Flashpoint

by Christie Golden

  She blinked and turned her head slowly in his direction. Blood, ichor, and brain matter had spattered her. Her face relaxed as their eyes met, then hardened again as she gazed at Valerian.

  “Mengsk,” she said, in a deep, angry voice, and began to move slowly, with a dreadful sense of purpose, toward Valerian.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Sarah, don’t!” Forgetting what danger he himself might be in, Jim darted forward and grabbed Sarah’s arm.

  She turned to him, green eyes blazing. “He’s a Mengsk, Jim! He can’t be trusted!”

  “Just like telepaths can’t be trusted?” Jim said. He kept his gaze locked with Sarah’s, vaguely aware that Egon had just hurried up to him and that Valerian hadn’t moved. “Just like outlaws can’t be trusted?”

  “You know what I mean. Let me go.”

  “No, I won’t. I won’t let you do something you’ll regret.”

  “Commander,” said Egon hesitantly, “something happened when she heard Mengsk’s voice . . . . I’m not so sure that’s, uh . . . ”

  “Not so sure it’s still me, Egon?” Sarah snapped. “Oh, it is. It truly is.”

  “Then you don’t want to kill this man,” said Jim. “He’s not his father. Time and again he’s shown that to me.”

  “He’s shown nothing to me.”

  “Then you just gotta trust me on this, don’t you?”

  Jim held in his mind all that Valerian had done. All the promises he had kept, all the danger he had faced. This boy was his daddy’s get, for certain, but he was his own man. Sarah’s eyes bored into his, and he knew she was reading his thoughts. For a second, he thought she saw those green eyes shimmer with tears, then she looked back at Valerian. Reading his thoughts now, Jim realized. Her tight jaw relaxed, just a little.

  “No,” she said. “You’re not Arcturus. Not yet, anyway.”

  “From you, Miss Kerrigan, I shall take what I can get.” He gave her a slightly crooked smile.

  Jim turned to Egon. “I see Sarah found you,” he said. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

  “Me too,” said Stetmann. He glanced at Sarah, his brow knitting, and Jim wondered what exactly the young scientist had witnessed when Sarah had heard Mengsk’s voice over the loudspeaker. Jim clapped him on the shoulder, startling the boy slightly, then stepped up to Sarah. Gently he wiped a smudge of something thick and purple-black from her cheek.

  “Thank you, Miss Kerrigan. You came in the proverbial nick of time,” said Valerian.

  “We don’t have much of that left at this point!” Jim reminded them.

  “No,” said Sarah. She nudged one of the hybrid corpses with a foot. “Mengsk wants to make absolutely certain none of us leave this station alive. On top of firing at the station and having Narud let loose his pets, he’s ordered some marines to track us down as well. I ran across eight. I’m sure there are more.”

  Egon paled and looked down, and Jim didn’t need to ask what Sarah had done to the marines. “Well then, we better not linger. Let’s head to the docking bay.”

  “And pray there’s at least one ship still there,” said Valerian.

  “No,” said Sarah. “Not yet. We’ve got to get the artifact. It’s far too dangerous to leave in Narud’s hands. He can’t be allowed to escape with it.”

  They all groaned slightly, but none of them protested. They all knew she was right. “Egon,” asked Jim, turning to his friend, “do you know where they might have taken it?”

  “Dr. de Vries wasn’t really interested in telling me anything useful,” Egon said. “She just wanted to get me out of the way. I don’t know anything about it.”

  “I do,” said Valerian. “I know exactly where he would have stored it.”

  “You need the map again?”

  “No,” said Valerian, and smiled a little. “It’s not on the map. Come on!”

  * * *

  “How long do you plan to keep this up, kid?” asked Swann.

  “As long as it takes,” said Matt.

  The Hyperion and the Bucephalus were taking a pounding. It wasn’t possible to keep this up. They were buying time, that was all they were doing. Jim didn’t realize how banged up both vessels were when he issued his order. He—

  Matt blinked. It was a risky choice, but anything was risky now. There wasn’t a safe option available. “Get me Vaughn,” he said.

  “Vaughn here,” came a voice, both exhausted and tense.

  “I’ve got a plan,” said Matt. “Here’s what you need to do.”

  Five minutes later, everything was in order for Matt’s gamble. Swann had warned him against it—“You could stall out the engines with a stunt like this”—but Matt knew it was the only choice he could live with. Or die with.

  “Everyone ready?”

  There was a chorus of ayes, and Matt took a deep breath. “Vaughn, keep them busy.”

  “Will do, Horner.”

  “Okay. Cade . . . jump!”

  * * *

  “What the—Sir, we’ve lost the Hyperion,” said a very nervous navigator aboard the White Star.

  “What do you mean, ‘lost’?” Mengsk stepped forward, hovering ominously.

  “I mean, sir, that she’s just—gone. There’s no trace. She must have jumped.”

  “Jumped? Where? We’re in the middle of an asteroid field. A jump would be suicide. Helmsman, stay on target with the Bucephalus. This has got to be some kind of trick. Varley, find out where they went.”

  “Aye, sir.” The navigator kept hitting buttons, calling up images, trying to find some answer for his emperor. Then he paused, his eyes going wide. “Uh, sir? They just came out of warp. And it looks like—like they jumped . . . behind us!”

  * * *

  Valerian seemed to know where he was going. Apparently he was more familiar with the location of the extremely secret laboratory than he was with how to get to sick bay. Jim supposed he shouldn’t be surprised.

  The lab was located deep within the center of the station. As they descended, taking what felt like endless amounts of stairs—“We don’t dare use the lifts,” Valerian had warned—the hammering Prometheus was taking seemed more distant. Valerian led the way. Luck was with them in that Narud hadn’t seen fit to block Valerian’s high-level security access. Sarah paced him impatiently. Jim and Egon brought up the rear, the young scientist huffing and puffing with exertion.

  “You need to work out more,” said Jim.

  “Apparently . . . I do . . . ” gasped Egon. His face was unhealthily red. They ran down another corridor, and Valerian slowed.

  “This is it,” Valerian said. He put his hand up to the scanner. It dutifully made a note of his fingerprints, voice patterns, and retina.

  The door slid open. The room was dark. “Lights,” Valerian called. The room was illuminated. They stood and stared directly at the platform. An empty platform.

  “We’re too late,” Sarah breathed. “He took it. He took it!”

  Valerian looked shattered. “I made this possible,” he said softly. “I gave this weapon to him. And now—”

  “Stop wallowing, Valerian,” snapped Jim. “Narud stole the damn thing. What you did was give Sarah a shot at being a human being again. And saved my hide a few times.”

  “We can still stop him,” said Sarah. Her expression was distant. She hadn’t been listening, with either ears or brain, to what had just been said. “There’s only one way off this station. I was wrong to detour here. We should have gone there and tried to cut him off!” She looked furious, but Jim knew it was with herself and her miscalculation.

  “Then let’s go back there, darlin’,” said Jim. Scarcely were the words out his mouth than he heard a voice in his ear.

  “Commander?”

  “Matt?” Jim frowned. “I thought I told you to get the hell out of here.”

  “I did, but I came back.”

  They had all turned around now and were racing back the way they had come. “That wasn’t the plan.”

  “
Well, it is now. We’re trying to divide the Dominion forces. The Bucephalus is leading them on a chase. Two of them are following; the White Star is probably going to figure out what I did and come after me. I’d rather have you all safely on board before then.”

  “Ditto,” said Jim. “We’re heading to the docking bay now. Meet you there.”

  This time, the stairs all led up. Egon didn’t complain, but Jim feared for the scientist’s blood pressure. But there was nothing to do—there was no time for anyone to stop and catch his or her breath, no time to do anything but hurry, hurry and pray they weren’t too late.

  Sarah led the way this time, setting a pace that was nearly impossible for the rest of them to follow. She took the stairs two at a time, and as they were about to head into another corridor, she stopped and lifted a finger to her lips. She motioned for them to go back down. Jim realized at once that marines were about to descend on them.

  “Hide under the stairs,” he hissed to Egon and Valerian. They followed, obeying his orders. Jim waited for Sarah to join them, and then, an instant too late, realized what her plan had been.

  He heard the sound of the carnage before he saw it. There was the unmistakable sound of gauss rifle fire pinging off walls and railings, echoing insanely in the stairwell. Sarah screamed something, he couldn’t tell what, and there was a horrible cry of a human being in torment that was suddenly cut off. Jim and the others raced back up the stairs, weapons ready to fire, but paused. Neither he nor Valerian wanted to hit Sarah, but she was moving so swiftly, there was no clear shot. Two of the marines—in hardskins—were already down. Jim couldn’t see their faces; blood and goo obscured the visors. Another marine was firing wildly as Sarah straddled his chest, reaching down to trigger the suit’s emergency lockdown. The man fell, but Sarah was on a fourth before he even hit the floor. This one she hurtled over the stairs. Jim felt a strange twinge of pity.

  There was only one left. Sarah whirled, clenched her fists, and shouted something unintelligible. The woman’s head exploded, and the hardskin tumbled down.

  Sarah turned to look at him. The tendrils that served her for hair were moving, either from their owner’s recent vigorous activity, or of their own volition. Jim didn’t know, nor did he want to. He swallowed hard. Valerian and Egon said nothing.

  “What are you staring at?” Sarah challenged. “Let’s go. We’ve got to stop Narud!” She raced ahead.

  Jim tried to shield his thoughts from her, but he knew the horror and chagrin seeped through anyway. He only hoped she was more focused on looking for more marines to slaughter than on reading his mind.

  “You think we’ll be able to stop him?” asked Egon as they hurried through the door.

  “I think Sarah can stop just about anything,” said Valerian. “And she would know if he had left the station.”

  Jim was embarrassed that he hadn’t reasoned it out for himself.

  The wailing of the klaxons and the sounds of vessels firing on the station were so much white noise to him now. His focus was on Sarah, racing through doors, leaping over debris, catching her balance with astounding, effortless grace as the rest of them lurched and stumbled with each hit. They were almost to the docking bay when she suddenly tensed and shouted, “No! No! He’s going to get away!”

  Had it been only a few hours ago that Jim, Egon, Sarah, and Valerian had approached the extended bridge with its own atmosphere to dock at the exquisite Space Station Prometheus? It felt like another lifetime ago. They followed Sarah to the door. She skidded to a halt, tilting her head, thinking . . . and listening to thinking. They all halted as well, catching their breaths, Jim and Valerian cradling their rifles. Jim realized that they had all tacitly agreed to Sarah being their de facto leader.

  “He’s still here, but we’re going to have to fight our way through,” she said. “Everyone ready?”

  She looked at each of them in turn. All of them, even Stetmann, nodded. Sarah turned to the door and punched the controls.

  The door opened onto hell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Jim was already running, yelling and firing before he even fully realized what they were up against. And when he did, he didn’t slow. There would be no point.

  There was a transport at the end of the ramp, and four marines were maneuvering the box containing the artifact toward it. Narud was already aboard, waving in a “come on!” gesture. Between them and Narud and the artifact were about a million marines.

  And one hybrid.

  The thing went right for Sarah, and she for it, each doubtless recognizing the most dangerous foe. This one had no legs, but still moved with shocking speed on its serpentine lower body. Bat-like wings, disturbingly reminiscent of those belonging to the Queen of Blades, stretched outward. Two sets of pincers reached for Sarah, huge enough to snap her in two if they closed upon her.

  They didn’t. She nimbly leaped out of the way, a gymnast in a competition that granted life to the winner, and landed like a cat. She reached out her arm and the hybrid stumbled backward, covering its head with two of the pincer-arms before renewing its attack.

  Jim, Egon, and Valerian concentrated on the human element. There was no shelter on the broad walkway. They had to rely on the element of surprise and the chaos—and the distraction that the battle between Kerrigan and the hybrid was providing, even to the likely resoced marines. It was all but impossible to shut it out; the screams of the creature, both psionic and audible, bored into one. The fugitives had the double-edged benefit of having become quite familiar with hybrid and how they fought. The marines hadn’t.

  It was the only advantage they had, and Sarah knew it. As Jim and Valerian fired, rushed about, and fired again, she darted and dove so that she was actually leading the hybrid, toying with it and turning it against the hated Narud and his allies.

  Jim couldn’t hear Narud over the cacophony of battle sounds, but he could see that the artifact was almost loaded. So could Sarah. She paused for a second, anguished as she stared at Narud.

  “Sarah!” Jim shouted.

  The hybrid had seized the instant of inattention and the pincer was descending. At the last moment, she leaped away, but not without cost—the thing had taken a chunk out of her thigh.

  And at that second Jim felt a metal spike sear his own arm and grunted in pain. The limb was weakened, but he could still manage his weapon and began firing again.

  It was hopeless. Jim knew it, and knew the others did too. They were outnumbered at least four to one, outgunned, and Sarah could not help them against the marines.

  Hell, we all gotta die one day. Seems as good a way to go out as any, Jim thought.

  The transport doors closed. It lifted off. They had failed to stop Narud. All that was left to them now was to rid the galaxy of one more hybrid and take as many of Mengsk’s marines down with them as they could.

  Then, with no warning, there was fire in the sky above Space Station Prometheus. Jim’s gaze flickered upward and a huge grin started to spread over his face. Narud’s transport was coming under attack.

  By the Hyperion dropship Fanfare. How the hell Swann had been able to modify a dropship so that it could fire weapons in so short a time Jim didn’t know, and right now didn’t care.

  “Bless you, Swann. And you, too, Matt, you disobedient bastard,” Jim muttered. The sight of the ship gave his battered body renewed energy, and out of the corner of his eye he saw that Valerian and Egon were also grinning like idiots. They still probably wouldn’t make it, but they had something they hadn’t had a minute before—hope.

  The Fanfare was firing furiously at Narud’s ship, but the transport had moved almost out of range. Even as Jim watched, there was a flash, and it was gone. Another flash, and Jim’s heart sank as quickly as it had risen a moment ago.

  The White Star.

  But the Raiders aboard the dropship seemed to have more optimism than their leader. Instead of defending themselves from the battlecruiser, they took aim at a more immediate threat. S
arah, obviously sensing their intent, leaped away right as the dropship blasted the hybrid to a pulp. Then it started mowing down the marines.

  “Go, go!” cried Jim. Valerian and Stetmann seemed all too eager to obey, but Sarah didn’t move. She stood, spattered with gore, and clenched her fists. A sudden wave rolled off her. Like dominoes, the marines dropped. The wave went all the way up to the dropship as Sarah cleared a path paved by human ruin. She stood for a moment longer, swaying, and then collapsed.

  Jim threw down the gun and raced toward her. Valerian and Egon were already running toward the dropship. Jim was hard on their heels, gritting his teeth against the pain while holding Sarah as best he could as he swiftly followed the path she had made, despite the ghoulishness. The ramp was lowered and eager hands reached to take Sarah from him and pull him to safety. He half jumped, half fell in. Valerian hauled him the rest of the way.

  The ramp was raised and the pilot lifted off immediately, even while many of them were still standing. Jim tumbled into a seat. Valerian and Egon scrambled for seats beside him.

  “Sarah?” Jim asked the medic, Lily Preston. The medic blocked his view of the person beside Sarah. As Lily moved to take her own seat and the dropship climbed, Jim realized that there were two people in the vessel who were sitting down, but very, very still. One of them was Sarah.

  The other was Annabelle Thatcher.

  “Oh, please, no,” Jim breathed.

  “Sarah’s unconscious,” Preston said in reply to his query, “but she seems to be all right. Just exhausted from . . . from the attack.”

  Jim nodded, grateful for the news even as he felt sickened by what had happened to Annabelle. The engineer’s hazel eyes were wide open. Blood was pouring out of her ears, nose, and mouth and trailing down her face like crimson tears. There was no sign of any other injury.

  Preston didn’t need to say it, but Jim said it in his mind. The attack on the marines that she couldn’t properly control. The attack that had blown up Annabelle’s brain. Oh, Annabelle . . . I’m so sorry. So goddamn sorry.

  Annabelle had to have been in the far part of the cabin, closest to Sarah’s psionic attack. There was a panel in the back that was open, revealing glowing lights and wires. She had probably been working on something when . . .