Shadow of the Xel'Naga, page 17
When at last he entered the grotto of the arctic-cold fire, it swelled and grew, drawing energy, licking the swirled sides of the cavern. Amdor stopped, and all the amazed thoughts in his mind drained away. He could no longer feel the Khala, but this presence was greater than even the combined mental power of the Protoss race. This was magnificent.
This was everything.
As he stood in front of the blazing, living heart of the artifact, Amdor could put no words to his astonishment. Then inside his head, piercing through even the awakening, utterly ancient presence of this thing, he heard the hated psi-voice of the Dark Templar, whispering to him from a distance: “Now you will believe, Judicator. This is only the beginning. This artifact is another creation of the Xel'Naga. It knows that we are all interconnected, part of the great tapestry. And the Xel'Naga plan requires all of us here, every scrap of our DNA. Their legacy needs only the energy to escape.”
Amdor whirled to see if Xerana had somehow followed him inside, if she dared taint this holy place with her foul presence. But the scholar was not there, only her voice. She herself had fled to safety. “You should have listened to me, Judicator Amdor.”
Then she fell silent in his head, and he looked once again toward the shimmering core, which even now blazed brighter, focusing on him, assessing him—then lunging out for him.
Brilliant bolts shot in all directions, lacing the grotto with a fiery webwork of connections, forming the final pattern as it disintegrated the Judicator and absorbed the last scraps of information that it needed for its full awakening.
CHAPTER 42
FOLLOWING THE BRIGHT PATH PAINTED ONTO THE surface of the artifact by the Ghost's special laser, the tactical nuclear warheads plunged down through the hazy storm-breeding skies of Bhekar Ro. They were like lightning bolts hurled from the heavens by an angry god.
The Ghost, MacGregor Golding, scrambled over rock outcroppings away from the giant structure. He switched off his cloaking field and left himself exposed as all the aliens turned, some noticing him, some spotting the streaks of fire coming down from distant ships high above, some just sensing an awful doom approaching.
It was just a few tactical nukes. The GPIP ( guaranteed permanent incapacitation of personnel) radius wasn't too large. A stim-charged Ghost, running all out, could get to the other side of the ridge, dive down among some thick rocks, and hope the mountainside offered enough shelter.
Before leaping down through scree and boulders, Golding raised his hands as if beckoning the awesome weapons closer. He heard a hissing boom through the air and the scream of their passage, then all the warheads came down like sledgehammers on top of the glowing artifact.
He found a crack in enormous talus rocks, squeezed inside to where the shadows looked dark and cool. But even there, he had to close his eyes, and through his lids the world looked bright as day. . . .
In a growing burst of light, the three tactical nukes erased the front of the mountain surrounding the artifact. A flash of spreading disintegration rippled outward.
But faster still, the awakened and hungry artifact struck, drinking deeply of the energy, absorbing it all. Within a moment—too short for any clock to measure—the outward spread of atomic annihilation halted, then was sucked inside, drawn deep into the Xel'Naga creation like a whirlpool of power. . . .
Reeling from the sonic boom, not knowing what had just happened, Executor Koronis stood by his Protoss forces, unable to believe he was still alive. He could not grasp how the artifact had responded to the nuclear attack from above, but now all the translucent biopolymer convolutions awakened in a burst of radiance.
The mountainside was gone, like unlocked chains that had fallen away. Recharged and fully awake, the living artifact at last cracked and broke free, its substance no longer an armor-like material. Now the whole thing was charged with pulsing electrical fire, a life force.
Alive, and searching.
The Zerg Overlords, stunned by the unexpected atomic blast, reeled, losing control of their ravenous minions. The bristling, monstrous Roverlisks, based on the genetics of Old Blue, bounded about, tearing into their Zergling cohorts. Dragonlike Mutalisks flew in circles, out of control and spitting a rain of Glave Wurm destruction down on all frenzied fighters.
The surviving Protoss Judicators and Zealots stood in awe, looking up at the incandescent, stirring object buried by their ancient progenitors, as if a thunderous destiny were coming down upon them.
Then the web-laced blazing shell split with crackling lightning bolts as the casing spread wider, opening up like an eggshell . . .
Or a chrysalis.
As Koronis stared in astonishment, feeling the thoughts of all the Protoss around him swelling with terror and anticipation, his own brain reached an overload. He thought of how wonderful it had been just to take his worn shard of old Khaydarin crystal to focus his thoughts, to calm himself and meditate. But this was too much for his brain, even in the flow of the Khala, to comprehend.
The Dark Templar Xerana had warned them. She had tried to explain that this object was not simply an artifact, but the seed of a living creature, another prototype race developed through the genetic machinations of the Xel'Naga. Now he and his armies, along with the Zerg Minions and the Terran military, had not succeeded in conquering it . . . but in reviving it.
With a squidlike form of incandescent energy barely held within a luminous organic skin, the real creature, a glorious being, emerged from the broken shards of its cocoon. It rose like a phoenix made of giant feathery wings, grasping tentacles, and blazing suns for eyes.
Koronis stood watching the wondrous beast. It looked unlike anything he had ever seen, and yet there was nothing wrong about it. The creature combined elements of Terran butterfly and jellyfish and sea anemone. This being had a purity of purpose that seemed to reach a pinnacle higher than either the Protoss or the Zerg, which were the Xel'Naga's other primary creations.
The awakened entity moved quickly, rising out of the shattered chrysalis and hovering over the battlefield. Koronis felt as if he were a part of it. The creature sang a telepathic melody, a song written by the long-dead Xel'Naga, infused with a throbbing resonance that felt attuned to every strand of his DNA.
But Koronis sensed that he and his Protoss were not here just as observers. This phoenix monster needed him, and it needed the Zerg. They were resources to complete its grand metamorphosis. The buried cocoon had been placed here aeons ago, growing, incubating, waiting . . . until now.
A typhoon of wind and carefully targeted lightning bolts flew around the rising creature like a fury, and it struck out in a kaleidoscope of color across the battlefield. The Protoss and the Zerg stood helpless as the Xel'Naga-spawned being flashed them all with its high-powered scanning beams, disintegrating and absorbing them, gathering up their genetics, all the thoughts and souls of these other children of the Xel'Naga. The area for miles around glowed, not with nuclear radiation, but with a seething backwash of life force.
Now more than the sum of its parts, the magnificent phoenix creature rose through the sky, tearing apart clouds and turning them hot and orange. The adult life-form ascended into space, leaving behind the destruction and the shell of its chrysalis in the blasted mountainside.
On its way it encountered the few remaining Alpha Squadron Battlecruisers in orbit.
Already on edge, knowing that the ground forces had been wiped out in the titanic three-way battle around the artifact, the captain of the wounded Battlecruiser Napoleon opened fire with a blast of his Yamato gun. Seeing the dazzling creature hurtling toward him like a hurricane, he had no time—or desire—to wait for orders from General Duke down in his command center in Free Haven.
The captains of the other Battlecruisers came to the same conclusion. Yamato guns fired at the oncoming phoenix-thing, unwittingly increasing the being's biological power reservoirs. It glowed brighter, hotter. . . .
And as it swept past, the newborn entity vaporized, absorbed, and digested the Terran battleships, drinking their power, leaving only sparkling chunks of molten debris, which flash-froze in the cold vacuum of space.
Then it engulfed and absorbed the Zerg and Protoss secondary forces that had remained in reserve above the planet.
Finally sated and eager to begin its new life, the strange blazing creature departed from its aeons-long home of Bhekar Ro and soared off through the Void into the vast and unexplored gulf between the stars.
CHAPTER 43
OCTAVIA PANTED, HER LEGS TREMBLING AS SHE forced her body to keep moving. The Dark Templar Xerana insisted that she maintain the desperate pace. They had climbed the slope together, no longer fearing any outlying Zerg infestation, because all of the aliens had drawn together into the valley war zone.
Sensing imminent danger just as they crested the ridge, though, the Dark Templar struck Octavia with the full force of her long arm, knocking her to the ground. Xerana ducked under a rock outcropping, sheltering herself and Octavia as a blaze of yellow-white fire lit up the sky and then faded . . . too quickly.
Your Marines have dropped their bombs, the Dark Templar said. But the result will not be what your commander expected.
When the light and fire began to fade, Xerana rose to her feet with Octavia beside her, and they watched from a distance as the enormous buried chrysalis cracked open and the phoenix-being hatched out of it, rose high in the air, and minutes later swept over the distant battlefield, absorbing everything. Octavia hoped they were far enough away from all the other combatants.
Welcome to the universe, Xerana said as if to the risen creature, her mental voice tinged with awe.
Octavia's mind sensed a glorious freedom and fulfillment. She now understood the presence that had been calling her for so long, and even though she hated what this alien thing had done to her brother Lars, she could not resist the pull of complete wonder. She had never before seen anything so beautiful or so utterly pure. Her eyes ached from the too-white light as the newly born luminous beast filled the valley with its incandescence and then eagerly shot up to vanish into the skies.
Come, Xerana said. There is more here we need to see.
They scrambled down the rough, steep slope. The battlefield valley itself continued to throb and glow. A strange pulsing fog crawled over the ground, like a nebulous remnant of life force seeping out of the stones and soil, a mist made of diamond dust. The crown of Khaydarin crystals that had surrounded the buried artifact was now pulverized and scattered about like myriad grains of sand . . . or seeds.
The two of them reached the valley floor and moved forward together. Only minutes ago Octavia had been exhausted, but now she felt recharged, more rested and nourished than she had been in years. She did not mind that the tall Dark Templar strode along at a rapid pace. Octavia bounded beside Xerana, practically running. She saw scars from the battle, the twisted wreckage of destroyed machines, but no corpses—not even any splashes of blood.
Xerana, who must have picked up her thoughts, responded. The Xel'Naga hatchling took all the life it could touch, and with the energy from your military's nuclear strikes, it had more life force than it could contain. It used that energy to combine all the genetics of the Zerg and Protoss in order to complete its maturation. Then, on its journey outward, the new hatchling shed some of its bioenergy, leaving it here.
Octavia bit her lip. As she looked around and saw so many wonderful things, her anger came back. “Then why did it take Lars? What possible use could that creature have for human DNA?”
Xerana seemed saddened. Your brother was a mistake. The hatchling had no use for your Terran energy. It was asleep and still young. It did not understand what it was doing.
So . . . Lars had died simply because he had been in the wrong place.
Not consoled by this, Octavia walked deeper into the valley, noticing a small change that grew more pronounced as minutes passed. The soil seemed springy, and she saw tendrils of grass, tiny shoots sprouting everywhere. They grew so quickly that she could actually see the plants moving, bursting up through the ground as if anxious to return an exuberance of life to scarred Bhekar Ro. She knelt on the ground and plucked a flower, which blossomed in her hand into a brilliant crimson bloom with three pointed petals.
It is life, Xerana said simply. Octavia could feel it in her eyes, her skin, her mind.
The powerful diamond mist began to dissipate, thinning to reveal a clear blue sky that seemed to reach all the way to the stars. Then, in the distance, Octavia saw several figures, people standing dazed and confused out in the middle of the burgeoning meadow.
They were human.
Octavia started forward, hesitantly at first, afraid to hope. Many of them wore the uniforms of Terran Marines, but one was dressed in settlers' clothes, serviceable coveralls . . . just like the ones her brother had worn. Octavia caught her breath, unable to believe what she was seeing. She blinked.
Xerana explained, For the final transformation, the embryo required the genetics of the other Xel'Naga children as a biological fuel. Because these Terrans were not necessary, the creature must have rejected them from the DNA matrix.
“Lars!” Octavia shouted, then rushed forward, breathless. She laughed. Her resurrected brother stood in the middle of a field of flowers that looked like a fireworks show of color across the grassy valley. He turned to see her, and his face lit up. She threw herself into Lars's arms. He looked confused at first, then hugged her tightly.
“Now this is interesting,” he said in a bemused voice.
“I can't believe you're back!” she said. Octavia grabbed his shoulders, just staring at him. Her knees felt weak. After all she had been through, this seemed the most unbelievable.
“I never thought I'd be glad to get back to this place,” Lars said. Octavia hugged him again.
The Dark Templar female stood alone and apart. There was nothing more for her here. She had come to see and to learn. Her warning had not been heeded, and she'd been unable to save her Protoss brothers, but perhaps that was for the best. The newly awakened phoenix creature was also part of the Xel'Naga mystery, and Xerana was glad that she had witnessed its birth.
Without a word of farewell, the Dark Templar scholar wrapped herself in shadows again, vanished from sight, and made her way back to her own ship.
Perhaps she could follow the newborn creature, or search for other sleeping embryos that had been hidden by the Xel'Naga. She had many questions to answer and much to do . . . and all the Void in which to search.
CHAPTER 44
THE OBLITERATION OF KUKULKAN BROOD FELT like a wound ripped into Sarah Kerrigan's side. The sickly light pulsing from the living walls of the Hive around her seemed oppressive.
It was not so much anger at a humiliating defeat or sadness at the deaths of so many of her minions. What she felt was the loss of an ambitious dream, a loss of resources.
Only a setback . . .
So far, she had worked without rest to guide the Zerg back into a ferocious force that was destined to conquer the galaxy. This mission to confiscate the Xel'Naga artifact had been a test for her. She had wanted to demonstrate to herself that her Zerg were undefeatable, that the destruction of the Overmind had been merely a fluke. The Queen of Blades was stronger, braver, more ambitious.
Now, though, she would have to reassess her plans, redefine her goals so that the dead planet of Char blossomed into a dark flower.
The burgeoning Hives generated hordes of larvae, all of which were mutated into carefully chosen configurations, minions that would fit into an overall military strategy.
Even without Kukulkan Brood, Sarah Kerrigan still had other powerful Broods—Tiamat, Fenris, Baelrog, Surtur, Jormungand. Each one was led by a different Cerebrate. Each one had a general function in the overall Zerg social structure: to command, hunt, terrorize, attack. Each one had thousands, sometimes millions of loyal Zerg minions.
Some had been decimated in the recent war that had brought Terrans, Protoss, and Zerg to the brink of oblivion. But the Queen of Blades had brought them back together again.
She decided she would not concern herself with the setback on Bhekar Ro. It did not matter. Despair was a human condition, and Sarah Kerrigan no longer considered herself human.
This was only the beginning.
Soon she would launch her Brood War.
CHAPTER 45
ACCOMPANIED BY LIEUTENANT SCOTT AND HIS surviving commandos—all of whom had also been restored in the backwash of the Phoenix-creature's birth—Octavia and Lars made their way back to Free Haven.
Inside the settlement town, General Edmund Duke seemed completely lost and alone. They found Mayor Nikolai pounding on the door of his home. “I want my office back.”
A handful of Marine guards continued their duties around the town, but they seemed completely bereft of goal or direction. General Duke opened the door and, ignoring the mayor, pushed past to stand out in the middle of the street.
Nik rushed back into his dwelling and began to clear the general's paraphernalia off his desk.
Alpha Squadron had been wiped out on the battlefield. Duke's Battlecruisers, Wraiths, and ground troops had been destroyed, some of them during the orbital battle, most in the abortive assault against the Zerg and the Protoss near the artifact. Now, shortly after the nuclear strike and the strange unexplained events that had occurred around the buried object, he'd lost contact with his remaining ships in space. No one answered his comm signals.
He hoped they were just scattered. Perhaps a few vessels had reported directly to Emperor Mengsk. Some might come back to search for him.
But he didn't think so.
When Octavia returned with her brother, the settlers, though beaten and in shock after the war, reacted with joy to see at least one member of their colony returned alive and well. The most joyful by far, though, was Cyn McCarthy, who ran to Lars, threw her arms around him, and burst into tears. To Octavia's surprise, Lars kissed the copper-haired young woman and proposed to her on the spot— prompting a fresh wave of happy tears.
