Shadow of the Xel'Naga, page 13
Two Marines hauled Mayor Nik away as he struggled and squirmed like a child being taken from a favorite toy.
Once the general had been debriefed by a handful of colonists his troops acquired at random, he sent Marines to look specifically for Octavia Bren, who had sounded the original alarm and apparently had more close experience with the aliens than anyone else in Free Haven.
Without offering an explanation, he had her escorted to his new command center—formerly Mayor Nikolai's home—and sat back at his desk to assess her. He didn't offer her any refreshments. She felt a renewed dislike for him.
“Now, Miz Brown,” he said in a gravelly voice.
“Bren, General. It's Bren.”
“Yes, of course, ma'am. Now, it's time for you to do your duty as a citizen of the Terran Dominion.”
Octavia stood straight and gave him a small frown. “Here on Bhekar Ro we're independent, General. We'd never heard of your Dominion until we sent a message just a few days ago, so how could we be citizens of it?”
“Nevertheless, Emperor Mengsk loves and counts on all of his subjects—even the ignorant ones.” He drummed his thick fingers on the desktop. “I understand that you, more than anyone else in the settlement, know about this mysterious alien artifact. You've seen it with your own eyes.”
“It killed my brother, General.”
“Good, good,” he said. “Not about your brother, I mean, but that you've got up-close experience. Now, ma'am, tell me everything you remember. What does it look like? What are the defenses around it? What else did you observe about its potential as a weapon, perhaps? If this thing can help us conquer the enemy, then we can leave you and your fellow farmers in peace. Wouldn't you like to go back to doing . . . whatever it is you colonists do?”
Octavia wanted nothing more in the world, so she gave him the details. Starting with how she and her brother had found the object exposed after an avalanche, she explained how it had killed Lars and later fried her robo-harvester.
General Duke raised his eyebrows. “Interesting. Perhaps it could be adapted to putting enemy vehicles out of commission. Like a lockdown strike. Hmmm, I'll have a team of science specialists study it up close.”
“I think all those aliens that arrived have the same idea,” she said. “Your scientists may be in for a surprise.”
“Don't worry your pretty little head, my girl. We've had experience with both the Zerg and the Protoss before.” He looked around at various instruments he had rewired in the mayor's dwelling, including the seismographs taken from the Brens' own home.
Offhandedly, as if recounting his glory days, he gave her a bit of background about the first war between the Protoss and the Terrans and the Zerg. As Octavia listened to him brag, she looked over at the repaired seismographs and saw them jiggling, picking up numerous explosions, all of them centered around the artifact out in the distant valley. “It looks like there's a disturbance out there, General.”
Duke quickly studied the blips and pursed his thick lips. “I can ascertain that these are weapons signatures. Must be the echoes of a big battle—and my men aren't even out there yet!” He clenched a fist and pounded the mayor's desktop. “I'd better not have lost my chance at that object while I was wasting my time here rescuing helpless colonists!”
CHAPTER 29
THOUGH FAR AWAY FROM THE BHEKAR RO BATTLEFIELD, Sarah Kerrigan watched the progress of Kukulkan Brood from deep within the quivering organic walls of her ever-growing Hive on Char.
During the battles, she felt the loss of each one of her minions, first as the pathetic colonists fought back, then as the Norad III and the hated General Edmund Duke brought Alpha Squadron down to devastate her advancing forces. And then the Protoss ground troops were fighting the Zerg for possession of the Xel'Naga artifact.
She experienced neither pain nor sorrow for the loss of those creatures, however. They existed to be sacrificed. Zerg minions were designed to be expendable. That didn't worry her.
However, in her progress toward replacing the full-fledged Overmind, the Queen of Blades maintained a tally of her living resources, counting each death as a number, a statistic.
With a twinge of anger, Kerrigan sent instructions to Kukulkan Brood, to the Overlords and Hatcheries, commanding the production of more larvae, more minions. And more. Sooner or later, in her plans for complete conquest of the galactic sector, she would need them all anyway.
And she would need the Xel'Naga artifact.
It infuriated her that the Protoss ships had arrived and established a base at the artifact first. As her anger flowed around her, several Guardians hissed and began to move up and down the tunnels, reflecting her agitation. Before they could damage the Hive, which would eventually heal itself, Sarah Kerrigan calmed her thoughts and focused instead on her growing plan, developing an overall scheme of betrayal and conquest that would become an all-out Brood war—the next step in her blueprint for domination and revenge.
Seeing Alpha Squadron, Kerrigan was again reminded of Jim Raynor, a man she might have loved. Raynor had been a special Terran, willing to forgive even her previous life's torment as a brainwashed telepathic Ghost. Jim Raynor, however, was part of her human past—before she had fallen victim to Arcturus Mengsk's betrayal, before she joined with the Zerg.
She did not resent Mengsk for bringing her together with the Zerg . . . though she would personally eviscerate him and rip the self-proclaimed emperor limb from limb as soon as she captured the man. For the sheer pleasure of it.
It was only a matter of time.
Kerrigan reviewed her previous encounter with the too-confident and overblown General Duke, during their rescue operation on the Norad II.
She did not regret that part of her life. Instead, she remembered every detail and considered how she could use it to her advantage—to the Zerg advantage.
As the war on Bhekar Ro continued, the Queen of Blades focused a small part of her expanded mind on the struggle, while devoting most of her attention to even more important matters.
CHAPTER 30
BENEATH THE CRUMBLING MOUNTAINSIDE THAT held the coveted artifact, the Protoss forces battled the Zerg minions on the rugged valley floor.
But while the preoccupied alien armies fought each other, the three Dropships dispatched by Alpha Squadron streaked in, carrying their own infiltration squad.
Dropships were quirky vessels, difficult to maneuver and prone to mechanical failures, but the daredevil pilots flew above the echoing explosions of the battlefield. It required fancy maneuvering to ride the shock waves from the psionic storm unleashed by Executor Koronis.
The Dropships had no weapons and relied primarily upon speed and their hull armor. They dodged low, moving fast, trying to reach their objective without being shot down.
Flying Mutalisks, a few stragglers not directly engaged against the Protoss, came after them. Splitting up, the three Dropship pilots engaged in evasive maneuvers. Though the acid spray of the Zerg attackers pitted and damaged their thick hulls, the ships arrived at the broken mountain range and descended to where the huge pulsing alien artifact lay exposed.
Protoss and Zerg antagonists redirected their firepower, dispatching a few fighters to attack the Terran interlopers. As the Dropships hovered over the giant target object, the pilots knew they had little time.
Led by Lieutenant Scott from the Norad III, a group of Marines, Firebats, and four magnificently armored soldiers called Goliaths hurried to the deployment doors. The Goliaths looked as much like walking bipedal tanks as men. They dropped out first, their powerful armor suits absorbing the impact. Marines and thick-suited Firebats spun down on rappel ropes to land on the boulders around the shimmering surface of the artifact's convoluted exterior.
“Go! Go!” shouted Lieutenant Scott, a command issued both to his men—and to the vulnerable Dropships.
As soon as the last Marine released his rope, the first Dropship wheeled about and spun upward, racing away at full acceleration. The other four Dropships followed, forming a wing in the sky.
Running across the rubble, Lieutenant Scott directed his troops to the artifact's nearest opening. “Come on, let's get inside! Our orders are to map out this thing and bring back whatever reconnaissance and intelligence we can gather.”
Bent low, their eight-millimeter C-14 Gauss Impalers drawn and pointed ahead, the Marines raced forward into the opening. The entrance looked less like a passageway than some kind of bubble in a biopolymer resin. One Goliath went in with the first group, his heavy firepower ready to defend the team. The Firebats hustled in next, looking for something to blast with their plasma-based Perdition flamethrowers.
As Lieutenant Scott prepared to follow, he looked up and was dismayed to see the Dropships fleeing from a concerted enemy attack. Mutalisks converged on two of the quirky vessels, and though the pilots dodged and put on a fantastic show of aerial combat, the Zerg attackers proved too much for them. Before long, acid cut through the engines, and the armored hulls split open.
In a last strategic move, the doomed pilots both careened into a cluster of battling alien ground troops, wiping out a handful of Zerg and Protoss as the two Dropships exploded on impact. The last remaining Dropship, though damaged, valiantly got away, flew over the low foothills, and limped back to the Free Haven base.
Lieutenant Scott followed his troops into the convoluted passageways, and it wasn't long before they encountered a firefight of their own. Inside the topmost tunnel three powerful Protoss Zealots loomed out at them, eyes blazing, mouthless faces giving them a demonic appearance.
“Look out!” Scott shouted.
The Zealots raised their strangely gloved hands and activated deadly Psionic Blades. The Marines were already opening fire. Their Gauss rifles sent out blasts that drove the Protoss back, even as the Zealots slashed with their crackling scythes.
Lieutenant Scott hadn't had time to know all the men assigned to him for this mission, so he didn't immediately recall the names of the three Marines who fell screaming. While the fallen soldiers' Impalers still sputtered energy bursts into the translucent wall, the lieutenant motioned one of his Goliaths forward.
The Goliath advanced, his armor fully powered, his twin thirty-millimeter autocannons blazing. The weapon blasted without pause until the nearest Zealot toppled backward, dead.
Six Firebats converged on the other two enemy fanatics. Flames erupted from their Perdition weapons. In a last struggle, one Protoss Zealot killed a Firebat with his Psionic Blade, but then the flamethrowers crisped the surviving two aliens. They all fell dead next to the three Marines they had slaughtered.
Scott tightened up his squad and ordered them forward, sparing only a quick glance at the martyred Marines. “The clock is ticking. Let's keep moving.” He knew this mission depended on momentum and speed. He could not spare any time for a ceremony that would make their fallen comrades rest more easily.
Though the lieutenant's commando team was vastly outnumbered, he planned to get them in and out, causing damage to the enemy while drawing as little attention to themselves as possible. Nobody knew exactly what this alien artifact was, but he intended to find out and return to General Duke with that information.
The team wound deeper into the object, planting locator blips so they could find their way back out again. Scott glanced at his suit chronometer to see how much time remained until their scheduled rendezvous. “Stimpacks, everyone,” he called. “We need the extra boost.”
Inside each Marine's Powered Combat Suit and each Firebat's Heavy Combat Suit, the in-field chemical delivery systems injected a powerful mixture of synthetic adrenaline and endorphins. Lieutenant Scott knew of the risks and potential side effects, as well as the increased unruliness caused by the psychotropic aggression-amplifier drug, but right now his team required the increased speed and reflexes the stimpacks would allow.
They charged forward, moving deeper, spiraling downward, until they encountered four massive crablike machines. The strange alien cyborgs had four articulated claw-legs and round body cores, each encasing a brain not shaped precisely like a human's. Dragoons!
The Dragoons seemed to be on their way out of the artifact. Scott realized that if he had been the Protoss military commander, he would have sent these cyborg warriors in as a first reconnaissance party. These Dragoons might already be carrying vital information. He knew, however, that no Terran technology could ever read the alien encryption in any data-recording devices carried by the Dragoons. He also knew he dared not let this intelligence fall into the hands of the Protoss commander.
“Open fire!” he shouted.
Like angry spiders, the Dragoons had already drawn back, preparing their phase-disrupter weapons. The Goliaths activated their twin autocannons, targeting two of the four cyborg warriors. In the confined tunnels, the heavy ammunition caused more than enough destruction to take out one of the Protoss cyborg warriors.
The other two Dragoons, though, were able to fire their bolts of antiparticles sheathed in a psychically charged field. Two Firebats, three Marines, and one Goliath buckled, their bodies pummeled into jelly by the force.
Shouting with anger and bloodlust, other Firebats closed in. Their range was shorter than the Marines' Gauss rifles, but when their Perdition flamethrowers lanced out, they concentrated on the body core until the fluid containing the alien brain began to boil.
One of the tanks exploded, spraying life-support liquid and boiled chunks of gray matter onto the corridor walls. The other Dragoon fell over on its side, four legs twitching and thrashing, like a bug that had been drowned in insecticide.
Covering his mouth with a protective mask to block the burning stench of death in the corridor, Lieutenant Scott blinked the stinging fumes from his eyes and guided the surviving members of his team forward.
“We've got a job to finish,” he said. “Let's get to the core of this object and then go home to supper.”
CHAPTER 31
AS SHE WORKED WITH THE WOUNDED IN FREE Haven, the tugging call in the back of Octavia's mind grew stronger. It seemed the more she ignored the mental call, the greater the tugging became, an insistent psychic pull that reached out—not to her, specifically, but to anyone who would listen.
Among the settlers on Bhekar Ro, Octavia somehow knew that because of her deep intuition she was the only one who could hear the weird call. She looked up and around, trying to pinpoint its source. The urgent summons whispered to her from the foothills on this side of the valley where alien forces were fighting over the giant artifact that had killed Lars.
This mental signal did not come from the artifact, though. It was much closer, and it . . . sounded different.
All around Free Haven, the Marines bustled about, calling to each other, moving from duty to duty in a rapid takeover and total conversion of what had once been a quiet colonial town.
After the great battle the day before, the Zerg attackers had fallen back and had not attempted any new offensives. Even the strange carpet of creeping biomass that had spread to engulf Rastin's land now seemed to have retreated. The Zerg were focusing their attention on the distant valley where they fought against another group of aliens that General Duke had called Protoss. The Protoss had apparently sent the mechanical Observer that the colonists' clunky old Missile Turret had shot down.
Until recently Octavia had thought her life was complicated, given the problems and difficulties she had to face daily. But now she realized the whole world of Bhekar Ro was just the tiniest blip on the vast galactic screen. Even with the Zerg gone from Free Haven, Alpha Squadron wasted no time in setting up full-fledged defenses.
The SCVs made quick work of creating a heavily armored perimeter where the fence had been, using pieces from existing colony buildings as well as mineral resources they ripped from the fertile ground around the settlement. They rapidly constructed bunkers and erected Missile Turrets—new, functional ones. Marines and Firebats filled the new facilities, while others were stationed inside the homes of some of the settlers that had not survived the Zerg offensive.
Farther out, beyond the ugly erected fortifications, Siege Tanks patrolled the area, crushing the surviving crops, knocking down orchards for better visibility of an oncoming alien army. Massively armored Goliaths strode about in search of something to fight. Vulture Hover Bikes cruised over the ground, acting as scouts. Their humming whine cut the air and they looked like wasps as they zipped along, crisscrossing the terrain and dropping sinister little packages called spider-mines. These small robotic bombs scurried about once they hit the ground, searched for an appropriate place to bury themselves, and waited with a sensor net for the approach of heavy enemy forces.
Free Haven had become an armed camp, and the colonists were prisoners inside their own village. General Duke, broadcasting his gruff voice over powerful loudspeakers mounted on the tops of buildings around the town square, instructed all civilians to remain behind the fortifications, “for your own protection.”
Mayor Nikolai made a show of complaining vigorously so the colonists could see that he was defending their interests. He chastised the general for overstepping the bounds of his authority, for damaging the settlers' hard-won agricultural land, and for devastating the meager stores they had managed to put by after forty years of eking out an existence.
General Duke and Alpha Squadron ignored him.
Trying to stay out of the general's way, Octavia felt the psychic call grow stronger in her mind. She'd already had her run-in with the commander and decided it would accomplish nothing if she argued with him. But perhaps there were other answers waiting for her, answers that surpassed anything this warmonger could comprehend.
