Shadow Hunters (15 page)

Would they even be able to find what Zamara so desperately wanted? What if the crystals had been destroyed somehow? Or uprooted and carted away by the Tal’darim?

Then we will find another alternative, Zamara soothed inside him. We know this is where the technology is secreted away. That is the important thing.

Yeah, but “another alternative” would be protoss-onprotoss violence, and no one here wants that.

Of course not.

But … you’d advocate that if it was necessary, wouldn’t you?

… I would, yes. For this information … many of them would gladly sacrifice their lives.

Jake placed his aching head in his hands for a moment. He thought about his friends, dying in the icy cold of space aboard the
Gray Tiger
at the hands of a madman he’d been used to unleash. He thought of the woman Leeza who’d tried to double-cross them in
the rough town of Paradise, and how her face exploded right in front of his eyes as Rosemary fired at her. He thought of watching from inside his own body as Zamara used it to kill Phillip Randall.

I’ve had so much of death already, Zamara.

Her response was more tender than any he had had from her, and he felt a brush of pain and worry.
I know this, Jacob.

“We are approaching the area you showed us, Jacob,” Ladranix said. Jake sat up, tensing. This was it then.

The earth had fallen away from the entrance, after more than two thousand years. It looked almost burrowlike, and he wondered if perhaps the huge, burrowing marsupials known as lombads had been responsible for uncovering the great chambers of the xel’naga. Even so, it was a nondescript hole in the earth, and nothing about it hinted at the secrets it contained. Perhaps indeed the Tal’darim had found nothing of import at all.

The small craft began its descent, slowly drifting downward to settle on the uneven, rocky surface. Even though it was an uninviting place, the fact that it had not been melted by blaster fire or covered with creep made it seem positively beautiful to Jake’s eyes. They disembarked, and Jake felt a shiver of anticipation run through him. The protoss who moved up behind him looked around, their gestures betraying their unease.

Rosemary was the last to step beside Jake. “Any sign of the Tal’darim or zerg?” she asked.

“No,” Ladranix said. “Varloris will let me know immediately if they appear.” Ladranix nodded to the comparatively small khalai, who straightened proudly under his leader’s acknowledgment and bowed deeply. “We would have time to depart before we would be sensed.” He turned to Jake, half closing his eyes and tilting his head just so in a smile.

“Okay,” said Rosemary, breaking the spell. “Glad you guys are monitoring, but the sooner I get in there, the sooner I’m out.” She double-checked her weapons, the invaluable Pig she had indeed been able to repair, and one of the walkie-talkies they’d found in the system runner. Jake had the other one. No one was certain if they would be able to stay in touch once she entered the chambers; it was possible there was something that could dampen communications. But it was the best chance they had. She turned to Jake.

“Okay, Prof—have Zamara do her whammy on me. I don’t like her poking around in my head, but it’s better than having a bunch of hostile protoss doing it.”

Jake nodded and moved toward her. He held out his hand. She hesitated, then took it. Not for the first time, he marveled at how small her hands were, to do the things they did. He didn’t need to be touching her to enable Zamara to make mental contact, but he wanted to—not just because he found he liked the feel of her hand in his, but because he wanted to reassure her with that most ancient of comforts, the human touch.

Zamara was in and out of Rosemary’s mind so quickly the two terrans barely had time to register anything. Rosemary blinked.

“That it?”

It is accomplished,
Zamara replied.
Her presence is effectively blocked.

Rosemary nodded. “I might just have you keep it up, Zamara,” she said, looking into Jake’s eyes but speaking not to him, but to the alien intelligence that had taken up residence there.

“Just to go over the plan,” Jake began. She interrupted him.

“I got it, Prof. I go in, have a look around, you all meet me back here tomorrow night at this same time. If I get into any trouble I’ll contact you.” Without further ado she turned and began to stride into the gaping hole in the earth.

“Be careful,” Jake added impulsively, and winced at how worried he sounded.

Rosemary Dahl paused. She looked back at him, a slow grin spreading over her face.

“I’m always careful, Professor,” she said, and gave him a wink before her small form was swallowed entirely by the darkness.

THE DARKNESS INCREASED AS ROSEMARY MOVED steadily, stealthily, downward. She had come prepared for that; infrared goggles and the Pig would keep her well clear of any of the troublesome Tal’darim. She hoped.

Actually, she was rather relieved to be clear of the protoss in general. Shel’na Kryhas or Tal’darim, it didn’t matter much to her—she felt uncomfortable around all of them. She hadn’t liked the idea of Zamara’s tinkering around with her brain, but everything else about this little plan suited her ideally.

It was good to be on her own again. Rosemary functioned best by herself, second best as leader of a well-trained and trusted team. This new role she’d been forced to adopt, a tag-along on some epic “mission” that Zamara didn’t see fit to tell even Jake about—it wasn’t at all what she was used to.

And yet—part of her was enjoying it, she mused as she stepped forward carefully. She’d had a bad moment when she had realized that Ethan was planning on turning her over to Valerian. But she’d recovered. Blowing a hole in the center of her former lover had cheered her greatly, and she’d been riding an adrenaline high through most of the rest of what had happened. True, Rosemary was indeed more or less along for the ride, but Jake and the protoss inside him had definitely needed her. She’d helped Jake off the
Gray Tiger
before the nut job Jake had turned loose on it had decided to have them for dinner. She’d gotten him to Ethan, which had seemed safe, and then away from Ethan, which had actually
been
safe. While Jake had done something—she still wasn’t sure what—involving a sort of human version of the Khala to allow them to escape Valerian at the last minute, it had been Rosemary who’d fixed the battered ship after the bad jump.

And now, when they needed someone to go scout out to make sure it was safe, they’d turned to the one person who wouldn’t screw it up. Rosemary Dahl.

Because she wasn’t stupid, she also realized that she was the one person they all thought was expendable at this point. And she could live with that. She also was well aware that no one liked her, and that bothered her not at all. At least … it didn’t use to. Recently, though, she found herself enjoying the moments when she and Jake got along. She wasn’t trusted by him or Zamara or any of the other protoss, and she understood why. But they all had the same agenda now—get off the planet. They could trust her for that, and right now, that was all that mattered.

She tried to remember everything Jake had told her about this place. As he’d said, the walls were smooth at first, as she had started to descend. Too, once the natural light from the entrance began to fade, other light—crystals embedded in the walls—provided gentle but serviceable illumination. She noticed that the texture of the walls changed the deeper she went, and spared a quick glance to look at the colors as they appeared to her in the faint light of the glowing crystals. Black and silver and gray, with threads of something that looked like veins running through them.

The temperature dropped as Rosemary went deeper into the earth. She paused at one point and strained to listen. She could hear it now, the faint pulsating sound. Her lips curved in a smile. It was like a heartbeat, just like Jake had described. No wonder Temlaa and Savassan had been rattled when they heard it.

The stairway turned and abruptly Rosemary found herself staring down into darkness. There were no more crystals to provide light after this point. Air swirled up from the huge cavern she couldn’t see, but knew waited below.

Rosemary reached the end of the stairway and fished out the Pig, checking to see if she was still as alone as she thought. Perfect. From what Jake had said, once she entered the rooms down here, lights would come up and she would, for all intents and purposes, shout her presence to anyone nearby. She
dropped the Pig back into her pocket and stepped forward.

Sure enough, up came the lights, glowing a soft white in contrast to the more tinted, gemlike hues that had provided illumination on the way in. The area the light displayed to her was even bigger than she’d thought. She took it in with a practiced eye: flat, clearly artificially leveled floor, a ceiling inlaid with gems that provided the light, all perfectly preserved.

Jake would have a field day.

She looked at a rectangle of gems on a stone pillar, and knew that if she touched them in that Golden Mean order Jake was so fascinated with a door would appear on the far wall. When Temlaa had touched the gems so, long ago, a platform had emerged. A platform upon which had lain six desiccated protoss bodies. The sight had given poor Temlaa a bad scare. Idly, Rosemary wondered if they were still there. But she had no real interest; she was here to see if the Tal’darim had penetrated this far into the chambers.

Rosemary looked at the map and nodded. There were the five oval doorways in the walls, just as Jake had drawn them, that led out into five different directions. She put her finger on the map over the door Temlaa had chosen as the one that best fit the Golden Mean ratio. She walked forward, and then paused. A slow smile spread over her face.

On the wall next to the door was a small black mark.

Despite herself, Rosemary felt a shiver as she lifted a hand to touch the mark that Temlaa had made, some two thousand years ago. In this place where there was no weathering, no water or wind or oils from human or protoss flesh to erase it, the charcoal mark had stayed in almost perfect condition. She was suddenly very sorry that she had seen this first, not Jake. She shook off the unusually soft sentiment and stepped into the corridor.

This place was much, much larger than it had seemed. Would she even get anywhere near the chamber they sought? She wished she had a vulture hoverbike right about now, but she supposed the walk would do her good. If she didn’t get far enough in a single twenty-four-hour mission to learn anything useful, well, she’d have to come back. It certainly seemed as though it was going well. Ladranix had assured them that there were no protoss or zerg spying on them, and she believed him. The Tal’darim could mask their thoughts, but little red dots on the Pig’s small but accurate computer screen were good old-fashioned hard technology and so far Rosemary had seen none of those. So far.

Not for the first time, she wondered if as she saw, she was also being seen. She’d asked that question, if there was any comparable protoss technology that would expose her. Ladranix had assured her that such a thing was not necessary, at least not short-range.

“We can sense another’s presence, as you know,” he said, sounding confused.

“Yeah, but you also said that these guys are shielding their thoughts from you. And that sounds like something protoss have been able to do for a while,” Rosemary replied.

“True,” Ladranix admitted. “But never for stealth, not from each other. We are all touching one another to some degree in the Khala.”

Jake had seemed a bit troubled and followed up on Rosemary’s point. “When I was reliving the memories of Temlaa, that’s how they were able to sneak up on each other to attack. The attackers would shield their thoughts and presence.”

“And now, what goes around comes around,” Rosemary said. “You’re right back where you started.”

“Rosemary—” Jake said warningly.

Ladranix had lifted a hand. “She is correct. Now, since the fall of our world, we have again turned against one another. Or rather, the Tal’darim have turned against us. We do shield our thoughts, to protect ourselves. For they will attack us. But this happened recently. Before the warp gate was shut down, there was no need to hide ourselves from one another. So therefore, no technology was created to overcome such an obstacle.”

It made sense to Rosemary. She was a very practical woman, and this all sounded practical to her.

But she was heading down into a place that was apparently crammed to the gills with ancient technology that was as advanced as it was forgotten. If the Tal’darim had been down here for a while, and it
sounded like they had, might they not have uncovered some of the xel’naga secrets? No one seemed concerned about this but her. Well, she mused as she continued to move slowly inward to the heart of the place, that might be because she was the one putting her ass on the line.

As she walked, constantly checking her map and the Pig to make sure she was not getting lost and not having company, she became increasingly grateful for the map. Wandering on her own would have been far too dangerous. Jake had told her the place was huge, but she hadn’t realized just how big. After several hours, she sat and ate some fruit and drank some water and rested for a while. She couldn’t risk sleep, and she’d stayed awake for longer than twenty-four hours at a stretch many, many times.

Her constant companion on this exploration was the deep, thrumming heartbeat sound. She knew she was on the right track because with each turn she took, each corridor that led her inward and downward, the noise increased. That sound, and the marks that the protoss whose memories Jake now kept in his brain had made were her guideposts.

Rosemary was mildly annoyed with Temlaa. The way Jake remembered it, it hadn’t taken all that long to get to the room where the crystal was. Maybe Jake didn’t get every memory of every second of every protoss’s life. Hell, she didn’t remember every second of her own life. Which was actually a blessing. Maybe it was just the important things Jake remembered. Or
maybe the protoss moved faster. Also, she was coming in a different way than Temlaa and Savassan had. While she was obviously on the right track, it might take longer to reach the same place the protoss had.