Flashpoint

by Christie Golden

  They had been summoned to Mengsk’s office. It was the first time either had seen him since Antiga Prime. He looked relaxed and rested, and greeted them both enthusiastically as he pressed snifters of brandy into their hands. Kerrigan at first demurred, but, “I insist,” said Arcturus, smiling kindly at her. And when Arcturus Mengsk insisted, one usually yielded.

  He indicated two chairs, and they both sat. “Where’s Mike?” asked Sarah. The reporter Michael Liberty had become a friend to both Kerrigan and Raynor, and seemed to be a special pet of Arcturus’s. Even though, Jim mused as the thought formed, if Mike was a “pet,” he was one of those dogs that occasionally growled at his “master.”

  “Normally I enjoy chatting with the three of you,” Mengsk said, swirling the brandy in the snifter as he spoke. “But Liberty’s devotion is somewhat . . . conditional. After what’s happened recently, I wanted to take a few moments and speak to those who are more—let us say, in sync with my ideals. I wanted to thank you. Both of you. Things lie ahead and—well, no one knows the hour of his passing. It’s more important than ever that we stay united. Work together for the freedom and betterment of mankind, as both of you have done.”

  He smiled, the neatly trimmed black-and-white beard parting to reveal white teeth. “I also wanted to say it does my heart good to see the two of you getting along so well.”

  Jim had thought he was a jaded cynic. But at Mengsk’s words, he actually blushed. Not that Kerrigan would have any problem knowing what he was thinking without his telltale reddening.

  Sarah, too, looked away for a moment, and then, evenly, regarded Jim. “I think we each misjudged the other,” she said. “I’m glad Jim’s with us.”

  “With you both cooperating, we can have what we are striving for. We truly can,” said Mengsk, his compelling voice earnest. “We can have a better world without the Confederacy. Overthrowing that brutal, antiquated system—that’s as pure a mission as any angel could follow. You two are my best soldiers—my angels.”

  Jim laughed out loud at that, scratching his neck. “Been called a lot of things before, Arcturus, but never an angel.”

  Mengsk chuckled, sipping the brandy. “Sometimes it takes others to see what lies inside a man’s heart. I’m a good judge of character, Jim Raynor. It’s let me get this far on my mission to, finally, rid this sector of the Confederacy and establish something that’s just and lasting. You, my friend, do have an angel’s ideals. And you, Sarah,” and his voice grew warm with affection as he toasted her, “you are my avenging angel.”

  She lowered her eyes. Jim didn’t have to be a telepath to sense her pain. But Sarah didn’t protest. Because they all knew it to be true.

  Jim was moved to speak. “You are right about one thing,” he said, taking a gulp of the brandy. The liquid burned beautifully going down. “They’ve got to be stopped. Got to be. If there is an afterlife, those bastards are going to have to answer for a hell of a lot. Their policies are designed to line their pockets and nothing more, and they cost lives. Lives of good, decent people, just trying to make an honest living. People who trusted because, damn it, they should be able to trust. Trust that their government would feed them healthy, nourishing food, not poison. Trust that if they volunteered to go off and fight a war for the government, fight and maybe die, they’d be honored if they fell and taken care of if they came home. Trust that their leaders gave a rat’s ass about them.”

  His voice shook, but he didn’t care. Both Sarah and Mengsk were watching him, eyes wide, drinks forgotten in their hands.

  “You see it too,” he said to both of them. “Mengsk—they call you a terrorist. But you’re a goddamned hero if you do what you say you’re going to do. And history is going to look back at you and us and what we did and, dammit, why we did it, and it ain’t going to be us that will be labeled terrorists anymore.”

  Mengsk extended his hand, and Raynor grasped it. Hard.

  2504

  I trusted you, you son of a bitch, Raynor thought. Trusted Mengsk.

  Trusted Tychus.

  He glanced down at where his hand held Sarah’s, and to his remorse realized he was almost crushing it. At once he loosened his grip. Sarah had trusted too.

  Had.

  For a long time now, Jim had kept a special bullet with the word Justice inscribed on it. He’d have to get another one now. The original had gone through Tychus Findlay’s brain. And even as he swallowed hard at the memory, he realized something.

  Tychus—maybe this wasn’t really your fault. I know what Mengsk can do to a person. I know how he can get under your skin and in your brain—make you think that you’re doing the right thing. Maybe . . . maybe you really thought you were.

  Like father, like son? came another thought. How far can I trust this pretty boy? So far he’s been true to his word. So far. But Mengsk was at the beginning too. And so was Tychus. Mengsk took her from me once—and Tychus almost did it a second time. And I can’t lose her again. I can’t.

  I won’t.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Matthew!”

  The voice was purring, warm, and slightly accented, the voice of a sex kitten. The woman it belonged to had spun-candy-pink hair, but the rest of her was far from soft and pliable. One eye was sparkling in mischievous delight through a lock of the outrageously dyed hair, the other was red and glowing and cybernetic, encased by puckered flesh. The rest of her shape, though what was seen was appealing, was covered in protective gear. Mira Han was a curious bundle of contradictions.

  “Matthew” smiled wanly at the image on the screen. “Hello again, Mira. Thank you for agreeing to help us.”

  “I am more than happy to help my dear, sweet husband,” she said, her grin widening for a playful moment at Horner’s obvious discomfort. Then, more seriously, she added, “For a while, anyway.”

  Matt frowned. “ ‘A while’?”

  “Of course. I cannot endanger my own people for too terribly long, now, can I? You would do the same.”

  Matt supposed he would. Sighing, he said, “Okay, how long is ‘a while’ in Mira time?”

  “When I say so. I won’t fight the Dominion for you, Matthew, so if they come, you and James and your new friend will be on your own. But, then again”—and she shrugged—“I know lots of hidey-holes here, and if I don’t want something to be found—it isn’t.”

  * * *

  Raynor was so lost in his thoughts that it took a faint squeeze from Sarah’s hand to draw his attention back to her. He looked at her at once, watching her eyelids fluttering open. “Hey, you,” he said.

  “Hey, yourself,” she murmured, and there was the slightest hint of a smile. “This doctor can’t keep his lab steady. Or is that just me?”

  “Nah,” Jim said. “It’s not you, but it ain’t the doctor either. We’ve been under attack, darlin’.”

  “Who from? Zerg, protoss, Dominion, Bob from down the hall?”

  Jim tried and failed not to feel giddy at these admittedly feeble- and forced-sounding attempts at humor. At least there was some of Sarah’s personality left. The giddiness abated when he realized that he probably would have to tell her about everything that had happened.

  “Dominion,” he said. The slight smile on her full mouth faded, and her lips pressed together.

  “Arcturus,” she said, the word a single sliver of ice.

  “Yeah,” Jim said. “He don’t know when he’s beat.”

  “He’s not beat, Jim. He’ll never be beat. He’ll outlive us all, and have cocktail parties on our graves.” She turned her head away and tried to disentangle her hand from his, but he wouldn’t let her.

  “Whoa, whoa now,” he soothed, “you ain’t got the whole picture.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  “I think you do,” Jim said. “We just gave old Arcturus a whipping he won’t soon forget. He’s sitting there on the bridge of his new flagship, licking his wounds and sulking.”

  “Your ally . . . he’s the one who . . . ” She lift
ed her other hand and gestured at her body.

  “Yep,” Jim said. “Mengsk’s boy. Still don’t trust him, but so far, he’s kept to everything he said. Besides, his own father was trying to kill him. He starts to look okay in my book.”

  Her brow furrowed as she tried, through the haze of drugs coursing through her system, to comprehend what he had told her.

  “Mengsk tried to kill his son?”

  “Sure did. Came too close for comfort to killing us all. Valerian lost twenty-five battleships because of his decision to bring you back to me.”

  She froze and closed her eyes. Jim cursed inwardly. It was clear he had pushed too far.

  “He didn’t bring me back for you, Jim,” Sarah said. Her voice was flat. “He brought me back to use me.”

  Jim caught movement out of the corner of his eye. The doctor was gesticulating and shaking his head, clearly wanting Jim to steer the conversation elsewhere. Jim frowned and shook his head. He’d never lied to Sarah before, and he wasn’t going to start now. He thought about the conversation he’d had with Valerian about this same subject.

  “I want something more,” Valerian had said. “To prove that I will be a better emperor, and a better man.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard,” Jim recalled replying.

  “If I reform the worst mass murderer in history, make her human again, teamed with the famous outlaw Jim Raynor—that’s all the proof I’ll need.”

  “So I’m just a cog in your machine.”

  “If it gets you what you want . . . do you care?”

  “Guess I don’t.”

  “You know, I thought that too,” Jim said. “And it may still be true. No doubt helping you—and me too—is going to be a feather in Junior’s cap. But that don’t matter. You’re back, Sarah, and he’s got the ability to help you. We’ll find out—”

  “That I’m still a monster?” Sarah tore her hand from Jim’s and grasped one of the long, snake-like tendrils that still served as hair. “This is human? I escape the certain death that Arcturus planned for me, only to become the queen of the zerg. Infested. Remade, cell by cell. And you’ve brought me back to hand me over to his son? Why didn’t you just kill me when you could, Jim? Why didn’t you? You promised you would . . . . ”

  And he had, long ago; he had promised he’d kill her rather than let her continue to rampage unchecked through the galaxy at the head of the Swarm. “Honey, I—”

  She threw back her head and screamed. Not a cry of terror or pain but of rage and grief and despair. She arched, trying to pull free of the restraints, trying to launch herself at Jim. He clamped his hands down on her wrists, holding her long enough for the doctor to inject her with something. Three seconds later she went limp, and Jim caught her. Gently, he laid her back down on the bed, only then noticing the tears that had spilled from her now-closed eyes.

  “I tried to tell you to stay quiet,” muttered Frederick. “You should leave now.”

  Jim nodded, slowly. He touched Sarah’s hand one more time, then rose and headed for the door.

  “And you probably shouldn’t come back,” Frederick said. “I know you care about her, but you seem to be distressing her.”

  Jim froze, then slowly turned. “I’d like to see you try to keep me out,” he said.

  “I could make it a medical order,” the doctor replied. “The care of my patient is paramount.”

  Jim took three long-legged strides and closed the distance between them. “You don’t know anything about Sarah Kerrigan,” he said. “I moved heaven and earth to bring her back, and I know that whatever harm my presence does her, it’s doing good too. You thought so too.”

  “I did, until she—”

  “It ain’t me that’s upsetting her,” Jim said. “It’s what I gotta be telling her about the world she’s about to go back into. Your boss was the one who wanted to bring her back in the first place. Well, now she’s back, and she’s got a single goddamned anchor.” He jutted a thumb at his chest. “Me. And I don’t intend to abandon her. She’s had to deal with betrayal once already. She’ll deal with it again over my dead body.”

  Frederick didn’t challenge him as he strode out of sick bay.

  * * *

  “We’re going to do what?” Valerian couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice.

  “Hide in a junkyard,” said the viewscreen’s image of Matt Horner.

  “That’s what I thought you said, but then I realized that couldn’t possibly be correct.”

  Matt smiled a little. “You’ve never actually been to Deadman’s Port, have you?”

  “Why no,” said Valerian. “The part of my education involving traipsing about in an entire city full of murderers, thugs, and thieves appears to be sadly neglected.”

  “We’ll bring you up to speed.”

  “How delightful.”

  “Anyway—if you’ve not physically been there, you don’t know what I mean when I say ‘junkyard.’ There are entire cities built on the junkyards of this planet. That’s essentially what Deadman’s Port is. Trust me . . . you could hide the whole Dominion fleet there if you had someone agreeing to look the other way. Two battlecruisers aren’t going to be a problem.”

  * * *

  Jim walked out from the Hyperion’s hangar bay into the gray, eye-stinging haze that was the “weather” in Deadman’s Port. Blinking, he looked around and thought about his visit here, so many years ago, with Tychus Findlay. The place itself hadn’t changed much—it was still an enormous trash heap that managed to be a city. Homes were made inside the wreckage of old ships; streets, if such they could be named, were merely pathways through the piles of debris. But people lived and died here, maybe even loved and dreamed.

  Jim and Tychus had been on the run then from an assassin, forced to seek refuge and help from one Scutter O’Banon. O’Banon, who had run the planet at the time, had been bad news, even in the opinion of Raynor, who was an outlaw himself. Jim had thought then that Deadman’s Rock, as the planet was known, was the single ugliest place he had ever seen, and O’Banon the ugliest soul he had had the misfortune to encounter.

  O’Banon had indeed given them shelter and jobs. Jim tried not to think about walking through the “streets” of the city with Tychus, and the bigger man approvingly exclaiming, “Can’t swing a cat without hitting a whore.” He had thought he had known what world-weary was, had thought things were as bad as they could get.

  He hadn’t even scratched the surface.

  I miss you, Tychus. Not the betrayer you became . . . but the man you used to be. Dammit . . . I miss my friend.

  But Tychus was gone. So was O’Banon, who had been replaced by someone named Ethan Stewart, who was himself replaced by someone else whom Raynor didn’t know. Presumably, whoever the new boss of this forsaken place was, Mira was in good with him, or else she wouldn’t have been able to offer sanctuary. Raynor hoped that whoever it was, he had good security. The bosses of Deadman’s Port didn’t seem to be very long-lived, and the last thing Jim needed was a transitional power struggle when he was asking a favor.

  “I . . . think I understand what Mr. Horner was trying to say about this place,” said Valerian as he emerged from the Bucephalus, his voice dripping with distaste.

  “Yep,” Jim said, still looking, still remembering. A whiff of a cigar from somewhere floated to him, and for a brief, wonderful moment, he thought if he turned around fast enough, he would see Tychus.

  Not in this life. Jim turned to regard Horner and Valerian and shook his head. The Heir Apparent to the Dominion had removed his bright military coat, but even in rolled-up shirtsleeves and trousers, he screamed “mark” to anyone who caught a glimpse of him. “We gotta do something about you, Valerian,” he said, welcoming the distraction from too many old memories. “You stick out like a sore thumb.”

  Valerian glanced down at his crisply pressed shirt, knife-edged trousers, and gleaming black boots.

  “Well, well, here you all are, three cute boys for Mira,” came
a voice behind them. They turned to see a tall, muscular woman standing in front of them, hands on her hips and grinning. “Well,” she amended thoughtfully, eyes—both mechanical and human—darting from one to the other, “two cute boys and one scruffy one. James,” she sighed, “do you never avail yourself of the sonic showers on your lovely ship?”

  The “lovely ship” she referred to, along with the Bucephalus, was camouflaged so well that its own designer wouldn’t have recognized it. The crew Mira had sent ahead had done a spectacular job of removing (carefully, under Swann’s supervision) unnecessary pieces of the exterior, temporarily welding on other pieces, and painting it masterfully so that it looked like a burned-out hulk. To heighten the illusion, actual debris had been piled atop the Hyperion. The Bucephalus had received the same treatment. Jim could have sworn Swann teared up at least once.

  “Yes, I do, and I enjoy it,” Jim said. “But I guess I just keep attracting dirt.”

  Mira made a little moue of disappointment and pushed his broad chest playfully. “Some might think that was an insult,” she said. “Good thing I know better.”

  She then turned her unsettling gaze on Valerian. “I’ve been told to call you Mr. V,” she said, “and I will do so. You look taller than UNN portrays you.”

  “I hear that a lot,” said Valerian. “Thank you for agreeing to shelter us. I won’t forget your kindness.”

  “Let us hope your dear papa doesn’t find out about it and also decide to not forget,” Mira said. Jim knew Mira well enough to recognize a warning when he heard it. Coquettish she might be when she chose, but dangerous she was at all times. He knew better than to underestimate her. She smiled, softening the subtle threat. “And I am grateful to you as well—for giving me the opportunity to spend some time with my dear Matthew.”

  Now, at last, she strode over to Horner and slipped into his arms, planting a kiss on his cheek as she handed him a folded piece of paper. Matt stayed completely immobile, looking like a prisoner about to face execution—resigned, but clearly wishing the situation were otherwise.