Shadow Hunters (11 page)

“Unlikely. Your ship is ruined, and it was mere accident that they came across you a second time. We anticipate that you will become folded into our group, no more or no less a threat to them than we are. The weapons we recovered from your vessel will be useful to us.”

Now they were navigating among what had been glorious spires and towers. Jake saw in his mind’s eye, superimposed over what his true eyes beheld, what this view had once been like. The little golden ship, a firefly of a vessel, moved gracefully amid the ruins until it came to a blackened clearing. It looked like a bomb had gone off here once but that the area had now been at least somewhat reclaimed. To the north, he saw some debris that intrigued him, though he couldn’t make sense of the jumble. The ship settled down easily, and the moment it alit, the protoss all rose in a movement timed so perfectly it might have been choreographed. The door opened and the elegant ramp extended, its delicacy at sharp odds with the ruination onto which it opened.

“Please, go first. You are expected.”

Jake and Rosemary nodded. Rosemary went first, moving with her head held high and a lithe, in-control stride. Jake followed.

He immediately thought of a refugee camp. Dozens, maybe hundreds of protoss all turned as one to gaze at him. Large, lambent eyes looked him up
and down, seemed to gaze into his very soul. The silence was the main thing that struck him. No cries of infants, no sobs or laughter, no murmurs of conversation—none of the things that one would expect of such a large gathering of people in one place. But then again, while the protoss were most certainly “people,” they were not humans. He knew that if Zamara had not been providing a buffer, his mind would be awash in thoughts that dwarfed human sounds in their detail, their richness, their depth and complexity and interconnection.

They had erected shelter as best they could, a strange amalgamation of items they had brought in from nature and things that had been taken from the city. A shiny metal beam held up a roof of woven leaves; a second small atmospheric craft was protected by poles made from tree branches. Even in the starkness of their necessity, there was beauty. Doors were made of the fronds of different-colored plants, and the result was not merely functional but lovely. Some things had been painted, other things carved.

Attention quickly went from the newcomers to what they brought. The protoss who rescued Jake, Zamara, and R. M. placed what they had gotten from the now-defunct system runner on the black, uneven surface. The refugees scurried forward, elegant four-fingered hands taking up the weapons, the bedding, the tools, the precious medkit.

“They’re taking everything!” Rosemary snapped, and started to move forward.

“They saved our lives,” Jake reminded her. “A weapon in their hands can only help us. And others need medical supplies more than we do.” At that moment his head throbbed. “Well, not all the supplies; they can’t take any oral medication.”

“Jake, listen, believe me when I say I’m delighted that we’re not inside a zerg’s belly at the moment. But this isn’t an archeological expedition here. We’ve got to find a way to get off this planet.” She was not looking at the protoss. She was looking at the wreckage that had once been a thriving city. She was looking for anything that might offer hope of a way out.

She’s right,
Jake thought to Zamara.

There may be a way. I must speak with the others first.

“Zamara’s working on it,” Jake said.

“Good.” Rosemary looked edgy, and he supposed he could understand why. She was extremely competent in her own environment, but now they were surrounded by aliens that they had never beheld until a few moments ago. The technology with which she was so familiar and a master at manipulating had been melted to a puddle of acidic ooze, and she’d come within centimeters of being melted right along with it. They were stuck at the mercy of said aliens, on a strange planet. And she was watching her precious weaponry being examined and parceled out.

“It’s all right, Rosemary,” Jake said gently, feeling oddly protective. “I know you’re worried and you feel out of place here. But it could be a lot worse.”

She glared at him, blue eyes cold. “Reading my mind again, Professor? I thought we discussed that.”

There was a time when her words would have stung. This time, he felt only compassion for her. “No. I just read your face.”

She looked slightly embarrassed, then irritated, and then she turned away.

“We understand that humans need to feed upon plant and animal matter,” said Ladranix. “We do not, so at this moment we have nothing to offer you. But we do have clean water for sterilizing instruments and will soon be able to provide you with what you require. Zamara has experienced … sharing a meal with you, Jacob. We will do our best to emulate this food.”

“We brought rations with us,” Jake sent back to Ladranix, looking him full in his glowing blue eyes. “We do not wish to inconvenience you any further than we already have.”

The protoss leader half closed his eyes and tilted his head in the way that Jake knew meant laughter. He knew it even before Ladranix’s warm mirth washed over him, coaxing his own lips to turn up at the corners in the human version of a smile.

“You bring us weapons and medicine. A few fruits from the trees and the flesh of beasts is nothing in comparison. You and Rosemary Dahl and Zamara are welcome here, Jacob Jefferson Ramsey. More than welcome.”

Jake felt, in a very strange but very real way, that, in a sense, he had come home.

THE WATER THEY WERE GIVEN WAS STALE AND warm, but it was wet, and Jake drank thirstily. He felt about as stale and warm and wet as the water. The heat coming off the ruins of the city as it baked underneath a sullen sun was almost unbearable. The pro-toss did not appear to be affected by it, but that was to be expected. They had evolved on this tropical world of sun and humidity. Jake’s and R. M.’s discomfort was noticed and after a short discussion, they were led inward into a jumble of metal and some sort of concrete that provided at least a bit of relief from the heat. It looked strangely familiar to Jake. He glanced around, sipping a second gourdful of the water. Ladranix came to stand beside him.

“Do you recognize this place?” Ladranix asked quietly.

“Sort of. But it’s so damaged I can’t place it.” Jake walked up to the wreckage of a chair, ran his hand along it. Like everything else the protoss made, it had been beautiful once. So had this place been beautiful—and huge; he remembered seeing what looked like a shattered tower and the ruinations of a landscape atop a huge circular disc.

“There are places elsewhere in the city that are not habitable. We were fortunate to find this shelter as intact as it is. What you behold now is the ruin of what was once known as the Executor’s Citadel. Since before the time of Adun, the leaders of the templar dwelt here.”

Jake’s gut twisted. Superimposed on this pathetic wreckage was the image of Adun standing and looking down on Antioch. He had perhaps sat in this very chair. Jake found his hand tightening on the back of the chair, as if he could hold on to the past.

“We like to think that even now, Adun somehow is watching over us,” Ladranix said gently. He touched the broken remains of the chair with a long, four-fingered hand, seemed to recover himself from his emotions, and faced Jake.

“I have sent our best scouts to find you food,” Ladranix said. “It is not without risks, but we are more familiar with how to evade the zerg than you. Night will fall soon. While the heat will not diminish greatly, the winds pick up at night. You will find it cooler.”

“That sounds great,” Rosemary said. Perspiration sheened her face, and heat had reddened it. Jake thought back to when he had first met her, calm and in control in the shadow of the
Gray Tiger.
He thought
of how stunning she had looked by candlelight in Ethan Stewart’s decadent enclave, her hair perfect, her dress cut down to
there
at the neck and up to
here
at the thigh. Right now she was grimy, sweaty, sunburned, and didn’t smell all that good. And she seemed more real, more … human … than he’d ever seen her.

He felt a gentle mirth in his head and mentally scowled. It was tiring having every thought of hunger, irritation, weakness, lust, or boredom being read. For a moment he wondered, if this “mission” of Zamara’s was successful and he indeed survived long enough to be a preserver, if all these thoughts would be available to every future preserver who cared to read them. It was an alarming concept and he quickly pushed it out of his mind.

“Please continue, Ladranix. What happened after the gate was shut down?”

The protoss leader inclined his head. “We scattered when the gate closed. Even the most rigorously trained among us knew a dreadful sense of abandonment when we realized that we had been left behind. Although we understood the reasoning—we few were the sacrifice to keep the others alive—it still hit hard. Most of the templar fell while distracting the zerg as the others fled.”

“Wait—what’s a templar?” Rosemary was confused.

Ladranix turned to her and gazed at her for a long moment. This was a private conversation between
them, so Jake had no idea what was being said. But in a few seconds Rosemary nodded. “I see. A caste system. Seems a little—I don’t know—intolerant for a society in which all are supposedly equal.”

Jake realized that Ladranix was giving R. M. only the basics. The protoss was respecting her boundaries, conveying only words in his thoughts, not feelings.

“It’s not as intolerant as it might sound, Rosemary,” Jake piped up. “Protoss aren’t quite like us. As I told you, before the Khala, they were separated into tribes. Each tribe had a definite proclivity, a—a strength, a
feel
to it. When the protoss turned to the Khala, the tribes fit pretty easily into three separate categories. But no one caste is better than the others.”

Zamara sent an affirmative.
The caste system was originally created to better utilize the abilities of the whole, yes. To take our different strengths and use them to unite us rather than divide us. And for a thousand years it stayed thus. But even among the protoss, even in a place where we are so tightly bound to one another in an intimacy you are just beginning to glimpse, there are those who aspire to better only themselves. We are not angels or gods, Jake. We are just beings like yourself.

… Hardly.

Zamara chuckled.

“The templar are the warriors,” Ladranix explained. “Our job is to protect our people, defend them, give our lives for them if necessary. We are trained from earliest youth to harness fear, to make it work for us. For of course, we do feel it. All thinking, feeling beings
do. But protecting the Conclave and their wisdom, and the khalai and their skills and talents—that is what we do. And on those long, dark days, that is what we did.

“More than the few of us you see here were stranded on Aiur that day. There were thousands. Hundreds of thousands. I am proud to say that the majority of those who died were templar, fighting to the death to save the others. The drawback is that now, while we face death every day still, most of those who are left alive are khalai. There are few trained warriors to defend them now.”

“No judicators?” Jake asked.

“Not here, not among the Shel’na Kryhas.”

The term was apparently untranslatable, for Jake saw his confused expression mirrored on Rosemary’s face. Ladranix chuckled and sent an image: stoic, resolute, weathering what will come.

“Those Who Endure,” Jake said quietly. Ladranix nodded.

“Yes. The words are but the crudest comprehension of what we are, but they will have to do.”

Rosemary snorted.

“Those first few days, it was simple, pure survival. Protoss fled, alone, in pairs, or in small family groups. They found shelter if they could, and died if they could not. Much of the rain forests had been destroyed, as were our once-beautiful cities. I fully expected death to find all of us shortly, for I did not understand what had happened to the zerg. It is a blessing that the zerg never regained the unified intensity they had while under the
Overmind’s control. Even so, they slay us when they find us, and they obviously felt it was necessary to investigate your ship when you were about to land. But whereas they were once single-minded of purpose to hunt us down and slaughter us, now that has changed. Perhaps they are merely waiting for us to feel a certain sense of safety before they decide upon our extinction.

“Whatever the zerg’s plans—if there is indeed anything so complex as to be called such—it has given us time. Time to find each other again. Time to return to our poor, blasted cities and do what we can to make them homes. Time to find weapons with which to fight these abominable creatures, and to craft new weapons. I would not go so far as to say the Shel’na Kryhas are creating a new society here on the remnants of our world, but we are doing what we can. And now, we have a preserver among us. We are grateful to you for bringing her to us.”

“I am no savior, Ladranix,” and Jake saw Rosemary’s china blue eyes widen slightly as she felt Zamara’s mind touch hers. “I cannot stay to help you overlong. I have a mission of dire importance to the survival of our people.”

“You are still wiser than any of us, for you have the memories of all who have gone before.” Ladranix’s mental words were tinted with awe. “We are grateful for anything you can do for us.”

Something was bothering Jake, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. There was something that was being left unsaid, unshared.

“I cannot help until I know all,” said Zamara. She, too, had been sensing something amiss.

Protoss didn’t breathe, at least not the way humans did, but Jake got the distinct impression of a heavy sigh as Ladranix spoke.

“We are the Shel’na Kryhas. We are Those Who Endure. We have gravitated back to what remains of our best and most noble creations, our cities. We have stayed true to the protoss ideals. We understand why we were left, and feel confident that when it is once again safe for our brethren to return to Aiur to retrieve us, they will. We rely as much if not more upon the Khala as ever, and the bond that unites us all. Not … all of those who were left behind that day feel the way we do.”