Twilight

by Christie Golden

  She seemed to stare right at Ethan.

  The small fighter continued to hover protectively above her, and Ethan swore. Valerian had no doubt issued orders to guard his pet assassin. No matter. He’d get her later.

  He was distracted by movement in another part of the courtyard. A protoss had suddenly emerged. He realized it was the one he had spoken with earlier, who had seemed to agree to his demands if he would only wait until the ritual was completed. Ethan growled softly. He should have known better—likely the whole story about the “delicate ritual” was a lie to buy time. He wanted to see this Executor Selendis ripped to pieces, too, and with a jerk of his hairless head another pack suddenly pulled itself from fighting the Dominion ground troops to tear off toward Selendis.

  She met them halfway, leaping from the courtyard into the fray. Ethan could appreciate good fighting, and he knew what he was seeing was magnificent. Glowing blue blades erupted from Selendis’s wrists and she whirled and almost danced as she fought. Her bright armor glinted in the merciless sunlight, the glare bright enough to make Ethan wince and probably harsh enough to be a weapon on its own at close range. Selendis dispatched two zerglings almost instantly, then turned on a third. The hydralisks fired a volley of spikes. Selendis cocked her head, as if listening, then leaped and flipped in midair. Her blades moved so swiftly they were a blur, and Ethan realized that she’d been fast enough to simply not be there when the spines reached her, and had sliced to pieces those she couldn’t elude.

  He debated sending in the “bigger guns” of his zerg army, but they were having a tough enough time holding off the Dominion attacks. Ethan realized that he was letting his emotions get the better of him. This must not become a personal battle, if he was to win it for his queen. He would leave Rosemary and Selendis to the lesser zerg; even a girl who was an expert with a rifle and a protoss executor would eventually fall.

  Even as he turned his head, two battlecruisers began attacking the guardians that were spewing acid on the strange new units that were wreaking havoc on the zerg. He watched them for a moment, enough of a good sport to admire the technology. Small, sleek little vessels with sporty red trim, they came almost to ground before the wings retracted, legs extended, and the ship became a ground unit to be reckoned with. Ethan shrugged. Impressive—but once they were on the ground, the ships were easy targets for the guardians. He pulled two more in and directed them at the robot/vessels.

  Valerian was not going to win this one.

  Rosemary glanced up only briefly. If she had guardian angels in the forms of Dominion ships sent to protect her, then it was a fallen angel named Valerian who’d sent them. If he wanted her alive, he likely wanted something from her. Well, hell, if he was going to put his resources to saving her, then she was going to do what she burned to do.

  She left the comparative safety of the pillar and raced down the steps, slipping and almost falling on zerg guts. She recovered, leaping the rest of the way to land firmly on the hard-baked earth. Rosemary had seen Ethan, flying out of harm’s way on a mutalisk. She looked up at the ships overhead, waved, and pointed, then took off at full speed.

  Ethan should have been harder to take down, she thought as the ships raced ahead and began bombarding him. The mutalisk screamed in agony, a horrible, screeching sound, and flailed before dropping like a stone. The ships continued to fire on the writhing zerg and its passenger.

  Kerrigan saw it happen through Ethan’s eyes, and sighed. She’d spent so much effort in creating him, had had such high hopes. As his body was riddled with metal, as he twitched and spasmed in agony, she experienced not a little regret. But there was nothing she could do. The task had been his to complete, and he had failed, and now he would die.

  “My…queen…” he gasped in her mind.

  She sent him the equivalent of a pat on the cheek, and then, unmoved by his wail of betrayal and shock, pulled out of his brain.

  Still, she mused, the experiment had worked. She would simply have to create a new consort at some later date. One that would hopefully survive his first real challenge.

  “Damn it!” Rosemary scowled as she ran, hoping there’d be enough left of Ethan for her to personally dispatch. The ships backed off as she entered their targeting range, unwilling to strike her.

  He was still alive. She skidded to a halt and caught her breath, picking her way swiftly but carefully to avoid the pools of acid that some of the dead zerg had left as a final attack. Ethan hadn’t been so lucky. His mount had fallen into one of these pools, and where he wasn’t scorched, the acid was eating through him.

  He did not scream, though he must have been in terrible pain. Rosemary respected that. She regarded him for a moment as he writhed in front of her.

  “Huh,” she said, casually. “I’d have thought a whole bunch of zerg would be coming to you right now, to spirit you away for healing.”

  Ethan propped himself up on one arm and one scythe-arm. His legs were pools of liquid flesh. The tendons on his neck stood out like cables as he tried to control his pain. But the look in his eyes gave him away. Rosemary raised an eyebrow; she’d never seen such anguish. And she knew it wasn’t physical, either.

  “Wait, let me guess. Your connection to the zerg has been severed, hasn’t it?”

  His silence confirmed it.

  “Wow. Nice queen you’ve got there, huh? Drops you the minute you need a little help from her. Looks like you’re just as expendable as the next zerg, Ethan.”

  “No!” The word was ripped from his throat. “She will not abandon me….” The protest turned into a harsh sob. “My queen…Kerrigan…”

  Rosemary grinned and made a mock tsk-ing sound of sympathy. “And so you die betrayed. Hooray for appropriate ironies, you son of a bitch.”

  She lifted her rifle, slowly, so he could watch her, and took careful aim.

  A sudden golden-blue blur interposed itself between Rosemary and her prey. Before Rosemary could react, Ethan lay lifeless before her, his head severed from his body, the flesh cauterized by a psi blade. Selendis stood before her.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing!” Rosemary shrieked.

  “Protecting you,” the executor replied calmly.

  Rosemary let loose a string of oaths. “Protecting me? You robbed me of my kill! He was all but dead! I didn’t need protecting from anything!”

  “I did not protect you from what Kerrigan left of Ethan Stewart,” Selendis said in that oh so irritatingly quiet mental voice. “I protected you from slaughtering out of hate. We are warriors, you and I. We must sometimes take lives. But we should do so because it is necessary. Not because we enjoy it. It is my fervent hope that after this moment, you will never again have to slay with hatred in your heart.”

  Beneath the resentment, the anger, the shock of feeling cheated, beneath the hate that did still surge fiercely inside her, a part of Rosemary understood.

  “I’ll give you a piece of my mind later,” Rosemary said, then winced at how literally that could be taken. “For now, we’ve got to stop the zerg—and then Valerian.”

  Selendis nodded, and together the executor of the templar and a terran assassin sprang into the fray.

  CHAPTER 22

  JAKE BLINKED AWAKE, TEARS WET ON HIS FACE. For a moment, he was disoriented. He felt as though he had forgotten something very important, lost it or misplaced it—and stared blankly up at the protoss faces peering down on him. And it was then that he realized what had happened.

  Zamara was gone. She was no longer anywhere to be found in his mind or thoughts. For a second, he thought he would be sick, so overwhelming was her absence. Four-fingered hands, strong but gentle, closed on his arms, slipped under his body and eased him to a sitting position.

  “She’s gone,” Jake gasped, reaching to clutch Krythkal’s robe. “She—”

  “We know,” came the thought in his head. At least he could still understand them. But he felt like an amputee. God, were humans really this…alone?

&nb
sp; Krythkal lifted his hand. Resting in his palm was the crystal that Jake had given him before the ritual had begun—the crystal that he, Rosemary, Alzadar, Ladranix, and all the others had found deep in the labyrinthine heart of Aiur. Then, it had been luminous, clear…clean. Now Jake stared at the crystal fragment. Its hue was now dark, yet still glowing somehow with a sullen purple-black hue. Something swirled inside it, and there was the occasional spark of brightness that surged forward only to submerge again.

  Jake took it gingerly. He had always had difficulty holding the crystal before. It had emanated a power that gradually would hurt if he held it too long. But that pain was somehow cleansing, scouring. Something too strong for him to hold or wield, yes, but not hostile.

  But now, as it lay in his hand, it felt…wrong. He could think of no other way to describe it.

  “I…blacked out,” Jake said, staring at the crystal. It felt cold, and a numbness began to spread across his palm. “What happened? Did she…did she do it? Did she manage to trap Ulrezaj in there with her?”

  “It is difficult to tell,” Krythkal said, his mental voice rich with sympathy. “Ulrezaj did disappear. The Dominion and the zerg are fighting one another now. The zerg appear to be losing that conflict. We felt—something at the very last moment. A surge of power from the crystal, from Zamara, reaching out…before we were unable to sense her anymore.”

  The cold increased. Jake stubbornly refused to release his grip on the crystal. He felt he owed it to Zamara, somehow, to hold it as long as he possibly could, and closed his fingers about it tightly. Just as she had hung on to her mission as long as she possibly could. And maybe—was still holding on to it.

  “Did she get all of him?” he demanded, his voice harsh with grief. “His soul, his memories, all of him?” Was it worth losing her? “And what about her? If she’s in there with him—”

  He couldn’t speak the words, but these were telepaths, and so he did not need to. Were they trapped together in some kind of hellish, eternal battle? Was she still self-aware? And if so—was she in pain? What could he have done to stop her? Should he have done something?

  Human fingers, small and warm and gentle, closed on his where they clutched the crystal and unfolded them. Jake let Rosemary open his hand and stared dully at the blood that coated the pulsing, sickly dark stone. He’d grasped it so hard he’d sliced his hand on its sharp edges. Jake looked up into Rosemary’s heart-shaped face, naked pain on his own. She smiled gently and then turned to hand the stone to Selendis.

  “Jacob,” came Selendis’s mental voice, and he dragged his eyes from Rosemary’s to look at the executor. “Zamara lived, died, and found a way to live again in order to serve her people with everything she had. We must now do the same to honor her memory and sacrifice. The zerg are all but defeated, their leader slain, and that means that Valerian will soon be here. He has come for Zamara, but he must not find her.”

  So, Ethan was dead. Jake wondered if Rosemary had killed him or if the Dominion or Selendis had taken him down. It didn’t matter—as long as he was alive, the zerg had an intelligent leader other than Kerrigan. He had to go if they were to win. Jake dragged his arm across his eyes and nodded, pulling himself back together.

  “You’re right,” he said. “We can’t let what Zamara did be for nothing.”

  “Valerian does not know the transfer has been successful. If he finds you here…”

  “Whoa, whoa,” Rosemary said, frowning at Selendis. “You’re just going to leave us here for him to kill? A decoy while you make off with Zamara? Sorry, that’s not my idea of a good time.”

  Jake looked up at her. “Selendis is right. We can’t let Zamara and Ulrezaj fall into the hands of the Dominion. Think what Mengsk would do with a weapon like Ulrezaj—and you know he’d try to set him loose and control him.”

  Rosemary’s face was still contorted in a frown. Jake continued.

  “Besides—I’m going to need medical care. Human medical care. The pain…hasn’t gone away. I think the tumors are still present. The protoss are smart, but they wouldn’t be able to cure me in time. Valerian’s people might. And he might not be as bad as you think. There was something—genuine about him. And about that Devon Starke fellow. I can’t explain it, but…”

  He took her hand. “And…damn it, I’m tired of running. So very, very tired. But…Rosemary, I think you should go with the protoss. Valerian won’t be looking for you, just me. I can delay him long enough for you and the protoss to escape. But you’ve got to hurry.”

  In the midst of his grief for Zamara, his heart lifted as Rosemary shook her head, her fine, short black hair flying with the gesture. “Not likely,” she said. That was all, but it was enough. More than enough. Whatever was going to happen, they would face it together.

  Selendis cocked her head. “The tide of battle turns,” she said gravely. “The zerg are all but vanquished.”

  Jake got unsteadily to his feet and for the first time saw the bodies just outside the door—two protoss and a zerg. “What—”

  “Long story,” Rosemary said.

  “I will want to hear it—but not now. You need to go,” he said. He looked at them in turn—Krythkal, who had possibly saved his life; Selendis, so strong and tall and proud; Vartanil, who had believed in him; Mohandar, the dark templar, who had worked side by side with Selendis and Rosemary to retrieve a preserver’s knowledge. He knew they could read in his thoughts his admiration and respect.

  “Jacob Jefferson Ramsey,” Selendis said, “you are a hero to our people. We will not forget. You will become part of our history—a bright part of it.”

  “And you as well, Rosemary Dahl,” said Vartanil. Rosemary’s cheeks reddened.

  “Hell, I’m no one’s hero,” she said roughly.

  “You are mine.” Vartanil gave them a protoss smile.

  Jake hissed slightly and staggered as pain shot through him. Rosemary caught him, small and slight but strong, steadied him. Overwhelmed, he turned his face from the protoss. “Thank you. And I will not forget Zamara.”

  As one, the protoss bowed deeply to him. Then they turned and quickly headed down the corridor, maneuvering around large chunks of stone and debris. He watched them until they vanished from sight, going deep below the temple to the hangar and the single ship. Krythkal did not go with them.

  “You’re…staying?”

  The protoss nodded. “The Alys’aril was damaged in the attack. The zerg killed many of the alysaar. Many, many crystals were destroyed. We will not leave it.”

  Jake and Rosemary exchanged glances. “Valerian will look at this site as a treasure trove. He’s all about ancient knowledge,” Rosemary warned.

  Krythkal half closed his eyes and tilted his head. “He would have to be protoss to understand it.”

  “He’ll figure that out,” Jake said.

  “He would doubtless plunder, as you fear, if no one were here to prevent him. But perhaps we can engage in a dialogue. I have lived here for most of my adult life. I cannot leave it, regardless. And who knows. It could be that the time has come when we will need to cooperate and share our knowledge with lower—with other species.”

  “Nice catch,” Rosemary said dryly. “So…what do we do now?”

  “We wait,” Jake said.

  They made their way out to the courtyard, where they could see the final moments of the battle unfolding. Jake’s eyes were glued to the small, clunky-looking ship that Rosemary had helped to restore as it emerged from beneath the Alys’aril and sped arrow-straight in the direction of the warp gate. His heart lurched as a fighter broke formation to follow, but almost immediately it barrel-rolled gracefully and returned to its fellows. He sagged in relief. The protoss vessel had been scanned for human life-forms and dismissed as unimportant. Jake watched, a smile curving his lips, as it disappeared from view.

  Krythkal stayed in touch mentally with Selendis as they raced to safety. A few moments later, he told them with quiet joy, “They reached the gate. They are
safe.”

  You did it, Zamara. You did more than anyone could have asked of you. And now you and Ulrezaj are on Shakuras. They’ll watch over him. You did it.

  Jake found himself unable to stand for long and Rosemary eased him down to the stones of the courtyard. She sat down herself and gently placed his head in her lap.

  He looked up at her, strangely at peace even though he suspected that torture and a particularly nasty death were but a few moments away. He saw the same odd peace reflected on her features as she ran her hands through his fair hair.

  “This is nice,” he said softly.

  “Don’t get used to it. I’m not about to feed you grapes or anything.”

  He laughed then, a free, pure, ringing laugh, and her full red lips, the lips he had not kissed nearly enough, curved in response.

  Valerian Mengsk found them there less than an hour later. The Heir Apparent paused on the last step, accompanied by several marines with rifles and a slight, nondescript man in civilian clothing. Valerian’s sharp gray eyes darted around and he lifted a hand in a quick gesture. Six of the marines hurried off, splitting up to head in two different directions.

  “Professor Ramsey. Rosemary. How good to see you safe,” Valerian said. The words sounded genuine. “Quite the chase you’ve given me. I—”

  While Valerian had been speaking, the nondescript man had been staring at Jake. Now he blurted, “Sir—she’s gone.”

  “What?”

  “The protoss in Professor Ramsey’s head. She’s gone.”

  “You must be Devon Starke,” Jake said. “You’re right. Zamara is no longer in here.” He sat up, tapping his skull. “Only thing that’s in here is a very human brain and a few very painful tumors.”