you who baited it.”

  And Jim realized he was right. “The Screaming Skulls set us up,” he said sickly. “Damn it. Damn it!”

  “Seems to be a fine time for betrayal,” Tychus said. “Happened to us twice already. I hope our paths cross again. Soon.”

  “First we’ve got to get out of here. Come on.”

  “Wait,” Tychus said. “Whoever sprung this trap has us right where he—or she—wants us. We can’t go back to the bay, and we’re in a nice, tight little corridor. There’s going to be something, or more likely someone—probably several someones—waiting for us up ahead. We’re doing exactly what they want.”

  “I’m open to suggestions.”

  Tychus paused. “Got none. Let’s go.”

  They moved slowly along the dimly lit corridor. They were as quiet as possible, although they both knew that whoever had trapped them so neatly knew exactly where they were. As they continued, Jim racked his brain, wondering who the hell it had been, anyway.

  Not Butler, that much was for certain. He might have shaken down the Skulls for information, but he wouldn’t go in for something this dramatic. No, if he were behind this, the door would have been closed, and as soon as they’d opened it, he and Tychus would have been staring at a face full of weapons, all cocked and ready to be fired. Simple, forthright, lawful. No slamming doors, no darkened lights.

  He couldn’t think of anyone they had robbed, cheated, swindled, or attacked who would do something this elaborate. So it had to be someone they didn’t know. The relative of a dead colleague or enemy, for instance. There were likely plenty of those around.

  They had reached the end of the corridor. The station was circular, and Jim recalled that each narrow passage that led from the bay to the center of the station opened onto a broader walkway that circumnavigated the main area. Below them were two floors. On one were offices, break rooms, and living quarters for the staff. The control rooms and access to the inner workings of the station were on the floor below that. Everything was on emergency lighting, and even that appeared to have been tinkered with. It was not completely dark—just dark enough.

  “Jimmy, ain’t nobody here,” Tychus said quietly.

  Jim was beginning to think Tychus was right. There should have been fifteen people living on the station, including Fitz-something, whom they had spoken with earlier. The place … felt empty. His own breathing, and his increased heart rate, suddenly seemed very loud in his own ears.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Nobody but whoever trapped us. Come on.”

  He was certain they were being watched, and he knew Tychus knew it too. And he was equally certain that whoever was watching them knew exactly where they were going. But it was the only thing they could do. Without overriding the power, nothing in this place was going to open so they could escape. Jim felt like a rat being put through its paces in a maze, but there was no alternative.

  He led the way, the slugthrower reassuringly solid in one hand as he reached out with the other, patting the walls to make sure of where he was. There should be a stairway up ahead that would take them to—

  He tripped and flailed. Tychus’s strong arm shot out and clamped down on his collar, keeping him from falling. Jim looked down at what had tripped him.

  It was a body. Male. Even in the dim lighting, Jim could make out the wide eyes, the gaping mouth. And he could make out the darker stain against the lighter color of the man’s shirt.

  And the very large hole in the chest.

  Someone—or something—had ripped the man’s heart out.

  “Holy shit, Tychus …,” he whispered.

  Suddenly, in the silence, a hollow, echoing voice filled the air: “No, please don’t!” It was male, but it was pitched slightly higher than a normal masculine voice, and it was higher even than that due to utter terror.

  He knew that voice, but for a wild second his mind couldn’t remember whose it was.

  And then Jim felt as if he’d just been punched in the gut.

  He remembered. Even if he’d tried to forget the voice, and the man it belonged to, and the memories it dredged up. Even if he’d tried to forget a lot. Higher-pitched, yes, but not as high as a child’s, nor with the timbre of a woman’s. They’d only ever met one person who spoke like that. Now, stunned and shocked to the core, they exchanged alarmed glances. Tychus voiced what Jim didn’t want to acknowledge but had to.

  “The bastard’s got Hiram!”

  Hiram Feek was not a member of the Heaven’s Devils officially. He was a civilian, the designer of the CMC-230-XE suit. He was fiercely intelligent and good-humored, and he had proved his loyalty repeatedly to the unit that had unofficially adopted him. As far as Tychus and Jim were concerned, the “little person,” as he preferred to be called, with the large brain was as much a Devil as anyone who had been officially in the unit.

  And he was being held by the person—or people—who wanted Jim and Tychus.

  Jim opened his mouth to say something—what, he wasn’t sure. Probably to stupidly repeat what they both knew, perhaps somehow to negate it. Tychus clamped a meaty hand over Jim’s mouth. “Do not say a word,” he hissed. He removed his hand.

  “They’ve got—”

  “I know, Jimmy boy, I know.”

  Hiram’s voice came again. This time in a shrill shriek of torment. Jim winced. Tychus muttered something inaudible under his breath.

  “We gotta do something. He saved our lives—more than once!”

  With an almost physical pain, Jim recalled when the diminutive engineer had visited him while Jim sat in a military stockade for a month, serving time for assaulting a noncommissioned officer. Feek had quietly informed him that Colonel Vander-spool had sabotaged the Devils’ hardskins. He had installed a “kill switch” in the Devils’ CMC-300 armor. At any point, if he found the Devils too troublesome, Vanderspool could press a button and trigger the emergency lockdown mechanism. The suit would freeze in its tracks, along with the soldier inside it. Feek had discovered the lethal switches and unobtrusively deactivated them. White-hot anger surged up at the recollection. Vanderspool had earned—more than earned—what had happened to him. What Jim Raynor had done to him.

  He’d killed Vanderspool himself.

  “We gotta help Feek,” he repeated, his voice shaking, his skin clammy with sweat. “He saved us, Tychus.”

  Tychus hesitated, then nodded. Jim knew that he, too, was remembering Feek, and that sickening revelation about the depths of Vanderspool’s inhumanity.

  “I—I know he did, Jimmy. It sounded like it came from below us.”

  Slowly they stepped over the body. Jim’s boot slipped a little on the puddle of blood. It was only starting to congeal. The murder had been recent.

  They made their way to the stairwell. They would be vulnerable here, more so than when they had been pressing against the wall, but there was nothing they could do about it. Quickly they descended, Jim wincing at the noise their boots made on the metal.

  There was light up ahead. Hiram Feek was sobbing. Jim’s gut twisted at the sound. Feek might have been an egghead, but he had courage. What was
going on? What were they doing to him?

  The sound abruptly ceased.

  “I didn’t break in a prison camp,” came a weary female voice. “I won’t break for you, you bas—uhhnnnghh!”

  Who was this? Terror pulsed through Jim with each heartbeat as his brain struggled to link this voice with a name, a face. Prison camp … who had they known who—

  “Oh, God,” Jim whispered. “Hobarth. Captain Clair Ho-barth.”

  They hadn’t known her well—not like they had known Feek—but she had played a pivotal role in their lives and military careers.

  They had last seen her emaciated and weak, an escapee of Kel-Morian Internment Camp-36. She had brought with her intel that enabled to the 321st Colonial Rangers Battalion to infiltrate the camp and liberate the POWs. Raynor had been so inspired by her that he had spearheaded the attempt—and been captured in the process. This gutsy woman had given them their name: the Heaven’s Devils.

  And now she, like Hiram Feek, was here. Being tortured by an unseen captor. Why? What had she done? There had to be a connection, but Jim’s mind was like a numb hand trying to grasp it. It wasn’t clicking.

  “This is personal,” Tychus rumbled, cold anger in his voice. “Two people we knew and liked. That can’t be pure coincidence. And it’s really starting to piss me off.”

  Hobarth started to moan, low and deep, the gut-wrenching sound of mortal pain. It rose to a sudden, sharp scream.

  Jim held his slugthrower in both hands, pointing the muzzle down. Tychus emulated him. Jim jerked his head; they were just about to come out into the area where Feek and Hobarth were being kept.

  Were being tortured.

  “Fellow Confederates, I cannot tell you what joy it brings me to see so many of you turning out here tonight.”

  What the hell …? That sounded like a politician’s speech. Both men frowned, puzzled and alert.

  “Not the best idea.”

  It was not the voice of anyone they recognized, but Jim took an instinctive dislike to it. It was … cold. Oily. Superior.

  They heard the scrambling of feet, the clatter of something landing on the floor, and a strange-sounding clang, as if metal were striking metal.

  “Cybernetic arm,” came the speaker’s voice.

  Recognition flickered over Tychus’s face. The big man went pale. His eyes widened and his lips pressed together tightly. Jim was as shaken by his friend’s reaction to the words as he was by the whole situation.

  “You know this guy?”

  “I sure as hell hope I don’t,” was Tychus’s cryptic reply.

  “Ready?”

  Still pale, sweat gleaming on his forehead, Tychus nodded.

  “One, two—”

  With perfect timing born of long experience, both men leaped around the corner …

  … and saw not two living men engaged in hand-to-hand combat, but a hologram of the fight.

  A man clad in a long duster leaped up and landed heavily on his victim’s left hand.

  He didn’t want to remember the poor bastard getting attacked. Thoughts of Feek and Hobarth hammering in his head, he recognized this man, too, and his heart spasmed as memories—unwanted and unwelcome—slammed down on him.

  “It’s Ryk,” whispered Jim.

  Ryk Kydd. The only one besides the two of them who had survived; the rich kid who had become an assassin but somehow had never lost a sense of innate decency. Feek, they cared about; Hobarth, they knew; but Kydd had been one of them. Now they stared, watching sickly as Kydd’s face contorted in agony. The attacker sprang back, lithe as a cat.

  “One down,” the man said, grinning. Now Jim could see his face clearly: lean, angular, a thin, cruel mouth framed by a trimmed goatee. “Three to go.”

  “Jimmy?” The voice belonged to Tychus. It was trembling, uncertain, and the sound of it issuing from Tychus’s throat shocked Jim to his core. He kept the slugthrower raised, but despite the danger, he couldn’t help but glance over at Tychus. His gut clenched at what he saw.

  Tychus Findlay was utterly terrified. He turned a face greasy with sweat to Jim and swallowed hard.

  “Jimmy … w-we’re in trouble.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “I see you recognize me.” It was the same voice as in the hologram—the hologram that was currently pinning the holographic Ryk Kydd to the floor with a dagger through the hand.

  Jim whirled, the slugthrower out in front of him, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. To Jim’s unspeakable relief, Tychus appeared to have gotten his terror under control—for the moment at least.

  Who the hell was this guy, who could rattle the normally unflappable Tychus Findlay so badly?

  “Maybe. One thing’s clear: you’re one sick puppy.” Tychus’s voice betrayed none of the fear Jim knew he was experiencing.

  “And you’re not? The pot is, I believe, calling the kettle black. Your reputation precedes you, Tychus Findlay—as, obviously, does mine.”

  The two people in the hologram continued to struggle. By now their comrade in arms was being forced to fight with two ruined hands. But he was not giving up.

  Jim knew what he was watching. And knew why the stranger wanted them to watch it.

  He wanted them to see Ryk Kydd’s murder.

  He gritted his teeth, closing his hands more tightly around the gun to steady their shaking. He didn’t want to watch, to give this bastard the satisfaction of knowing that his sadistic little light show had gotten to them. The voice seemed to come from different places. It was hard to get a bead on him, and the flickering light of the hologram kept drawing his eye back.

  “Who is this guy, Tychus?”

  For a moment Tychus didn’t reply. Jim risked a quick glance, saw the big man close his eyes and swallow. “Goes by the name of Ezekiel Daun.”

  “Well, we’re gonna kick Ezekiel Daun’s ass,” Jim said with assurance he did not feel.

  The holographic Daun now had his implacable cybernetic hand clamped around Kydd’s throat and was lifting him off the floor. Kydd’s feet kicked frantically as he slapped ruined hands futilely against the cybernetic arm. Daun was grinning. Enjoying killing Ryk, as he was enjoying watching Jim and Tychus witness the murder.

  “Somebody wants you dead,” Daun said. “That’s fine by me. But he didn’t stipulate how you were to die. Nor how long it should take. That was left up to me to decide. And we got all night.”

  Tune it out, Jimmy, Raynor told himself. Focus. Where is he? How’s Tychus handling this?

  The latter question at least had an answer. Tychus was still afraid, but he wasn’t letting it get in the way of escaping.

  “He’s set this all up very carefully,” Tychus muttered to Jim, a hint of his old self creeping into his voice. Jim felt a brush of relief as his friend continued to regain control. “Which means that he’s going to want us to watch it all. Bet those voices of Feek and Hobarth also came from a hologram of their … murders.”

  Jim swallowed.

  “He won’t do anything until he shows us that Ryk’s dead, and maybe not until he forces us to watch him kill Feek and Hobarth too. Still, we’d best haul ass. Where is the central control area?”

  “If we’re at six, then it’s at eleven,” Jim replied, using antiquated references that were still useful for military purposes, if not their original.

  “What’s at the other hours?”

  Jim tried to think, tried to shut out the sound of his friend being strangled.

  “How’s it feel now, Ark? Having trouble getting air in? Feeling the blood pressure build up? Do you want to swallow?”

  “Nothing at seven,” Jim continued, forcing the words out, clinging to the calmness thinking provided him. “Eight is the crane-operating station.”

  “Those manually controlled?”

  “Usually, unless specifically set otherwise. At two, we’ve got—”

  “That’s enough hours in my day. We need a distraction. I got an idea.”

  They moved q
uickly, Jim’s shoulders itching, expecting at any moment to feel a bullet or a metal spike between them. But he believed that Tychus was onto something. This Daun wouldn’t have set up such a complex little display if he hadn’t wanted them to appreciate all the effort he’d gone to. They had time. The question was: how much? And if it would be enough.

  They approached the crane-operating station. In the center, Jim watched, sick to his stomach, as Ryk Kydd struggled, then went limp.

  “Damn it, not yet!” cried the holographic Daun.

  “Tychus? Whatever you’re gonna do, do it fast, because I think we just ran outta time.”

  “Already on it.” Tychus, his face close to the controls, was trying to figure out which was which. Then he muttered, “Hell, let’s just do this thing,” and punched one.

  The station shuddered. Jim almost lost his footing, staying erect only by grabbing on to the console as Tychus was doing. The hologram, mercifully, winked out; its holoprojector had probably toppled over.

  There was an angry cry from above them, and the sound of bullets firing. Tychus hit another control, and another, grabbing a joystick and yanking it about wildly in various directions. Then Jim realized what he was doing: he was using the cranes to slam into the station. As distractions went, it seemed to be working.

  Unless, of course, one of the cranes actually broke through a bulkhead of the station, and all the air ran out.

  The shots went wild, then stopped. Daun was trying to get to a better position.

  Jim turned and bolted for the main override control panel. As such an important part of the station, it had more blue emergency lights activated than most of what they had seen until now. Jim perused it quickly. As the seconds ticked by, his tension rose. Doors, where were the doors? They—

  “Damn it!” He pounded his fist on the console in fury and frustration.

  “For fekk’s sake, what now?” shouted Tychus from across the room.

  “He took the master key. Nothing can be overridden without that. Nothing!”

  A pause. “Oh.”

  Jim knew he was perilously close to losing it. The unexpected betrayal of the Skulls; Tychus’s sudden, almost overwhelming terror; being forced to watch the torture and murder of a man he had cared about, who was a brother in arms, a friend, damn it; and this horrible sensation of feeling like a trapped animal—