Shadow of the Xel'Naga, page 11
Octavia felt despair overwhelm her terror. What chance did they possibly have? She had brought a pellet blaster from home, which she fired again and again. At first she took a grim pride in watching the creatures she slaughtered, but then there was no time even to pay attention. She blazed out pellets until she exhausted her stockpile of ammunition. Many of the other colonists had also run dry of shotpacks for their projectile weapons or battery cartridges for their pulse pistols.
The first mob of small aliens attacked, breaking through the fence line and raising their scythe-claws to slash and tear. Colonists screamed. Octavia watched several people fall in bloody piles of dismantled flesh. And it was just the beginning.
Kiernan and Kirsten Warner—he a young stonemason, she a teacher and amateur engineer—fought side by side with the granite-chopping implements Kiernan used in his work. He swung the long tool from one side to the other, hacking sharp limbs off the creatures, splitting their thick leathery hides, and leaving a pile of twitching, mindless alien bodies around him. Kirsten fought just as hard, as if trying to keep up with the number of victims Kiernan scattered on the ground.
Mayor Nikolai turned and bolted. Octavia shouted for him to come back, but like a true politician, he had an excuse for his hasty retreat. “I need to send an urgent call to the Terran fleet! They should have arrived by now. I've got to tell them what's going on down here.” Without waiting, Nikolai ran and barricaded himself inside the communications turret.
Octavia didn't have time to worry about it. She hurled her empty, useless pellet gun at the closest lizardlike alien with such force that it smashed open the thing's head. Ooze splattered, but that didn't seem to bother the creature a bit.
As she stood for a fraction of a second, weaponless, Octavia remembered the old Missile Turret, the decorative monument that had surprised them all by activating itself and shooting the Observer out of the skies. Even with its automated systems burned out, the turret still had a few intact missiles. There should be enough explosives to cause some damage.
The Missile Turret was made for shooting at airborne targets, but it no longer functioned as it had been designed to do. Perhaps she could launch the rockets manually.
Octavia needed only one minute. It was all the time she had.
She raced for the center of town, a place that had once been peaceful, the closest thing to a park on Bhekar Ro. Behind her, the terrified colonists were forced to fall back, their lines crumbling as the bloodthirsty alien hordes attacked them. The makeshift weapons were beginning to falter, but Octavia concentrated only on the large piece of equipment.
Although she and Jon had managed to fix the mechanical parts of the gun, the electronics were completely unsalvageable. But these comprised mostly the sensors and the automated targeting systems, Octavia realized. She climbed up the metal-runged ladder and ripped open the access panel.
All she needed were the firing controls.
Using her legs and shoulder, she pushed upward, swinging the missile launcher down and swiveling it with brute force toward the oncoming alien troops. She had only two missiles left and didn't know exactly how much damage each one would cause.
Finding the trigger controls, she did her best to eyeball a trajectory, pointing the first of the small surface-to-air missiles at the center of the slavering monsters. It would be good to watch them blow up.
Squeezing one eye shut, whispering a quick prayer, she launched the first weapon. The explosive-filled projectile roared through the air, whistling and spinning. At first she thought her shot would miss, but then she saw it plow down into a cluster of the alien scouts. Flashes of fire and smoke and broken monstrous parts flew in all directions, sending the attacking creatures spinning like a hive of maddened ants.
In the moment of stunned surprise, Octavia saw no point in waiting. She swung the Missile Turret slightly to the left, where the lizardlike alien creatures were regrouping, then launched her second—and last— missile. She watched the new explosion with exhilaration. She had single-handedly wiped out hundreds of the attackers!
Unfortunately, the ravenous invading forces had many hundreds to spare.
As the dust and smoke settled, a brief silence hovered for a few seconds over the battlefield. Several colonists cheered at this. Others screamed in pain. The swarm of deadly aliens gathered themselves again, making hissing and buzzing noises.
Then Octavia saw what she feared most shambling out of the carnage—hulking forms, slightly man-shaped, yet twisted and distorted. The bodies had once been human. The farmers had been strong; the women had been beautiful in a coarse sort of way. But now these infested settlers had been taken over completely by the controlling alien invaders.
They plodded forward, a mass of tentacles, slashing claws, and hideous stingers that dripped venom. They looked as if a mad dollmaker had grafted extra parts onto what had previously been perfectly normal human forms.
Several of the front-line defenders wailed as the infested colonists came forward. “It's Gandhi, and Liberty Ryan! And there's Brutus Jensen.”
Octavia recognized these people with a twist of revulsion. The settlers had been her neighbors. They had all worked hard to plant seedlings, protecting and nurturing them out in the agricultural fields. Brutus Jensen had been a hardworking farm hand.
The infested colonists walked forward. Free Haven's defenders were uneasy, reluctant to fire upon people who until today had been their friends.
But now they were all monsters. Enemies. Just like the prospector Rastin.
When Octavia saw their skin begin to squirm, their bodies boil, their faces and stomachs swell and puff, she remembered what had happened to Old Blue—a buildup of toxic and explosive gases. “Get away from them!” she shouted, running toward the perimeter. “Don't let them come closer!”
But she was too far away. Some of the colonists heard her and turned to look, while others were too frozen with horror to listen.
Octavia threw herself to the ground, flinching instinctively as the infested colonists came as close as they could manage before their bodies exploded like biological bombs filled with poisonous vapors and chemicals.
The violent eruption of the Ryans and poor young Brutus Jensen knocked out the front line of the Bhekar Ro defenders. Three colonists were killed instantly. Thirty meters of fence and two entire perimeter buildings were knocked over by the shock wave. Other defenders who had stood too close fell rolling on the ground, gasping and choking, coughing blood as the poison worked its way through their systems in a quick but agonizing death.
Many alien scouts in the vicinity were also wiped out, but Octavia had seen by now that the invading forces considered each individual creature to be completely expendable.
She got to her feet and saw a new wave of monsters approaching, then glanced over to the sealed doors of the comm turret where Mayor Nikolai had barricaded himself. She hoped he'd been able to contact the Terran fleet.
If the military “rescuers” did not get down here soon, there wouldn't be any colonists left to rescue.
CHAPTER 24
IN THE PROTOSS BASE CAMP IN THE SHADOW OF the magnificent Xel'Naga artifact, Executor Koronis stood beside the curved wing of the large Arbiter. With a flurry of telepathic signals, he tried to follow the complex battle among the enemy forces in orbit. He remained in contact with Templar Mess'Ta aboard his flagship, receiving tactical updates.
Koronis spoke through the all-fleet telepathic channel, knowing that none of their enemies could hear or understand the powerful mental transmission. “Show no mercy against the enemies of the First Born. You must protect this great prize for the Protoss race. Our success here will decide whether the Qel'Ha returns to Aiur in triumph, or as a thrice-beaten failure.”
Mess'Ta responded, “We all know what is at stake, Executor. We will not falter. Our resolve will never weaken.”
Koronis signed off, knowing he could not have left the Qel'Ha in better hands, unless he himself was in orbit. But he had another job to do here.
Flanked by four other Judicators, Judicator Amdor stood below the object, raising his three-fingered hands high and spreading his claws. They all clustered together, mentally chanting, sensing the vibrations from the Khala as they attempted to detect nuances from the glowing object.
Koronis stepped up to them, watching. Before being promoted to Executor, he had been a High Templar himself, proficient in many telepathic abilities. He could feel the emanations from the exposed object, but could not determine the origin, could not comprehend whether it was a message or a warning.
Amdor turned to the Executor and indicated the silvery clear spines of large crystal growths that rose like broken snowflakes from the rubble of the avalanche. “Look at the Khaydarin crystals! These alone are enough wealth to make the entire Conclave rejoice.”
“Those crystals, Judicator, are a mark of the Xel'Naga. Their very presence proves that this object is far more valuable than we had at first dreamed.”
Amdor fairly glowed with satisfaction and pleasure. “We must explore, Executor. Let us go inside with all possible haste.”
Koronis had made other plans, though. “I have ordered a group of Dragoons to prepare.”
Amdor looked frustrated, but bowed his gray head. Despite his personal ambitions, the Judicator could not argue with such a wise precaution.
Koronis turned and sent a signal to the nearest Arbiter. The wings of the big ship opened. With ponderous clanking movements that grew smoother as the cyborg warriors exercised and proceeded forward, four Dragoons came down the ramp.
Encased in a spherical body core and propelled by four large spiderlike legs, the Dragoons plodded along. These were veteran Protoss warriors who had been crippled or mortally wounded in combat. Rather than dying in service of the Khala, they had chosen to have their bodily remnants transplanted into these mechanical exoskeletons.
The walkers lumbered forward in their armored bodies. The brains of the shattered volunteers focused energies through the Khala in order to control the movements of Dragoon limbs. Their articulated legs were able to scramble over the rough terrain and climb the broken rock wall more easily than the robed Judicators ever could.
During the Qel'Ha's long and fruitless search, these Dragoons had waited, unused, fearing they would never contribute to the overall mission. Their greatest concern was that their sacrifice in becoming these living mechanical walkers would be in vain.
Now the Dragoons had a purpose.
The first Protoss explorers to enter the exposed Xel'Naga artifact clambered upward until they reached the opening tunnels. Koronis and Amdor stood together and watched as the brave Dragoons entered the mysterious labyrinth.
CHAPTER 25
THE BATTLE FOR FREE HAVEN CONTINUED WITHOUT any glimmer of hope for the struggling settlers. Octavia had no time to plan ahead or worry about the future—only to survive for the moment, and kill as many Zerg as possible.
But the ravenous alien invaders did not need to rest.
Some of the settlers fought hand to hand, using farm implements in a desperate attempt to stem the tide of monstrous creatures. Octavia had no more missiles to fire and no hand weapon. She raced toward the nearest robo-harvester, a big lumbering vehicle that Mayor Nikolai kept for his own use. She knew the man did not maintain it as well as she and Lars had kept their own vehicle, which now lay dead near the site of the alien artifact. But the robo-harvester could still cause a lot of damage.
She bounded up the treads, stepped on the metal running board, threw herself inside the huge vehicle, and powered up the engines. A snort of Vespene exhaust coughed out of the top stack like smoke from a dragon's nostril.
Across the town plaza, which now became a hunting ground for the Zerglings that had broken through the settlers' first defenses, she watched the stonemason Kiernan Warner and his wife Kirsten jump into one of the ponderous, slow-moving mining machines. They sealed themselves into the armored vehicle and began to plow forward.
Octavia found the harvester controls, knocked aside some clutter and trinkets the mayor had left in the driver's seat, and surged ahead, treads clanking through the streets. Clenching her teeth tightly together, she pushed the giant vehicle forward, ready to meet the next wave of Zerg. Behind the small stampeding attackers she saw bigger monsters, including nine of the hunched serpentine creatures that had shot needle spines at her as she fled in the little field crawler from Rastin's homestead. Hydralisks.
The monsters' fang-filled jaws opened all the way back to their stunted leather ears, and black soulless eyes stared at her as the creatures reared up in defiance of this mechanical foe.
Before she even moved close enough to fire a boulder blaster, the first Hydralisk bent its hunched, hard back and launched a volley of needle projectiles. She heard them spang and ricochet off the thick walls of the robo-harvester. Octavia flinched as one bounced against the windshield, leaving a snowflake of damaged glass. She pushed the growling engines to their limits and bore down upon the first Zerg monster as it prepared to fire again.
The creature was powerful and armed with more of the needle projectiles, but it was no match for the mass and momentum of the giant harvesting machine. It flailed its clawed arms, trying to grasp the robo-harvester and wrestle it to the ground, but she rolled over the thing with her heavy treads, squashing it into a puddle of crunched exoskeleton and spreading goo.
Next, two of the remaining Hydralisks converged on her from opposite sides, each hammering the vehicle with another volley of spines. She heard the pattering clang as the projectiles crashed into the metal walls, scratching and denting the hull. A few poked all the way through, leaving bright air holes, but Octavia did not cringe.
Instead, she activated the powerful combine arm, a huge rolling basket with sharpened blades that could mow down fields of triticale-wheat. She lowered the combine arm like a blurring flyswatter onto one of the spine-depleted Hydralisks. The monster flailed and thrashed even as it was chopped into a thousand pieces. Slime and blood splattered her machine's windshield.
Dizzy with her success, Octavia swung the combine arm to the left and bore down on the third Hydralisk, which lurched backward as if suddenly sensing its danger. She plowed over that one as well, then careened forward as three more monsters clustered in a concerted effort to stop her.
Octavia squeezed her eyes shut and drove ahead. She didn't know if the whirring blades of the harvesting arm or the crushing treads themselves destroyed the new batch of Hydralisks—but when the robo-harvester clanked past, she saw that she had left all of them dead, their few intact limbs and body parts still twitching on the crushed ground.
Kiernan Warner had brought his mining machine close enough to dig into the rocky ground at the edge of the battered perimeter fence. The boulder catapult seized hard stones and began to launch them like cannonballs into the Zerg forces.
Dozens of frantic Zerglings were pulverized into bloody spray. The rock thrower struck two more Hydralisks, punching boulders through their hard carapaces. In its death throes, one of the ferocious creatures sprayed a cloud of poison needles in all directions. Some of them struck the cumbersome mining machine, others flew like wild arrows into the sky, while the remainder of the spines slaughtered other enemy aliens that surged forward into the gap.
Stunned by the sudden turnabout and vehemence of the colonists' defense, the attacking forces hesitated. Octavia saw the creatures fall back, their numbers vastly diminished.
But soon the Zerg circled around the octagonal perimeter of Free Haven and approached from the northeast, where they massed, ready for a full-fledged invasion of the town.
“They're trying to break through to the fuel depot!” she muttered to herself, looking toward the industrial area where the colonists stored their tanks of refined Vespene gas.
Free Haven always kept a fuel stockpile “for emergencies,” Mayor Nikolai said, although Octavia was half convinced that the settlers had maintained such a large reservoir of volatile Vespene so that they didn't often need to deal with the grouchy old recluse Rastin.
She felt a pang of sadness, knowing that the prospector had been one of the first casualties of the Zerg swarm. Well, now maybe his painstakingly harvested Vespene could help with the defense of Bhekar Ro.
Octavia used the robo-harvester's front flamethrower to blast out a column of fire that withered the nearby Zerglings. The built-in flamethrower had originally been designed for clear-cutting dense forests to make way for new arable land. Now she used it to cremate a field of enemies.
One of the Hydralisks turned defiantly to face her, rising up tall and hissing, but she incinerated it with a fireball right in its ugly face.
The treads of the robo-harvester clanked over the uneven ground as she made her way toward the fuel depot. Perhaps the alien army sensed this was a weak point in the town's defenses, or maybe they just wanted the Vespene for themselves. The monsters clustered near the depot and moved forward together. The Zerg passed through the town's weakened fences as if they were no more than thin strings, and piled into the open area of Vespene storage tanks.
Octavia knew she would only have a few seconds, and she had to act now or her wild plan was doomed. She locked down the robo-harvester's treads and let loose with the full long-range stream of her flamethrower, trying to blanket the fuel depot. Dozens of the Zerglings shriveled and crisped. Two Hydralisks moved through the diluted flames, singeing their glossy hides, though the creatures did not appear to notice any pain.
Octavia's target, however, was not the hideous monstrosities.
After a few agonized seconds during which she doubted the heat would be sufficient, the first and nearest storage tank reached its critical temperature. The Vespene fuel erupted in a fireball that knocked out the next tank, setting it on fire, which in turn blew up the third, like a game of incandescent dominoes.
