Shadow Hunters (29 page)

“What the hell
is
that?” he demanded of Starke.

“Sir, I—can’t rightly tell you.” Starke’s voice was shaking and uncertain. “It is extremely psionically powerful, and the energy readings from it are off the scale.”

Valerian could see that. Spurts of dark energy seemed to erupt from the being like magma, and anything that was in their path—even in their general vicinity—was destroyed. Including one of his ships, he surmised, as one of the screens suddenly went dark.

“It’s—
aaah!”

In all the time Valerian had known the man, Devon Starke had never raised his voice above a calm, reasoned pitch. To hear him cry out in pain startled the youth. “Devon—what’s happening?”

“He—it—them—he doesn’t see me as a specific threat, or else I’d be”—a growl of pain—“dead.”

Valerian watched the swathe of destruction this monstrous thing was causing and did not doubt that statement for a second. “Stay out of its way. You’re too valuable to lose.”

“Aye, sir.”

“What is it targeting? Is it after Jake?” Valerian stared raptly at the figure, a glorious swirl of death and darkness and destruction. Valerian thought it was a very good thing that his father wasn’t present. Mengsk Senior would probably happily sacrifice Ramsey and the protoss entity inside him in exchange for somehow being able to trap and harness this dark storm of energy. It would make a powerful weapon.

“Everything, sir. He’s fighting the protoss and the zerg alike. He’s moving directly for the warp gate, though. My guess is that he wants Ramsey, just like the rest of us.”

That day when he had sat with Jake Ramsey in his study, discussing the temple and toasting the discovery of wonder, Valerian had never anticipated it coming to this—a bitter, bloody fight between three races and a monster on an all-but-dead world. He had not yet developed his father’s callousness when it came to sending men to die, but gave the orders even as he felt a wave of regret.

He would make it up to Jacob Ramsey. Somehow.

“See to it that the thing doesn’t get him” was all he told Starke.

*   *   *

“A dark archon!”

Kerrigan’s voice in Ethan’s mind cracked like a whip. She was surprised, and angry at being surprised, and he quailed slightly at her wrath. “Yet nothing so simple as that, I think. Where did it come from?”

“I know not, my queen, but we are engaged in battle with it now.”

“Is it attacking you or the protoss?”

“It seems to be bearing down upon Ramsey and the gate,” Ethan confessed haltingly. “It seems we all have an interest in the professor.”

“But there is only one faction that can prevail, and that must be ours. Use our forces fully, my consort. We are fortunate in that it does not matter, nor do we care, how many of our soldiers fall, so long as we obtain our goal. The preserver inside him is valuable beyond measure to me. She must not be allowed to die here.”

“She shall not,” Ethan vowed. His queen’s consciousness left him, flitting away to other things, other minions, and he sagged slightly.

She was his world. She had made him, improved him, re-created him to serve and love her, and so he did. Part of him knew that he was not choosing this of his own volition, but he did not care. She was his queen, he adored her, he would die for her, and killing for her was a joyful task.

*   *   *

“Got it!” yelped Rosemary. The look she flashed Jake, obviously intended for both him and Zamara, was filled with triumph and pleasure.

“I have nearly completed my task as well,” Zamara said. “Once I am finished, we will have six minutes to get everyone through before a self-disabling sequence is employed.”

“Whoa, wait, we’ve only got six minutes once it’s set?” Jake turned and looked out to where the battle was still taking place. The realization suddenly hit him: There was no way that everyone was going to make it through. Many of his friends would die here.

Ladranix, of course, read his thoughts. “Four years ago I stood in this very spot, with Raynor, and Fenix, and dozens of my people, who stood to hold back the tide that threatened to wash away everything I loved. We have a saying, Jacob Ramsey: ‘My life for Aiur.’ I thought to give it then, but such was not my fate. I lived to help protect and defend those who could not protect themselves. But today I stand ready to fulfill that destiny, for I believe it to be mine.”

“Ladranix …” Jake was not in the Khala, not as the protoss were, but he did not have to be for the templar to feel his emotions.

“I can think of no greater honor than protecting a preserver, or of aiding my people. Truly, I am glad that I did not die that day so that I might stand here at this moment.”

“I will fight alongside you, as we have before,” said Alzadar. “I will atone for what I have done. What I have
unwittingly enabled. The obscenity that marches upon us now was fed in part by my hand. My servitude—my willing, foolish, blind servitude—aided him. I will find redemption when my blood is spilled to stop him. I wish to greet the gods a templar again.”

“Brother,” said Ladranix, with deep sincerity, “you are already redeemed. But I understand. It will be an honor to die with you.” He extended his hand.

“My life for Aiur,” said Alzadar.

“Our
lives for Aiur,” replied Ladranix simply.

With no more words, the two protoss hurried to join the others. Jake looked after them for a long moment, then turned to see Rosemary watching them as well. There was respect, admiration, and a hint of sorrow on her beautiful features.

Rotten time to fall in love,
he thought, then turned his attention to the gathering protoss.

There was in truth little time. The accidental allies of protoss, zerg, and Dominion were slowing Ulrezaj, but only for the moment. Debris from both Dominion and protoss vessels, crushed or smoking or actively burning, littered the ground, bits and pieces of metal entwined with chunks of flesh from zerg mowed down in numbers almost too vast to comprehend. The remnants of Those Who Endure and the Forged clustered together as far back behind the fighting lines as possible, reaching out toward one another, physically joining hands as they mentally began to link minds.

Jake didn’t know if it would work. Nor did Zamara, nor Ladranix, nor any of the others who, on his
word—his, not even Zamara’s, honestly—were willing to open themselves to the wildness they feared and mistrusted on such a deep level.

But Jacob, truly—there is little else we can do. There are insufficient numbers for disciplined tactics to achieve much more than senseless death. The only hope is the most desperate gambit. Your instincts were sound.

Could the templar control and direct the storms their Forged brethren were going to summon? Or would the energies spiral out of control, wreaking dreadful havoc upon the very people they were supposed to protect? There was no way of knowing, no way of telling—only the doing of it.

“Zamara doesn’t need me anymore, so I’m going to the front,” Rosemary said, almost casually, reaching for her rifle and running with a lithe, even gait toward the makeshift bunker walls. Jake watched her go, wanting to call her back, yet knowing that she was too valuable not to utilize. He wished he could do something. It wasn’t his world, but it had become his battle.

Ulrezaj came on. Implacable and inevitable he was, and Jake despaired to see it. Even if the templar could coordinate in time, how could anything short of a nuclear blast stop this thing? It was huge, and awesomely, devastatingly powerful. Adun had called upon the powers of both Aiur and dark templar to weave a protective shield about those he had sworn to keep safe as they fled into the xel’naga ship. Jake knew a very little bit about the dark templar, but not what had happened
to them after that pivotal moment in history. Where had they gone? What had they learned? How had they come to Shakuras? Zamara hadn’t told him that story yet. He was sad to think that he would never live to know it. Never live to know so many stories of these people he had come to respect and love. Never know what it was like to kiss Rosemary Dahl. He—

It was like a song.

For a few seconds, he couldn’t fathom what was happening. And then he understood.

They were doing it.

Those Who Endure and the Forged were now joining minds, one group grounded in the Khala, which had served them so well when they were in desperate need of order, the other disconnected from that ancient place in the mind and heart, but linked secondarily to it. Dumbly, Jake stood, mouth slightly open, and let it wash over and around and through him. The screams of dying zerg and wild creatures of this world, the boom of exploding vessels, the sound of weapons fire—it all receded before this
song
of unification. He didn’t hear it with his ears, but he felt it, felt it down to his cells, felt it pulse through him with every contraction of his heart.

And then the song took a wild turn.

Energy rose up like a blue mist from the huddled figures, and Jake’s breath caught. Their bodies arched, from ecstasy or pain or both commingled. The mist swirled like a little galaxy before his eyes, coalescing and crackling and growing stronger.

Then Ulrezaj paused.

Hope shot through Jake with an almost painful intensity. And then he felt the powerful focus of the monster’s intense regard. The blue swirling galaxy, the nascent psionic storm, shivered and all but dissipated in the face of the dark archon’s directed will. Jake cried out—what, he did not know; but it was a plea, a prayer.

And then the cloud split, and split again, and again, until each psychically joined pair of protoss had their own small, comparatively weak energy field. As Jake continued to watch, every heartbeat a wild plea, some of the clouds were extinguished as if a careless hand were pinching out a candle flame.

Those protoss fell, crumpling silently.

But others did not fall. They redoubled their efforts, and their energy fields increased. Swirling, spiraling, growing, pulsing. Again Jake felt the monster’s angry attack, and more protoss died in silence.

Suddenly Jake realized what had happened. The protoss who had passed had not done so in vain. They hadn’t been snuffed out, erased, as he had thought. They had freely given their life energies to the others in this moment, in this union that the protoss had never before attempted.

My life for Aiur.

Ulrezaj realized it as well, and Jake staggered from the force of the creature’s anger. But this time, the remaining joined pairs did not waver. The small galaxies that enveloped them suddenly surged, and
grew stronger. A wind came out of nowhere. Jake shivered and his hair stood on end, crackling with static electricity and something other, something more than simple physics could explain. He thought of Adun, standing to protect the dark templar, of the energy that flowed in and around and through him.

And suddenly the song reached a crescendo.

A huge crash deafened Jake for a moment as he was blown off his feet. He hit the earth hard. His body felt almost burned and he couldn’t breathe for a moment. Power surged and snapped above him, and for a moment he thought the protoss had lost control. These storms were beasts they sought to tame and the creatures had turned against their masters, struggling and straining to break free, and for a second—the briefest, longest second in Jake’s life—they succeeded. Then the protoss regained control, corralling the power of the mental storms and sending them to attack.

Ulrezaj halted as the blue nimbus of the storm began to feed on his dark energy. As it grew, he shifted back, and began to fight it in deadly earnest.

Now!
cried Zamara, as the gate behind them came to life. Those protoss who were not actively engaged in the fight were galvanized into action. They turned and raced through the gate, running with that lithe, graceful speed that Jake remembered from his time as Temlaa. Half of the protoss ships that were attacking Ulrezaj curved smoothly in mid-flight, disappearing through the gate as well. The other half remained, the
attack not slacking, engaging the enemy from all sides as to split his attention from the wildest, deadliest weapon the protoss could manage—the one created from joined minds and spirits. Jake realized they weren’t planning to retreat at all. He was looking at flying, golden coffins.

The storm grew in force almost faster than the pro-toss could flee to safety, and Jake wondered if they had cut it too close; had inadvertently created their own deaths. Some of the protoss worried about that too.

We are protoss. We cannot be divided any longer. Stand strong and focus!

Jake felt Ladranix and Alzadar respond then, their unique mental voices blazing in his mind. The storm swelled, roiled, heavy with lethal energy, and then—

They finally released it.

Dozens of zerg screamed in agony as they seemed to explode from the inside. The storm cut the very air with its power, the sonic boom rattling Jake’s bones. The breath seemed to be sucked out of his lungs for a moment as he watched, unable to tear his gaze away.

The storm surrounded the dark archon—Ulrezaj, the “Benefactor”—in a cocoon of destruction. Jake felt a visceral stab of deep satisfaction as he saw the thing lurch to a sudden halt and falter, taken aback by the intensity of the assault.

“Sir, they’re escaping through the gate.” Starke’s voice revealed his strain.

“Stop them!”

“It’s all we can do to stop this dark archon from killing them. The protoss are doing something—I’m not sure what, but it’s giving the thing pause.”

Valerian stared at the various screens that were flashing jumpy, static-flawed information. It was obviously madness down there. He couldn’t tell what was going on even as he saw it unfold.

Suddenly all the screens went dark. Whittier gasped and let out a sound perilously close to a squeal of horror.

“Starke, what just happened?”

Silence.

“Starke? Devon!
What’s going on?”

Ethan went flying. The whirlwind had slammed into him and the beast he was riding like a blow from a giant’s fist. Pain shuddered through him and he fell, tumbling down, bound by gravity despite the fact that he was the consort of the Queen of Blades, had been made glorious and nearly perfect. He felt his flesh shivering, puckering, and it was only the several-deep piles of zerg corpses that broke his fall. As it was, he was bruised and battered, despite his vastly increased strength and resilience.