Flashpoint

by Christie Golden

  “They’re—they’re not going to try to ram it, are they?” asked Vaughn.

  Valerian shook his head, unable to answer. Raynor and his Raiders were completely unpredictable. The prince didn’t think that the young man who was captaining the Hyperion was prepared to destroy all aboard for the sake of Raynor and Kerrigan—but he didn’t know. And that chaotic element gave the Raiders an enormous advantage.

  Because if Valerian didn’t know what Horner would do, then Arcturus certainly didn’t.

  The two mighty ships, the Hyperion and the White Star, drew closer together. Valerian frowned. The Hyperion was jury-rigged and souped up within an inch of its mechanical life, and thus theoretically might be able to hold its own for a time against the newer White Star. Still, it was definitely the one that had the most to lose. He was glad that Raynor wasn’t watching this; Valerian somehow didn’t think that the man, outlaw and hater of Arcturus Mengsk though he was, would condone blowing up his own ship and all aboard on an attack that might not even work.

  “Sir, they are most certainly on an intercept course,” said Vaughn.

  “I can see that, thank you, Captain,” Valerian replied coolly, unable to tear his eyes from the impending disaster.

  The White Star ripped into the Hyperion. Wraiths dove at it like a mass of angry hornets, strafing as they darted past. The White Star fired its Yamato cannon, and Valerian squinted at the brightness of the attack. Luck was with the Hyperion; it had been banking as the cannon fired, and the blow was a glancing one. Still, it was bad enough. Strangely, the Hyperion didn’t return fire and just kept coming.

  “Suicide,” murmured Valerian. But . . . this made no sense . . . .

  And then he laughed, a sharp, clear bark of admiring delight. Because while the Hyperion had indeed suffered the damage of a glancing hit, the attack had also served to anger the zerg. And all of them—dozens by this point—began descending upon the White Star.

  “Hyperion to Bucephalus—get to clear space at coordinates four one seven mark eight.”

  “Valerian here,” he said, preempting the standard reply. “I’ll notify my fleet.” He turned to Vaughn. “You heard the gentleman,” he said. “Get that message out, and make sure it’s run on encryption level three. I don’t want to risk my father’s hearing about this.”

  “Aye, sir,” said Vaughn.

  Valerian turned his attention back to the battle that was raging. The ships looked close enough to touch, and he felt the Bucephalus rock as it was struck.

  “Acknowledged, sir. The Eos, the Patroclus, the Herakles, and the Antigone are all reporting various degrees of damage but will make every effort to get there. The rest of the fleet have lost their engines and are dead in space.”

  Valerian nodded. He was not surprised, judging by what Arcturus was doing. But he would regret each life lost. This wasn’t supposed to happen. All had been going so well . . . but that was a lesson he had learned early in life. Things could change in a matter of seconds, and seldom for the better. This was war now between father and son, and thousands would get caught in the crossfire. That was the nature of the beast.

  The zerg were still attacking the White Star, heedless of how many of them died and buying Valerian and his soldiers precious time. The Bucephalus and his other vessels slowly began to turn, heading for the coordinates Horner had given them. Too slowly . . . Valerian’s jaw tightened as he saw a concentrated volley nearly take out the Eos.

  Four. Out of twenty-five . . . . Well, then, four it would be. He knew the pilot was maneuvering the damaged Bucephalus at top speed, but it felt like eons before Valerian started seeing stars and empty space rather than Char, zerg, and explosions in the viewports. Up ahead, bloody but unbowed, was the Hyperion waiting for them.

  “Bucephalus, where are you?” Horner’s voice demanded.

  “We are en route. Four other battlecruisers have reported they will be jumping with us.”

  “They better get here soon. We don’t have time to wait. Looks as if your absence has been noted.”

  “Rear view,” snapped Valerian, fixing his gaze on the viewscreen. Sure enough, several of his father’s ships were also starting to turn in lumbering pursuit. Valerian saw his own four vessels trying to follow him. Even as he watched, the emperor’s fleet opened fire, and the Eos, already damaged, suddenly halted and began to drift.

  Three.

  “Come on,” murmured Valerian. He felt sweat gather at his brow and reproached himself. He took pride in his constant, controlled demeanor, but he’d never been in this position before.

  “Sir, incoming message from the White Star,” said Vaughn.

  That surprised Valerian. For a moment he debated ignoring his father. He didn’t particularly feel like enduring more threats and angry comments. But what if Arcturus had changed his mind?

  Doubtful. More honestly, impossible. But Valerian would never know unless he agreed to listen.

  “Sir?”

  “Put him through,” Valerian said as he stepped to the console, pleased that his voice, at least, did not reflect his current agitated state.

  The image of his father appeared in front of him. “Because you are my son and, at least until today, my heir, I am going to do something I have never done with anyone I’ve ever fought before. I’m going to swallow my pride.”

  Hope, painful in its joy and fear, pulsed sharply through Valerian like adrenaline. Is it possible?

  “I will ask you one final time to reconsider. You have the enemy on your ship, boy. We can kill them together. I’ll let you share the credit. I promise you that. Don’t throw away your life and those of your crews on some wild protoss goose chase . . . if they even have geese.”

  No. Valerian had been right the first time.

  He spoke, his heart heavy and melancholy with resignation. “You’ve already killed thousands, Father. I owe it to those who lost their lives defending me to stand up for what I believe in. And what I don’t believe in . . . is you and your promises.”

  He stabbed a finger down, and the image disappeared. A light began to flash almost immediately, indicating that Arcturus wanted to have the last word, but Valerian was done.

  Behind him, the White Star, having shaken itself mostly free of the zerg, moved slowly around to fire on one of the ships trailing the Bucephalus. It landed a perfect hit on the Patroclus, and more red-orange death sprang up.

  Two battlecruisers, then.

  Two of the twenty-five that had accompanied Valerian would be able to make the jump with him. The captains of the ships that were crippled and of necessity left behind might or might not surrender to Arcturus; the emperor might or might not accept that surrender. Either way, it was out of Valerian’s hands now. He had made his choice, and despite the losses that were mounting by the second, Valerian knew in his heart it was the right one. In his sick bay, he had Sarah Kerrigan—key to the prophecy about the return of the xel’naga. He could not—would not—jeopardize that.

  “Sir, the White Star is moving within firing range,” said Vaughn.

  “Warp out,” said Valerian.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  They came, so many, so very many, all descending upon her. She felt hot breath, slaver on her face, and saw the flash of rows of teeth and the waving of sharp limbs. She had fought until her weapon clicked empty, only to realize that no evac was on its way, no help was going to arrive. She’d expected death, and instead—

  Darkness . . . captivity, the inability to move toward freedom. But something was moving. Inside her body, her bones and muscles and sinew were twisting, contorting, reforming, and it was agony. Other minds touched her thoughts as she was being remade.

  The power. So much strength, so many lives bound to hers, so much love—

  Love—

  She had known love before they had been bonded to her. Had tasted it as a simple human female lying quietly in the arms of a strong yet gentle man with a weatherworn, bearded face.

  James Raynor. Marshal, outlaw, fa
ther, widower. Lover.

  Jim—

  The brief surcease of pain faded. Images of carnage took its place. Of uncountable zerg swarming across the faces of planets, infesting anything living they came across, including her, including—

  She could feel her bony wings, each tip as sharp as a dagger, flexing, extending. Her head felt heavy, adorned not with light strands of hair but with something weightier, something that moved of its own accord. Her eyes could see farther than they ever had before; her mind had opened—

  —had been stretched—

  —to accommodate so much more than she had been able to process even as a ghost. To know, to feel, to wield power unimaginable.

  To slaughter in numbers unimaginable.

  How many?

  Seas of faces. But one was etched in her brain. Kerrigan had never met her, but through the eyes of her zerg, Sarah had watched her die.

  Watched a mother struggle to lift her sobbing daughter out of harm’s way, when there was no path out of harm’s way . . . .

  Oh yes, Sarah had killed before. But each time, the taking of a life from another person had taken something from her as well. She recalled a dance of death she had performed, which the journalist Mike Liberty had unfortunately been forced to behold. Phasing in and out of invisibility, slashing here, snapping a neck there, firing a slugthrower, disappearing from one spot only to reappear in another. Faces gone, torsos ripped. She had left a trail of death like bread crumbs for Liberty to follow. And finally he had found her, sinking to her knees in exhaustion . . . .

  “Waffles,” she murmured.

  “What’s that, darlin’? Getting hungry on me?”

  A voice from the past. One that had spoken soft words once, had threatened to kill her another time. It had to be from the past, because he couldn’t be here now—

  Waffles. One of the techs she had killed during that danse macabre on Antiga Prime had died wishing he had eaten the waffles offered for breakfast that morning.

  I am a destroyer of things.

  And then suddenly the corpses rose up, their faces rotting or bloody or disfigured. Not just from that day but from every day she had dealt death as a human and as the Queen of Blades. Every man, woman, and child who had fallen since the moment she had become first a ghost and then the queen of the zerg—their mother—now lifted gore-covered hands to her, some pleading for her to return what she had ripped from them, some demanding vengeance for lives cut far, far too short.

  They were a sea of ripped and bleeding flesh. She looked, dazed, as they flooded every corner of her vision and beyond. Dozens . . . hundreds . . . thousands . . . millions . . . billions . . .

  . . . and two—mother and daughter . . . .

  Their screams of agony and rage and fear filled her throat, and Sarah Kerrigan gave voice to them all.

  * * *

  The screaming made Jim’s hair stand on end. Sarah’s beautiful face was contorted in a grimace of pure terror and torment, her mouth gaping open, all the sounds of grief and fury pouring from it.

  “Sarah!” he cried, grabbing her shoulders and shaking them first gently, then more firmly. “You’re safe! It’s all right!”

  The screaming mutated into wails, then soft sobbing so lost and despairing that Jim felt himself start to weep.

  “Talk to her,” Frederick snapped. “Her brain waves indicate that she can hear us; she’s just not letting any of this reach her.”

  Jim gazed at the woman on the bed and said a silent prayer to any deity, real or imagined, who might be listening.

  “Sarah, honey, do you remember how much you hated my guts when we first met?”

  More sobbing. There was no sign that she had understood him. Jim glanced at the doctor, who waved at him to continue.

  “You sure were something else, honey. You looked mighty fine. And, oh, my thoughts betrayed me then, didn’t they?”

  2500

  Antiga Prime. It was not the first world Sarah Kerrigan, former ghost and now second-in-command of the rebel group led by Arcturus Mengsk, had been assigned to, nor was it likely to be the last. As planets went, it was worse than some, better than others. Arid, dry, brown. It was known that the inhabitants were not all that fond of the Confederacy of Man. Mengsk believed that with a little bit of encouragement, they would rise up as they had once before, taking their world away from the clutches of the tyrannical Confederacy, reclaiming it for themselves. And, of course, for Arcturus Mengsk, their liberator.

  So Sarah had been sent to make sure the situation for the overthrow was ripe. Her recon had borne fruit. Initial intel had revealed that the main problem was posed by a single Confederate detachment. Admittedly, it was Alpha Squad, but it was still only one detachment. It had not taken long for Kerrigan to discover that General Edmund Duke, commander of Alpha Squad and the battlecruiser Norad II, was nowhere to be found.

  Mengsk had seemed pleased with the report and had told her to expect a dropship shortly with the “new boy,” former marshal and now captain James Raynor, in command.

  She had arrived at the rendezvous point and watched as the dropship disgorged its human contents, Mike Liberty still awkward in his powered armor, and they began to set up a perimeter. She chose to stay cloaked, wanting to take the measure of this Raynor for herself. Part of her training had been to size up the enemy, and these days everyone was a potential enemy—even those who claimed they were working for Mengsk.

  Raynor was tall, well built but not overburdened with muscle, with deep-set wrinkles around dark eyes. He chatted amiably with the others, clapping one of them on the back. Yes, she thought. He looks exactly like what he has been—a law-enforcement official on a backwater planet. But there was something about him . . . something about the set of the jaw and the sharpness of his eyes. From a backwater world James Raynor might be, but he was no bumpkin.

  Satisfied with her assessment and mindful that minutes mattered, Sarah stepped forward, removing her helmet to let her head cool and deactivating the cloak.

  Liberty gave her a wry smile of recognition, but she didn’t have time for pleasantries. She strode up to Raynor, saluting.

  “Captain Raynor,” she began. He turned around, lifting an eyebrow. “I’ve finished scouting out the area and—”

  She was used to men finding her attractive, to giving them the telepathic equivalent of rolling her eyes and continuing with the conversation. But this man—the things he wanted to do to her . . . . Images of his hands on her, of their lips pressing together, of her legs wrapped around him—

  “You pig!”

  The pictures in his head were graphic, vivid, and . . . compelling. She was surprised by her own reaction to them, and she turned it into anger.

  Jim’s eyes widened. “What? I haven’t even said anything to you yet!”

  She gave him credit for not denying it but was too upset to acknowledge that. Besides, why should she? He was a pig!

  “Yeah, but you were thinking it,” she shot back. She wondered why she was so offended. It wasn’t as if he was the first man to think such things. Sarah had thought there was an essence of goodness and decency about him upon first perusal. Clearly, she was wrong. He was just like all the rest underneath.

  A pig.

  “Oh yeah, you’re a telepath,” he said, infusing the word with . . . something. There were many emotions crowding his mind, and she didn’t want to try to decipher them. He had the grace, at least, to appear embarrassed. “Look, let’s just get on with this, okay?”

  “Right.” She bit the word off icily, again wondering why she was so angry. With the speed of practice, she recovered, still stinging a little, and filled in Liberty and Raynor on the situation. When Jim made a snide comment about her abilities, she rose to the bait for an instant before pushing her anger down. More important was the fact that she had observed something else on her reconnaissance . . . that the terrans were not alone on Antiga Prime.

  “Crap,” Jim said. “Confederates and zerg. They seem to go ha
nd in hand. Okay, now let’s roll out.”

  2504

  Jim’s mouth was dry from talking, from describing to the tormented young woman a time in their lives that now seemed so simple and almost sweet. He knew the Bucephalus had been in battle; even in the sick bay, deep inside the ship, they could feel it. He’d felt the ship take the hits. It had all gone on while he had been talking.

  But Raynor was right where he knew he could do the most good. As he spoke, Kerrigan’s taut body relaxed slightly. Toward the end his heart lifted as something resembling her old smirk curved her full lips. Her breathing slowed, and the doctor came over to check her stats.

  “She’s asleep,” Frederick said. “Not unconscious . . . just sleeping.” Jim blew out a sigh of relief and sat back, still holding her hand. “Couldn’t help but overhear,” Frederick continued. “Just what the hell were you thinking when you saw her?”

  “Way I was raised, son, a gentleman don’t tell,” Jim said, finding the energy to give the doctor a tired smirk. “But I bet you can make a good guess.”

  At that moment, there was a sharp whistling sound. “Mr. Raynor, this is Valerian. Please acknowledge.”

  Jim rose and went to the console, punching a button. “Raynor here. I’m guessing you and Matt got out all right, or else we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “You guess correctly. Although our escape from my father’s fleet came at a great cost.” The voice sounded genuinely regretful. “I’d like to meet with you and Mr. Horner aboard the Hyperion. We have much to discuss.”

  Click. It wasn’t a request, of course, and Jim knew it. He was fine with that—it proved that he wasn’t a prisoner, confined to sick bay along with Sarah. He didn’t want to leave her, but she was clearly stable and in good hands. Jim gazed at her for a moment more, then glanced over at the doctor.

  “Take care of her,” he said. “Good care.”

  He’d given so much to find her. To save her. He’d turned on Tychus for her. He couldn’t lose her now.