StarCraft II: Devil's Due

by Christie Golden

  Jim paused at the door to put on his hat. He turned to Myles. “I won’t lie to you, Myles. After all I’ve seen and done … it’s mighty tempting. But before I can tell you yes or no, there’s something I need to put to bed first.”

  Something in his voice made Myles’s eyes narrow, but he nodded. “You go on and do what you gotta do. I respect that. Offer’s always on the table. After all”—and he winked—“it’s not like Mar Sara is going anywhere.”

  The moment had been long in coming.

  Raynor had begun planning it as soon as he jumped out of the Covington Bank building. It had been forming in the back of his mind as the modified prototype hardskin took him through the city, fighting off pursuit, outrunning and outgunning it until he got far enough away to break into an abandoned building and shuck the suit. He continued to elude capture the next day, finally managing to sneak out on foot to where the ship was waiting for him. The poor pilot seemed confused to see Jim instead of Ash, but went along with it long enough to give Jim the chance to knock him out and commandeer the vessel.

  Then the journey had begun. Researching. Digging up old contacts who owed him favors. Getting in good with the right people. Five years of criminal activity harnessed, sifted, and milked dry to find out what he needed to learn, to do, to become, in order to put the plan into action.

  For seven months, Raynor had been investigating something that made the heists he and Tychus had pulled seem noble. There was a black market for a very specific type of commodity—hard to learn about, harder to locate. It involved not just trafficking in goods but in humans—and not just the selling of bodies but of souls, minds, and hearts.

  Unlike Tychus, Jim had not spent all his money like water—well, not quite—and was able to grease more than a few palms. He had next to nothing, now, at least with regard to funds—but he had something more important. He had the ID, the cover, the codes …

  … and the room location.

  He had easily negotiated the labyrinthine building’s twists and turns. While he had never physically been inside before, he had been here a thousand times via a hologram he had had privately constructed, based on expensively stolen blueprints. He stood dressed in the white uniform of the resocs who had access to this, the inner sanctum of what was the modern equivalent of a medieval fortress.

  As if to confirm the analogy, the resocs called it “the master’s quarters.” The door before him was large, dark, sinister. Considering whom it housed, Jim thought that was quite apt.

  He looked at the door, and thought that he and Tychus had blown safes that seemed more secure. The thought made him recall the train robbery, and Woodley, and the jukebox, and Wilkes Butler. Already, the memories had a nostalgic quality to them. The taste of something that had passed.

  Soon he would feel the same way about the next few minutes.

  He looked over at the security pad. The code was not a problem. It was triply secured: the correctly entered code, fingerprint identification, and a retinal scan were all required. As he had managed to get himself hired by forging a completely new and thoroughly verifiable identity, this should be easy.

  His “new identity” was as a resoc.

  Raynor noticed that his hand trembled slightly as he entered the code, and forced himself to be calm.

  The massive barricade slid open. It was even more dimly lit inside than in the corridor. Jim hadn’t been expecting this and closed his eyes as the door closed behind him, helping them adjust quicker despite the burning desire to behold his enemy.

  In front of him was a metal contraption that looked like a large coffin. Jim’s lips twitched in a bitter smile at the appropriateness of the image. Lights flickered along the outside in a running pattern, and various tubes went in and out through small apertures. Jim’s eyes strained, but he could make out only the barest outline of a head extending from the end of the metal box. A short distance away, a large bellows worked slowly and methodically, emitting a dull thunking sound as it operated.

  This was what Ezekiel Daun had showed him and Tychus when he had revealed who had hired him to kill them. This room, this metal box … this shell of a man inside it.

  Jim forced himself to turn his attention to the resoc standing off to the side in front of a screen, carefully examining rolling statistics. His hand dropped to his pocket and closed about a syringe.

  The resoc looked up at him. “You’re new,” he said, frowning slightly.

  “Yes, I am. I just got started a few days ago. I’m so pleased to be here.” Jim stuck his hand out and smiled cheerfully, receiving a handshake and smile in return.

  “How is the master doing today?” Raynor asked, feigning interest in the scrolling statistics.

  “His condition hasn’t changed much. He—”

  The resoc gasped in pain at the sudden sharp needle stab, turned confused eyes on Jim for a few seconds, and then crumpled. Jim checked to make sure the man was really out—and that he would be out for a while—then rose and turned to the coffin.

  “What’s going on over there?”

  The voice was hollow, weary, querulous. But it still had that same cool arrogance, and Jim was surprised at the quick flash flood of hatred that washed through him.

  Javier Vanderspool.

  He heard that voice again dripping contempt, snarling in anger. Heard it issuing commands. Heard it pathetically begging.

  Jim’s hand slipped into the other pocket and closed on the handle of his Colt.

  He didn’t answer at once. Partly because he wanted the bastard to sweat. And partly because he didn’t trust his voice.

  He relaxed his grip on the revolver, though he kept his hand on it. He had not come here as a vengeful murderer. He had come here for something else entirely.

  “Who is this?”

  “A ghost from your past, Colonel. Just the past, coming back to haunt you.”

  There was silence. The thunking noise continued. “I know that voice. Come over to where I can see you!” Vanderspool barked.

  “Of course, sir.”

  He moved slowly to where the light seemed greatest. There was movement as Vanderspool craned his neck to look at him. Their eyes met.

  “Raynor,” Vanderspool said quietly.

  “The same. You don’t look so good, Colonel.”

  Silence.

  “Your dog got caught. But not before he tipped us off as to who was holding the leash.”

  “You always were so damn smug,” snarled Vanderspool. “You and Tychus. Well, Tychus isn’t going to be seeing sunlight anytime soon. I will be content with that. And I’ve spent quite a lot of money making sure my facility is secure. You might have gotten in, but any second now you’ll be stopped. I’ll have you. I always get what I want in the end.”

  “You got the others,” Jim agreed. He drew out the Colt, as always admiring the craftsmanship. “Your sick dog filmed everything. You two probably watched the holograms together while he fed you popcorn. But you ain’t getting me, Colonel. There’s a balance in this universe. I knew that once, and then forgot it. But I’ve had a lot happen to me since then, and I remember it now. When I learned who was behind Daun, I wanted to kill you so bad, I could have ripped you apart with my teeth.”

  Despite his bluster, Vanderspool had to know that help wasn’t coming. It would have been here by now. Why should it? Jim was a duly hired employee. He had access to this room. The weight of the gun was familiarly heavy in his hand.

  “Yes, brave, noble outlaw James Raynor,” drawled Vander-spool. “How tragically wronged you were. You rob from the rich, give to the poor, help little old ladies across streets, no doubt. It takes such courage to shoot a completely harmless man trapped in an iron lung.”

  Jim smiled in the dim light. “See, that’s the whole point, Colonel. You ain’t never gonna be harmless as long as you draw breath—even if you have to rely on a machine to draw that breath for you. Only reason you’re even alive is that you’re just too full of hate and twisted darkness to die pr
operly the first time like you shoulda done. That’s partly my fault. I was so damned angry, I couldn’t see straight.” The moment was as clear in his mind as if it had been one of Daun’s holograms. Vanderspool, wounded, clutching his shoulder and sobbing. Begging for a medic. Offering to pay.

  Pay. Like the soldiers he had tried to kill, control, or turn into resocialized zombies would accept money from him to tend his injury.

  Vanderspool had first tried Tychus, then Kydd. Raynor had deliberately stepped on the man’s hand as the bastard reached for a weapon, crunching the fine bones and relishing the screaming that resulted. He had fired a metal spike into Vanderspool’s chest, watched him slump and, he thought, die. There had been a harsh pleasure—and then an ashy emptiness as he realized that he had become part of what he most loathed.

  He had spent five years running since then. He thought he’d been running to something—but he’d been running from it. It was time to end the running.

  It was time to end a lot of things—and to begin others.

  “But I can see clearly now. And I know what has to be done.”

  “You can still get out of here alive,” Vanderspool said. “Just walk out the way you came in. Tychus Findlay is going to rot in prison. I can afford to let you go.”

  Jim stared for a moment, completely taken aback by the sheer arrogance of the man. Then he laughed. It echoed in the large room.

  “You still think you’re in charge. Directing the show, even if you can’t act in it anymore. I used to hate you. Now I just feel sorry for you. And not because you’re stuck in that contraption, neither. I feel sorry for you because all you got is hate, and control, and greed. I got more than that. But as long as you’re alive, I’m stuck down here in the mud with you, Vanderspool. And I’m aiming to finally crawl out of the mud.”

  “I’ll pay you.”

  “What?”

  “Whatever you’d like. Enough for you to be comfortable the rest of your life. You don’t have to do this. I’ll leave you alone, I swear.”

  Jim shook his head, disgusted. He lifted the gun, as he had so many times before. With his thumb, he eased back the hammer, hearing the familiar and distinctive series of clicks. Vander-spool heard it, too, and actually whimpered.

  “Please … look at the sort of life I’m consigned to, Raynor. Surely this is revenge enough!”

  Incredulous, Raynor snorted, even more surprised by this tactic than Vanderspool’s arrogance. “You’re not helpless, and you fekking know it. You’ve done more harm from here than most people do in their whole lifetimes. From this damned coffin, you hired Daun. From here, you took delight in watching the Heaven’s Devils fall, one by one. Because that’s all you got, you sick shit. You’re a rabid dog, Vanderspool. You will continue to harm, and contaminate, and destroy as long as you are permitted to exist. Even if you did keep your word to let me alone, which we both know you won’t, some other poor bastard is going to pay for some imaginary sin against you. You’ll never stop. You’ll think of another person, and another, and another. I once shot you in hate. I ain’t doing that again.”

  “Your revenge—”

  “Don’t you get it?” Jim shouted. “This ain’t about revenge. This is about justice. About restoring the balance. About taking something dark and ugly out of the galaxy once and for all, so that something—something decent and good—can grow instead.”

  He strode up to Vanderspool and gazed down at the remnants of the man. The face was pale, the eyes sunken. The being before him was so shriveled, so worn, that Jim almost hesitated. But then the lips thinned, the eyes flashed with hate.

  No. Vanderspool’s body might be crippled, but the essence of the man was as vile and as strong as ever. “This is for the Heaven’s Devils,” Jim said quietly. “For everyone who was their friend. And for everyone whose life you have ruined along your way to this moment.”

  He kept his gaze locked with Vanderspool’s as he pulled the trigger.

  The gunshot was shockingly loud and seemed to go on forever. Slowly, Jim lowered the gun, not flinching at the sight of the ruined face. This time there was no sick gnawing at his gut that he had become the thing he despised. Nor hot, glorious, righteous delight.

  Just peace. Just quiet in his soul.

  The rabid dog would never harm anyone, ever again.

  The hologram that had been playing in his mind’s eye shifted. It was no longer of him standing over Vanderspool and shooting him.

  Instead, he saw his father, and heard words that echoed more loudly in his soul than that final gunshot in his ears.

  Do you remember what I used to tell you, Son? A man is what he chooses to be … a man can turn his life around in a single thought, a single decision. You can always choose to be something new. Never forget that.

  I won’t forget, Dad. I won’t. Maybe I’m not the man you thought I’d be … but that don’t mean I’m not capable of being what I choose.

  Jim looked at the gun for a long moment, remembering when his fingers had first closed about it; how it had fitted his hand perfectly; how he had felt at that instant that it had somehow been waiting for him—that it had been made just for him. And perhaps it had been: made for the man who was a thief and a criminal, who pointed it at innocent, frightened people. It still fit his hand, but it no longer fit him.

  Slowly, James Raynor placed the antique Colt Single Action Army revolver on top of the metal coffin, turned, and walked out.

  EPILOGUE

  MAR SARA

  JANINE’S

  The bar was one of the smaller, friendlier ones Jim had run across. Cleaner, too, and brighter. Of course, he was here in the middle of the day, not at oh-dark-thirty like he usually was when he visited such establishments, so that probably made at least some difference.

  He’d ordered a beer. One. Without Scotty Bolger’s Old No. 8. And he’d been nursing it for the better part of an hour, settling his lanky frame into an old, comfortable chair and simply thinking and observing.

  Oddly, he found his thoughts turning to Marshal Wilkes Butler. He and Tychus had made fun of the marshal’s methodical, unimaginative pursuit of them. And yet … Jim found himself respecting the man. Tychus and he had been almost impossibly wily—half the time, because they never knew what they were going to do themselves. And yet, Butler had come after them time and time again, doggedly, doing everything by the book, until finally he’d gotten at least one of them. He’d not been seduced by Daisy’s charms, nor used underhanded methods, nor ever employed greater force than was necessary. He’d been—and Jim was surprised to find himself thinking this—a decent man.

  Janine’s was more of a gathering spot than a watering hole. There were few hard drinkers here, and the food was actually pretty good. Standard stuff for a bar—skalet burgers and fries and such—but some fried range hen was also on the menu that the bar owner, the cheerfully hefty brunette Janine, made fresh herself every day. He was gnawing on a drumstick when the door opened.

  “Afternoon, Liddy!” called Janine. “The usual?”

  Still chewing the delicious range hen—Janine used some kind of spice that made it really zingy—Jim turned idly to see the newcomer.

  She was slim and tanned and exuded that wholesome fresh-scrubbed appeal that women strove to attain through artfully messy hair and makeup carefully applied so as to not look applied at all. This woman didn’t need to bother with artifice to look beautifully natural.

  Her long blond hair, the color of the triticale-wheat his family used to harvest back on Shiloh, was tied in a careless braid and draped over her shoulder. Her eyes were sky blue and crinkled at the edges when she grinned. Her tanned face had just the faintest smattering of freckles.

  “Heya, Janine. You bet: it’s a hot one today.” Her voice was as cheerful and warm as the rest of her.

  Jim lifted an eyebrow as something sunny yellow was plunked down in front of the newcomer.

  “Don’t tell me that’s lemonade,” he said before he could stop himself. I
t wouldn’t be made from actual lemons, of course. It was synthetic, but everyone had their own recipe, adjusted to their particulars.

  “Best in the county,” Janine said with pride.

  “The county? Janine’s range hen, potato salad, cobbler, and lemonade beat any other meal on the whole planet,” asserted the incredibly gorgeous girl.

  “Okay, you got me curious. I’ll agree with you on the chicken, so, Janine, a lemonade here, too, please. And this lady’s serving is on me.”

  The girl raised a golden eyebrow and toasted him with the beverage. A moment later Jim was drinking something cool, tangy-sweet, and utterly refreshing. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had lemonade. It had to have been back on Shiloh, some hot summer’s day when his mother had come out to the field with a cooler full of food and a vacuum flask of lemonade. Jim had been sweaty, exhausted, sunburned, and, he realized, probably happier than he had ever been since.

  “Don’t like it?” The voice of the wheat-haired angel brought him back to the present. He realized he’d just been sitting, holding the glass since he’d taken the first sip.

  “Oh … yeah, love it, actually. Just … brought back memories. I grew up on a farm.”

  She looked at him for a moment, then slipped into the chair beside him. Sticking out a hand that looked calloused and strong, she said, “I’m Lidya. But everyone calls me Liddy.”

  Jim’s fingers closed around her hand, and he shook it. She had a good grip—firm, friendly. “Nice to meet you, Liddy. That’s a pretty name. I’m Jim Raynor.”

  “Nice to meet you, Jim Raynor.” She tucked her legs up underneath her and leaned on the chair arm, chin on her hand, eyes bright with curiosity. “What do you do around these parts?”

  Jim thought about Myles Hammond, his impassioned words about the decency of people on this world, and simply smiled.