The Rift
Moderator: LadyTevar
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The Vortex Empire
- Jedi Council Member
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- Joined: 2006-12-11 09:44pm
- Location: Rhode Island
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Themightytom
- Sith Devotee
- Posts: 2818
- Joined: 2007-12-22 11:11am
- Location: United States
Chapter Sixty Nine
Jacen Solo leapt easily from one rocky outcropping to the next on the steep slope. The dry stone and dust beneath his feet crumbled and shifted at his weight, but he steadied himself by throwing out both arms, careful to keep a tight grip on the lightsaber grip clasped in his right hand. When he was sure of his balance, Jacen scanned the bare slope before him, and continued his ascent. The sound of a dozen, trudging pairs of feet kept pace on either side, almost masking the chorus of heavy breathing and jostling equipment that emanated from young Jedi’s companions. The hurried progress of the mixed group of Starfleet and Alliance personnel did not slow even when they came to a shallow trough in the steep slope. They plowed through the thicket of dead vegetation that filled it and scaled the other side, intent on the crest of the rocky face, less than ten meters ahead.
A roar of super-compressed air directed Jacen’s attention skyward. As he glanced at the dark, roiling sky, the green-sided form of an Alliance starfighter streaked overhead. Close behind the A-Wing, which had passed less than a hundred meters above them, half a dozen scaled creatures shot past, their massive, clawed wings beating the air vigorously. Several of the flighted Zerg loosed keening cries, and one discharged a convulsing projectile from the tip of its curved, tail-like body.
Jacen did not turn to see if the Zerg had hit its target. Several of his soldiers had already reached the lip of rocky earth at the slope’s peak, and he hurried to join them. A few long strides brought him there, and he helped push a puffing Starfleet officer over the edge. The run up the slope, although brief, had been exhausting, and Jacen had already been forced to tap into the Force to preserve his stamina.
To his relief, the next being to reach the ridge also appeared to have maintained his strength.
“Tassadar,” he said, extending an arm to help the towering alien onto the lip of gravel and exposed stone. Tassadar accepted the help and heaved his armored bulk up next to the Jedi.
“I am the last,” he intoned, looking down at Jacen without any outward signs of distress. “Is this place secure?”
Jacen nodded. There was another trough just beyond the ridge, and the others had piled into it, their blasters and phaser rifles drawn even as they caught their collective breath.
“We should stop here for a minute. They might not get another chance to rest for a long time.”
“We must not tarry, Solo,” Tassadar replied. “No place on this mountain is safe, and it will not be long until Kerrigan brings the full force of her multitudes against us.”
Jacen glanced at his squad, and then looked back down the sloped they had just scaled. It had been a rough climb, steep and marred by unstable mounds of stone, but they hadn’t encountered a single Zerg warrior during the course of their ascent. The lack of resistance puzzled Jacen; the ridge on which they stood was not part of the main mass of Mount Kilimanjaro – rather, it was a long spine of raised rock that trailed from the main formation to a group of smaller peaks hundreds of meters away – but it’s rough surface was ideal for hiding ambush holes and traps. Tassadar’s pointed face was impassive, but Jacen thought could sense unease from the templar as well.
Far down the slope, Jacen could make out the shuttle that had brought them all to the mountainside. They had been forced into a controlled crash by fire from a Zerg anti-air growth and come to ground well short of their final target, and had hastily abandoned the ship in an attempt to avoid the inevitable clean-up units. No one was left to guard the shuttle. Jacen tried not to think about how little thought had been given to escape from Kerrigan’s fortress, should they succeed.
As the young Jedi watched, the mountain’s guardians finally appeared; from the lifeless, dusty slope, dozens of tiny, inhuman forces suddenly swept over the shuttle. They seemed to come from nowhere, but as Jacen looked on, he noticed a pack of the creatures scrabble from a shaft hidden behind a cairn of stones.
“This place is wormed with their tunnels,” Tassadar warned. “They can emerge from any part of it. We must not linger.”
Jacen nodded, and turned to the others.
“We’re heading out up the ridge. Keep to the rocks as much as you can, and watch out for any…”
His gut clenched. Danger.
He cast about for the source of the abrupt premonition. Then the ground beneath his feet began to tremble.
“Out!” he shouted. “Out of the dip!”
The soldiers threw themselves at the sides of the depression, but before any could clamber out of it fully, its bottom cracked and transformed into a churning pool of rubble. There was another great tremor, and Tassadar and Jacen were nearly knocked off their feet into the trough. Before their eyes, a wide swath of ruptured ground fell away and a pair of massive legs and wide, hoofed feet burst from below. The limbs scrabbled for purchase on the sides of the depression, and an angular head burst up between them, showering the fleeing soldiers with fist-sized rocks.
The creature that tore itself from the ground was massive, easily as tall as a mature Rancor and far more massive. Its four muscular legs, each thicker than two men, supported a squat body of thick hide and chitinous plate. Atop this mass was the creature’s head, a huge, flattened barrel that seemed to serve as little more than a pivot for the pair of meters-long bone scythes that flanked it. The mind Jacen perceived within its hardened skull was animalistic and chaotic, impossible to reach with the calming influence of the Force. The fire that Kerrigan instilled in all her minions both sheltered it and drove it towards oblivion.
The Jedi ignited his lightsaber. The burst of light and sound drew the creature’s attention, allowing the soldiers who had escaped the shower of debris more time to flee. Slowly, it pulled itself from its hole and planted its front feet on the ridge to Jacen’s either side. He watched its ponderous movements and tensed himself, waiting for the thing to try and bring the massive hooves down upon him.
There was a twang of tendons, and the creature’s outstretched scythes swung together on back-slung jaws. The sudden movement caught Jacen off-guard, but before could make a move to escape the double guillotine, a blow to his back sent Jacen tumbling down into the trough, directly under the titan. As he slid through dislodged gravel, Jacen heard the blades clash together uselessly.
Slamming his foot onto a jut of rock, Jacen stopped is descent at the edge of the hole the creature above him had created and pushed himself to his knees. Looking back, he saw Tassadar standing on the ridge where he had been, just beyond the beast’s withdrawing mandibles.
“Its knees!” Tassadar called, just as the creature swept a leg across the ridge at the Protoss, unleashing a wave of dust and earth. The high templar seemed to simply vanish a moment before the blow reached him, but Jacen didn’t waste a moment to try and find him again. He leapt to his feet and focused on the beast’s hind legs, perched centimeters from the pit’s edge.
In a moment he was next to one, and his blade slashed into the leg at the joint, above the protective growths that etched up from its hoof. The lightsaber punched through its hide, but its progress was not easy, and Jacen was only able to inflict a shallow gash before the beast drew the injured leg up and then smashed it down, trying to the squash the interloper. Jacen avoid the foot, but the shock of its impact against the ground sent him sprawling.
Lances and darts of fiery light splashed against the creature’s body and neck from several directions. The outer layers of its hide boiled and charred, but the biological war machine shrugged off the blows, turning its attention towards the scattered ring of soldiers that surrounded it. With unerring speed, it stomped towards a knot of three and swung its head down upon them. Its blades slashed into the soldiers, and Jacen heard their screams as he pushed himself from the silt.
Before he could even find his footing, the creature was back on top of him, intent upon a group of Allied soldiers on the other side of the depression. A massive hoof came down upon Jacen, but he anticipated the movement and rolled to the side. The creature lumbered past and Jacen rose once more.
He watched a Starfleet officer lash across one of its forelegs with his phaser. The beast shuddered, but the blast did not stop it from crushing the hapless man and clench another between its jaws.
Tassadar was right about its knees, Jacen knew, but the Allied soldiers lacked the firepower and cohesion to bypass its dense hide. His blade might work, but he doubted he’d survive many more forays beneath the beast’s crushing feet.
The titan flailed at another retreating officer, knocking a large rock from the ridge into the air. Jacen side-stepped the missile, and promptly had to lean forward to stop himself from falling backwards into the pit left by the creature’s emergence. Glancing down, he saw that the hole was quite deep, despite the mounds of debris knocked into it in the war beast’s swath.
A desperate cry of pain pulled Jacen back to the battle.
“Pull back!” Jacen ordered as loudly as he could. “Stop shooting it!”
The fire from the remaining soldiers petered out as they hurriedly complied with the Jedi’s command. The Zerg monstrosity noted the withdrawal, and made to pursue the closest pair of humanoids, put it ground to a halt when a large rock bounced off the base of its right blade.
Still standing at the brink, Jacen telekinetically wrenched another stone from the rubble and flung it at the creature’s head, waving his lightsaber in its direction as cast around for the new attacker. As he had hoped, the beast fixated on Jacen and lumbered straight at him, its pincer-head waggling up and down in anticipation.
The creature was almost within arm’s reach before Jacen moved again. It brought its head upon him, and the Jedi caught a glimpse of tiny, blank eyes deeply ensconced within it before he leapt backwards, somersaulting backwards into the air. The beast followed with significantly less grace. The ground in its path fell away, and it plummeted headlong into the pit with such force that it flipped onto its back before dropping the few meters to the hole’s clogged bottom.
Jacen alighted on the far side, but the force of the beast’s fall knocked the ground beneath him into the widening depression and he found himself being propelled towards a quartet of powerful, flailing legs that now filled its bottom. He jumped again, this time landing on the beast’s up-turned belly. It seemed not to sense the impact through its dense hide, and continued to pound at the air aimlessly with its legs. Steadying himself, Jacen marveled at what he sensed from the creature. Even its compromised state, he could sense no animal fear or drive for preservation. It desired only to fight and destroy, to satisfy the hunger that the Swarm instilled in all its beings.
The Jedi felt disgust bubble up within him. This thing was a true monstrosity, an aberration of life. Nothing would benefit from its continued existence save its equally perverted master. Staring down at the thing’s blood-stained mandibles, pressed by its own mass against the ground, he felt a sudden compulsion to slay the thing. Not just to eliminate it as a threat, but erase it from existence entirely.
Hatred and revenge are the surest paths to the Dark Side.
The mantra, one of many pounded into him during his youth, crept into his mind unbidden, and his heart slowed.
Needless killing is not the Jedi way. Destroy only when you must, and always with a mind that which you silence.
Jacen lowered his blade. The creature was thoroughly stuck. Killing it now would accomplish nothing, even if was but a thing of evil.
“Jedi Solo!”
He looked up at the edges of the pit. Several soldiers from his squad were crowded there, peering at the incapacitated titan warily.
“I’m all right,” he replied. Jacen took a last look at the struggling creature and then made from the steep wall of the depression, careful to avoid the thing’s thrashing legs.
Reaching the top, Jacen wiped dust and sweat from his face and inspected the survivors. They all seemed to be uninjured, but the surprise attack had obviously taken a toll. The empty space in their formation was a blatant-enough indicator of that.
“The others?”
“We lost five, sir,” an Alliance marine reported. A few of the others glanced at the outcropping where the Zerg’s first group of victims had been caught. “None of them made it.”
“And Tassadar?”
“I am uninjured.” The Protoss appeared from beyond the ridge, his dark cloak spattered with dust. He paused to look down at the fallen titan. “You did well, Solo. Ultralisks are formidable foes. Kerrigan has crafted her fortifications carefully, if she can hide such a beast so well.”
Jacen nodded shortly.
“We should keep moving.”
“Indeed. The Zerg that located our craft have begun to scale the ridge, and their numbers are growing.”
Jacen turned to face the main mountain face in the distance, but as he did, a new burst of premonition made him focus on the pit again. As he did, his vision was filled by the barbed frame of a leaping Zergling, its jaws wide and its claws splayed. Jacen’s lightsaber burst to life in an instant and he bisected the vicious thing, side-stepping its severed limbs as they sailed past. Tassadar bristled and the soldiers hurriedly aimed their weapons, but two more of the creatures were already upon them. Jacen slew another before it could even clear the pit, but the other leapt onto solid ground and threw itself at a hapless Starfleet officer standing less than a meter away.
The woman tried to get a bead on it with her phaser, but the weapon was barely raised when the quadruped knocked her to the ground. It arched its slimy frame, ready to tear into the woman’s flesh with tooth and claw, but the report of blaster rifle sounded from across the depression and the Zergling rolled onto its side, back shattered and smoking.
Burrowing their way out from underneath where the Ultralisk lay, more Zerglings appeared, taking advantage of the racket of the larger Zerg’s struggles to clamber up the shifting slopes unnoticed. The other soldiers opened up on the new attackers, and half a dozen of the beast rolled back into the pit, waylaying still others who were vying to emerge.
Jacen pulled the fallen officer to her feet and then gestured towards the direction of the first shot.
“Come on!”
The seven skirted around the edge of the depression, firing intermittent bursts into the hole as more Zerglings showed their malformed heads. Additional fire came from the other side; even in the dimming light, it was easy for Jacen to see where it was coming from. The Master Chief stood with one leg on a cracked shelf of rock, using his knee to help aim his weapon, an Imperial-made heavy blaster repeater, as he swept the Zerg hole. A trio of Allied personnel were still hurrying up the slope behind him.
The two groups met the Chief at the same time.
“Rig!” the Spartan demanded.
A soldier unclipped a phaser pistol from his belt and tossed it to his superior. The weapon’s small handle display was blank, and all but one of its buttons had been removed. The Chief jabbed the remaining control, and immediately it began to emit a high-pitched whine. He took aim and lobbed the jury-rigged phaser into the pit.
“Move it!”
As one, the Chief, Jacen, and the rest broke from the lip and ran for the long crest of the ridge. Behind them, the whine escalated into a screech, and then terminated in a resounding boom. Jacen squinted against the glare of the overloaded phaser and looked over his shoulder. Nothing followed them from the blackened crater.
“Almost as good as an actual incendiary,” the Chief said to himself. “Wish I had more of them.”
“Master Chief!” Jacen called, pulling alongside him.
“Solo,” he replied, slowing slightly. Behind them, Tassadar and the two squads did as best they could to keep pace and maintain their footing on the uneven terrain.
“Where are the others?”
“Zerg anti-air forced my shuttle to find an LZ short of the target zone. It was hot. I lost most of my squad, and the rest of us had to double-back on to this ridge to escape our pursuers. We still have at least twenty Zerg tailing us.”
“The same thing happened to my shuttle,” Jacen said. “We all made it out alive, but that creature in the pit came up from the ground when we reached the top of the ridge.”
The Chief nodded curtly. “The Tassadar’s intel was good. This place is honeycombed with tunnels and ambush holes.”
“What of the other units?” Tassadar asked from a few paces behind.
“Unknown. Zerg jamming intensified as soon as we began our approach. I know my unit lost at least two shuttles before we reached the mountain. Hopefully, the others made it to the target zone and are holding, or dropped early and are converging. I haven’t been able to contact Beta or Gamma since touchdown.”
“The second Cerebrate still lives,” Tassadar said. “I can still sense its mind.”
“Then we’d better hope Beta and Gamma are still operational, too.”
Jacen suppressed a grimace. He had seen his share of combat, but that had not prepared for the rate casualties were increasing. He had known all along that this might be a suicide mission, but that knowledge hadn’t really begun to sink in until the last few minutes. A Jedi was not supposed to fear death; it was but to become one with the Force, a new state of being. Nevertheless, the mounting agitation of those around him and his own, increasingly unrestrained emotions were wearing at his training.
There was a roar overhead, and an X-Wing shot over them from the direction of the main peak. The group turned to watch as it swung low over the ridge, and then peppered the lower face of one of the slopes with its quartet of laser cannons. There was a distant burst of screeching and howling, and dozens of minute forms began to tumble down the steep face. Several of the soldiers in the group loosed a weak cheer, but it was cut short as another volley of sound boomed from the air above Kilimanjaro.
Jacen could make out the form of an Alliance Y-Wing shuddering as it moved along the same trajectory that the X-Wing had taken. It was buffeted by a continual chain of violent explosions, some of which momentarily blocked it from view. The Jedi didn’t need to wonder what was assailing it; the even smaller forms of three bat-like Scourges streaked into view as the Y-Wing approached. The starfighter attempted to execute a sharp banking turn, but the evasive maneuver merely allowed the Zerg minions to slam directly into the ship’s belly. The Y-Wing crumpled immediately under the onslaught, and its wreckage dove straight down into one of the shallow crevasses that lined the mountainside.
The Chief slowed to a stop as the crash site burned in the distance.
“Air support can’t keep them off of us forever. We need to get to that mountain. Now, double-time! And keep an eye on the ground. They’re just as likely to come from below as above.”
None of the others raised a voice of objection, and soon they were running again up the increasingly-steep ridge. Before them, Kilimanjaro loomed ever higher beneath the blackening sky.
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The trek did not take long, but by the time they left the top of the ridge for a wide ravine that cut into the mountain’s main peak, the sky had dimmed to a muddy, deep gray. The gathering twilight had seen only a minor skirmish with a patrol of Zerglings, but the relative ease of their progress seemed to unsettle Jacen and the Chief. Either Allied air cover was more effective than any of them had thought at keeping mountain’s defenders at bay, or Kerrigan was holding back. Surely, she knew that the intruders had reached the walls of her fortress, and yet they were not being overwhelmed by endless waves of Zerg both knew were lurking on all sides.
Passing by a Starfleet shuttle that had crashed at the mouth of the ravine, mercifully free of corpses, the group moved cautiously between towering walls of rock. The Chief indicated that they should all be as silent as possible, but there was little need. Each was far too occupied scanning the barren walls and listening past the distant sounds of laserfire to talk. Jacen sensed life up ahead, but his senses became cloudier with every step they took towards the mountains heart, and he could not tell if they beings he felt were friend or foe. He cast a questioning look at Tassadar, but the templar kept his eyes straight ahead and his cloak wrapped close.
At length, the officer the Chief has saved waved him close and indicated to her tricorder.
“Sir, the target zone is just ahead, beyond that jut of rock,” she whispered, indicating to a rounded, nearly vertical face of dull stone that narrowed the ravine’s floor and blocked their view.
The target zone, chosen by Tassadar before the mission had commenced, was the most likely point of entry into the mountain, an organic sphincter visible from orbital scans. If any of the other shuttle crews had survived, they would have converged on the structure.
There had been no sign of life, human or otherwise, since they had left the ridge, but Jacen noticed indentations on a patch of sand that ran up to the narrow gap.
“Footprints,” he said. “Humanoid.”
“Let’s go then,” an Alliance marine urged, glancing over his shoulder at the empty pass. He started forward, but Tassadar held out an arm.
“Wait.”
The alien moved to the side of the ravine, where the rock bowed out into their path. He scanned the surface, and then kneeled, his eyes undulating. A long finger brushed a small gouge on the base of the formation. Tassadar moved his hand up the smooth surface a meter, and then turned his gaze up along its rapidly-rising crest. Other marks marred the stone at random internals, some barely-visible scratches, others deep and wide.
“There is another path here,” he said softly. “Older, and less obvious.”
“Up that?” the Chief asked, following the templar’s gaze. The slope steep and relatively smooth, but it was far more gradual than the bowed face further along.
“I believe that this is the better way,” Tassadar replied, already testing the surface with a foot. “The lower course feels like a trap.”
The Chief looked between the templar and the pass in silence, turning the stock of his rifle over in his hands.
“I agree, Chief,” Jacen said. “There’s something wrong about this all of this. If we can approach in a way Kerrigan might not expect, we should.”
The Spartan considered Jacen for a moment longer, and then hefted his weapon onto his back, where magnetic clamps held it fast.
“Let’s make this quick, then. After the Protoss, Solo.”
Jacen turned to see that Tassadar was already making his way up the rounded face, carefully inserting his huge feet into the claw marks that had drawn his notice. The others shouldered or clipped their weapons and followed suit, and soon the opening of the ravine was empty once more.
After a few dozen meters, the slope came to narrow crack in the wall of the ravine itself and leveled off, allowing the party to slide in with their feet on even ground. The gap was so narrow that Tassadar was barely able to slide through with his back to the wall, but he persevered. Jacen noticed that the Protoss scanned the walls of the space constantly and intently as he moved, picking up on every minute scratch and cleft. More, it seemed as though he was looking beyond the rock, peering into the depths of the mountain. He didn’t have to ask what was preoccupying the templar; there was a power close at hand, as dark as the sky above.
The gap opened onto another sloping path, sided to the left by a vertical wall of rock and to the right by a sharp drop into the center of the ravine. Careful not to stray too close, Jacen peered down over the edge, but he saw nothing more than another stretch of lifeless sand and stone. Nevertheless, Tassadar remained stiff and wary, and silence hung heavily over the others.
Their narrow path inclined upwards sharply not long after the pass, widening into a ledge large enough to accommodate all of them. Beyond the far lip of the open area, Jacen perceived the end of the larger ravine, a convergence of the two steep walls that tapered down out of sight to the formation’s floor. Wind echoed through the expanse from above, but no other sounds reached their high path.
“We should hear the others by now,” an Allied soldier whispered. “And where are the fighters?”
“Cut the chatter,” the Master Chief ordered, but he eased the rifle down from his back. The others followed suit.
Tassadar took a few steps onto the ledge, but rather than making for the other side, he stop at a large alcove in the rock. It was less than a meter deep, but the heap of large stones at its back indicated that it had once gone much deeper.
The high templar pressed a huge hand against one of the boulders, and his eyes slipped shut. Jacen felt energy crackle between the Protoss and the mountain, and the hairs on his back stood on end.
“Here,” Tassadar muttered. “There is a path here.”
“I thought you said that the main entrance was our best,” the Chief said, moving alongside him.
“I could not perceive this way before. We were too far. I am not certain…”
Tassadar withdrew suddenly from the rock and his eyes flashed open. He brought his hands to his head, as if racked by a sudden pain, but when Jacen approached, he waved him off.
“No. I just felt… this is the way. It is an old tunnel. It should be safe, for a time.”
“And what about the other strike teams?” Jacen asked.
The Chief looked from one to the other, and then back at the rubble-clogged indentation. “If any made it to the mountain, they should be close by, in the ravine.”
He turned to one of the Starfleet officers who was waiting behind them. “Can your phaser penetrate this?”
She looked at the alcove, and then flipped open her tricorder. “I’ll need a moment to calibrate it if you want a stable shaft, but yes, I think so.”
“Do it.”
The officer immediately began to scan the surface, and the Chief turned back to Jacen.
“Take two men and continue down the ravine. If you find the other units, contact them and guide them back up here. I’m taking the rest in as soon as the debris is clear. Follow us in with as many men as you can locate.”
Jacen spared another glance at Tassadar, who was now leaning against the ravine wall with a hand clasped to his forehead, and then gestured to a pair of the soldiers, who fell in behind him.
They did not have to walk far. As soon as the three came to the ledge’s far lip, a wave of dread and revulsion washed over him.
From his vantage point, nearly twenty meters up the side of the ravine, he could see the entirety of the sheltered valley that made up the formation’s terminus. The path on which he stood did continue on, narrowing as it wound down to the ravine floor until it ended just short of the flattened back face. The lower of half of this face was dominated by an enormous structure, one Jacen recognized from long-range orbital shots of the entry point Tassadar had picked out for them. A lens twelve meters in diameter, the portal was tethered to the mountainside by a tangled fusion of blackened rock and livid, organic growth. A shell of gray bone and purplish plating covered the lens itself, giving the structure the appearance of a great, burrowing beetle lodged in the rock. Jacen knew that that might actually be close to the truth; the building-creature probably extended deep into the mountain, perhaps constituting most of the interior of Kerrigan’s fortress.
The open space before the biological construct had once been covered by the enveloping Zerg creep, sustenance for the menagerie of other growths that had flanked the entryway, but much of the living surface had been burned away, and the lesser structures with it. Only meters from the gutted bases of anti-air appendages, a trio of shuttlecraft sat on scorched rock. The hatches of the vessels were wide open, but Jacen saw no movement within them, or anywhere in the valley.
One of the soldiers the Jedi had chosen to accompany him choked back a gasp of horror.
Fragments of humanoid figures covered the valley floor. What Jacen had first assumed to be carbon scoring from the Allied incursion was actually a thick layer of dark blood and ichor, lit in flickering bursts by a collapsed Starfleet field beacon. Strewn throughout were fragments of humanoid forms – human, Klingon, Cardassian, Wookiee, and others wholly unrecognizable – stuck to the rock walls, dashed against the shuttles, or mounded in wet heaps before the sealed gate. The corpses of a handful of Zerg warriors lay sprawled to one side, but the vast majority of the carnage was humanoid in origin.
Jacen had seen slaughter in the Republica’s cargo bays, but this transcended even that savagery, violence brutal and indiscriminate, but quick. The scope of the death laid out below him was calculated and malicious. Butchery.
The Chief’s assessment, seen through the magnification and illumination his visor afforded him, was the same.
“Forty, at least,” he said slowly, turning away from the grisly spectacle. “It doesn’t even look like they had a chance to fight back.”
“They lie in wait,” Tassadar said softly. He hadn’t moved from the ravine wall. “We are at the heart of the Swarm. They need not make themselves know until it is their time to strike. Their prey comes to them, and cannot escape. There is need for efficiency or speed then. The beasts burst free, and the feeding begins. They, upon flesh and blood. She, upon fear, and death itself.”
“How?” Jacen sunk onto the lip, his back to the scene below. “How are we still alive? That creature back on the ridge attacked us. She must have realized that we were here, too. Why has she not sprung a trap on us?”
Tassadar let his hand fall from his face, and caught Jacen’s eyes with his own, unblinking orbs.
“Surely you have realized by now, Jedi. Our lives ended as soon as those ships reached this blackened plain. We still breathe only because she wills it. The Queen of Blades is drawing us in, deeper into a trap from which she thinks there is no escape. She wants me. She needs me to come closer.”
Tassadar paused. Jacen felt his fists clench.
“You live only because you are with me, and she has not seen fit yet to prune you from me.”
Slowly, Jacen rose from the rock, his gaze fixed on the Protoss. Tassadar did not quaver under his stare, instead returning it with equal intensity.
“You knew,” he whispered. “You knew from the start that she would let you come here to face her.”
“As did you,” Tassadar replied. “I made it no secret that the only hope, the entire purpose of this gambit, was for me to reach Kerrigan.”
“But then why them?” The words came out harsher and louder than Jacen knew was wise, but he suddenly did not care. “Why let all those men and women die? And the fleet! Thousands up there are dead, are still dying, and for nothing!”
Calm yourself, young one. Anger is not the path.
The admonition from his training echoed in his head, but it seemed far away, and was easily pushed aside. All Jacen could think about were the bodies strewn below. And his father, and Chewbacca.
Laura.
“Not for nothing,” Tassadar said, undaunted by the Jedi’s apparent agitation.
Jacen advanced on Tassadar, his lightsaber pommel clenched in white knuckles. The Allied soldiers around them back away uneasily.
“Then for what, Tassadar? Why not come alone? If she wants to face you so badly, she would have let you. The fleet could have held back, taken more time to plan and regroup, instead of throwing itself blindly upon her fortress, one you knew it could not break!”
“You do not know the Queen as I do, Solo. You have not touched her mind as I have. This, all of this, is a game. Her armies, the worlds she has taken, your resistance, is meaningless to her. She believes herself invincible. Even I, the destroyer of her predecessor, am but a curiosity in her eyes. Something to be toyed with before being discarded. I do not know why she was so intent upon me coming here, but I had to, before her fancies changed and my only chance to bring her to a reckoning was lost.”
“But the rest of us? The Fleet! What if you fail?”
“Even games have rules, Solo. I must meet Kerrigan on my terms, and I can only do that if she is occupied elsewhere. Were I simply to surrender myself to her, the game would be forfeit. She would cow me from afar, overwhelm me with her minions and strip me of my power. Only then would I be brought before her, spent and powerless. This was the only way.”
Jacen shook his head, disbelieving. All of their planning, training, hoping. It had all been false. Fodder for the Zerg Queen’s game. And Tassadar had delivered them to her. He had trusted the high templar, fought alongside him, even saved him. For that, he, and Enterprise’s crew, everyone who had depended upon the Tassadar’s knowledge and power had been thrown away.
The rock behind Tassadar’s head trembled, and a minute fissure began to cut through its dusty surface. Jacen’s fingers edged haltingly towards the activation stud of his lightsaber. He felt power welling up from within, not the serene strength of the Light, but something far more base. He had touched that hidden might before in his darkest hours, but now the will that normally held it back quavered, somehow weakened.
Tassadar did not retreat or cower, or even avert his gaze.
“You must trust my judgment now, Solo. Their sacrifice will not be for nothing. I will give everything I am to ensure that is so. But first, I must reach the Queen.”
Jacen was barely listening. He took another step forward and raised his sword arm, leveling it straight at the Protoss. His thumb found his saber’s activation stud.
A heavy hand fell on his shoulder. Jacen shrugged it off, but it would not budge. When he tried again, it yanked him back and around, nearly taking him off of his feet. Anger burst over Jacen, and green fire erupted in his right hand.
The Master Chief held him fast at arm’s length. Jacen raised his lit sword with his free arm, but the Spartan did not flinch, and his grip did not weaken. The two stared at each other, and Jacen saw himself reflected in the saber’s light against polished plate, his face contorted with rage.
Breath caught in the Jedi’s throat. He had not seen as much of the Dark Side as some in the Order, but he knew it well enough to see it bubbling up before his eyes.
“Are you really going to use that thing on me, Solo?” the Chief asked, his voice calm and even.
Slowly, Jacen lowered his sword arm, but he did not let the searing beam collapse.
“What’s done is done. Were in this fight now, and we have our orders. Those men did their job. Now we’ve got to do ours.”
“Sir!” The Starfleet officer by the alcove by the alcove flipped her tricorder shut.
The Chief acknowledged her with a nod, and then turned back to Jacen.
“Are you with us?”
Jacen stared at his clouded reflection for a moment longer, and then he released the stud of his weapon, closing it with a hiss.
“I am.”
The Spartan’s helmet dipped forward, and Jacen barely made out a whisper.
“Mourning will wait.”
The Chief released the Jedi, moving to direct the debris removal without another word. As the other soldiers moved away from the ravine wall, Jacen felt as though he was coming out of a stupor. Looking down at his unlit saber, he could barely believe that it had been active only a few moments before. And yet, the anger had been so real, so powerful…
Tassadar walked past him, and Jacen felt it flare anew, but he quickly pushed back the emotion. He still did not understand or accept the Protoss’ actions, but that… that was not the way.
“I’m sorry,” he managed, joining the alien at the Chief’s side. “I should not have done that.”
“It is this place,” Tassadar replied without facing the human. “Her corruption taints the very air here. It is all I can do to withstand it.”
He was silent as the Starfleet officer began to calibrate her phaser, but before Jacen could reply, Tassadar turned slightly towards him.
“This is not the first time I have sacrificed valiant warriors in my pursuit of the Zerg. I have a great deal to atone for, far more than you know. The destruction of Swarm is the only thing that can bring me penance now, and I am not sure even that is enough. Perhaps I have been too focused on my goal, too willing to throw the lives of others away for it. I once fought to protect my people, but now I fear that I fight only for revenge, not for the Protoss, but for the lengths that the Swarm has pushed me to.”
“Repress your anger if you feel you must, but I do not begrudge you for it. My life outside of this feud ended long ago, and I have been far too reckless for it. Too secretive. It is time that it ended. Kerrigan will die this night. After that, my life is no longer relevant.”
A lance of red light shot from the officer’s phaser into the alcove. Heat and energy radiated from the point of impact across the mound of boulders, and they began to glow as the weapon pumped still more energy into the rock.
Far below, the gore-strewn floor of the ravine began to tremble, and dozens of small rifts formed on its surface. One after another, claws and thorny feet burst through the sodden sand and fractured rock, and the seemingly-solid ground dissolved into a churning mass of silt and scrabbling bodies. The first Zerglings to pull themselves free immediately pelted for the far end of the raised path, chattering as they went. Others simply threw themselves at the ravine wall, clawing at the solid rock for leverage.
“Weapons free! Contacts below!” the Chief called, and the other soldiers rushed to kneel at the brink of the ledge.
“How long?” he demanded of the Starfleet officer.
“A few more seconds!” The first boulders had begun to melt away under the onslaught, matter vanishing with heat into the twilight air.
“Fire!”
Blaster bolts and phaser beams swept over the approaching Zerglings, sending them spinning off the path into the milling masses below. The valley was already filled with the vicious quadrupeds, and larger creatures were beginning to pull themselves from the bloody muck. The Chief locked the elongated head of a Hydralisk into the sight if his blaster and depressed the trigger. Four crimson bolts lashed the serpentine monstrosity, shattering its hardened skull beyond recognition.
Jacen had ignited his lightsaber once more, but he kept behind the line of soldiers. Jumping into the fray now would be suicidal, even for him. There were dozens of Zerglings pelting up the narrow path now, and hundreds more waited eagerly to follow them. Concerted fire on the winding ramp was keeping the horde at bay for a moment, but it wouldn’t be long until they figured out other ways to reach their new prey.
“Put a rig on that path!” the Chief shouted, and one of his soldiers produced another jury-rigged phaser. He lobbed it ten meters down the narrow stretch, and everyone on the ledge turned away, covering their heads. The device detonated just as the foremost Zerg warrior reached it, buffeting every living thing in the ravine with noise, heat and blinding light. Only the Chief seemed able to ignore it, shielding the cutting officer as he sprayed fire at Zerglings further up the ravine.
The blast carved a sizeable hole in the rock face, obliterating a section of the path, but the Zerg continued on undaunted, leaping over it or tumbling twenty meters in the attempt.
An Alliance marine screamed and fell onto his back, clutching his face. Jacen fell on one knee at the convulsing man’s side, but before he could find a medical kit, he stopped moving. His hands fell away uselessly, revealing the tail of a bone barb lodged in one eye and a visage of boiled flesh, still being consumed by the acid that had accompanied the missile.
“Hydralisks!” he shouted, reluctantly leaving the man where he had fallen.
“They’re scaling the wall!” the Chief confirmed. He was leaning over the lip, hosing the unseen attackers with fire as fast as his weapon could discharge it. A hail of acid-coated, organic projectiles arced up at him in response, sending spasms of light across his battle suit’s energy shield.
“Fall back! The tunnel’s been cut!”
The last of the boulders had vanished, revealing a narrow passageway that led down into the inky blackness of the mountain, but the first few yards were still glowed red-hot. Urged by the Spartan, the soldiers poured into the gap anyways, gasping as they pressed through the wall of heat the phaser had left.
The crest of a Hydralisk emerged over the lip of the ledge, followed by black, glassy eyes and a snarling, skeletal maw. The Chief pumped three rounds into it, and the creature plummeted back out of sight.
He pivoted on the spot, bringing his rifle to bear on the first Zerglings to reach the overlook, but before he could fire off another shot, Jacen was among them, cleaving free limbs and heads with grim focus.
“Go!” he shouted over his shoulder as he sent another Zergling tumbling over the edge with a blast of telekinetic energy. “I’ll hold them while you get Tassadar into the mountain!”
“I will not have your life on my conscience as well, Solo!” Tassadar rumbled from the entrance to the tunnel. “Come, both of you!”
Neither the Chief nor Jacen was in the mood to argue, and a moment later they had cleared the expanse of still-searing rock. Tassadar was close behind them, but he halted while the tunnel entrance was still in full view. Already, Zerg were bounding down after them, paying little heed to the heat. The Chief picked off two over Tassadar’s shoulder plates, but many more were close on their heels.
“Stand back!” Tassadar bellowed, throwing out his arms and letting his cloak flow free. The fabric rippled with an unseen wind, and arcs of forked light shot from one scaled hand to the other. Jacen looked on in awe. He had never seen the Protoss’ psionic energies unleashed, but he had heard accounts of the templar’s duel with Darth Vader aboard Home One. He sensed power swell within the alien, energies both Light and Dark, and others he could barely perceive, let alone comprehend.
The crisscrossing volley of charge between the templar’s hands quickened and intensified. One of the lead Zerglings leapt for the Protoss, heedless of the web of energy. To Jacen’s eyes, it seemed to simply vanish, and the space it had occupied was swiftly filled by an expanding network of brilliant synapses. Then, with a crack that resonated through the rock and into the Jedi’s very core, Tassadar’s energies burst forward. Jacen brought his arm up to shield his eyes, and the Chief’s visor polarized to its limit.
There was another crack, deeper and more physical, and a series of booms and crashes. Dust and searing air rushed down the tunnel, and then all was quiet.
The flashlight affixed to the side of the Chief’s helmet flicked on, adding to the glow cast by Jacen’s lightsaber. In their combined light, the quality of Tassadar’s work was apparent. Only two meters up the tunnel, and fresh pile of distressed boulders and loose gravel filled the space from floor to ceiling. The Chief cast his light above them, wary of residual deformations in the rock, but the tunnel seemed otherwise intact.
Slowly, Tassadar lowered his arms and turned to face them. His eyes were dimmer than they usually were, half-closed. He took a few tentative steps, swayed, and then caught himself.
“That took more of me than I had hoped,” he said, his words coming slowly. “But I am far from spent. Come, let us catch the others. Our fight is not over.”
The tunnel was barely tall enough for Tassadar to move without stooping and only wide enough to accommodate two of them at a time, but the floor was solid and even, angled steadily downward in a relatively straight course. The walls bore the same gouge-marks as the pass Tassadar had found, and Jacen could only assume the tunnel had been carved by the Zerg when Kerrigan had chosen the mountain as her citadel.
The room in which they found the seven remaining Allied soldiers was a different matter entirely. The tunnel stopped abruptly, opening onto the side of a low-ceilinged, rectangular chamber little wider than the interior of a Starfleet shuttlecraft and twice as long. It was still hewn of the dull stone of the mountain, but it looked more like the interior of a starship than a roughly-cut Zerg hole. The floor and ceiling were perfectly flat and regular, and the walls were carved with blocky, vertical pillars and shot with bands of silvery metal that glinted in the artificial light. A large, empty alcove dominated the far wall, and next to it, the rectangular maw of a door opened onto darkness. Both the door and the alcove were marred by slash marks and signs of deformation, and shards of metal lay scattered on the floor around each.
“Secure, soldier?” the Chief asked, ignoring the sudden abnormality of their surroundings.
“Yes, sir. We haven’t seen or heard anything since we ran in here. What about the ones behind us?”
“The entrance is blocked, but there are probably just as many crawling around down here. Keep your guard up.”
“What is this place?” another soldier asked, carefully keeping his phaser trained on the doorway even as he marveled at the precise geometry of the wall supports.
“This is no Zerg construction,” Tassadar said, genuinely startled by the chamber’s appearance.
Jacen kneeled to pick up a tiny piece of metal that had settled into the dust at his feet. It sparkled in a vaguely crystalline manner as he turned it over on his palm.
“And not a Federation one, either, I’m guessing. It looks too old.”
The Chief didn’t take his hands off his rifle, but he too peered into the room’s perfect corners and regular alcoves.
It almost looks like…
A keening cry echoed from beyond the darkened doorway, and each member of the unit froze, eyes and gunsights locked on the entryway. A new howling joined it, and then another. There was a sound of distant scrabbling, talons on metal or stone, a last, sharp clack, and silence once more. Peripherally, the Chief noticed that both Tassadar and Jacen bored pained expressions.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Psionic backlash,” Tassadar replied, peering up at the flattened ceiling. “Those cries were made by Zerg without guidance, confused and directionless. A Cerebrate has been destroyed.”
Jacen looked at the Chief. “Truul and Worf!”
The Spartan immediately activated his helm transmitter. Zerg interference had made long-range communications impossible for over an hour, but if the Cerebrates contributed to the disruption…
“Beta, do you read?”
Nothing but static.
The Chief switched channels.
“Gamma, are you receiving?”
A series of rapid clicks, and then static again.
“I repeat, Unit Beta, do you…”
Abruptly, the static increased in volume, and a familiar voice materialized from the background noise.
“Damn straight, I copy ya, Sierra! Sounds like you’re half a parsec away, but I copy!”
“What’s your status, beta? Have you reached the secondary?”
“We got there all right, and cleared out just about fifteen seconds ago! Wasn’t a pleasant sight, and we wanted to clear out before the clean-up crew arrived.”
The Chief glanced over at Tassadar. “Confirm, the secondary target has been neutralized?”
There was a burst a static, and something that sound like a like muffled explosion obscured Truul’s voice momentarily.
“…looks like they’re not letting us off so easy after all. But yes, we got it. Gamma and mine got under the damn thing’s anti-air. Don’t know how, but we did. Hard fighting, and both units are down to less than half-strength, but we cleared out the anti-air from the ground and painted up the secondary. That’s where our boys in the air came in. I couldn’t reach ‘em on comms, but the flares we sent up were good enough it looks like. You should see…”
The Chief cut Truul off. “Are Beta and Gamma fully airborne?”
“Affirmative, Sierra. We’ve got the shuttles packed and we’re angling on your vector. The Zerg up here took a hit from the secondary, it looks like, but there are still a hell of a lot of ‘em. As long as we have the squadron, though…”
“Beta, Sierra and Alpha have breached the primary, but we lost most of our units. The target LZ is hot, repeat hot. We had to bypass the main entry vector for a side passage, on the ridge above the ravine floor. Strafe the LZ, repeat, fire it, offload your troops, and follow us in. The way may be still blocked. I repeat, clear the obstruction and follow us in with all available forces. Do you copy?”
There was no reply but static.
The Chief tried the link several more times, and then shook his head.
“Jamming’s resumed.”
“Did it get through?” Jacen asked.
“We can’t wait here to find out.” He turned to the others. “Move on that exit, and stay together! We don’t know what’s in there. Tassadar?”
The Protoss looked off into space, and shook his head at length.
“I can’t be sure where she is. There is another Cerebrate in here as well, and its presence is shielding her.”
“Then we’ll have to bypass it,” the Chief said, checking the capacitors of his blaster. “Or kill it.”
“It lies directly ahead of us, and below.”
“Let’s get moving, then. Praxal, Richardson, you’re on point with me.”
Jacen and Tassadar lagged slightly behind the others as they readied to leave.
“You have something else to say?” the Protoss asked, drawing his cloak tightly around him once more, as if warding off a draft none of the others could feel.
“Tassadar, back there, in the tunnel, and before, I sensed darkness in you, and light. They were at war, as they are in me, sometimes, and yet you controlled them both, used both energies. I know your power is different from the Force, but… how can both exist within you like that?”
The templar stopped to stare down at the human, and a chilling sensation ran up his spine.
“I cannot speak of your Force, Jedi. But I will never claim to control the energies within me. I am but a conduit, open to light and dark, and they flow through to me as they will. They are powers beyond comprehension, and to deny either is to throw everything out of balance. Try to follow only one, if you will. I did once, long ago. But now I take both, ride their conflicting course, guide them toward the path I deem true and hope they follow. Light and dark lend me their power, when it is to be had, but they do not dominate my destiny. I alone can do that.”
Jacen Solo leapt easily from one rocky outcropping to the next on the steep slope. The dry stone and dust beneath his feet crumbled and shifted at his weight, but he steadied himself by throwing out both arms, careful to keep a tight grip on the lightsaber grip clasped in his right hand. When he was sure of his balance, Jacen scanned the bare slope before him, and continued his ascent. The sound of a dozen, trudging pairs of feet kept pace on either side, almost masking the chorus of heavy breathing and jostling equipment that emanated from young Jedi’s companions. The hurried progress of the mixed group of Starfleet and Alliance personnel did not slow even when they came to a shallow trough in the steep slope. They plowed through the thicket of dead vegetation that filled it and scaled the other side, intent on the crest of the rocky face, less than ten meters ahead.
A roar of super-compressed air directed Jacen’s attention skyward. As he glanced at the dark, roiling sky, the green-sided form of an Alliance starfighter streaked overhead. Close behind the A-Wing, which had passed less than a hundred meters above them, half a dozen scaled creatures shot past, their massive, clawed wings beating the air vigorously. Several of the flighted Zerg loosed keening cries, and one discharged a convulsing projectile from the tip of its curved, tail-like body.
Jacen did not turn to see if the Zerg had hit its target. Several of his soldiers had already reached the lip of rocky earth at the slope’s peak, and he hurried to join them. A few long strides brought him there, and he helped push a puffing Starfleet officer over the edge. The run up the slope, although brief, had been exhausting, and Jacen had already been forced to tap into the Force to preserve his stamina.
To his relief, the next being to reach the ridge also appeared to have maintained his strength.
“Tassadar,” he said, extending an arm to help the towering alien onto the lip of gravel and exposed stone. Tassadar accepted the help and heaved his armored bulk up next to the Jedi.
“I am the last,” he intoned, looking down at Jacen without any outward signs of distress. “Is this place secure?”
Jacen nodded. There was another trough just beyond the ridge, and the others had piled into it, their blasters and phaser rifles drawn even as they caught their collective breath.
“We should stop here for a minute. They might not get another chance to rest for a long time.”
“We must not tarry, Solo,” Tassadar replied. “No place on this mountain is safe, and it will not be long until Kerrigan brings the full force of her multitudes against us.”
Jacen glanced at his squad, and then looked back down the sloped they had just scaled. It had been a rough climb, steep and marred by unstable mounds of stone, but they hadn’t encountered a single Zerg warrior during the course of their ascent. The lack of resistance puzzled Jacen; the ridge on which they stood was not part of the main mass of Mount Kilimanjaro – rather, it was a long spine of raised rock that trailed from the main formation to a group of smaller peaks hundreds of meters away – but it’s rough surface was ideal for hiding ambush holes and traps. Tassadar’s pointed face was impassive, but Jacen thought could sense unease from the templar as well.
Far down the slope, Jacen could make out the shuttle that had brought them all to the mountainside. They had been forced into a controlled crash by fire from a Zerg anti-air growth and come to ground well short of their final target, and had hastily abandoned the ship in an attempt to avoid the inevitable clean-up units. No one was left to guard the shuttle. Jacen tried not to think about how little thought had been given to escape from Kerrigan’s fortress, should they succeed.
As the young Jedi watched, the mountain’s guardians finally appeared; from the lifeless, dusty slope, dozens of tiny, inhuman forces suddenly swept over the shuttle. They seemed to come from nowhere, but as Jacen looked on, he noticed a pack of the creatures scrabble from a shaft hidden behind a cairn of stones.
“This place is wormed with their tunnels,” Tassadar warned. “They can emerge from any part of it. We must not linger.”
Jacen nodded, and turned to the others.
“We’re heading out up the ridge. Keep to the rocks as much as you can, and watch out for any…”
His gut clenched. Danger.
He cast about for the source of the abrupt premonition. Then the ground beneath his feet began to tremble.
“Out!” he shouted. “Out of the dip!”
The soldiers threw themselves at the sides of the depression, but before any could clamber out of it fully, its bottom cracked and transformed into a churning pool of rubble. There was another great tremor, and Tassadar and Jacen were nearly knocked off their feet into the trough. Before their eyes, a wide swath of ruptured ground fell away and a pair of massive legs and wide, hoofed feet burst from below. The limbs scrabbled for purchase on the sides of the depression, and an angular head burst up between them, showering the fleeing soldiers with fist-sized rocks.
The creature that tore itself from the ground was massive, easily as tall as a mature Rancor and far more massive. Its four muscular legs, each thicker than two men, supported a squat body of thick hide and chitinous plate. Atop this mass was the creature’s head, a huge, flattened barrel that seemed to serve as little more than a pivot for the pair of meters-long bone scythes that flanked it. The mind Jacen perceived within its hardened skull was animalistic and chaotic, impossible to reach with the calming influence of the Force. The fire that Kerrigan instilled in all her minions both sheltered it and drove it towards oblivion.
The Jedi ignited his lightsaber. The burst of light and sound drew the creature’s attention, allowing the soldiers who had escaped the shower of debris more time to flee. Slowly, it pulled itself from its hole and planted its front feet on the ridge to Jacen’s either side. He watched its ponderous movements and tensed himself, waiting for the thing to try and bring the massive hooves down upon him.
There was a twang of tendons, and the creature’s outstretched scythes swung together on back-slung jaws. The sudden movement caught Jacen off-guard, but before could make a move to escape the double guillotine, a blow to his back sent Jacen tumbling down into the trough, directly under the titan. As he slid through dislodged gravel, Jacen heard the blades clash together uselessly.
Slamming his foot onto a jut of rock, Jacen stopped is descent at the edge of the hole the creature above him had created and pushed himself to his knees. Looking back, he saw Tassadar standing on the ridge where he had been, just beyond the beast’s withdrawing mandibles.
“Its knees!” Tassadar called, just as the creature swept a leg across the ridge at the Protoss, unleashing a wave of dust and earth. The high templar seemed to simply vanish a moment before the blow reached him, but Jacen didn’t waste a moment to try and find him again. He leapt to his feet and focused on the beast’s hind legs, perched centimeters from the pit’s edge.
In a moment he was next to one, and his blade slashed into the leg at the joint, above the protective growths that etched up from its hoof. The lightsaber punched through its hide, but its progress was not easy, and Jacen was only able to inflict a shallow gash before the beast drew the injured leg up and then smashed it down, trying to the squash the interloper. Jacen avoid the foot, but the shock of its impact against the ground sent him sprawling.
Lances and darts of fiery light splashed against the creature’s body and neck from several directions. The outer layers of its hide boiled and charred, but the biological war machine shrugged off the blows, turning its attention towards the scattered ring of soldiers that surrounded it. With unerring speed, it stomped towards a knot of three and swung its head down upon them. Its blades slashed into the soldiers, and Jacen heard their screams as he pushed himself from the silt.
Before he could even find his footing, the creature was back on top of him, intent upon a group of Allied soldiers on the other side of the depression. A massive hoof came down upon Jacen, but he anticipated the movement and rolled to the side. The creature lumbered past and Jacen rose once more.
He watched a Starfleet officer lash across one of its forelegs with his phaser. The beast shuddered, but the blast did not stop it from crushing the hapless man and clench another between its jaws.
Tassadar was right about its knees, Jacen knew, but the Allied soldiers lacked the firepower and cohesion to bypass its dense hide. His blade might work, but he doubted he’d survive many more forays beneath the beast’s crushing feet.
The titan flailed at another retreating officer, knocking a large rock from the ridge into the air. Jacen side-stepped the missile, and promptly had to lean forward to stop himself from falling backwards into the pit left by the creature’s emergence. Glancing down, he saw that the hole was quite deep, despite the mounds of debris knocked into it in the war beast’s swath.
A desperate cry of pain pulled Jacen back to the battle.
“Pull back!” Jacen ordered as loudly as he could. “Stop shooting it!”
The fire from the remaining soldiers petered out as they hurriedly complied with the Jedi’s command. The Zerg monstrosity noted the withdrawal, and made to pursue the closest pair of humanoids, put it ground to a halt when a large rock bounced off the base of its right blade.
Still standing at the brink, Jacen telekinetically wrenched another stone from the rubble and flung it at the creature’s head, waving his lightsaber in its direction as cast around for the new attacker. As he had hoped, the beast fixated on Jacen and lumbered straight at him, its pincer-head waggling up and down in anticipation.
The creature was almost within arm’s reach before Jacen moved again. It brought its head upon him, and the Jedi caught a glimpse of tiny, blank eyes deeply ensconced within it before he leapt backwards, somersaulting backwards into the air. The beast followed with significantly less grace. The ground in its path fell away, and it plummeted headlong into the pit with such force that it flipped onto its back before dropping the few meters to the hole’s clogged bottom.
Jacen alighted on the far side, but the force of the beast’s fall knocked the ground beneath him into the widening depression and he found himself being propelled towards a quartet of powerful, flailing legs that now filled its bottom. He jumped again, this time landing on the beast’s up-turned belly. It seemed not to sense the impact through its dense hide, and continued to pound at the air aimlessly with its legs. Steadying himself, Jacen marveled at what he sensed from the creature. Even its compromised state, he could sense no animal fear or drive for preservation. It desired only to fight and destroy, to satisfy the hunger that the Swarm instilled in all its beings.
The Jedi felt disgust bubble up within him. This thing was a true monstrosity, an aberration of life. Nothing would benefit from its continued existence save its equally perverted master. Staring down at the thing’s blood-stained mandibles, pressed by its own mass against the ground, he felt a sudden compulsion to slay the thing. Not just to eliminate it as a threat, but erase it from existence entirely.
Hatred and revenge are the surest paths to the Dark Side.
The mantra, one of many pounded into him during his youth, crept into his mind unbidden, and his heart slowed.
Needless killing is not the Jedi way. Destroy only when you must, and always with a mind that which you silence.
Jacen lowered his blade. The creature was thoroughly stuck. Killing it now would accomplish nothing, even if was but a thing of evil.
“Jedi Solo!”
He looked up at the edges of the pit. Several soldiers from his squad were crowded there, peering at the incapacitated titan warily.
“I’m all right,” he replied. Jacen took a last look at the struggling creature and then made from the steep wall of the depression, careful to avoid the thing’s thrashing legs.
Reaching the top, Jacen wiped dust and sweat from his face and inspected the survivors. They all seemed to be uninjured, but the surprise attack had obviously taken a toll. The empty space in their formation was a blatant-enough indicator of that.
“The others?”
“We lost five, sir,” an Alliance marine reported. A few of the others glanced at the outcropping where the Zerg’s first group of victims had been caught. “None of them made it.”
“And Tassadar?”
“I am uninjured.” The Protoss appeared from beyond the ridge, his dark cloak spattered with dust. He paused to look down at the fallen titan. “You did well, Solo. Ultralisks are formidable foes. Kerrigan has crafted her fortifications carefully, if she can hide such a beast so well.”
Jacen nodded shortly.
“We should keep moving.”
“Indeed. The Zerg that located our craft have begun to scale the ridge, and their numbers are growing.”
Jacen turned to face the main mountain face in the distance, but as he did, a new burst of premonition made him focus on the pit again. As he did, his vision was filled by the barbed frame of a leaping Zergling, its jaws wide and its claws splayed. Jacen’s lightsaber burst to life in an instant and he bisected the vicious thing, side-stepping its severed limbs as they sailed past. Tassadar bristled and the soldiers hurriedly aimed their weapons, but two more of the creatures were already upon them. Jacen slew another before it could even clear the pit, but the other leapt onto solid ground and threw itself at a hapless Starfleet officer standing less than a meter away.
The woman tried to get a bead on it with her phaser, but the weapon was barely raised when the quadruped knocked her to the ground. It arched its slimy frame, ready to tear into the woman’s flesh with tooth and claw, but the report of blaster rifle sounded from across the depression and the Zergling rolled onto its side, back shattered and smoking.
Burrowing their way out from underneath where the Ultralisk lay, more Zerglings appeared, taking advantage of the racket of the larger Zerg’s struggles to clamber up the shifting slopes unnoticed. The other soldiers opened up on the new attackers, and half a dozen of the beast rolled back into the pit, waylaying still others who were vying to emerge.
Jacen pulled the fallen officer to her feet and then gestured towards the direction of the first shot.
“Come on!”
The seven skirted around the edge of the depression, firing intermittent bursts into the hole as more Zerglings showed their malformed heads. Additional fire came from the other side; even in the dimming light, it was easy for Jacen to see where it was coming from. The Master Chief stood with one leg on a cracked shelf of rock, using his knee to help aim his weapon, an Imperial-made heavy blaster repeater, as he swept the Zerg hole. A trio of Allied personnel were still hurrying up the slope behind him.
The two groups met the Chief at the same time.
“Rig!” the Spartan demanded.
A soldier unclipped a phaser pistol from his belt and tossed it to his superior. The weapon’s small handle display was blank, and all but one of its buttons had been removed. The Chief jabbed the remaining control, and immediately it began to emit a high-pitched whine. He took aim and lobbed the jury-rigged phaser into the pit.
“Move it!”
As one, the Chief, Jacen, and the rest broke from the lip and ran for the long crest of the ridge. Behind them, the whine escalated into a screech, and then terminated in a resounding boom. Jacen squinted against the glare of the overloaded phaser and looked over his shoulder. Nothing followed them from the blackened crater.
“Almost as good as an actual incendiary,” the Chief said to himself. “Wish I had more of them.”
“Master Chief!” Jacen called, pulling alongside him.
“Solo,” he replied, slowing slightly. Behind them, Tassadar and the two squads did as best they could to keep pace and maintain their footing on the uneven terrain.
“Where are the others?”
“Zerg anti-air forced my shuttle to find an LZ short of the target zone. It was hot. I lost most of my squad, and the rest of us had to double-back on to this ridge to escape our pursuers. We still have at least twenty Zerg tailing us.”
“The same thing happened to my shuttle,” Jacen said. “We all made it out alive, but that creature in the pit came up from the ground when we reached the top of the ridge.”
The Chief nodded curtly. “The Tassadar’s intel was good. This place is honeycombed with tunnels and ambush holes.”
“What of the other units?” Tassadar asked from a few paces behind.
“Unknown. Zerg jamming intensified as soon as we began our approach. I know my unit lost at least two shuttles before we reached the mountain. Hopefully, the others made it to the target zone and are holding, or dropped early and are converging. I haven’t been able to contact Beta or Gamma since touchdown.”
“The second Cerebrate still lives,” Tassadar said. “I can still sense its mind.”
“Then we’d better hope Beta and Gamma are still operational, too.”
Jacen suppressed a grimace. He had seen his share of combat, but that had not prepared for the rate casualties were increasing. He had known all along that this might be a suicide mission, but that knowledge hadn’t really begun to sink in until the last few minutes. A Jedi was not supposed to fear death; it was but to become one with the Force, a new state of being. Nevertheless, the mounting agitation of those around him and his own, increasingly unrestrained emotions were wearing at his training.
There was a roar overhead, and an X-Wing shot over them from the direction of the main peak. The group turned to watch as it swung low over the ridge, and then peppered the lower face of one of the slopes with its quartet of laser cannons. There was a distant burst of screeching and howling, and dozens of minute forms began to tumble down the steep face. Several of the soldiers in the group loosed a weak cheer, but it was cut short as another volley of sound boomed from the air above Kilimanjaro.
Jacen could make out the form of an Alliance Y-Wing shuddering as it moved along the same trajectory that the X-Wing had taken. It was buffeted by a continual chain of violent explosions, some of which momentarily blocked it from view. The Jedi didn’t need to wonder what was assailing it; the even smaller forms of three bat-like Scourges streaked into view as the Y-Wing approached. The starfighter attempted to execute a sharp banking turn, but the evasive maneuver merely allowed the Zerg minions to slam directly into the ship’s belly. The Y-Wing crumpled immediately under the onslaught, and its wreckage dove straight down into one of the shallow crevasses that lined the mountainside.
The Chief slowed to a stop as the crash site burned in the distance.
“Air support can’t keep them off of us forever. We need to get to that mountain. Now, double-time! And keep an eye on the ground. They’re just as likely to come from below as above.”
None of the others raised a voice of objection, and soon they were running again up the increasingly-steep ridge. Before them, Kilimanjaro loomed ever higher beneath the blackening sky.
-----------------------------------------------------
The trek did not take long, but by the time they left the top of the ridge for a wide ravine that cut into the mountain’s main peak, the sky had dimmed to a muddy, deep gray. The gathering twilight had seen only a minor skirmish with a patrol of Zerglings, but the relative ease of their progress seemed to unsettle Jacen and the Chief. Either Allied air cover was more effective than any of them had thought at keeping mountain’s defenders at bay, or Kerrigan was holding back. Surely, she knew that the intruders had reached the walls of her fortress, and yet they were not being overwhelmed by endless waves of Zerg both knew were lurking on all sides.
Passing by a Starfleet shuttle that had crashed at the mouth of the ravine, mercifully free of corpses, the group moved cautiously between towering walls of rock. The Chief indicated that they should all be as silent as possible, but there was little need. Each was far too occupied scanning the barren walls and listening past the distant sounds of laserfire to talk. Jacen sensed life up ahead, but his senses became cloudier with every step they took towards the mountains heart, and he could not tell if they beings he felt were friend or foe. He cast a questioning look at Tassadar, but the templar kept his eyes straight ahead and his cloak wrapped close.
At length, the officer the Chief has saved waved him close and indicated to her tricorder.
“Sir, the target zone is just ahead, beyond that jut of rock,” she whispered, indicating to a rounded, nearly vertical face of dull stone that narrowed the ravine’s floor and blocked their view.
The target zone, chosen by Tassadar before the mission had commenced, was the most likely point of entry into the mountain, an organic sphincter visible from orbital scans. If any of the other shuttle crews had survived, they would have converged on the structure.
There had been no sign of life, human or otherwise, since they had left the ridge, but Jacen noticed indentations on a patch of sand that ran up to the narrow gap.
“Footprints,” he said. “Humanoid.”
“Let’s go then,” an Alliance marine urged, glancing over his shoulder at the empty pass. He started forward, but Tassadar held out an arm.
“Wait.”
The alien moved to the side of the ravine, where the rock bowed out into their path. He scanned the surface, and then kneeled, his eyes undulating. A long finger brushed a small gouge on the base of the formation. Tassadar moved his hand up the smooth surface a meter, and then turned his gaze up along its rapidly-rising crest. Other marks marred the stone at random internals, some barely-visible scratches, others deep and wide.
“There is another path here,” he said softly. “Older, and less obvious.”
“Up that?” the Chief asked, following the templar’s gaze. The slope steep and relatively smooth, but it was far more gradual than the bowed face further along.
“I believe that this is the better way,” Tassadar replied, already testing the surface with a foot. “The lower course feels like a trap.”
The Chief looked between the templar and the pass in silence, turning the stock of his rifle over in his hands.
“I agree, Chief,” Jacen said. “There’s something wrong about this all of this. If we can approach in a way Kerrigan might not expect, we should.”
The Spartan considered Jacen for a moment longer, and then hefted his weapon onto his back, where magnetic clamps held it fast.
“Let’s make this quick, then. After the Protoss, Solo.”
Jacen turned to see that Tassadar was already making his way up the rounded face, carefully inserting his huge feet into the claw marks that had drawn his notice. The others shouldered or clipped their weapons and followed suit, and soon the opening of the ravine was empty once more.
After a few dozen meters, the slope came to narrow crack in the wall of the ravine itself and leveled off, allowing the party to slide in with their feet on even ground. The gap was so narrow that Tassadar was barely able to slide through with his back to the wall, but he persevered. Jacen noticed that the Protoss scanned the walls of the space constantly and intently as he moved, picking up on every minute scratch and cleft. More, it seemed as though he was looking beyond the rock, peering into the depths of the mountain. He didn’t have to ask what was preoccupying the templar; there was a power close at hand, as dark as the sky above.
The gap opened onto another sloping path, sided to the left by a vertical wall of rock and to the right by a sharp drop into the center of the ravine. Careful not to stray too close, Jacen peered down over the edge, but he saw nothing more than another stretch of lifeless sand and stone. Nevertheless, Tassadar remained stiff and wary, and silence hung heavily over the others.
Their narrow path inclined upwards sharply not long after the pass, widening into a ledge large enough to accommodate all of them. Beyond the far lip of the open area, Jacen perceived the end of the larger ravine, a convergence of the two steep walls that tapered down out of sight to the formation’s floor. Wind echoed through the expanse from above, but no other sounds reached their high path.
“We should hear the others by now,” an Allied soldier whispered. “And where are the fighters?”
“Cut the chatter,” the Master Chief ordered, but he eased the rifle down from his back. The others followed suit.
Tassadar took a few steps onto the ledge, but rather than making for the other side, he stop at a large alcove in the rock. It was less than a meter deep, but the heap of large stones at its back indicated that it had once gone much deeper.
The high templar pressed a huge hand against one of the boulders, and his eyes slipped shut. Jacen felt energy crackle between the Protoss and the mountain, and the hairs on his back stood on end.
“Here,” Tassadar muttered. “There is a path here.”
“I thought you said that the main entrance was our best,” the Chief said, moving alongside him.
“I could not perceive this way before. We were too far. I am not certain…”
Tassadar withdrew suddenly from the rock and his eyes flashed open. He brought his hands to his head, as if racked by a sudden pain, but when Jacen approached, he waved him off.
“No. I just felt… this is the way. It is an old tunnel. It should be safe, for a time.”
“And what about the other strike teams?” Jacen asked.
The Chief looked from one to the other, and then back at the rubble-clogged indentation. “If any made it to the mountain, they should be close by, in the ravine.”
He turned to one of the Starfleet officers who was waiting behind them. “Can your phaser penetrate this?”
She looked at the alcove, and then flipped open her tricorder. “I’ll need a moment to calibrate it if you want a stable shaft, but yes, I think so.”
“Do it.”
The officer immediately began to scan the surface, and the Chief turned back to Jacen.
“Take two men and continue down the ravine. If you find the other units, contact them and guide them back up here. I’m taking the rest in as soon as the debris is clear. Follow us in with as many men as you can locate.”
Jacen spared another glance at Tassadar, who was now leaning against the ravine wall with a hand clasped to his forehead, and then gestured to a pair of the soldiers, who fell in behind him.
They did not have to walk far. As soon as the three came to the ledge’s far lip, a wave of dread and revulsion washed over him.
From his vantage point, nearly twenty meters up the side of the ravine, he could see the entirety of the sheltered valley that made up the formation’s terminus. The path on which he stood did continue on, narrowing as it wound down to the ravine floor until it ended just short of the flattened back face. The lower of half of this face was dominated by an enormous structure, one Jacen recognized from long-range orbital shots of the entry point Tassadar had picked out for them. A lens twelve meters in diameter, the portal was tethered to the mountainside by a tangled fusion of blackened rock and livid, organic growth. A shell of gray bone and purplish plating covered the lens itself, giving the structure the appearance of a great, burrowing beetle lodged in the rock. Jacen knew that that might actually be close to the truth; the building-creature probably extended deep into the mountain, perhaps constituting most of the interior of Kerrigan’s fortress.
The open space before the biological construct had once been covered by the enveloping Zerg creep, sustenance for the menagerie of other growths that had flanked the entryway, but much of the living surface had been burned away, and the lesser structures with it. Only meters from the gutted bases of anti-air appendages, a trio of shuttlecraft sat on scorched rock. The hatches of the vessels were wide open, but Jacen saw no movement within them, or anywhere in the valley.
One of the soldiers the Jedi had chosen to accompany him choked back a gasp of horror.
Fragments of humanoid figures covered the valley floor. What Jacen had first assumed to be carbon scoring from the Allied incursion was actually a thick layer of dark blood and ichor, lit in flickering bursts by a collapsed Starfleet field beacon. Strewn throughout were fragments of humanoid forms – human, Klingon, Cardassian, Wookiee, and others wholly unrecognizable – stuck to the rock walls, dashed against the shuttles, or mounded in wet heaps before the sealed gate. The corpses of a handful of Zerg warriors lay sprawled to one side, but the vast majority of the carnage was humanoid in origin.
Jacen had seen slaughter in the Republica’s cargo bays, but this transcended even that savagery, violence brutal and indiscriminate, but quick. The scope of the death laid out below him was calculated and malicious. Butchery.
The Chief’s assessment, seen through the magnification and illumination his visor afforded him, was the same.
“Forty, at least,” he said slowly, turning away from the grisly spectacle. “It doesn’t even look like they had a chance to fight back.”
“They lie in wait,” Tassadar said softly. He hadn’t moved from the ravine wall. “We are at the heart of the Swarm. They need not make themselves know until it is their time to strike. Their prey comes to them, and cannot escape. There is need for efficiency or speed then. The beasts burst free, and the feeding begins. They, upon flesh and blood. She, upon fear, and death itself.”
“How?” Jacen sunk onto the lip, his back to the scene below. “How are we still alive? That creature back on the ridge attacked us. She must have realized that we were here, too. Why has she not sprung a trap on us?”
Tassadar let his hand fall from his face, and caught Jacen’s eyes with his own, unblinking orbs.
“Surely you have realized by now, Jedi. Our lives ended as soon as those ships reached this blackened plain. We still breathe only because she wills it. The Queen of Blades is drawing us in, deeper into a trap from which she thinks there is no escape. She wants me. She needs me to come closer.”
Tassadar paused. Jacen felt his fists clench.
“You live only because you are with me, and she has not seen fit yet to prune you from me.”
Slowly, Jacen rose from the rock, his gaze fixed on the Protoss. Tassadar did not quaver under his stare, instead returning it with equal intensity.
“You knew,” he whispered. “You knew from the start that she would let you come here to face her.”
“As did you,” Tassadar replied. “I made it no secret that the only hope, the entire purpose of this gambit, was for me to reach Kerrigan.”
“But then why them?” The words came out harsher and louder than Jacen knew was wise, but he suddenly did not care. “Why let all those men and women die? And the fleet! Thousands up there are dead, are still dying, and for nothing!”
Calm yourself, young one. Anger is not the path.
The admonition from his training echoed in his head, but it seemed far away, and was easily pushed aside. All Jacen could think about were the bodies strewn below. And his father, and Chewbacca.
Laura.
“Not for nothing,” Tassadar said, undaunted by the Jedi’s apparent agitation.
Jacen advanced on Tassadar, his lightsaber pommel clenched in white knuckles. The Allied soldiers around them back away uneasily.
“Then for what, Tassadar? Why not come alone? If she wants to face you so badly, she would have let you. The fleet could have held back, taken more time to plan and regroup, instead of throwing itself blindly upon her fortress, one you knew it could not break!”
“You do not know the Queen as I do, Solo. You have not touched her mind as I have. This, all of this, is a game. Her armies, the worlds she has taken, your resistance, is meaningless to her. She believes herself invincible. Even I, the destroyer of her predecessor, am but a curiosity in her eyes. Something to be toyed with before being discarded. I do not know why she was so intent upon me coming here, but I had to, before her fancies changed and my only chance to bring her to a reckoning was lost.”
“But the rest of us? The Fleet! What if you fail?”
“Even games have rules, Solo. I must meet Kerrigan on my terms, and I can only do that if she is occupied elsewhere. Were I simply to surrender myself to her, the game would be forfeit. She would cow me from afar, overwhelm me with her minions and strip me of my power. Only then would I be brought before her, spent and powerless. This was the only way.”
Jacen shook his head, disbelieving. All of their planning, training, hoping. It had all been false. Fodder for the Zerg Queen’s game. And Tassadar had delivered them to her. He had trusted the high templar, fought alongside him, even saved him. For that, he, and Enterprise’s crew, everyone who had depended upon the Tassadar’s knowledge and power had been thrown away.
The rock behind Tassadar’s head trembled, and a minute fissure began to cut through its dusty surface. Jacen’s fingers edged haltingly towards the activation stud of his lightsaber. He felt power welling up from within, not the serene strength of the Light, but something far more base. He had touched that hidden might before in his darkest hours, but now the will that normally held it back quavered, somehow weakened.
Tassadar did not retreat or cower, or even avert his gaze.
“You must trust my judgment now, Solo. Their sacrifice will not be for nothing. I will give everything I am to ensure that is so. But first, I must reach the Queen.”
Jacen was barely listening. He took another step forward and raised his sword arm, leveling it straight at the Protoss. His thumb found his saber’s activation stud.
A heavy hand fell on his shoulder. Jacen shrugged it off, but it would not budge. When he tried again, it yanked him back and around, nearly taking him off of his feet. Anger burst over Jacen, and green fire erupted in his right hand.
The Master Chief held him fast at arm’s length. Jacen raised his lit sword with his free arm, but the Spartan did not flinch, and his grip did not weaken. The two stared at each other, and Jacen saw himself reflected in the saber’s light against polished plate, his face contorted with rage.
Breath caught in the Jedi’s throat. He had not seen as much of the Dark Side as some in the Order, but he knew it well enough to see it bubbling up before his eyes.
“Are you really going to use that thing on me, Solo?” the Chief asked, his voice calm and even.
Slowly, Jacen lowered his sword arm, but he did not let the searing beam collapse.
“What’s done is done. Were in this fight now, and we have our orders. Those men did their job. Now we’ve got to do ours.”
“Sir!” The Starfleet officer by the alcove by the alcove flipped her tricorder shut.
The Chief acknowledged her with a nod, and then turned back to Jacen.
“Are you with us?”
Jacen stared at his clouded reflection for a moment longer, and then he released the stud of his weapon, closing it with a hiss.
“I am.”
The Spartan’s helmet dipped forward, and Jacen barely made out a whisper.
“Mourning will wait.”
The Chief released the Jedi, moving to direct the debris removal without another word. As the other soldiers moved away from the ravine wall, Jacen felt as though he was coming out of a stupor. Looking down at his unlit saber, he could barely believe that it had been active only a few moments before. And yet, the anger had been so real, so powerful…
Tassadar walked past him, and Jacen felt it flare anew, but he quickly pushed back the emotion. He still did not understand or accept the Protoss’ actions, but that… that was not the way.
“I’m sorry,” he managed, joining the alien at the Chief’s side. “I should not have done that.”
“It is this place,” Tassadar replied without facing the human. “Her corruption taints the very air here. It is all I can do to withstand it.”
He was silent as the Starfleet officer began to calibrate her phaser, but before Jacen could reply, Tassadar turned slightly towards him.
“This is not the first time I have sacrificed valiant warriors in my pursuit of the Zerg. I have a great deal to atone for, far more than you know. The destruction of Swarm is the only thing that can bring me penance now, and I am not sure even that is enough. Perhaps I have been too focused on my goal, too willing to throw the lives of others away for it. I once fought to protect my people, but now I fear that I fight only for revenge, not for the Protoss, but for the lengths that the Swarm has pushed me to.”
“Repress your anger if you feel you must, but I do not begrudge you for it. My life outside of this feud ended long ago, and I have been far too reckless for it. Too secretive. It is time that it ended. Kerrigan will die this night. After that, my life is no longer relevant.”
A lance of red light shot from the officer’s phaser into the alcove. Heat and energy radiated from the point of impact across the mound of boulders, and they began to glow as the weapon pumped still more energy into the rock.
Far below, the gore-strewn floor of the ravine began to tremble, and dozens of small rifts formed on its surface. One after another, claws and thorny feet burst through the sodden sand and fractured rock, and the seemingly-solid ground dissolved into a churning mass of silt and scrabbling bodies. The first Zerglings to pull themselves free immediately pelted for the far end of the raised path, chattering as they went. Others simply threw themselves at the ravine wall, clawing at the solid rock for leverage.
“Weapons free! Contacts below!” the Chief called, and the other soldiers rushed to kneel at the brink of the ledge.
“How long?” he demanded of the Starfleet officer.
“A few more seconds!” The first boulders had begun to melt away under the onslaught, matter vanishing with heat into the twilight air.
“Fire!”
Blaster bolts and phaser beams swept over the approaching Zerglings, sending them spinning off the path into the milling masses below. The valley was already filled with the vicious quadrupeds, and larger creatures were beginning to pull themselves from the bloody muck. The Chief locked the elongated head of a Hydralisk into the sight if his blaster and depressed the trigger. Four crimson bolts lashed the serpentine monstrosity, shattering its hardened skull beyond recognition.
Jacen had ignited his lightsaber once more, but he kept behind the line of soldiers. Jumping into the fray now would be suicidal, even for him. There were dozens of Zerglings pelting up the narrow path now, and hundreds more waited eagerly to follow them. Concerted fire on the winding ramp was keeping the horde at bay for a moment, but it wouldn’t be long until they figured out other ways to reach their new prey.
“Put a rig on that path!” the Chief shouted, and one of his soldiers produced another jury-rigged phaser. He lobbed it ten meters down the narrow stretch, and everyone on the ledge turned away, covering their heads. The device detonated just as the foremost Zerg warrior reached it, buffeting every living thing in the ravine with noise, heat and blinding light. Only the Chief seemed able to ignore it, shielding the cutting officer as he sprayed fire at Zerglings further up the ravine.
The blast carved a sizeable hole in the rock face, obliterating a section of the path, but the Zerg continued on undaunted, leaping over it or tumbling twenty meters in the attempt.
An Alliance marine screamed and fell onto his back, clutching his face. Jacen fell on one knee at the convulsing man’s side, but before he could find a medical kit, he stopped moving. His hands fell away uselessly, revealing the tail of a bone barb lodged in one eye and a visage of boiled flesh, still being consumed by the acid that had accompanied the missile.
“Hydralisks!” he shouted, reluctantly leaving the man where he had fallen.
“They’re scaling the wall!” the Chief confirmed. He was leaning over the lip, hosing the unseen attackers with fire as fast as his weapon could discharge it. A hail of acid-coated, organic projectiles arced up at him in response, sending spasms of light across his battle suit’s energy shield.
“Fall back! The tunnel’s been cut!”
The last of the boulders had vanished, revealing a narrow passageway that led down into the inky blackness of the mountain, but the first few yards were still glowed red-hot. Urged by the Spartan, the soldiers poured into the gap anyways, gasping as they pressed through the wall of heat the phaser had left.
The crest of a Hydralisk emerged over the lip of the ledge, followed by black, glassy eyes and a snarling, skeletal maw. The Chief pumped three rounds into it, and the creature plummeted back out of sight.
He pivoted on the spot, bringing his rifle to bear on the first Zerglings to reach the overlook, but before he could fire off another shot, Jacen was among them, cleaving free limbs and heads with grim focus.
“Go!” he shouted over his shoulder as he sent another Zergling tumbling over the edge with a blast of telekinetic energy. “I’ll hold them while you get Tassadar into the mountain!”
“I will not have your life on my conscience as well, Solo!” Tassadar rumbled from the entrance to the tunnel. “Come, both of you!”
Neither the Chief nor Jacen was in the mood to argue, and a moment later they had cleared the expanse of still-searing rock. Tassadar was close behind them, but he halted while the tunnel entrance was still in full view. Already, Zerg were bounding down after them, paying little heed to the heat. The Chief picked off two over Tassadar’s shoulder plates, but many more were close on their heels.
“Stand back!” Tassadar bellowed, throwing out his arms and letting his cloak flow free. The fabric rippled with an unseen wind, and arcs of forked light shot from one scaled hand to the other. Jacen looked on in awe. He had never seen the Protoss’ psionic energies unleashed, but he had heard accounts of the templar’s duel with Darth Vader aboard Home One. He sensed power swell within the alien, energies both Light and Dark, and others he could barely perceive, let alone comprehend.
The crisscrossing volley of charge between the templar’s hands quickened and intensified. One of the lead Zerglings leapt for the Protoss, heedless of the web of energy. To Jacen’s eyes, it seemed to simply vanish, and the space it had occupied was swiftly filled by an expanding network of brilliant synapses. Then, with a crack that resonated through the rock and into the Jedi’s very core, Tassadar’s energies burst forward. Jacen brought his arm up to shield his eyes, and the Chief’s visor polarized to its limit.
There was another crack, deeper and more physical, and a series of booms and crashes. Dust and searing air rushed down the tunnel, and then all was quiet.
The flashlight affixed to the side of the Chief’s helmet flicked on, adding to the glow cast by Jacen’s lightsaber. In their combined light, the quality of Tassadar’s work was apparent. Only two meters up the tunnel, and fresh pile of distressed boulders and loose gravel filled the space from floor to ceiling. The Chief cast his light above them, wary of residual deformations in the rock, but the tunnel seemed otherwise intact.
Slowly, Tassadar lowered his arms and turned to face them. His eyes were dimmer than they usually were, half-closed. He took a few tentative steps, swayed, and then caught himself.
“That took more of me than I had hoped,” he said, his words coming slowly. “But I am far from spent. Come, let us catch the others. Our fight is not over.”
The tunnel was barely tall enough for Tassadar to move without stooping and only wide enough to accommodate two of them at a time, but the floor was solid and even, angled steadily downward in a relatively straight course. The walls bore the same gouge-marks as the pass Tassadar had found, and Jacen could only assume the tunnel had been carved by the Zerg when Kerrigan had chosen the mountain as her citadel.
The room in which they found the seven remaining Allied soldiers was a different matter entirely. The tunnel stopped abruptly, opening onto the side of a low-ceilinged, rectangular chamber little wider than the interior of a Starfleet shuttlecraft and twice as long. It was still hewn of the dull stone of the mountain, but it looked more like the interior of a starship than a roughly-cut Zerg hole. The floor and ceiling were perfectly flat and regular, and the walls were carved with blocky, vertical pillars and shot with bands of silvery metal that glinted in the artificial light. A large, empty alcove dominated the far wall, and next to it, the rectangular maw of a door opened onto darkness. Both the door and the alcove were marred by slash marks and signs of deformation, and shards of metal lay scattered on the floor around each.
“Secure, soldier?” the Chief asked, ignoring the sudden abnormality of their surroundings.
“Yes, sir. We haven’t seen or heard anything since we ran in here. What about the ones behind us?”
“The entrance is blocked, but there are probably just as many crawling around down here. Keep your guard up.”
“What is this place?” another soldier asked, carefully keeping his phaser trained on the doorway even as he marveled at the precise geometry of the wall supports.
“This is no Zerg construction,” Tassadar said, genuinely startled by the chamber’s appearance.
Jacen kneeled to pick up a tiny piece of metal that had settled into the dust at his feet. It sparkled in a vaguely crystalline manner as he turned it over on his palm.
“And not a Federation one, either, I’m guessing. It looks too old.”
The Chief didn’t take his hands off his rifle, but he too peered into the room’s perfect corners and regular alcoves.
It almost looks like…
A keening cry echoed from beyond the darkened doorway, and each member of the unit froze, eyes and gunsights locked on the entryway. A new howling joined it, and then another. There was a sound of distant scrabbling, talons on metal or stone, a last, sharp clack, and silence once more. Peripherally, the Chief noticed that both Tassadar and Jacen bored pained expressions.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Psionic backlash,” Tassadar replied, peering up at the flattened ceiling. “Those cries were made by Zerg without guidance, confused and directionless. A Cerebrate has been destroyed.”
Jacen looked at the Chief. “Truul and Worf!”
The Spartan immediately activated his helm transmitter. Zerg interference had made long-range communications impossible for over an hour, but if the Cerebrates contributed to the disruption…
“Beta, do you read?”
Nothing but static.
The Chief switched channels.
“Gamma, are you receiving?”
A series of rapid clicks, and then static again.
“I repeat, Unit Beta, do you…”
Abruptly, the static increased in volume, and a familiar voice materialized from the background noise.
“Damn straight, I copy ya, Sierra! Sounds like you’re half a parsec away, but I copy!”
“What’s your status, beta? Have you reached the secondary?”
“We got there all right, and cleared out just about fifteen seconds ago! Wasn’t a pleasant sight, and we wanted to clear out before the clean-up crew arrived.”
The Chief glanced over at Tassadar. “Confirm, the secondary target has been neutralized?”
There was a burst a static, and something that sound like a like muffled explosion obscured Truul’s voice momentarily.
“…looks like they’re not letting us off so easy after all. But yes, we got it. Gamma and mine got under the damn thing’s anti-air. Don’t know how, but we did. Hard fighting, and both units are down to less than half-strength, but we cleared out the anti-air from the ground and painted up the secondary. That’s where our boys in the air came in. I couldn’t reach ‘em on comms, but the flares we sent up were good enough it looks like. You should see…”
The Chief cut Truul off. “Are Beta and Gamma fully airborne?”
“Affirmative, Sierra. We’ve got the shuttles packed and we’re angling on your vector. The Zerg up here took a hit from the secondary, it looks like, but there are still a hell of a lot of ‘em. As long as we have the squadron, though…”
“Beta, Sierra and Alpha have breached the primary, but we lost most of our units. The target LZ is hot, repeat hot. We had to bypass the main entry vector for a side passage, on the ridge above the ravine floor. Strafe the LZ, repeat, fire it, offload your troops, and follow us in. The way may be still blocked. I repeat, clear the obstruction and follow us in with all available forces. Do you copy?”
There was no reply but static.
The Chief tried the link several more times, and then shook his head.
“Jamming’s resumed.”
“Did it get through?” Jacen asked.
“We can’t wait here to find out.” He turned to the others. “Move on that exit, and stay together! We don’t know what’s in there. Tassadar?”
The Protoss looked off into space, and shook his head at length.
“I can’t be sure where she is. There is another Cerebrate in here as well, and its presence is shielding her.”
“Then we’ll have to bypass it,” the Chief said, checking the capacitors of his blaster. “Or kill it.”
“It lies directly ahead of us, and below.”
“Let’s get moving, then. Praxal, Richardson, you’re on point with me.”
Jacen and Tassadar lagged slightly behind the others as they readied to leave.
“You have something else to say?” the Protoss asked, drawing his cloak tightly around him once more, as if warding off a draft none of the others could feel.
“Tassadar, back there, in the tunnel, and before, I sensed darkness in you, and light. They were at war, as they are in me, sometimes, and yet you controlled them both, used both energies. I know your power is different from the Force, but… how can both exist within you like that?”
The templar stopped to stare down at the human, and a chilling sensation ran up his spine.
“I cannot speak of your Force, Jedi. But I will never claim to control the energies within me. I am but a conduit, open to light and dark, and they flow through to me as they will. They are powers beyond comprehension, and to deny either is to throw everything out of balance. Try to follow only one, if you will. I did once, long ago. But now I take both, ride their conflicting course, guide them toward the path I deem true and hope they follow. Light and dark lend me their power, when it is to be had, but they do not dominate my destiny. I alone can do that.”
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
------------------------------------------------
As much as the world that it orbited, Earth’s moon was a graveyard. The domed cities and research hubs that had grown up across its pockmarked surface over centuries of peaceful and prosperous Federation rule had been among the first Zerg targets after Kerrigan had claimed Earth, and now only blackened craters and derelict tramways remained. Debris from two desperate battles had added new hollows to its already-marred surface and scattered melted fragments across pristine gray plains. The newest conflict promised more of both, and already the satellite’s weak gravity was guiding ruined forms towards its bald, lifeless face.
With the entirety of both Allied and Zerg forces engaged closer to Earth, the moon and its orbital perimeter were quiet and motionless.
But they were not devoid of life.
The streamlined forms of thirty Romulan warbirds slid cautiously from the far side of the satellite. Each ship in the tight, stacked formation was completely enveloped in its characteristic cloaking shield, and none but the most sensitive gravitational sensor could have detected their arrival. With the barest bursts of ionized discharge, carefully filtered so as to appear as simple background radiation, the warships slowed their forward momentums in unison and gradually came to a halt. All but hugging the lunar surface, they had paused just beyond its gentle arc. The night face of Earth drifted before them, serene save for the occasional, fleeting discharge of light.
The Agrona sat at the heart of the formation, its wide-swept, avian hull just as cool and outwardly undetectable as those of its companions. Its transmitter arrays and running lights all lay inactive; not even the most subtle ship-to-ship message was to be risked while combat was so near. Only passive sensors remained active, but they alone were enough to relay the gravity of the battle that still raged in Earth’s shadow. All other eyes of the task force were fixed upon the conflict.
But those aboard the Agrona, for the moment, were oblivious to it.
Groggily, Commander Suran ran a hand across his face. He attempted to open his eyes, but the dim illumination of his bridge forced them shut again. His head was swimming so badly that he tried and failed to form a coherent word, but a vigorous shake sent feeling through his body. Sensing his command chair beneath him, he leaned forward and tried his eyes once more. The blinding glare quickly faded, and he was met with the familiar, orderly operations center of his command.
“What’s happened?” he demanded of no one in particular, rising tentatively from his chair. “Operations, report!”
His command crew was in the process of picking themselves from the deck, and none seemed to be any more cognizant of the situation than he was. Trying not to stumble over control interfaces and their attending officers, Suran made his way to his second-in-command, who was busy helping a navigational officer to her feet.
“What’s going on here, subcommander?” Suran asked, making way as his other subordinate offered a self-conscious salute and hurried back to her station.
“I am not certain, commander,” his second replied, turning to the closest interface and hunching over it urgently. “The last I remember, we had just reached the Federation Neutral Zone. You were just about to open a comm line with the commander of the Doerank, and then…”
The subcommander trailed off, looked up at Suran with a mixture of confusion and apology, and then turned back to his interface.
Suran turned back to the rest of his bridge crew. “Give me our position, now! Where is the rest of the task force?”
The commander was an experienced and level-headed soldier, but he ran an orderly ship, and liked it that way. Nothing like this had happened during his entire service in the Imperial Fleet.
“Sensors are online, sir! Checking our position now!”
“Commander, I’m getting alerts from across the ship! Section executives are all reporting black-outs among the crew!”
“Get me status reports from each of them!” Suran demanded. “Tactical, bring us to full alert!”
“The Zerg, sir?” Suran’s second suggested. “Could they have hit us with some new weapon?”
“Commander! The Agrona is already at battle readiness!”
Suran whirled on the tactical officer.
“We are at stealth stations, sir! The ship is under full cloak!” the man continued.
The commander strode over to his station.
“Under who’s orders?”
The officer shook his head. “Yours, sir.”
“But I never…”
“Sir, I have our position! We’re no longer in the Neutral Zone. New coordinates…”
The officer began to list of numbers, but the ship’s second pushed him aside and peered at the navigational display.
“Sector 001, Commander!” he called out after a few seconds. “The Sol System!”
“Earth!”
A thousand different thoughts burst upon Suran’s brain. This was place he had sacrificed the Romulan alliance with the rest of the quadrant and pushed aside his personal inclinations to avoid, and yet there they were. The last he could remember, he had been light-years away, leading his forces back to the relative safety of the Star Empire, but…
“How did we…?”
He shook his head, and then moved to the command chair.
“Never mind that now. Is the rest of the task force with us?”
It was a credit to his crew that they were able to move from delirious half-consciousness into battle readiness in little more than a minute, but it was nothing more than what he expected of them. They were officers in the Romulan Fleet, the best of the best. If this was a Zerg trick, the devils would regret not finishing them off while they were all helpless.
“I’m reading twenty-nine other warbirds flanking us, sir, standard fringe formation. We are still with the task force.”
“There are reports of a few minor feedback errors in the long-range sensors and the computer core, but all major systems are nominal, commander. There are no reports of significant casualties in the lower decks.”
If this was a surprise attack, Suran mused, it was a very poorly executed one.
“Are we in scanning range of the human homeworld?”
“Yes, sir. The task force is just above the planet’s moon.”
“Show me.”
Earth’s night side filled the bridge’s main viewscreen. Suran leaned forward, his attention attracted by the distant obvious flashes of a pitched battle.
“So, it has begun already,” he muttered to himself. “Magnify quadrant five.”
The profile of Earth vanished, and a great double-orb of minute shapes replaced it, lit irregularly by a cascade of dashes and lances of red and green light.
“How many ships are engaged there?”
“At least three hundred, sir, mostly of Federation or Klingon construction. Sensors also detect several hundred smaller contacts, identical to the living missiles the Zerg used during their assault on Romulus.” The officer took a moment to confirm his readings. “The ships appear to be divided into two opposing formations. The larger, numbering some two hundred vessels, is evidently in the process of enveloping the smaller and trapping it against the planet’s gravity well.”
Suran felt an unexpected glimmer of hope.
“Where are the Zerg missiles concentrated?”
“Within the interior formation, sir.”
Suran leaned back in his chair and suppressed a sigh.
You should have listened, Picard. This assault was suicide.
“Sir.”
Suran looked over to see his second approach, face creased with confusion.
“Have you determined how we got here, Subcommander Dural?”
“The diagnostic logs indicate that the inhabited decks simultaneously decompressed as the Agrona entered the Federation Neutral Zone, incapacitating the crew. Technical is still working on the subsequent logs, but it is clear that life support only normalized a few minutes ago. Navigation recorded a course correction directly for Sector 001 at maximum warp velocity immediately after decompression.”
Suran frowned. “Was the ship commandeered? Are there intruders aboard?”
“None have been detected thus far, sir, but the marine detachment is conducting ongoing sweeps.” Dural shook his head slowly. “Sir, the ship recorded both the decompression and the course change as being executed with your voice authorization.”
“I gave no such orders.”
“Yes, sir. There’s more. I also checked the transmission logs. There has been one outgoing transmission from this ship since the decompression, directed at the rest of the task force. Audio and visual. From you, sir.”
Suran’s lips pursed into a tight line. “Put it onscreen.
Dural gestured to a waiting officer, and the viewscreen switched to freeze-frame of Suran himself, backed by a view of the Agrona’s bridge. There was a brief pause, and then the image came to life.
“All ships of the Second Expeditionary Task Force, this is Commander Suran. I have received new instructions from Romulus. We are to alter course for Sector 001, infiltrate the primary system, and taking up holding stations at coordinates included in this transmission. This deployment is class one covert, and as such, there will be no further ship-to-ship communications of any sort until the objective is reached. Full stealth precautions are to be initiated. Do not engage hostile contacts unless you are engaged, and do not reveal the location of the Agrona under any circumstances. Fallback coordinates will follow. That is all.”
The message ended abruptly, and Suran caught several of his crew cast uncertain glances his way. The speaker’s appearance, mannerisms, and diction had been identical to his own. Except…
“That bluish distortion, near the beginning of the transmission…”
“Yes, commander. The technical division is analyzing it right now.”
Suran stroked his cheek thoughtfully, eyes fixed on the frozen image of him. It was obviously a fake, a projection of some sort, but he could not conceive how it had worked its way into the Agrona’s comm system.
“There must be an intruder aboard. Lock down the non-essential sections, and double the guard.”
“At once, sir.”
“We shall deal with this later. Now, raise the rest of the fleet. Tell them…”
Suran trailed off. What did he want to tell them? Whatever had brought him halfway across Federation space, it had given him another opportunity to join Picard and the rest in their final stand against the Zerg. Judging by what he had seen of the battle, they needed the help, desperately.
Of course, the rationale for his withdrawal from their alliance was just as valid as it had been days before. Even with the aid of his forces, the Zerg would still command numerical superiority, and Suran had no idea if they had reinforcements incoming. More than likely, the Allied fleet was doomed, and any effort to assist them would be suicide.
You must understand, Suran, that if we join you, we will have been defeated. A kinder fall, perhaps, but in the end, the result would be the same.
Picard’s parting words had haunted Suran since the task force had left Deep Space Nine, and he still couldn’t shake the human’s determined face from his mind. The commander had seen Romulan worlds defiled by the Zerg, and the idea of abandoning an opportunity to strike a mortal blow to the monsters, fleeing to the relative safety of the Empire’s borders while humans, Cardassians, even Klingons fought on…
“Sir?” Dural prompted.
Suran stared at the officer. He, and the rest of the crew, would follow him unquestioningly, no matter which path he chose. They were good soldiers, and no doubt many of them silently wished to bring the fight back to the invaders.
But this was not the time. He would not see them die in a hopeless battle, no matter how righteous.
“Tell them to break from orbit, full impulse. We’re heading back home. This is a fight we cannot win.”
The bridge viewscreen flickered, and several displays at the back of bridge went blank for an instant, and then resumed their previous tasks.
Before Suran could question the momentary disruption, the tactical stations came alive with activity.
“What is it?”
“Commander, I’m detecting a large number of vessels approaching at high warp. At least seventy, possibly more.
“Range?”
“They’ve already entered the star system, sir. They will reach the lunar perimeter in under a minute.”
“What? Why didn’t you detect them before?”
“I’m not certain, sir. Our proximity to the planet’s moon may be reducing the range of our long-range sensors, but…”
“Well, it’s of little consequence now. Can you identify them?”
“The warp signatures appear to be human and Klingon in origin, sir.”
“The Alliance wouldn’t have mounted this attack piecemeal,” Suran said, leaning forward.
“Zerg reinforcements?” Dural ventured, still at his side.
Suran nodded, his frown deepening. The Allied assault was utterly lost now. All he could do was keep his men from being swept up in the slaughter.
“Open the comm. We’re leaving, now.”
“Sir!” the tactical officer’s consternation was palpable. “The incoming ships have dropped from warp. They’re almost on top of us, range thirty thousand kilometers!”
“Calm yourself, centurion. Our cloaking shields are still online. Put them onscreen.”
The viewscreen flickered to life, and a wall of Starfleet vessels and Klingon warships filled it. As the bridge crew watched, the massed fleet began to spread out, and the space between each vessel was filled by a cloud of tiny, winged forms. Suran felt a twang of dread, invisibility or no. He hadn’t realized that the Zerg possessed so many ships, much less could afford to keep them in reserve.
“One hundred and twenty ships, commander, and hundreds more of the organic missiles. They appear to be spreading out and moving towards our position.”
Suran clenched the armrest of his chair tightly. “They’re moving on our position?”
“Yes, sir. The formation has closed to twenty-five thousand kilometers.”
“They’re pinning us against the moon…” Suran heard Dural mutter, and he felt inclined to agree. Cloaking shields or not, the Zerg fleet was angling directly for Earth’s satellite, not the battle above the planet.
Slowly, Suran rose and walked towards the viewscreen as the wall of enemy ships inexorably approached. Before his eyes, the gap between the colossal formation and the lunar surface closed to a sliver. Other ships moved just as quickly, plainly intent on Suran’s other avenues of escape.
They were trapped. Somehow, the Zerg had detected the task force, and now they were pressed between a countless kilograms of rock and one of the largest fleets Suran had ever seen.
The game was up, and there was only one option left to him.
“What should I tell the fleet, sir?” Dural asked earnestly.
“Tell them…” Even now, Picard’s steadfast expression stuck in his mind’s eye. “Tell them to disengage their cloaks, divert all power to weapons and shields, and form up on the Agrona. I’m not about to die hiding, and I’d rather make a stand with a human at my back than smashed against this blasted rock.”
Subcommander Dural’s lip fell in surprise, but he caught himself and saluted smartly.
“Helm, take us into the Earthward Zerg line, full impulse!”
Suran thought he saw a small smile on his second’s face as he moved to oversee the order, and he couldn’t help share a bit of the sentiment. If the Zerg had the resources arrayed against his force at their disposal, falling back to Romulan space would have only delayed this encounter. Stealth and calculation had had their place. Now he would show the invaders what the price of their conquest would truly be.
----------------------------------------------
“Admiral, the Enterprise has broken from the main battle line!”
Nechayev peered through the acrid smoke of a fried navigation console at the distant form of the Sovereign-class vessel as it skirted around a pair of badly damaged Galaxy-class ships and shot towards the slivery lunar disk.
“The fool is going after K’Nera!” she snarled. “Get me a link with Picard. Now! And get more ships on our starboard flank!”
The Versailles rocked violently as a lucky photon torpedo exploded just aft.
Nechayev’s operation’s officer shook his head. “Sir, the main communications array is still down from the last volley. Engineering is switching to auxiliaries, but we won’t have it back for another few minutes, at least.”
The admiral slammed her fist against her chair.
“Damn him! We’ll lose both of them now! What does he think he’s proving?”
The bridge shook again, harder this time, and a lighting panel on the bridge’s upper half exploded, sending crewers fleeing from the sparks.
“Admiral, we can’t take much more of this!” Commander Slovach shouted over the din as she helped the remaining navigational officer back into his chair. “Shields are down to forty-two percent! We have to fall back! Let the reserve squadrons move forward!”
“We don’t have many reserves left, Commander!” Nechayev shouted back.
“We won’t do anyone any good if we’re dead, sir! The Fleet needs you! N’Kera’s probably gone, and Picard…!”
A direct phaser triggered a chorus of warning klaxons, drowning Slovach out. The captain silenced them with an irritated jab at her seat’s interface.
“All right, commander! You’ve made your point! Helm, take us back to the reserve position! Tell Captain Gehirn to take her ships forward and cover us!”
The admiral watched as a flight of Starfleet vessel, each almost as badly damaged as her own, moved past her viewscreen, straight into a volley of missiles from the ever-advancing Zerg front. Slovach was right; the Versailles’ engineering teams needed time to make repairs. But time was something they were running out of, just as fast as the Fleet lost ships. At their current loss rate, there wouldn’t be anything left of it in under twenty minutes. And if they lost the Enterprise, the last vestiges of morale among her crews would vanish.
“Damn him,” she whispered. The Enterprise would have met the Zerg ships pursuing the remnants of Battle Group Qo’nos by now. It wouldn’t take long. One ship couldn’t withstand the Zerg onslaught alone, no matter who captained it or what its name was.
“Sir… Admiral Nechayev, I’ve lost the Enterprise,” the sensor officer reported haltingly.
The other members of the bridge crew looked up from their stations. Nechayev’s eyes fell.
“…no, wait a moment.” The lieutenant smacked his interface in frustration, and then began jabbing at it again. “The long-range sensors seem to be malfunctioning. Yes, I’ve got it again! And… wait…”
Slovach stalked around towards the man from the other side of the bridge, wiping sweat and soot from her forehead.
“Lieutenant, if the station is malfunctioning…”
“Sir, it’s not the station… There! I’ve got it! And… Romulan signatures?”
“What?” Both Nechayev and Slovach shouted in unison, and in a moment both were looking over the lieutenant’s shoulders.
“Yes! Thirty Romulan warbirds, D’deridex and Valdore-class!”
“Suran,” Nechayev whispered.
“But how…?” Slovach began.
Nechayev was already running back to her command chair.
“How did they get here? How did Picard know they would come? We’ll just have to ask them ourselves, won’t we? Let’s make sure we have the chance to chat! This isn’t quite over!”
Damn him.
--------------------------------------------------------
Nestled deep within the Agrona’s computer core, Cortana looked on through the ship’s sensors as thirty fresh, Romulan warship swept into rear of the Zerg line. As the reactor of the first infested ship ignited like a thermonuclear firework, the AI loosed a sigh of relief. Or rather, she would have if she wasn’t currently a collection of data packets circulating through the warbird’s central routing junction. There was a very real chance that the Zerg would rally and turn on the unexpected reinforcements, annihilating her matrix in the process, but at that moment, she didn’t let the danger bother her, and sat back to enjoy the show.
For the first time in days, Cortana didn’t entirely loathe her surroundings. When she had first heard Picard’s contingency plan, just after the loss of the Republica, she had been all for it; after all, she had, quite literally, been built to infiltrate alien computer systems. As the captain had expected, Suran had decided to withdraw from the Allied Fleet, and she had hitched a ride on the last transmission between the Enterprise and the Agrona.
It had been a tight fit; the message had been only a terse navigational intent statement, and she had lost a few lengths of accessory coding in the process. That, she had expected; it was the loneliness that had turned her off. The warbird had no artificial intellect to speak of, only a few relatively basic defensive algorithms and an entirely bland coordinating system. Knocking out the crew, fabricating a message to guide the rest of the task force to Earth, and conjuring up a phantom armada of omniscient Zerg to trap Suran had been too easy. Give her a hostile Covenant AI any day, if only for the company.
The Romulan fleet was worthy of its reputation – in combat, at least – Cortana was still surprised how easily their unquestioning chain of command had enable her to seize the entire task force. Already, it had swept through Zerg’s outer perimeter and overtaken a handful of beleaguered Klingon warships. And with them…
The Enterprise!
A more welcome sight Cortana hadn’t seen since she’d last slipped from the Master Chief’s familiar neural interface. She began collecting the tendrils of her consciousness from the various system hubs she’d hacked and migrated towards the communications network. The sooner someone tossed a hurried salutation or status request the Enterprise’s way, the better. Sheltered as she was deep in the Agrona’s hardware, Cortana didn’t relish the idea of being around when Suran opened a line to one of his escorts and found out that the Zerg reinforcements had been nothing more than sensor artifacts and a bit of artistry with the bridge viewscreen’s combat log.
Hopefully, Suran would be too thick in the fighting when he finally found out to try and withdraw. Still, Cortana didn’t envy the unfortunate individual standing at the Agrona’s bridge sensor station…
An unheard order activated the ship’s primary communications grid, and the AI was gone.
As much as the world that it orbited, Earth’s moon was a graveyard. The domed cities and research hubs that had grown up across its pockmarked surface over centuries of peaceful and prosperous Federation rule had been among the first Zerg targets after Kerrigan had claimed Earth, and now only blackened craters and derelict tramways remained. Debris from two desperate battles had added new hollows to its already-marred surface and scattered melted fragments across pristine gray plains. The newest conflict promised more of both, and already the satellite’s weak gravity was guiding ruined forms towards its bald, lifeless face.
With the entirety of both Allied and Zerg forces engaged closer to Earth, the moon and its orbital perimeter were quiet and motionless.
But they were not devoid of life.
The streamlined forms of thirty Romulan warbirds slid cautiously from the far side of the satellite. Each ship in the tight, stacked formation was completely enveloped in its characteristic cloaking shield, and none but the most sensitive gravitational sensor could have detected their arrival. With the barest bursts of ionized discharge, carefully filtered so as to appear as simple background radiation, the warships slowed their forward momentums in unison and gradually came to a halt. All but hugging the lunar surface, they had paused just beyond its gentle arc. The night face of Earth drifted before them, serene save for the occasional, fleeting discharge of light.
The Agrona sat at the heart of the formation, its wide-swept, avian hull just as cool and outwardly undetectable as those of its companions. Its transmitter arrays and running lights all lay inactive; not even the most subtle ship-to-ship message was to be risked while combat was so near. Only passive sensors remained active, but they alone were enough to relay the gravity of the battle that still raged in Earth’s shadow. All other eyes of the task force were fixed upon the conflict.
But those aboard the Agrona, for the moment, were oblivious to it.
Groggily, Commander Suran ran a hand across his face. He attempted to open his eyes, but the dim illumination of his bridge forced them shut again. His head was swimming so badly that he tried and failed to form a coherent word, but a vigorous shake sent feeling through his body. Sensing his command chair beneath him, he leaned forward and tried his eyes once more. The blinding glare quickly faded, and he was met with the familiar, orderly operations center of his command.
“What’s happened?” he demanded of no one in particular, rising tentatively from his chair. “Operations, report!”
His command crew was in the process of picking themselves from the deck, and none seemed to be any more cognizant of the situation than he was. Trying not to stumble over control interfaces and their attending officers, Suran made his way to his second-in-command, who was busy helping a navigational officer to her feet.
“What’s going on here, subcommander?” Suran asked, making way as his other subordinate offered a self-conscious salute and hurried back to her station.
“I am not certain, commander,” his second replied, turning to the closest interface and hunching over it urgently. “The last I remember, we had just reached the Federation Neutral Zone. You were just about to open a comm line with the commander of the Doerank, and then…”
The subcommander trailed off, looked up at Suran with a mixture of confusion and apology, and then turned back to his interface.
Suran turned back to the rest of his bridge crew. “Give me our position, now! Where is the rest of the task force?”
The commander was an experienced and level-headed soldier, but he ran an orderly ship, and liked it that way. Nothing like this had happened during his entire service in the Imperial Fleet.
“Sensors are online, sir! Checking our position now!”
“Commander, I’m getting alerts from across the ship! Section executives are all reporting black-outs among the crew!”
“Get me status reports from each of them!” Suran demanded. “Tactical, bring us to full alert!”
“The Zerg, sir?” Suran’s second suggested. “Could they have hit us with some new weapon?”
“Commander! The Agrona is already at battle readiness!”
Suran whirled on the tactical officer.
“We are at stealth stations, sir! The ship is under full cloak!” the man continued.
The commander strode over to his station.
“Under who’s orders?”
The officer shook his head. “Yours, sir.”
“But I never…”
“Sir, I have our position! We’re no longer in the Neutral Zone. New coordinates…”
The officer began to list of numbers, but the ship’s second pushed him aside and peered at the navigational display.
“Sector 001, Commander!” he called out after a few seconds. “The Sol System!”
“Earth!”
A thousand different thoughts burst upon Suran’s brain. This was place he had sacrificed the Romulan alliance with the rest of the quadrant and pushed aside his personal inclinations to avoid, and yet there they were. The last he could remember, he had been light-years away, leading his forces back to the relative safety of the Star Empire, but…
“How did we…?”
He shook his head, and then moved to the command chair.
“Never mind that now. Is the rest of the task force with us?”
It was a credit to his crew that they were able to move from delirious half-consciousness into battle readiness in little more than a minute, but it was nothing more than what he expected of them. They were officers in the Romulan Fleet, the best of the best. If this was a Zerg trick, the devils would regret not finishing them off while they were all helpless.
“I’m reading twenty-nine other warbirds flanking us, sir, standard fringe formation. We are still with the task force.”
“There are reports of a few minor feedback errors in the long-range sensors and the computer core, but all major systems are nominal, commander. There are no reports of significant casualties in the lower decks.”
If this was a surprise attack, Suran mused, it was a very poorly executed one.
“Are we in scanning range of the human homeworld?”
“Yes, sir. The task force is just above the planet’s moon.”
“Show me.”
Earth’s night side filled the bridge’s main viewscreen. Suran leaned forward, his attention attracted by the distant obvious flashes of a pitched battle.
“So, it has begun already,” he muttered to himself. “Magnify quadrant five.”
The profile of Earth vanished, and a great double-orb of minute shapes replaced it, lit irregularly by a cascade of dashes and lances of red and green light.
“How many ships are engaged there?”
“At least three hundred, sir, mostly of Federation or Klingon construction. Sensors also detect several hundred smaller contacts, identical to the living missiles the Zerg used during their assault on Romulus.” The officer took a moment to confirm his readings. “The ships appear to be divided into two opposing formations. The larger, numbering some two hundred vessels, is evidently in the process of enveloping the smaller and trapping it against the planet’s gravity well.”
Suran felt an unexpected glimmer of hope.
“Where are the Zerg missiles concentrated?”
“Within the interior formation, sir.”
Suran leaned back in his chair and suppressed a sigh.
You should have listened, Picard. This assault was suicide.
“Sir.”
Suran looked over to see his second approach, face creased with confusion.
“Have you determined how we got here, Subcommander Dural?”
“The diagnostic logs indicate that the inhabited decks simultaneously decompressed as the Agrona entered the Federation Neutral Zone, incapacitating the crew. Technical is still working on the subsequent logs, but it is clear that life support only normalized a few minutes ago. Navigation recorded a course correction directly for Sector 001 at maximum warp velocity immediately after decompression.”
Suran frowned. “Was the ship commandeered? Are there intruders aboard?”
“None have been detected thus far, sir, but the marine detachment is conducting ongoing sweeps.” Dural shook his head slowly. “Sir, the ship recorded both the decompression and the course change as being executed with your voice authorization.”
“I gave no such orders.”
“Yes, sir. There’s more. I also checked the transmission logs. There has been one outgoing transmission from this ship since the decompression, directed at the rest of the task force. Audio and visual. From you, sir.”
Suran’s lips pursed into a tight line. “Put it onscreen.
Dural gestured to a waiting officer, and the viewscreen switched to freeze-frame of Suran himself, backed by a view of the Agrona’s bridge. There was a brief pause, and then the image came to life.
“All ships of the Second Expeditionary Task Force, this is Commander Suran. I have received new instructions from Romulus. We are to alter course for Sector 001, infiltrate the primary system, and taking up holding stations at coordinates included in this transmission. This deployment is class one covert, and as such, there will be no further ship-to-ship communications of any sort until the objective is reached. Full stealth precautions are to be initiated. Do not engage hostile contacts unless you are engaged, and do not reveal the location of the Agrona under any circumstances. Fallback coordinates will follow. That is all.”
The message ended abruptly, and Suran caught several of his crew cast uncertain glances his way. The speaker’s appearance, mannerisms, and diction had been identical to his own. Except…
“That bluish distortion, near the beginning of the transmission…”
“Yes, commander. The technical division is analyzing it right now.”
Suran stroked his cheek thoughtfully, eyes fixed on the frozen image of him. It was obviously a fake, a projection of some sort, but he could not conceive how it had worked its way into the Agrona’s comm system.
“There must be an intruder aboard. Lock down the non-essential sections, and double the guard.”
“At once, sir.”
“We shall deal with this later. Now, raise the rest of the fleet. Tell them…”
Suran trailed off. What did he want to tell them? Whatever had brought him halfway across Federation space, it had given him another opportunity to join Picard and the rest in their final stand against the Zerg. Judging by what he had seen of the battle, they needed the help, desperately.
Of course, the rationale for his withdrawal from their alliance was just as valid as it had been days before. Even with the aid of his forces, the Zerg would still command numerical superiority, and Suran had no idea if they had reinforcements incoming. More than likely, the Allied fleet was doomed, and any effort to assist them would be suicide.
You must understand, Suran, that if we join you, we will have been defeated. A kinder fall, perhaps, but in the end, the result would be the same.
Picard’s parting words had haunted Suran since the task force had left Deep Space Nine, and he still couldn’t shake the human’s determined face from his mind. The commander had seen Romulan worlds defiled by the Zerg, and the idea of abandoning an opportunity to strike a mortal blow to the monsters, fleeing to the relative safety of the Empire’s borders while humans, Cardassians, even Klingons fought on…
“Sir?” Dural prompted.
Suran stared at the officer. He, and the rest of the crew, would follow him unquestioningly, no matter which path he chose. They were good soldiers, and no doubt many of them silently wished to bring the fight back to the invaders.
But this was not the time. He would not see them die in a hopeless battle, no matter how righteous.
“Tell them to break from orbit, full impulse. We’re heading back home. This is a fight we cannot win.”
The bridge viewscreen flickered, and several displays at the back of bridge went blank for an instant, and then resumed their previous tasks.
Before Suran could question the momentary disruption, the tactical stations came alive with activity.
“What is it?”
“Commander, I’m detecting a large number of vessels approaching at high warp. At least seventy, possibly more.
“Range?”
“They’ve already entered the star system, sir. They will reach the lunar perimeter in under a minute.”
“What? Why didn’t you detect them before?”
“I’m not certain, sir. Our proximity to the planet’s moon may be reducing the range of our long-range sensors, but…”
“Well, it’s of little consequence now. Can you identify them?”
“The warp signatures appear to be human and Klingon in origin, sir.”
“The Alliance wouldn’t have mounted this attack piecemeal,” Suran said, leaning forward.
“Zerg reinforcements?” Dural ventured, still at his side.
Suran nodded, his frown deepening. The Allied assault was utterly lost now. All he could do was keep his men from being swept up in the slaughter.
“Open the comm. We’re leaving, now.”
“Sir!” the tactical officer’s consternation was palpable. “The incoming ships have dropped from warp. They’re almost on top of us, range thirty thousand kilometers!”
“Calm yourself, centurion. Our cloaking shields are still online. Put them onscreen.”
The viewscreen flickered to life, and a wall of Starfleet vessels and Klingon warships filled it. As the bridge crew watched, the massed fleet began to spread out, and the space between each vessel was filled by a cloud of tiny, winged forms. Suran felt a twang of dread, invisibility or no. He hadn’t realized that the Zerg possessed so many ships, much less could afford to keep them in reserve.
“One hundred and twenty ships, commander, and hundreds more of the organic missiles. They appear to be spreading out and moving towards our position.”
Suran clenched the armrest of his chair tightly. “They’re moving on our position?”
“Yes, sir. The formation has closed to twenty-five thousand kilometers.”
“They’re pinning us against the moon…” Suran heard Dural mutter, and he felt inclined to agree. Cloaking shields or not, the Zerg fleet was angling directly for Earth’s satellite, not the battle above the planet.
Slowly, Suran rose and walked towards the viewscreen as the wall of enemy ships inexorably approached. Before his eyes, the gap between the colossal formation and the lunar surface closed to a sliver. Other ships moved just as quickly, plainly intent on Suran’s other avenues of escape.
They were trapped. Somehow, the Zerg had detected the task force, and now they were pressed between a countless kilograms of rock and one of the largest fleets Suran had ever seen.
The game was up, and there was only one option left to him.
“What should I tell the fleet, sir?” Dural asked earnestly.
“Tell them…” Even now, Picard’s steadfast expression stuck in his mind’s eye. “Tell them to disengage their cloaks, divert all power to weapons and shields, and form up on the Agrona. I’m not about to die hiding, and I’d rather make a stand with a human at my back than smashed against this blasted rock.”
Subcommander Dural’s lip fell in surprise, but he caught himself and saluted smartly.
“Helm, take us into the Earthward Zerg line, full impulse!”
Suran thought he saw a small smile on his second’s face as he moved to oversee the order, and he couldn’t help share a bit of the sentiment. If the Zerg had the resources arrayed against his force at their disposal, falling back to Romulan space would have only delayed this encounter. Stealth and calculation had had their place. Now he would show the invaders what the price of their conquest would truly be.
----------------------------------------------
“Admiral, the Enterprise has broken from the main battle line!”
Nechayev peered through the acrid smoke of a fried navigation console at the distant form of the Sovereign-class vessel as it skirted around a pair of badly damaged Galaxy-class ships and shot towards the slivery lunar disk.
“The fool is going after K’Nera!” she snarled. “Get me a link with Picard. Now! And get more ships on our starboard flank!”
The Versailles rocked violently as a lucky photon torpedo exploded just aft.
Nechayev’s operation’s officer shook his head. “Sir, the main communications array is still down from the last volley. Engineering is switching to auxiliaries, but we won’t have it back for another few minutes, at least.”
The admiral slammed her fist against her chair.
“Damn him! We’ll lose both of them now! What does he think he’s proving?”
The bridge shook again, harder this time, and a lighting panel on the bridge’s upper half exploded, sending crewers fleeing from the sparks.
“Admiral, we can’t take much more of this!” Commander Slovach shouted over the din as she helped the remaining navigational officer back into his chair. “Shields are down to forty-two percent! We have to fall back! Let the reserve squadrons move forward!”
“We don’t have many reserves left, Commander!” Nechayev shouted back.
“We won’t do anyone any good if we’re dead, sir! The Fleet needs you! N’Kera’s probably gone, and Picard…!”
A direct phaser triggered a chorus of warning klaxons, drowning Slovach out. The captain silenced them with an irritated jab at her seat’s interface.
“All right, commander! You’ve made your point! Helm, take us back to the reserve position! Tell Captain Gehirn to take her ships forward and cover us!”
The admiral watched as a flight of Starfleet vessel, each almost as badly damaged as her own, moved past her viewscreen, straight into a volley of missiles from the ever-advancing Zerg front. Slovach was right; the Versailles’ engineering teams needed time to make repairs. But time was something they were running out of, just as fast as the Fleet lost ships. At their current loss rate, there wouldn’t be anything left of it in under twenty minutes. And if they lost the Enterprise, the last vestiges of morale among her crews would vanish.
“Damn him,” she whispered. The Enterprise would have met the Zerg ships pursuing the remnants of Battle Group Qo’nos by now. It wouldn’t take long. One ship couldn’t withstand the Zerg onslaught alone, no matter who captained it or what its name was.
“Sir… Admiral Nechayev, I’ve lost the Enterprise,” the sensor officer reported haltingly.
The other members of the bridge crew looked up from their stations. Nechayev’s eyes fell.
“…no, wait a moment.” The lieutenant smacked his interface in frustration, and then began jabbing at it again. “The long-range sensors seem to be malfunctioning. Yes, I’ve got it again! And… wait…”
Slovach stalked around towards the man from the other side of the bridge, wiping sweat and soot from her forehead.
“Lieutenant, if the station is malfunctioning…”
“Sir, it’s not the station… There! I’ve got it! And… Romulan signatures?”
“What?” Both Nechayev and Slovach shouted in unison, and in a moment both were looking over the lieutenant’s shoulders.
“Yes! Thirty Romulan warbirds, D’deridex and Valdore-class!”
“Suran,” Nechayev whispered.
“But how…?” Slovach began.
Nechayev was already running back to her command chair.
“How did they get here? How did Picard know they would come? We’ll just have to ask them ourselves, won’t we? Let’s make sure we have the chance to chat! This isn’t quite over!”
Damn him.
--------------------------------------------------------
Nestled deep within the Agrona’s computer core, Cortana looked on through the ship’s sensors as thirty fresh, Romulan warship swept into rear of the Zerg line. As the reactor of the first infested ship ignited like a thermonuclear firework, the AI loosed a sigh of relief. Or rather, she would have if she wasn’t currently a collection of data packets circulating through the warbird’s central routing junction. There was a very real chance that the Zerg would rally and turn on the unexpected reinforcements, annihilating her matrix in the process, but at that moment, she didn’t let the danger bother her, and sat back to enjoy the show.
For the first time in days, Cortana didn’t entirely loathe her surroundings. When she had first heard Picard’s contingency plan, just after the loss of the Republica, she had been all for it; after all, she had, quite literally, been built to infiltrate alien computer systems. As the captain had expected, Suran had decided to withdraw from the Allied Fleet, and she had hitched a ride on the last transmission between the Enterprise and the Agrona.
It had been a tight fit; the message had been only a terse navigational intent statement, and she had lost a few lengths of accessory coding in the process. That, she had expected; it was the loneliness that had turned her off. The warbird had no artificial intellect to speak of, only a few relatively basic defensive algorithms and an entirely bland coordinating system. Knocking out the crew, fabricating a message to guide the rest of the task force to Earth, and conjuring up a phantom armada of omniscient Zerg to trap Suran had been too easy. Give her a hostile Covenant AI any day, if only for the company.
The Romulan fleet was worthy of its reputation – in combat, at least – Cortana was still surprised how easily their unquestioning chain of command had enable her to seize the entire task force. Already, it had swept through Zerg’s outer perimeter and overtaken a handful of beleaguered Klingon warships. And with them…
The Enterprise!
A more welcome sight Cortana hadn’t seen since she’d last slipped from the Master Chief’s familiar neural interface. She began collecting the tendrils of her consciousness from the various system hubs she’d hacked and migrated towards the communications network. The sooner someone tossed a hurried salutation or status request the Enterprise’s way, the better. Sheltered as she was deep in the Agrona’s hardware, Cortana didn’t relish the idea of being around when Suran opened a line to one of his escorts and found out that the Zerg reinforcements had been nothing more than sensor artifacts and a bit of artistry with the bridge viewscreen’s combat log.
Hopefully, Suran would be too thick in the fighting when he finally found out to try and withdraw. Still, Cortana didn’t envy the unfortunate individual standing at the Agrona’s bridge sensor station…
An unheard order activated the ship’s primary communications grid, and the AI was gone.
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
-
Darth Ruinus
- Jedi Master
- Posts: 1400
- Joined: 2007-04-02 12:02pm
- Location: Los Angeles
- Contact:
Is that room what I think it is?
"I don't believe in man made global warming because God promised to never again destroy the earth with water. He sent the rainbow as a sign."
- Sean Hannity Forums user Avi
"And BTW the concept of carbon based life is only a hypothesis based on the abiogensis theory, and there is no clear evidence for it."
-Mazen707 informing me about the facts on carbon-based life.
- Sean Hannity Forums user Avi
"And BTW the concept of carbon based life is only a hypothesis based on the abiogensis theory, and there is no clear evidence for it."
-Mazen707 informing me about the facts on carbon-based life.
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Vehrec
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2204
- Joined: 2006-04-22 12:29pm
- Location: The Ohio State University
- Contact:
So. Forerunner structures on Earth. I wonder if this means that there might be a few sentinels lying around waiting for a 'burn and clear' command. However, I think there shouldn't be much just waiting to be used like that, given that Earth wasn't a major base or anything, just a bolthole or something.
Glad to see Cortana had put herself to good use, stealing a Romulan Fleet. I had a feeling that if she wasn't on Enterprise, and she wasn't with the Chief, than she was off scarring up the largest fleet of reinforcements she could find. I wonder if she'll be handling the point defense of Enterprise now. And I wonder how the Romulans will plan to get her back for this.
Glad to see Cortana had put herself to good use, stealing a Romulan Fleet. I had a feeling that if she wasn't on Enterprise, and she wasn't with the Chief, than she was off scarring up the largest fleet of reinforcements she could find. I wonder if she'll be handling the point defense of Enterprise now. And I wonder how the Romulans will plan to get her back for this.
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)-
The Vortex Empire
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1586
- Joined: 2006-12-11 09:44pm
- Location: Rhode Island
I'm not sure of the exact page count, but I am fairly certain The Rift won't surpass 72 chapters (not counting an epilogue). The end is quite close.FA Xerrik wrote:Hah HAH! DOUBLE KILL
Double update, anyways. Glad to see the Romulans have joined the party, willingly or not. I'm sure you've answered this before, but how close are we to endgame? It seems like one way or the other, things are about to explode.
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
-
The Vortex Empire
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1586
- Joined: 2006-12-11 09:44pm
- Location: Rhode Island
Noble Ire wrote:I'm not sure of the exact page count, but I am fairly certain The Rift won't surpass 72 chapters (not counting an epilogue). The end is quite close.FA Xerrik wrote:Hah HAH! DOUBLE KILL
Double update, anyways. Glad to see the Romulans have joined the party, willingly or not. I'm sure you've answered this before, but how close are we to endgame? It seems like one way or the other, things are about to explode.
Only 3 more chapters? How can such a great story end? Make it an epic conclusion, Ire.-
Themightytom
- Sith Devotee
- Posts: 2818
- Joined: 2007-12-22 11:11am
- Location: United States
All good things must come to an end and this is definitely a good thing. Great job so far noble Ire, any of the franchises you ahve combined here would be lucky to hire you as a writer, you do great work balancing action with plot. This is a great story
"Since when is "the west" a nation?"-Styphon
"ACORN= Cobra obviously." AMT
This topic is... oh Village Idiot. Carry on then.--Havok
Chapter Seventy
One by one, the ten remaining members of Alpha and Sierra units moved down a long, enclosed corridor, silent as the countless tons of rock that hemmed them in on all sides. The Master Chief led the company, his keen eyes scanning the path ahead for any interruptions in the smooth, geometric lines of the octagonal passageway. The bland sameness of the space contrasted sharply with the frantic spasms of activity that crowded the short-range motion tracker of his helmet’s HUD; masses of Zerg somewhere above or below, or the composition of the mountain and its unlikely interior structure, had rendered it useless. Similarly, the helmet’s integrated flashlight sat inactive; lambent nodes embedded in the narrow corridor’s walls cast the space in dusky, bluish light.
Behind him, Jacen, Tassadar, and their diminished escort of Alliance marines and Starfleet officers kept pace. Like the rest, the Jedi held his weapon at the ready, but his apprehension over their continued descent into Kerrigan’s fortress was mitigated by simple curiosity. Jacen wasn’t sure what he had expected the heart of the Zerg hive to look like, but he certainly hadn’t imagined subtly-carved, mathematically-precise passageways and anterooms reminiscent of Coruscanti museums. Even the Federation members of the party seemed confused by the network’s presence, and a passing scan of the Chief revealed an even stronger, if carefully restrained, sense of astonishment.
Next to the impending threat of the Swarm, however, the strange architecture seemed almost welcoming, and when the Spartan had guided them from the darkness of a larger passage into the almost claustrophobic area, no one had objected. The sudden illumination of the tunnel by some unseen trigger had seemed more comfort than threat; the further Jacen progressed, the more the Jedi felt as though the mountain’s interior structure was quite disparate from its Zerg occupiers, and beyond even their dark mistress.
Perhaps it was just the twilight illumination and the steady, almost imperceptible hum that resonated from the plated floor. They seemed undeniably… permanent, more than any living being could be.
The Master Chief slowed to a stop, and the rest followed suit. Before them, the way was blocked by a sealed doorway. A pair of narrow windows was set in its surface, but all that was visible beyond them was the same eerie dusk that filled the corridor. Eight pairs of hands leveled blasters and phasers at the barrier, and the Spartan took a tentative step forward.
Obediently, the door split into three segments and vanished into the walls and ceiling, revealing a small, circular chamber adorned only by a single, central pillar.
“A dead end?” one of the Starfleet officers, Richardson, asked as the group filed into the room. The space was barely large enough to accommodate them all, and there appeared to be no other hatches or doorways that would permit further progress.
The Chief did not reply immediately. Instead, he rounded the central pillar, scanning its streamlined, mechanical surface intently. Finally, he found what he was looking for: an illuminated, rectangular panel, precisely at waist-height. Shifting his rifle, the Chief extended his right palm towards the panel, and just before he touched it, Jacen thought he saw the outline of a humanoid hand on the surface.
There was a hiss of ancient hydraulics from above, and the members of the party drew back from the central column. A puff of pressurized gas escaped its upper seam, and the entire cylinder retracted into the ceiling with dull thud. The movement revealed a sizeable hole in the floor, down which was visible an inclined shaft of indeterminate length.
The Chief turned to Tassadar. “The Cerebrate is below us?”
“It is.”
The Spartan inspected what was visible of the shaft for a moment, slid his rifle onto the magnetic clamps affixed to the back of his armor, and removed the compact blaster pistol from his hip.
“If the shaft is safe and the landing secure, I’ll call back up. If not, find another way to the Cerebrate. Don’t waste our time looking for me.”
“Sir…” one of the Allied soldiers ventured apprehensively, but the Spartan had already slipped into the hole.
The sound of metal on metal echoed back up the shaft for a few seconds, and then stopped. Jacen reached out, trying to follow the Chief’s life force, but before he could find him again…
“Clear!”
“All right,” the Jedi said, relieved. “One at a time, now.” He gestured to Tassadar. “High Templar?”
The Protoss slid into the opening without complaint and the rest followed, most easing their way into the dark shaft with obvious trepidation. When the last had vanished, Jacen counted a few breaths, and then swung his legs over the gap. Inhaling, he let go, and let the steep, metallic incline guide him down. Almost immediately, Jacen made out new light beyond his feet, but before the sensation could even fully register, an all-too-familiar feeling shot up his spine.
Danger.
A few seconds later, the Jedi hit the ground at a crouch with his lightsaber ablaze. A quick look around the new chamber yielded only the surprised faces of the other members of the squad, still in the process of recovering from the lengthy fall, so Jacen turned his attention upward. Three meters above his head, the shaft yawned, narrow and empty, but the abrupt sound of scrabbling held his focus there. A moment later, the tusked, beady-eyed bulk of a Zergling plummeted straight downward at Jacen’s head, its spiky limbs flailing.
An upward slash and swift sideways roll ensured that the Jedi escaped the beast unharmed and that it was dead before it finished its fall, but the creature was only the first to tumble from the shaft. Within a few moments, three more Zerglings had dropped upon their slain brood-mate.
The Chief and the other soldiers were quick to respond, backing to the encircling wall and focusing fire on the center of the small chamber, and the trio fell before they could move more than a few steps. Jacen scrambled to his feet, keenly aware that he was well within their field of fire.
“Solo!”
The Chief’s shout coincided with another burst of premonition, and Jacen spun back towards the smoking heap, but before he could react further, his legs fell out from underneath him. One of the creatures must have only been stunned by the initial volley, and had thrown itself at him upon recovering.
Jacen pushed out with the Force to break his fall, but a slash of pain across his thigh shattered his focus, and he tumbled onto exposed belly of one of the other Zerg minions. In an instant, the creature was on top of him, and he felt the serrated hide of one of its forelimbs rip across his left cheek. Realizing that the fall had knocked his lightsaber from his grasp, Jacen pushed up against the beast’s center mass, trying to avoid its gaping, toothy maw.
Before he could summon the pulse of pressure needed repel the Zergling, an impact drove the creature full onto his chest, knocking Jacen’s breath away and prompting a throaty yelp from his attacker.
The two lay stunned for a moment as the air filled with the sound of energy discharges. One of the beast’s glassy, red eyes was pressed centimeters from Jacen’s own. A burst of sensation swept over the Jedi. The same manifestation of empty malice and hunger that he had sensed in the Zerg on the approach to Kerrigan’s fortress was here to, but now it appeared to be nothing more than a flimsy veil. Beyond it, a greater entity dwelled, a being with an intelligence of its own, and for a moment their minds touched.
They are close.
Fear that was not his own tore at Jacen, and the Zergling howled. The thing reeled back, and the pressure on the Jedi’s chest lessened. Acting on instinct, Jacen summoned all the energy he could to the small space between their bodies and pushed. The creature shot backward through the air for a full meter before grinding into the metallic floor and coming to a stop in a confused heap.
Pulling himself to one knee, Jacen looked about him to see that two more Zerg bodies had joined their fellows on the growing mound at the room’s center. Several others had made it to the encircling line of Allied soldiers, and Jacen saw one leap for a pair of Alliance marines. Skirting around the pile of Zerg corpses, he spied the hilt of his lightsaber next to the body of the first fallen Zergling and summoned it to his outstretched palm with barely a thought.
The report of a blaster rifle cut the air, and the Zergling Jacen had spotted collapsed onto one of the soldiers. He grunted under the sudden weight, but immediately began to extricate himself, apparently uninjured. Jacen looked back towards the origin of the shot, and caught sight of the Chief. He stood by the chamber’s single exit, through which the rest of the squad was hurriedly stumbling.
The Spartan gestured to him earnestly, but another pulse of insight pulled Jacen’s attention to the other side of the small chamber. In a flash, he perceived the spiny back of yet another Zergling, and beneath it, Tassadar’s robed form. With a shout, Jacen charged towards his companion, ready to tear the beast from him, but he stopped short after only a few steps. The air around the Zergling seemed to crack with energy, and both Zerg and Protoss glowed white. Light burst from the creature’s thick hide in an expanding web of brilliance, and with a crack, it fell away. When the glare cleared, all that remained of the attacker was a smear of gore across the curving wall.
Tassadar stepped quickly past the remains without a second look and moved past Jacen towards the door. The Jedi’s eyes lingered on the bloody smudge for a moment before he followed.
The power of the dark with the control of the light.
Tassadar’s power was alien, and yet it still awed him as much as any feat of his old masters.
The corridor beyond the chamber was identical to the one they had left levels above. The Chief, Tassadar, and the others pelted along it as quickly as they could, eager to put some distance between themselves and the shaft before any more Zerg could emerge. As Jacen sought to catch up, a flare of pain on his side reminded Jacen of the gouge on his thigh. He glanced at the bloody gash, and tried to focus on the blood flowing into his lower extremities. The bleeding slowed, but he kept on running and it did not cease entirely. He would have to leave it until they had a moment to rest. The pain also lessened, but his lower body still tingled with it.
He could feel no poison flowing from the wound. Jacen grimaced. There was that, at least.
Pulling up behind Tassadar, Jacen called to him.
“I sensed the Cerebrate back there.”
“We are almost upon it,” Tassadar replied without breaking his long, powerful stride. “And it knows we are here. It must be eliminated quickly, before the brunt of the Queen’s vanguard is brought upon us.”
“Will we be able to face it directly?” Jacen asked. “It must be well-defended, and we don’t have that much manpower. I don’t know about the Chief, but the others are wearing down, and I can only fight so many.”
“I do not think that the creature expected any intruder to penetrate this far. We must be cautious, but…”
Tassadar trailed off, and to Jacen it looked as though the Protoss was lost in thought.
“What is it?” Jacen asked, moving closer.
The templar faltered. “It is calling… he is calling to me.”
“The Cerebrate is trying to communicate?”
Tassadar did not turn his head. “No… it is nothing. We will be able to reach the creature, but we must hurry. There is little time.”
The templar raised his voice. “Spartan, the next doorway!”
A small door mounted in the right wall led them into a somewhat more spacious passageway, lit with the same bluish light but brighter than the others had been. There was also a familiar, fetid tang in the air, and the arching walls and plated floor bore more scrapes and claw marks.
“Do you hear that?” one of the soldiers ahead of Jacen whispered to a companion.
As they advanced quickly along the gradually-curving passage, the sound became more apparent: wind, and faint echoes. It was like they were approaching an exit to the mountain, and yet Jacen knew that they had to be hundreds of meters deep within its stony bulk. More ominously, the Jedi was beginning to perceive individual glimmers of life ahead of them, resolving from the mass of clouded activity that had pressed upon him since the squad had penetrated Kilimanjaro. Among them, one emerged with particular clarity, the same that he had touched vicariously only minutes before. Jacen drew back from it, attempting to minimize his own psychic presence.
“Do not restrain your senses, Jedi,” Tassadar said, his eyes fixed on the path ahead. “It already knows that I am coming, and it perceives only me. I have made sure of that.”
Abruptly, the passageway straightened out, and the floor inclined upward steeply. Above them, the roof gave way, revealing a vaulted ceiling of dark stone and patterned metal far above. They crept up the incline in tight formation, each with their weapon at the ready, but the broad space beyond presented no obvious foes.
The unit emerged into what appeared to be a sort of nexus. Behind and far in front of them, walls like vertical cliffs towered dozens of meters until they met the ceiling. The base of each was studded with small doors and inclined openings like their own. Higher up, rows of protrusions extruded from the flat surface, some like open pipes, others sealed hatches studded by rhythmically-blinking lights. A broad causeway stretched to either side between the walls, hemmed in by the blank, imposing faces of twin gates. The left barrier was set into a third, huge wall, but the right was built into a sheer rampart that extended less than halfway to the ceiling. Beyond it, the vaulted ceiling transformed into the underside of a shallow dome, from which most of the huge chamber’s illumination seemed to emanate.
The group formed up around Tassadar and moved quietly onto the causeway. The soldiers at the perimeter swept their weapons back and forth over closed doorways and imposing columns, conscious of the slightest movement of sound. A gentle breeze brushed past from them from the domed area, and Jacen realized that the current must have been born of the room’s ventilation systems. Unfortunately, the circulator seemed incapable of dealing with the growing stench of exposed flesh.
“Watch those openings,” the Chief warned, nodding at the protruding, pipe-like structures high above them. “I’ve been surprised by them before.”
Jacen shot a quizzical glance at the Spartan, but he seemed not to notice it.
“The right wall,” Tassadar said. “The Cerebrate is just beyond it.”
“But where are its guards?” a Starfleet officer asked, stepping over a particularly deep gouge in the floor. “And their black growth? The creep?”
The Protoss looked from the far wall to the man. He stared back nervously, but Tassadar seemed lost in thought once again.
“The creep is corrosive. It will consume all that is not Zerg in time. The Queen… she wanted this place to remain intact.”
“What? Why?”
Tassadar closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened then again. “No. No, we must hurry. Come, to the wall.”
The right gate sat fully sealed, but as they approached, a pair of smaller openings to either side of the main entrance came into view, set into low blocks of protruding dark stone. Careful to avoid full view of the smaller entry points, the group came to a halt at one of the house-sized protrusions, and the Chief stepped forward. He sized the barrier wall up carefully, taking in the blocks, both of which were less than a meter taller than he was, as well as the construct’s other sparse features.
“There’s another raised platform set against the wall above this protrusion,” the Spartan said at last. “The wall is inclined near the top. I should be able to climb up and reconnoiter the area before we advance. The rest of you, hold position here.”
Jacen offered no complaint, and Tassadar seemed lost within his own head once again. With the soldiers, they moved up against the wall, trying to make the open corner at the base of the sheer barrier as defensible as possible. Behind them, the Chief stowed his weapon, and with a single standing leap, caught hold of the lip of the protrusion and hefted his half-ton weight up with little effort. With practiced finesse, he silently moved across the flat roof, scaled the secondary platform, and then shimmied up the inclined crest of the wall. The barrier arched skyward at almost ninety degrees, so the Spartan was forced to lodge his back against the vertical face of the adjoining wall and laboriously wedge his way up with carefully-coordinated movement of his legs and left arm, but he reached the top nonetheless, with surprising speed.
After securing himself to the barrier’s upper edge, the Chief’s optically-enhanced visor took in everything that lay below. Thirty meters away the causeway gave way to a huge circular platform, anchored far below the dome they had seen below. The source of its illumination was now apparent; a sizeable hole marked the platform’s center, and through this gap a continuous beam of blue-white light rose up until it disappeared into some sort of emitter affixed to the dome’s apex. The platform itself seemed to be quite barren.
A large alcove flanked either side of the causeway. The Chief could not see into the one closest to him, but the other was more than enough to draw his attention. Filling it was a creature that could only have been the Cerebrate. The being was huge, easily larger than an Ultralisk, and yet it barely even seemed to be alive. A folded, oblong mass of pulsating brown flesh affixed to a small expanse of the Zerg creep by a collection of thick, purple tentacles, the Cerebrate lacked any overt sensory organs or recognizable features of any sort. Like all components of the Swarm, it had been bred and grown to be just what it needed to be, with no unnecessary embellishments or vestigial limbs. It was a brain, utterly dependent upon the minions that were its eyes and ears, its hands and its protective shell.
As he turned his magnified viewer away from the thing, the Chief was grateful for his suit’s dedicated air filters. Whatever waste the Cerebrate excreted, it must have done so directly into the surrounding creep.
A handful of large, crab-like creatures the Chief had never seen before clustered about the Cerebrate, grooming its perpetually-undulating creases with their proboscises or trimming the edges of the surrounding creep. Others scuttled around a pair of sagging, conical growths that flanked the Cerebrate. Eight Hydralisks also slithered back and forth before the immobile entity, watching the wall and the far platform with empty, hateful eyes. These creatures were half again as large as most of the same breed that the Chief had faced before, and their chitinous exoskeletons shown a dusky crimson in the light of the nearby energy pillar.
The Chief was about to take a closer look at the organic mounds adjacent to the Cerebrate when a shout from below drew him back to the other side of the wall. The Allied soldiers had drawn into a tight semicircle against the gated rampart, and their weapons were aimed purposefully back down the causeway. Jacen stood before them, the green of his lightsaber clear against the dull stone.
Zerglings and Hydralisks had begun to pour from the passageways at the other end of the huge chamber. A chorus of clacking-hisses reached the Chief’s aural receptors, and he watched as the closest Hydralisks reared back and loosed volleys of lethal spines. A few found their way to the crest of the wall, but the Spartan was already sliding back down, unhooking his rifle as he went. The Chief hit the upper platform firing, adding his blaster’s coughing report to the rising symphony of weapons fire reverberating from below. As he began to topple advanced warriors, the Spartan failed to notice that Tassadar was no longer sheltered amongst his squad’s ranks.
-----------------------------------------------
Boil’s massive bulk shuddered with relief as he sensed a throng of his warriors descend upon the human interlopers. The clutch of Hunter-Killers arrayed before him stiffened at the sound of weapons fire just beyond the barrier wall to their left, but they did not break away from their master to hunt the intruders. They were Hydralisks of the purest, most power breed, and for several long minutes, they had been the only beings between Boil and debilitating panic. His final line of defense, the eight warriors were all that Kerrigan allowed him to retain so close to her hive’s heart. He had never questioned her insistence that lesser Zerg be kept from the core of the mountain complex, nor was he capable of doing so now, but he was nevertheless relieved that his master had temporarily lifted the restriction to stop the human’s advance.
The Cerebrate did not fear death; as long as the Queen of Blades persisted, his consciousness would persist and be grown a new corporeal form. Rather, he had feared that he would fail in his mandate to protect her inner sanctum. This anxiety was not born of potential punishment or even the thought of not being created anew; loyalty to his mistress was part of what he was.
Boil had tracked the small group of humanoids since they arrived at one of the fortress’s upper egress maws, near the mountain’s summit. At first, he has thought little of them, suspecting that they were simply stragglers of the larger group that his forces had ambushed as they established a beachhead just meters from the hive’s sealed entrance. These first attackers had displayed little of the cunning that had frustrated the Cerebrate during the human’s initial incursion; by the time that they’re metallic conveyances had offloaded the pitiful strike force, his perimeter broods had already burrowed themselves into the sand and soft rock below they’re feet. The slaughter had been quite satisfying.
The latecomers, however, had posed an unexpected challenge. After killing a large number of his underlings, they had been able to slip into an excavation tunnel carved months earlier by the brood tasked by the Queen with establishing her seat on the human homeworld. Boil had believed that all such entrances had been collapsed, but somehow, the intruders had managed to use it to gain access to the mountain’s interior. The Cerebrate had become nervous as soon as his perimeter forces lost the group; the preexisting, artificial complex that the Queen had adopted as her throne was left more or less intact at its lower levels, and thus lacked the sensory organs that would have allowed Boil to pinpoint the human’s exact movements in a comparably-sized superorganism.
He had been forced to flood the portions of the facility that his Queen had not restricted with all the minions he could recall, weakening the fortress’s defenses. Moreover, he had resorted to personally directing their search, an effort that distracted him from the other enemy forces scattered across the surrounding plain; the destruction of Boil’s other brother had left him in sole command of the continent’s broods. After a period of mounting agitation, a group of lesser minions had finally stumbled across the offending humans, who had evidently used the complex’s conduit network to penetrate hundreds of meters down, to Boil’s own level. One of them had touched his mind, and the Cerebrate had realized that, for the first time in his short life, he was in real danger. Desperately, he had called all the warriors within his reach to him, and attempted to track the alien mind as it approached. Even that effort had failed; another psionic power had repelled his mental tendrils, and mounted its own psychic assault.
The creature’s dreadful, alien presence in his own thoughts still sickened him, even though it had been fleeting. Foreign as the hostile mind was, he could comprehend it fully, and he felt a portion of his being reach out in response. The momentary, uncontrollable reaction confounded and terrified him.
Through all of this, his Queen had left Boil almost entirely to his own devices. She seemed content to simply observe, and it did not even occur to him to question her passivity. He was tasked with defending her, and he threw himself upon the task with every measure of his will.
Nostrils of a dozen remote bodies captured the iron-heavy tang of human blood, and Boil began to calm down. Extraordinary nuisances they might have been, but no lesser organisms could withstand the fury of the Zerg for long. Confident that the threat had been dealt with, Boil extended his psionic presence outward once more, eager to oversee the extermination of the remnants of the force that had slain his brothers.
A wave of psionic energy washed over the Cerebrate, and his restored view of creep-covered vistas dissolved into blackness. Boil felt the solid metal and stone of the floor beneath him break asunder and give way, and he was falling, blind and alone, unable to even scream. Bursts of searing flare erupted across his pulpy hide, and with each one, a pulse of pain shot from end of his bloated body to the other. The tortuous void became solid again in an instant, and Boil felt the impact with every ounce of shivering biomass and every iota of sentience.
Reeling, the Cerebrate shot mental tendrils out in every direction, desperate to re-anchor himself in the corporeal realm. First, he felt the creep he was rooted in, then the floor, and the sheltering walls above, all still quite intact. The drones that had milled been milling about his body, grooming and sustaining it, lay dead, their tiny minds fried by his sudden outpouring of shock and disorientation. Beyond, his guardians coiled around one another, tense and confused, but still very much alive. Outwardly, the world seemed virtually unchanged.
Boil knew different. The Queen was gone.
She had not disappeared entirely, for as Boil concentrated, he could barely detect the familiar resonance of her thoughts, but it appeared as though perceived from a vast distance, like an eclipsed star a galaxy away. The gulf was crushing. From his first thought, she had been with him. The ebb and flow of her passions was his heartbeat. Her designs and machinations were his dearest dreams. It was as though his very ability to feel had been torn from him, and only the crushing ache of its memory had been left to him.
He needed to reach his Queen again. He needed to lose his mind in hers. He would find the thing that had severed them. He would take her back.
Boil felt the unending fury and blind bloodlust of his minions, and took the fire as his own. As his intellect began to boil away, he lashed out with all his will, and all at once, the demon that had stolen his essence was before him.
Tassadar walked calmly from the far entryway in the barrier wall, his blazing eyes fixed firmly on the Cerebrate. The attendant Hydralisks spotted the Protoss, simultaneously loosed keening wails that drowned out the echoing sounds of battle, and charged. Their claws scythed the empty air in furious anticipation, and the scales of their armored carapaces gouged wakes of stone as they surged forward on tails of knotted muscle.
The templar’s resolute, steady pace did not slow, and he spared the leading Hunter-Killer’s only a momentary glance before turning his gaze back on the heaving mass of the Cerebrate. The fiends stopped short, almost collapsing backwards from their own inertia. The inky eyes within their serrated skulls went wild, and primal fury overcame the tenuous hold that genetic conditioning and psionic influence had on their basic instincts. Suddenly, everything that moved was enemy and prey, and each Hydralisk found an adversary within claw’s reach.
Tassadar sidestepped the ball of gnashing jaws and shattering chitin, pushing the pair from his mind even as they smashed into the sealed gate, tearing at each other’s arched throats. The six remaining beast fell upon the templar, unfazed by his effortless dismissal of their brethren. As the first blade plunged down upon his unprotected head, Tassadar flung back his dark cloak and thrust his arms out to both sides. The air before him cracked with blue and white, and lattice of pure energy burst into being from nothingness, mirroring the cool fire in the Protoss’ eyes. Synapses of psionic force pulsed through open space and the bodies of the Hunter-Killers, unimpeded by their meticulously-evolved exoskeletons. Organs and soft tissue burned as bodily fluids boiled, and one by one, the Zerg warriors exploded.
When Tassadar looked again at Boil through a sinking red mist, the Cerebrate could finally see the isolating shroud that had severed him from his mistress. The obscuring, impenetrable fog poured from the Protoss’ every orifice. In Boil’s mind’s eye, Tassadar became the miasma, a singularity anchored to the world only by conflagrations of cerulean and jet that erupted from where his skull should have been.
Terror lashed at Boil, and the rage he had manifested within his prone body burst forth. The pyramidal growths that flanked the Zerg coordinator came to life. Their sagging crests turned towards Tassadar, revealing circular maws dripping with nameless, toxic fluids that withered the creep where it fell. With great, wet inhalations of oxygen, the living towers vomited forth twin globes of writhing biomatter. Steeped in pustules of corrosive chemicals, each projectile swam with lethal bacterial spores.
Tassadar stiffened as the wave of filth hurtled at him, but he did not attempt to evade it. The projectiles washed over him, and his lanky form faded from being in a flash of blue light. Boil’s bulk trembled with a silent roar of triumph, but it died as he watched three new dark-robed Protoss emerge from the empty space only a dozen meters before him, untroubled by the loss of their duplicate.
Illusions!
Boil’s spore belchers lobbed another volley of corrosive missiles, obliterating a pair of the phantom templars, but the third leapt free of the withering impacts and broke into a run, thrusting his palms forward as he did. The firing mouths of constructs exploded in showers of blue sparks, and the organic towers collapsed in on themselves in eruptions of caustic fluid.
Tassadar leapt, clearing the creep entirely and burying his splay-toed boots in Boil’s soft, livid flesh. The Cerebrate thrashed with all his might, almost tearing his barely-motile tentacles from the ground, but Tassadar held fast, climbing further up the bucking mass and clasping hold of its blistered surface.
When he felt the Protoss’ long, delicate fingers on his body, Boil no longer could articulate the emotions that flooded his mind, kept so carefully in check for its entire existence. Fear, anger, and despair coalesced into madness, and the last thing that the Cerebrate perceived was an expanding point of darkness deep within its very skin, disrupting the last of the creature’s cascading neural impulses as it reached out for Tassadar’s careful grasp.
Then there was light.
---------------------------------------------------
The Master Chief knelt in the narrow archway. He held a Starfleet phaser in his right hand and his blaster pistol in his left. His favored rifle lay somewhere out on the open causeway, cleaved in half by a Hydralisk he let get too close. Methodically and with supernatural precision, he fired each weapon one after the other in short bursts. The right sent a Zergling skittering to the floor. The left punched a hole in the chest of an arachnidan horror that the Spartan could not name.
The right. The left. Two more monstrosities dead. The Chief ignored the flashing, red indicators on his HUD that tracked the ammunition and charge levels of both weapons. They still fired when he engaged their firing studs, and so he held his ground.
Behind him, Jacen Solo dragged a Starfleet officer deeper into the dark, confining passageway that ran through the barrier wall. Even through the spattering of blood and grime on her face, he recognized her as the officer who had cut them a passage into the mountain. As gently as he could, the Jedi leaned her up against one wall. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing was shallow. Jacen’s hands and tunic were covered with the woman’s blood. Looking down, he saw that the jagged stump where her left arm had been was still bleeding furiously.
“I’m out!” the Chief shouted, and Jacen stood. Turning towards the archway, he palmed and ignited his lightsaber, illuminating the barren passage and the Spartan’s worn battlesuit. Over its shoulder, the Jedi saw that the open chamber still writhed with fresh Zerg bodies, eager to pile after their wounded prey. Jacen stepped carefully over the unconscious woman and moved to join the Chief in the doorway. The Spartan had thrown aside both exhausted weapons, and now faced the ravening hoard with his gauntlets alone.
Another Zergling leapt at them, and all Jacen could hear was the rapid thud of his own heart. The others had all died so quickly after their makeshift line had been overrun. Somehow, it seemed quite natural that he would join them. He was mortal, just like the rest of them, and mortals died. They had fallen short of their goal and their deaths would bear little lasting meaning, but, didn’t that seem like a very mortal end?
The Chief caught the air-borne Zergling with a sharp elbow just below the jaw. Robbed of its momentum, the beast tumbled to the blood-stained floor, but its spiked, dorsal limbs swung up and into the supersoldier’s chest. His energy shields exploded into sparks and he was forced back a step, but the defensive field absorbed the brunt of the blow, and the Chief was able to grab both appendages before their owner could bring them back for another attack. His armored fingers locked on the bony shafts and he yanked up and back, twisting his wrists as he did. With a wet crack, the upper halves of the limbs broke away in the Chief’s hands, and the Zergling loosed a pained shriek. A plated boot silenced the cry, and before the creature could bite down on it, the Chief slammed the foot to the floor with a sickening crunch.
Not bothering to shake away the gore, the Chief brace himself for the next attacker, but the only thing that greeted him through his spattered and scratched visor was a heap of broken and burned Zerg corpses. The rest were now halfway across the chamber, running or staggering for the hatches and openings from which they had come, wailing as they went. Several dashed against each other as they fled, hissing and clawing as they stumbled to the floor and then uneasily picked themselves up again. Within a few more seconds, the causeway was devoid of life.
Warily, the Chief stooped to recover his blaster and reloaded it from a compartment on his leg. No Zerg had shown itself by the time he had finished checking the weapon, so he withdrew deeper into the passage, where Jacen knelt again next to the Starfleet officer.
“Zerg aren’t intimidated that easily,” he said.
Jacen shook his head. “It wasn’t that. I felt… something, very close by. It must have scared them off.”
He looked up at the Chief. “Tassadar! He slipped away just before the attack!”
“He must have found the Cerebrate,” the Chief agreed. “Lucky for us. We should find him before the effect on its minions wear off.”
The Spartan paused. Jacen had torn a piece of his tunic and was tying it around the wounded officer’s stump. She wasn’t moving. The Chief had seen hundreds of battlefield injuries in the course of his service, and he was a reasonably good a gauging them.
“You can’t save her. She’s already lost too much blood.”
Jacen ignored him. Tying off the tourniquet, he leaned closer to the woman and gently placed his hands on the wounded area. He closed his eyes, and concentrated. Almost immediately a measure of color returned to the officer’s ashen features and chest swelled with a ragged breath. The Chief stepped back and fell quiet.
Jacen withdrew a hand. It came up caked with blood, but none of it was new. Satisfied that the bleeding had stopped, he moved his hands to the woman’s face. In the dim light, in her Starfleet uniform, she reminded him of Laura. Taking a deep breath, he placed each palm on her cheeks and laid his forehead on hers. She took another drag of air, and then another. The Chief saw an eye flutter, but the third breath was weaker, and after the fourth, no others came.
After fifteen seconds of motionless silence, the Chief placed a heavy hand on Jacen’s shoulder.
“You did all you could, Solo. We have to go. We have to find Tassadar.”
Slowly, Jacen lifted his head from the cooling body. His hands fell away, but his eyes lingered on her bruised, pallid face for a few more moments.
The Chief was already at the other archway.
“Solo.”
“Just a moment,” he called back, and then took a long, deep breath. “I’m with you.”
Jacen tried not to look back.
Cautiously avoiding the entwined bodies of a pair of Hunter-Killers, the two survivors found Tassadar standing in the midst of a massive mound of charred, oozing flesh, three times the Chief’s height even in its ruined form.
“I guess he didn’t need our help after all,” the Spartan said, kicking a loose segment of shriveled tentacle.
The Protoss was kneeling waist-deep in the blasted remains, cradling a limp hunk of the dead Cerebrate in his arms. Wading closer, Jacen realized that the object was moving, if only slightly. Trying to shake away the disorientation of the last few minutes, the Jedi realized that there were two minds alive in the muck. Two very similar minds.
Carefully, almost tenderly, Tassadar swept a layer of purple ichor and white veins away from the top of the mass, and a face came into view. Its skin was rough and gray, and it seemed to lack any facial features save for a pair of clouded, half-open eyes. A faint glimmer of yellow light appear in them, and the being’s neck twitched, shaking organic detritus from its pronounced, back-swept forehead.
“Another Protoss?” Jacen whispered.
“A friend.”
For the first time since Jacen had met the templar, the psychic resonance that was his voice lacked its stern, commanding tone. The words were almost a whisper.
“Zeratul, I am here,” he continued, pressing his head close to the other Protoss. “You are free.”
The gore-covered alien twitched again, and his eyes opened a fraction wider.
“See with eyes unclouded, my friend. The Cerebrate will trouble you no longer.”
“It was… a dream.”
Zeratul’s voice was even softer than Tassadar’s, purely psychic, lacking the resonance that carried the templar’s thoughts into the physical world.
“Trickery.”
“I am no illusion, Zeratul,” Tassadar said gently. “Although… I must appear so.”
“You died. On Aiur. I saw it.” Zeratul shivered, and his eyes began to inch closed. “More deception. But I will do no more. Your prize is spent, O Concubine of the Zerg.”
Tassadar pulled him closer.
“You know me, Zeratul! You know the energy that flows through me. It is as much a part of you as it is of me! You felt it when you reached out to me, and you feel it now.”
Zeratul said nothing for a long moment, and Tassadar’s arms slackened.
“I feel one who has walked the path of shadow.”
The glimmer beneath Zeratul’s heavy eyelids brightened.
“Death suited you well, Tassadar. The stain of your association with me was washed away. They spoke of you as they did of Adun. En taro Tassadar, they would say. En taro Tassadar…”
Zeratul’s eyes undulated flicking over Jacen where he stood nearby, but he did not appear to see him. Staring back, the Jedi remembered a conversation he had shared with Tassadar weeks previously, all but an eternity. He recalled mention of one of the templar’s mentors, a teacher who had expanded his thinking and broadened his powers to combat the Zerg. A Dark Templar.
The emaciated Protoss soon settled on the high templar once more.
“How?”
“I do not know, my friend. When I plunged my flagship into the Overmind, I was ready to walk Khala’s Path. Instead, when I awoke, I found a different road ahead of me.”
Zeratul shivered again, but he did not speak.
“Though I Was far from home, an old enemy found me. The human… the terran Kerrigan.”
Zeratul made a sound Jacen did not understand. “Ah. She found me, too.”
Tassadar nodded slowly. “I must find her, Zeratul. I must discover how she brought me to this place, so far from home. And then she must be stopped, before she carries her curse to any other worlds.”
“Tell me, my friend, if you are able, how did you come to this place? Why did she bring you here?”
Zeratul’s eyes slid shut, and there was another long silence. Jacen heard footsteps behind them, and turned to see that the Chief had moved towards the huge, circular platform beyond, his opaque faceplate still turned warily towards the barrier wall.
“The creation exceeded its master. Queen… the corrupted terran rose with the Overmind’s fall. Under her, the Swarm consumed the terran empires and pushed our people back to my world. We fought as one, like the Protoss of old, but even with the ancient artifacts of the Xel’Naga, we could not withstand forever.”
“When Shakuras was finally overrun, I was taken. Some escaped… fled to the stars, but all the rest… consumed. She brought me to the apex of the Great Temple. She did something to the sacred machine, and then made me fight her. I attacked… summoned what energy I could…”
For a third time, Zeratul shivered, more violently than the last. Tassadar raised a hand to his the other’s face, but he shook it off, opening his eyes once again.
“Something happened to the machine, and we left Shakuras. Far, far… She was too strong. I, too weak. She kept me locked away. Used new terrans, pitted them one against the other. She…” The Protoss cringed at some unseen stimulus. “She broke it. My mind. Took the secrets, like she had from the others. The dark… she used it to corrupt…”
“Deep Space Nine,” Jacen whispered. “That’s why the commander went mad!”
Zeratul seemed not to hear him.
“Then… here. She brought me here. Gave me to the Cerebrate. I tried to fight, but… I slept… everything. Everything stolen. Everything lost.”
The final words seemed to have exhausted Zeratul, and he slumped again into Tassadar’s arms.
The templar held him close. “Not all is lost, my friend. I will destroy her, and I will bring you home.
Zeratul’s eyes had diminished to slivers of yellow again, and their light had faded noticeably.
“I am meant for shadow, Tassadar, and the light has already begun to fade. But not all of us are gone. Some still live, lost amongst the stars. They need a guide.”
Zeratul’s right arm, virtually atrophied beyond recognition, shifted free of a mass of matted debris and inched up agonizingly until Tassadar clasped his friend’s hand firmly in his own.
“Find them, Tassadar. Guide them home.”
“By Aiur, Zeratul, I will.”
The withered Protoss’ eyes closed on distant embers.
“Shadows, at last. Adun toridas.”
“Adun toridas,” Tassadar said quietly, laying Zeratul’s hand upon his sallow chest. It tightened, and then was still.
Neither Jacen nor Tassadar spoke until the Chief returned.
“We’ve got to move out,” he said. “I don’t know how badly losing this Cerebrate hurt the Zerg, but we can’t count on them not coming back.”
“The Queen is not far,” Tassadar said, still facing the fallen Protoss. “We must go deeper.”
“I found a control panel I recognize on that platform. It should take us down.”
Jacen looked up. “A control panel you recognize?”
The Chief paused a moment before replying. “I’ve been in structures like this one before, in my galaxy.” He shook his head before Jacen could ask the inevitable question. “I don’t know how it’s possible. It just is.”
“There is one who can answer your riddle. Let us find her.”
Tassadar clambered down off of the Cerebrate’s corpse, Zeratul’s body in his arms. The other alien was wrapped in Tassadar’s cloak; the dark blue and gold of the templar’s bare cuirass and raised pauldrons shown ethereally in the light of the looming energy beam.
The Chief stared pointedly at the wrapped remains as they moved towards the platform.
“Do not concern yourself with the body, Spartan. He will not burden us for long.” After a few more strides, Tassadar laid Zeratul on the smooth stone of the causeway. “No sentient being deserves to rot in that foul heap, especially not him.”
Kneeling at Zeratul’s head, he closed his eyes, and Jacen felt the resonance of thoughts that only other Protoss could comprehend. Tassadar placed both hands on the covered skull, and with an exhalation, blue-white fire spread from his fingertips across the body until it was covered with roiling arcs of energy. There was a momentary flash of blinding light, and when it cleared, only a scattering of ash marked the spot where Zeratul had lain.
Tassadar stood and waved an arm across the spot, sending the remains scattering into the artificial wind.
“May these ashes find their master upon the Path,” Tassadar said, straightening. “Let us hope that he receives them, for nothing can find a Dark Templar who wishes to remain hidden.”
One by one, the ten remaining members of Alpha and Sierra units moved down a long, enclosed corridor, silent as the countless tons of rock that hemmed them in on all sides. The Master Chief led the company, his keen eyes scanning the path ahead for any interruptions in the smooth, geometric lines of the octagonal passageway. The bland sameness of the space contrasted sharply with the frantic spasms of activity that crowded the short-range motion tracker of his helmet’s HUD; masses of Zerg somewhere above or below, or the composition of the mountain and its unlikely interior structure, had rendered it useless. Similarly, the helmet’s integrated flashlight sat inactive; lambent nodes embedded in the narrow corridor’s walls cast the space in dusky, bluish light.
Behind him, Jacen, Tassadar, and their diminished escort of Alliance marines and Starfleet officers kept pace. Like the rest, the Jedi held his weapon at the ready, but his apprehension over their continued descent into Kerrigan’s fortress was mitigated by simple curiosity. Jacen wasn’t sure what he had expected the heart of the Zerg hive to look like, but he certainly hadn’t imagined subtly-carved, mathematically-precise passageways and anterooms reminiscent of Coruscanti museums. Even the Federation members of the party seemed confused by the network’s presence, and a passing scan of the Chief revealed an even stronger, if carefully restrained, sense of astonishment.
Next to the impending threat of the Swarm, however, the strange architecture seemed almost welcoming, and when the Spartan had guided them from the darkness of a larger passage into the almost claustrophobic area, no one had objected. The sudden illumination of the tunnel by some unseen trigger had seemed more comfort than threat; the further Jacen progressed, the more the Jedi felt as though the mountain’s interior structure was quite disparate from its Zerg occupiers, and beyond even their dark mistress.
Perhaps it was just the twilight illumination and the steady, almost imperceptible hum that resonated from the plated floor. They seemed undeniably… permanent, more than any living being could be.
The Master Chief slowed to a stop, and the rest followed suit. Before them, the way was blocked by a sealed doorway. A pair of narrow windows was set in its surface, but all that was visible beyond them was the same eerie dusk that filled the corridor. Eight pairs of hands leveled blasters and phasers at the barrier, and the Spartan took a tentative step forward.
Obediently, the door split into three segments and vanished into the walls and ceiling, revealing a small, circular chamber adorned only by a single, central pillar.
“A dead end?” one of the Starfleet officers, Richardson, asked as the group filed into the room. The space was barely large enough to accommodate them all, and there appeared to be no other hatches or doorways that would permit further progress.
The Chief did not reply immediately. Instead, he rounded the central pillar, scanning its streamlined, mechanical surface intently. Finally, he found what he was looking for: an illuminated, rectangular panel, precisely at waist-height. Shifting his rifle, the Chief extended his right palm towards the panel, and just before he touched it, Jacen thought he saw the outline of a humanoid hand on the surface.
There was a hiss of ancient hydraulics from above, and the members of the party drew back from the central column. A puff of pressurized gas escaped its upper seam, and the entire cylinder retracted into the ceiling with dull thud. The movement revealed a sizeable hole in the floor, down which was visible an inclined shaft of indeterminate length.
The Chief turned to Tassadar. “The Cerebrate is below us?”
“It is.”
The Spartan inspected what was visible of the shaft for a moment, slid his rifle onto the magnetic clamps affixed to the back of his armor, and removed the compact blaster pistol from his hip.
“If the shaft is safe and the landing secure, I’ll call back up. If not, find another way to the Cerebrate. Don’t waste our time looking for me.”
“Sir…” one of the Allied soldiers ventured apprehensively, but the Spartan had already slipped into the hole.
The sound of metal on metal echoed back up the shaft for a few seconds, and then stopped. Jacen reached out, trying to follow the Chief’s life force, but before he could find him again…
“Clear!”
“All right,” the Jedi said, relieved. “One at a time, now.” He gestured to Tassadar. “High Templar?”
The Protoss slid into the opening without complaint and the rest followed, most easing their way into the dark shaft with obvious trepidation. When the last had vanished, Jacen counted a few breaths, and then swung his legs over the gap. Inhaling, he let go, and let the steep, metallic incline guide him down. Almost immediately, Jacen made out new light beyond his feet, but before the sensation could even fully register, an all-too-familiar feeling shot up his spine.
Danger.
A few seconds later, the Jedi hit the ground at a crouch with his lightsaber ablaze. A quick look around the new chamber yielded only the surprised faces of the other members of the squad, still in the process of recovering from the lengthy fall, so Jacen turned his attention upward. Three meters above his head, the shaft yawned, narrow and empty, but the abrupt sound of scrabbling held his focus there. A moment later, the tusked, beady-eyed bulk of a Zergling plummeted straight downward at Jacen’s head, its spiky limbs flailing.
An upward slash and swift sideways roll ensured that the Jedi escaped the beast unharmed and that it was dead before it finished its fall, but the creature was only the first to tumble from the shaft. Within a few moments, three more Zerglings had dropped upon their slain brood-mate.
The Chief and the other soldiers were quick to respond, backing to the encircling wall and focusing fire on the center of the small chamber, and the trio fell before they could move more than a few steps. Jacen scrambled to his feet, keenly aware that he was well within their field of fire.
“Solo!”
The Chief’s shout coincided with another burst of premonition, and Jacen spun back towards the smoking heap, but before he could react further, his legs fell out from underneath him. One of the creatures must have only been stunned by the initial volley, and had thrown itself at him upon recovering.
Jacen pushed out with the Force to break his fall, but a slash of pain across his thigh shattered his focus, and he tumbled onto exposed belly of one of the other Zerg minions. In an instant, the creature was on top of him, and he felt the serrated hide of one of its forelimbs rip across his left cheek. Realizing that the fall had knocked his lightsaber from his grasp, Jacen pushed up against the beast’s center mass, trying to avoid its gaping, toothy maw.
Before he could summon the pulse of pressure needed repel the Zergling, an impact drove the creature full onto his chest, knocking Jacen’s breath away and prompting a throaty yelp from his attacker.
The two lay stunned for a moment as the air filled with the sound of energy discharges. One of the beast’s glassy, red eyes was pressed centimeters from Jacen’s own. A burst of sensation swept over the Jedi. The same manifestation of empty malice and hunger that he had sensed in the Zerg on the approach to Kerrigan’s fortress was here to, but now it appeared to be nothing more than a flimsy veil. Beyond it, a greater entity dwelled, a being with an intelligence of its own, and for a moment their minds touched.
They are close.
Fear that was not his own tore at Jacen, and the Zergling howled. The thing reeled back, and the pressure on the Jedi’s chest lessened. Acting on instinct, Jacen summoned all the energy he could to the small space between their bodies and pushed. The creature shot backward through the air for a full meter before grinding into the metallic floor and coming to a stop in a confused heap.
Pulling himself to one knee, Jacen looked about him to see that two more Zerg bodies had joined their fellows on the growing mound at the room’s center. Several others had made it to the encircling line of Allied soldiers, and Jacen saw one leap for a pair of Alliance marines. Skirting around the pile of Zerg corpses, he spied the hilt of his lightsaber next to the body of the first fallen Zergling and summoned it to his outstretched palm with barely a thought.
The report of a blaster rifle cut the air, and the Zergling Jacen had spotted collapsed onto one of the soldiers. He grunted under the sudden weight, but immediately began to extricate himself, apparently uninjured. Jacen looked back towards the origin of the shot, and caught sight of the Chief. He stood by the chamber’s single exit, through which the rest of the squad was hurriedly stumbling.
The Spartan gestured to him earnestly, but another pulse of insight pulled Jacen’s attention to the other side of the small chamber. In a flash, he perceived the spiny back of yet another Zergling, and beneath it, Tassadar’s robed form. With a shout, Jacen charged towards his companion, ready to tear the beast from him, but he stopped short after only a few steps. The air around the Zergling seemed to crack with energy, and both Zerg and Protoss glowed white. Light burst from the creature’s thick hide in an expanding web of brilliance, and with a crack, it fell away. When the glare cleared, all that remained of the attacker was a smear of gore across the curving wall.
Tassadar stepped quickly past the remains without a second look and moved past Jacen towards the door. The Jedi’s eyes lingered on the bloody smudge for a moment before he followed.
The power of the dark with the control of the light.
Tassadar’s power was alien, and yet it still awed him as much as any feat of his old masters.
The corridor beyond the chamber was identical to the one they had left levels above. The Chief, Tassadar, and the others pelted along it as quickly as they could, eager to put some distance between themselves and the shaft before any more Zerg could emerge. As Jacen sought to catch up, a flare of pain on his side reminded Jacen of the gouge on his thigh. He glanced at the bloody gash, and tried to focus on the blood flowing into his lower extremities. The bleeding slowed, but he kept on running and it did not cease entirely. He would have to leave it until they had a moment to rest. The pain also lessened, but his lower body still tingled with it.
He could feel no poison flowing from the wound. Jacen grimaced. There was that, at least.
Pulling up behind Tassadar, Jacen called to him.
“I sensed the Cerebrate back there.”
“We are almost upon it,” Tassadar replied without breaking his long, powerful stride. “And it knows we are here. It must be eliminated quickly, before the brunt of the Queen’s vanguard is brought upon us.”
“Will we be able to face it directly?” Jacen asked. “It must be well-defended, and we don’t have that much manpower. I don’t know about the Chief, but the others are wearing down, and I can only fight so many.”
“I do not think that the creature expected any intruder to penetrate this far. We must be cautious, but…”
Tassadar trailed off, and to Jacen it looked as though the Protoss was lost in thought.
“What is it?” Jacen asked, moving closer.
The templar faltered. “It is calling… he is calling to me.”
“The Cerebrate is trying to communicate?”
Tassadar did not turn his head. “No… it is nothing. We will be able to reach the creature, but we must hurry. There is little time.”
The templar raised his voice. “Spartan, the next doorway!”
A small door mounted in the right wall led them into a somewhat more spacious passageway, lit with the same bluish light but brighter than the others had been. There was also a familiar, fetid tang in the air, and the arching walls and plated floor bore more scrapes and claw marks.
“Do you hear that?” one of the soldiers ahead of Jacen whispered to a companion.
As they advanced quickly along the gradually-curving passage, the sound became more apparent: wind, and faint echoes. It was like they were approaching an exit to the mountain, and yet Jacen knew that they had to be hundreds of meters deep within its stony bulk. More ominously, the Jedi was beginning to perceive individual glimmers of life ahead of them, resolving from the mass of clouded activity that had pressed upon him since the squad had penetrated Kilimanjaro. Among them, one emerged with particular clarity, the same that he had touched vicariously only minutes before. Jacen drew back from it, attempting to minimize his own psychic presence.
“Do not restrain your senses, Jedi,” Tassadar said, his eyes fixed on the path ahead. “It already knows that I am coming, and it perceives only me. I have made sure of that.”
Abruptly, the passageway straightened out, and the floor inclined upward steeply. Above them, the roof gave way, revealing a vaulted ceiling of dark stone and patterned metal far above. They crept up the incline in tight formation, each with their weapon at the ready, but the broad space beyond presented no obvious foes.
The unit emerged into what appeared to be a sort of nexus. Behind and far in front of them, walls like vertical cliffs towered dozens of meters until they met the ceiling. The base of each was studded with small doors and inclined openings like their own. Higher up, rows of protrusions extruded from the flat surface, some like open pipes, others sealed hatches studded by rhythmically-blinking lights. A broad causeway stretched to either side between the walls, hemmed in by the blank, imposing faces of twin gates. The left barrier was set into a third, huge wall, but the right was built into a sheer rampart that extended less than halfway to the ceiling. Beyond it, the vaulted ceiling transformed into the underside of a shallow dome, from which most of the huge chamber’s illumination seemed to emanate.
The group formed up around Tassadar and moved quietly onto the causeway. The soldiers at the perimeter swept their weapons back and forth over closed doorways and imposing columns, conscious of the slightest movement of sound. A gentle breeze brushed past from them from the domed area, and Jacen realized that the current must have been born of the room’s ventilation systems. Unfortunately, the circulator seemed incapable of dealing with the growing stench of exposed flesh.
“Watch those openings,” the Chief warned, nodding at the protruding, pipe-like structures high above them. “I’ve been surprised by them before.”
Jacen shot a quizzical glance at the Spartan, but he seemed not to notice it.
“The right wall,” Tassadar said. “The Cerebrate is just beyond it.”
“But where are its guards?” a Starfleet officer asked, stepping over a particularly deep gouge in the floor. “And their black growth? The creep?”
The Protoss looked from the far wall to the man. He stared back nervously, but Tassadar seemed lost in thought once again.
“The creep is corrosive. It will consume all that is not Zerg in time. The Queen… she wanted this place to remain intact.”
“What? Why?”
Tassadar closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened then again. “No. No, we must hurry. Come, to the wall.”
The right gate sat fully sealed, but as they approached, a pair of smaller openings to either side of the main entrance came into view, set into low blocks of protruding dark stone. Careful to avoid full view of the smaller entry points, the group came to a halt at one of the house-sized protrusions, and the Chief stepped forward. He sized the barrier wall up carefully, taking in the blocks, both of which were less than a meter taller than he was, as well as the construct’s other sparse features.
“There’s another raised platform set against the wall above this protrusion,” the Spartan said at last. “The wall is inclined near the top. I should be able to climb up and reconnoiter the area before we advance. The rest of you, hold position here.”
Jacen offered no complaint, and Tassadar seemed lost within his own head once again. With the soldiers, they moved up against the wall, trying to make the open corner at the base of the sheer barrier as defensible as possible. Behind them, the Chief stowed his weapon, and with a single standing leap, caught hold of the lip of the protrusion and hefted his half-ton weight up with little effort. With practiced finesse, he silently moved across the flat roof, scaled the secondary platform, and then shimmied up the inclined crest of the wall. The barrier arched skyward at almost ninety degrees, so the Spartan was forced to lodge his back against the vertical face of the adjoining wall and laboriously wedge his way up with carefully-coordinated movement of his legs and left arm, but he reached the top nonetheless, with surprising speed.
After securing himself to the barrier’s upper edge, the Chief’s optically-enhanced visor took in everything that lay below. Thirty meters away the causeway gave way to a huge circular platform, anchored far below the dome they had seen below. The source of its illumination was now apparent; a sizeable hole marked the platform’s center, and through this gap a continuous beam of blue-white light rose up until it disappeared into some sort of emitter affixed to the dome’s apex. The platform itself seemed to be quite barren.
A large alcove flanked either side of the causeway. The Chief could not see into the one closest to him, but the other was more than enough to draw his attention. Filling it was a creature that could only have been the Cerebrate. The being was huge, easily larger than an Ultralisk, and yet it barely even seemed to be alive. A folded, oblong mass of pulsating brown flesh affixed to a small expanse of the Zerg creep by a collection of thick, purple tentacles, the Cerebrate lacked any overt sensory organs or recognizable features of any sort. Like all components of the Swarm, it had been bred and grown to be just what it needed to be, with no unnecessary embellishments or vestigial limbs. It was a brain, utterly dependent upon the minions that were its eyes and ears, its hands and its protective shell.
As he turned his magnified viewer away from the thing, the Chief was grateful for his suit’s dedicated air filters. Whatever waste the Cerebrate excreted, it must have done so directly into the surrounding creep.
A handful of large, crab-like creatures the Chief had never seen before clustered about the Cerebrate, grooming its perpetually-undulating creases with their proboscises or trimming the edges of the surrounding creep. Others scuttled around a pair of sagging, conical growths that flanked the Cerebrate. Eight Hydralisks also slithered back and forth before the immobile entity, watching the wall and the far platform with empty, hateful eyes. These creatures were half again as large as most of the same breed that the Chief had faced before, and their chitinous exoskeletons shown a dusky crimson in the light of the nearby energy pillar.
The Chief was about to take a closer look at the organic mounds adjacent to the Cerebrate when a shout from below drew him back to the other side of the wall. The Allied soldiers had drawn into a tight semicircle against the gated rampart, and their weapons were aimed purposefully back down the causeway. Jacen stood before them, the green of his lightsaber clear against the dull stone.
Zerglings and Hydralisks had begun to pour from the passageways at the other end of the huge chamber. A chorus of clacking-hisses reached the Chief’s aural receptors, and he watched as the closest Hydralisks reared back and loosed volleys of lethal spines. A few found their way to the crest of the wall, but the Spartan was already sliding back down, unhooking his rifle as he went. The Chief hit the upper platform firing, adding his blaster’s coughing report to the rising symphony of weapons fire reverberating from below. As he began to topple advanced warriors, the Spartan failed to notice that Tassadar was no longer sheltered amongst his squad’s ranks.
-----------------------------------------------
Boil’s massive bulk shuddered with relief as he sensed a throng of his warriors descend upon the human interlopers. The clutch of Hunter-Killers arrayed before him stiffened at the sound of weapons fire just beyond the barrier wall to their left, but they did not break away from their master to hunt the intruders. They were Hydralisks of the purest, most power breed, and for several long minutes, they had been the only beings between Boil and debilitating panic. His final line of defense, the eight warriors were all that Kerrigan allowed him to retain so close to her hive’s heart. He had never questioned her insistence that lesser Zerg be kept from the core of the mountain complex, nor was he capable of doing so now, but he was nevertheless relieved that his master had temporarily lifted the restriction to stop the human’s advance.
The Cerebrate did not fear death; as long as the Queen of Blades persisted, his consciousness would persist and be grown a new corporeal form. Rather, he had feared that he would fail in his mandate to protect her inner sanctum. This anxiety was not born of potential punishment or even the thought of not being created anew; loyalty to his mistress was part of what he was.
Boil had tracked the small group of humanoids since they arrived at one of the fortress’s upper egress maws, near the mountain’s summit. At first, he has thought little of them, suspecting that they were simply stragglers of the larger group that his forces had ambushed as they established a beachhead just meters from the hive’s sealed entrance. These first attackers had displayed little of the cunning that had frustrated the Cerebrate during the human’s initial incursion; by the time that they’re metallic conveyances had offloaded the pitiful strike force, his perimeter broods had already burrowed themselves into the sand and soft rock below they’re feet. The slaughter had been quite satisfying.
The latecomers, however, had posed an unexpected challenge. After killing a large number of his underlings, they had been able to slip into an excavation tunnel carved months earlier by the brood tasked by the Queen with establishing her seat on the human homeworld. Boil had believed that all such entrances had been collapsed, but somehow, the intruders had managed to use it to gain access to the mountain’s interior. The Cerebrate had become nervous as soon as his perimeter forces lost the group; the preexisting, artificial complex that the Queen had adopted as her throne was left more or less intact at its lower levels, and thus lacked the sensory organs that would have allowed Boil to pinpoint the human’s exact movements in a comparably-sized superorganism.
He had been forced to flood the portions of the facility that his Queen had not restricted with all the minions he could recall, weakening the fortress’s defenses. Moreover, he had resorted to personally directing their search, an effort that distracted him from the other enemy forces scattered across the surrounding plain; the destruction of Boil’s other brother had left him in sole command of the continent’s broods. After a period of mounting agitation, a group of lesser minions had finally stumbled across the offending humans, who had evidently used the complex’s conduit network to penetrate hundreds of meters down, to Boil’s own level. One of them had touched his mind, and the Cerebrate had realized that, for the first time in his short life, he was in real danger. Desperately, he had called all the warriors within his reach to him, and attempted to track the alien mind as it approached. Even that effort had failed; another psionic power had repelled his mental tendrils, and mounted its own psychic assault.
The creature’s dreadful, alien presence in his own thoughts still sickened him, even though it had been fleeting. Foreign as the hostile mind was, he could comprehend it fully, and he felt a portion of his being reach out in response. The momentary, uncontrollable reaction confounded and terrified him.
Through all of this, his Queen had left Boil almost entirely to his own devices. She seemed content to simply observe, and it did not even occur to him to question her passivity. He was tasked with defending her, and he threw himself upon the task with every measure of his will.
Nostrils of a dozen remote bodies captured the iron-heavy tang of human blood, and Boil began to calm down. Extraordinary nuisances they might have been, but no lesser organisms could withstand the fury of the Zerg for long. Confident that the threat had been dealt with, Boil extended his psionic presence outward once more, eager to oversee the extermination of the remnants of the force that had slain his brothers.
A wave of psionic energy washed over the Cerebrate, and his restored view of creep-covered vistas dissolved into blackness. Boil felt the solid metal and stone of the floor beneath him break asunder and give way, and he was falling, blind and alone, unable to even scream. Bursts of searing flare erupted across his pulpy hide, and with each one, a pulse of pain shot from end of his bloated body to the other. The tortuous void became solid again in an instant, and Boil felt the impact with every ounce of shivering biomass and every iota of sentience.
Reeling, the Cerebrate shot mental tendrils out in every direction, desperate to re-anchor himself in the corporeal realm. First, he felt the creep he was rooted in, then the floor, and the sheltering walls above, all still quite intact. The drones that had milled been milling about his body, grooming and sustaining it, lay dead, their tiny minds fried by his sudden outpouring of shock and disorientation. Beyond, his guardians coiled around one another, tense and confused, but still very much alive. Outwardly, the world seemed virtually unchanged.
Boil knew different. The Queen was gone.
She had not disappeared entirely, for as Boil concentrated, he could barely detect the familiar resonance of her thoughts, but it appeared as though perceived from a vast distance, like an eclipsed star a galaxy away. The gulf was crushing. From his first thought, she had been with him. The ebb and flow of her passions was his heartbeat. Her designs and machinations were his dearest dreams. It was as though his very ability to feel had been torn from him, and only the crushing ache of its memory had been left to him.
He needed to reach his Queen again. He needed to lose his mind in hers. He would find the thing that had severed them. He would take her back.
Boil felt the unending fury and blind bloodlust of his minions, and took the fire as his own. As his intellect began to boil away, he lashed out with all his will, and all at once, the demon that had stolen his essence was before him.
Tassadar walked calmly from the far entryway in the barrier wall, his blazing eyes fixed firmly on the Cerebrate. The attendant Hydralisks spotted the Protoss, simultaneously loosed keening wails that drowned out the echoing sounds of battle, and charged. Their claws scythed the empty air in furious anticipation, and the scales of their armored carapaces gouged wakes of stone as they surged forward on tails of knotted muscle.
The templar’s resolute, steady pace did not slow, and he spared the leading Hunter-Killer’s only a momentary glance before turning his gaze back on the heaving mass of the Cerebrate. The fiends stopped short, almost collapsing backwards from their own inertia. The inky eyes within their serrated skulls went wild, and primal fury overcame the tenuous hold that genetic conditioning and psionic influence had on their basic instincts. Suddenly, everything that moved was enemy and prey, and each Hydralisk found an adversary within claw’s reach.
Tassadar sidestepped the ball of gnashing jaws and shattering chitin, pushing the pair from his mind even as they smashed into the sealed gate, tearing at each other’s arched throats. The six remaining beast fell upon the templar, unfazed by his effortless dismissal of their brethren. As the first blade plunged down upon his unprotected head, Tassadar flung back his dark cloak and thrust his arms out to both sides. The air before him cracked with blue and white, and lattice of pure energy burst into being from nothingness, mirroring the cool fire in the Protoss’ eyes. Synapses of psionic force pulsed through open space and the bodies of the Hunter-Killers, unimpeded by their meticulously-evolved exoskeletons. Organs and soft tissue burned as bodily fluids boiled, and one by one, the Zerg warriors exploded.
When Tassadar looked again at Boil through a sinking red mist, the Cerebrate could finally see the isolating shroud that had severed him from his mistress. The obscuring, impenetrable fog poured from the Protoss’ every orifice. In Boil’s mind’s eye, Tassadar became the miasma, a singularity anchored to the world only by conflagrations of cerulean and jet that erupted from where his skull should have been.
Terror lashed at Boil, and the rage he had manifested within his prone body burst forth. The pyramidal growths that flanked the Zerg coordinator came to life. Their sagging crests turned towards Tassadar, revealing circular maws dripping with nameless, toxic fluids that withered the creep where it fell. With great, wet inhalations of oxygen, the living towers vomited forth twin globes of writhing biomatter. Steeped in pustules of corrosive chemicals, each projectile swam with lethal bacterial spores.
Tassadar stiffened as the wave of filth hurtled at him, but he did not attempt to evade it. The projectiles washed over him, and his lanky form faded from being in a flash of blue light. Boil’s bulk trembled with a silent roar of triumph, but it died as he watched three new dark-robed Protoss emerge from the empty space only a dozen meters before him, untroubled by the loss of their duplicate.
Illusions!
Boil’s spore belchers lobbed another volley of corrosive missiles, obliterating a pair of the phantom templars, but the third leapt free of the withering impacts and broke into a run, thrusting his palms forward as he did. The firing mouths of constructs exploded in showers of blue sparks, and the organic towers collapsed in on themselves in eruptions of caustic fluid.
Tassadar leapt, clearing the creep entirely and burying his splay-toed boots in Boil’s soft, livid flesh. The Cerebrate thrashed with all his might, almost tearing his barely-motile tentacles from the ground, but Tassadar held fast, climbing further up the bucking mass and clasping hold of its blistered surface.
When he felt the Protoss’ long, delicate fingers on his body, Boil no longer could articulate the emotions that flooded his mind, kept so carefully in check for its entire existence. Fear, anger, and despair coalesced into madness, and the last thing that the Cerebrate perceived was an expanding point of darkness deep within its very skin, disrupting the last of the creature’s cascading neural impulses as it reached out for Tassadar’s careful grasp.
Then there was light.
---------------------------------------------------
The Master Chief knelt in the narrow archway. He held a Starfleet phaser in his right hand and his blaster pistol in his left. His favored rifle lay somewhere out on the open causeway, cleaved in half by a Hydralisk he let get too close. Methodically and with supernatural precision, he fired each weapon one after the other in short bursts. The right sent a Zergling skittering to the floor. The left punched a hole in the chest of an arachnidan horror that the Spartan could not name.
The right. The left. Two more monstrosities dead. The Chief ignored the flashing, red indicators on his HUD that tracked the ammunition and charge levels of both weapons. They still fired when he engaged their firing studs, and so he held his ground.
Behind him, Jacen Solo dragged a Starfleet officer deeper into the dark, confining passageway that ran through the barrier wall. Even through the spattering of blood and grime on her face, he recognized her as the officer who had cut them a passage into the mountain. As gently as he could, the Jedi leaned her up against one wall. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing was shallow. Jacen’s hands and tunic were covered with the woman’s blood. Looking down, he saw that the jagged stump where her left arm had been was still bleeding furiously.
“I’m out!” the Chief shouted, and Jacen stood. Turning towards the archway, he palmed and ignited his lightsaber, illuminating the barren passage and the Spartan’s worn battlesuit. Over its shoulder, the Jedi saw that the open chamber still writhed with fresh Zerg bodies, eager to pile after their wounded prey. Jacen stepped carefully over the unconscious woman and moved to join the Chief in the doorway. The Spartan had thrown aside both exhausted weapons, and now faced the ravening hoard with his gauntlets alone.
Another Zergling leapt at them, and all Jacen could hear was the rapid thud of his own heart. The others had all died so quickly after their makeshift line had been overrun. Somehow, it seemed quite natural that he would join them. He was mortal, just like the rest of them, and mortals died. They had fallen short of their goal and their deaths would bear little lasting meaning, but, didn’t that seem like a very mortal end?
The Chief caught the air-borne Zergling with a sharp elbow just below the jaw. Robbed of its momentum, the beast tumbled to the blood-stained floor, but its spiked, dorsal limbs swung up and into the supersoldier’s chest. His energy shields exploded into sparks and he was forced back a step, but the defensive field absorbed the brunt of the blow, and the Chief was able to grab both appendages before their owner could bring them back for another attack. His armored fingers locked on the bony shafts and he yanked up and back, twisting his wrists as he did. With a wet crack, the upper halves of the limbs broke away in the Chief’s hands, and the Zergling loosed a pained shriek. A plated boot silenced the cry, and before the creature could bite down on it, the Chief slammed the foot to the floor with a sickening crunch.
Not bothering to shake away the gore, the Chief brace himself for the next attacker, but the only thing that greeted him through his spattered and scratched visor was a heap of broken and burned Zerg corpses. The rest were now halfway across the chamber, running or staggering for the hatches and openings from which they had come, wailing as they went. Several dashed against each other as they fled, hissing and clawing as they stumbled to the floor and then uneasily picked themselves up again. Within a few more seconds, the causeway was devoid of life.
Warily, the Chief stooped to recover his blaster and reloaded it from a compartment on his leg. No Zerg had shown itself by the time he had finished checking the weapon, so he withdrew deeper into the passage, where Jacen knelt again next to the Starfleet officer.
“Zerg aren’t intimidated that easily,” he said.
Jacen shook his head. “It wasn’t that. I felt… something, very close by. It must have scared them off.”
He looked up at the Chief. “Tassadar! He slipped away just before the attack!”
“He must have found the Cerebrate,” the Chief agreed. “Lucky for us. We should find him before the effect on its minions wear off.”
The Spartan paused. Jacen had torn a piece of his tunic and was tying it around the wounded officer’s stump. She wasn’t moving. The Chief had seen hundreds of battlefield injuries in the course of his service, and he was a reasonably good a gauging them.
“You can’t save her. She’s already lost too much blood.”
Jacen ignored him. Tying off the tourniquet, he leaned closer to the woman and gently placed his hands on the wounded area. He closed his eyes, and concentrated. Almost immediately a measure of color returned to the officer’s ashen features and chest swelled with a ragged breath. The Chief stepped back and fell quiet.
Jacen withdrew a hand. It came up caked with blood, but none of it was new. Satisfied that the bleeding had stopped, he moved his hands to the woman’s face. In the dim light, in her Starfleet uniform, she reminded him of Laura. Taking a deep breath, he placed each palm on her cheeks and laid his forehead on hers. She took another drag of air, and then another. The Chief saw an eye flutter, but the third breath was weaker, and after the fourth, no others came.
After fifteen seconds of motionless silence, the Chief placed a heavy hand on Jacen’s shoulder.
“You did all you could, Solo. We have to go. We have to find Tassadar.”
Slowly, Jacen lifted his head from the cooling body. His hands fell away, but his eyes lingered on her bruised, pallid face for a few more moments.
The Chief was already at the other archway.
“Solo.”
“Just a moment,” he called back, and then took a long, deep breath. “I’m with you.”
Jacen tried not to look back.
Cautiously avoiding the entwined bodies of a pair of Hunter-Killers, the two survivors found Tassadar standing in the midst of a massive mound of charred, oozing flesh, three times the Chief’s height even in its ruined form.
“I guess he didn’t need our help after all,” the Spartan said, kicking a loose segment of shriveled tentacle.
The Protoss was kneeling waist-deep in the blasted remains, cradling a limp hunk of the dead Cerebrate in his arms. Wading closer, Jacen realized that the object was moving, if only slightly. Trying to shake away the disorientation of the last few minutes, the Jedi realized that there were two minds alive in the muck. Two very similar minds.
Carefully, almost tenderly, Tassadar swept a layer of purple ichor and white veins away from the top of the mass, and a face came into view. Its skin was rough and gray, and it seemed to lack any facial features save for a pair of clouded, half-open eyes. A faint glimmer of yellow light appear in them, and the being’s neck twitched, shaking organic detritus from its pronounced, back-swept forehead.
“Another Protoss?” Jacen whispered.
“A friend.”
For the first time since Jacen had met the templar, the psychic resonance that was his voice lacked its stern, commanding tone. The words were almost a whisper.
“Zeratul, I am here,” he continued, pressing his head close to the other Protoss. “You are free.”
The gore-covered alien twitched again, and his eyes opened a fraction wider.
“See with eyes unclouded, my friend. The Cerebrate will trouble you no longer.”
“It was… a dream.”
Zeratul’s voice was even softer than Tassadar’s, purely psychic, lacking the resonance that carried the templar’s thoughts into the physical world.
“Trickery.”
“I am no illusion, Zeratul,” Tassadar said gently. “Although… I must appear so.”
“You died. On Aiur. I saw it.” Zeratul shivered, and his eyes began to inch closed. “More deception. But I will do no more. Your prize is spent, O Concubine of the Zerg.”
Tassadar pulled him closer.
“You know me, Zeratul! You know the energy that flows through me. It is as much a part of you as it is of me! You felt it when you reached out to me, and you feel it now.”
Zeratul said nothing for a long moment, and Tassadar’s arms slackened.
“I feel one who has walked the path of shadow.”
The glimmer beneath Zeratul’s heavy eyelids brightened.
“Death suited you well, Tassadar. The stain of your association with me was washed away. They spoke of you as they did of Adun. En taro Tassadar, they would say. En taro Tassadar…”
Zeratul’s eyes undulated flicking over Jacen where he stood nearby, but he did not appear to see him. Staring back, the Jedi remembered a conversation he had shared with Tassadar weeks previously, all but an eternity. He recalled mention of one of the templar’s mentors, a teacher who had expanded his thinking and broadened his powers to combat the Zerg. A Dark Templar.
The emaciated Protoss soon settled on the high templar once more.
“How?”
“I do not know, my friend. When I plunged my flagship into the Overmind, I was ready to walk Khala’s Path. Instead, when I awoke, I found a different road ahead of me.”
Zeratul shivered again, but he did not speak.
“Though I Was far from home, an old enemy found me. The human… the terran Kerrigan.”
Zeratul made a sound Jacen did not understand. “Ah. She found me, too.”
Tassadar nodded slowly. “I must find her, Zeratul. I must discover how she brought me to this place, so far from home. And then she must be stopped, before she carries her curse to any other worlds.”
“Tell me, my friend, if you are able, how did you come to this place? Why did she bring you here?”
Zeratul’s eyes slid shut, and there was another long silence. Jacen heard footsteps behind them, and turned to see that the Chief had moved towards the huge, circular platform beyond, his opaque faceplate still turned warily towards the barrier wall.
“The creation exceeded its master. Queen… the corrupted terran rose with the Overmind’s fall. Under her, the Swarm consumed the terran empires and pushed our people back to my world. We fought as one, like the Protoss of old, but even with the ancient artifacts of the Xel’Naga, we could not withstand forever.”
“When Shakuras was finally overrun, I was taken. Some escaped… fled to the stars, but all the rest… consumed. She brought me to the apex of the Great Temple. She did something to the sacred machine, and then made me fight her. I attacked… summoned what energy I could…”
For a third time, Zeratul shivered, more violently than the last. Tassadar raised a hand to his the other’s face, but he shook it off, opening his eyes once again.
“Something happened to the machine, and we left Shakuras. Far, far… She was too strong. I, too weak. She kept me locked away. Used new terrans, pitted them one against the other. She…” The Protoss cringed at some unseen stimulus. “She broke it. My mind. Took the secrets, like she had from the others. The dark… she used it to corrupt…”
“Deep Space Nine,” Jacen whispered. “That’s why the commander went mad!”
Zeratul seemed not to hear him.
“Then… here. She brought me here. Gave me to the Cerebrate. I tried to fight, but… I slept… everything. Everything stolen. Everything lost.”
The final words seemed to have exhausted Zeratul, and he slumped again into Tassadar’s arms.
The templar held him close. “Not all is lost, my friend. I will destroy her, and I will bring you home.
Zeratul’s eyes had diminished to slivers of yellow again, and their light had faded noticeably.
“I am meant for shadow, Tassadar, and the light has already begun to fade. But not all of us are gone. Some still live, lost amongst the stars. They need a guide.”
Zeratul’s right arm, virtually atrophied beyond recognition, shifted free of a mass of matted debris and inched up agonizingly until Tassadar clasped his friend’s hand firmly in his own.
“Find them, Tassadar. Guide them home.”
“By Aiur, Zeratul, I will.”
The withered Protoss’ eyes closed on distant embers.
“Shadows, at last. Adun toridas.”
“Adun toridas,” Tassadar said quietly, laying Zeratul’s hand upon his sallow chest. It tightened, and then was still.
Neither Jacen nor Tassadar spoke until the Chief returned.
“We’ve got to move out,” he said. “I don’t know how badly losing this Cerebrate hurt the Zerg, but we can’t count on them not coming back.”
“The Queen is not far,” Tassadar said, still facing the fallen Protoss. “We must go deeper.”
“I found a control panel I recognize on that platform. It should take us down.”
Jacen looked up. “A control panel you recognize?”
The Chief paused a moment before replying. “I’ve been in structures like this one before, in my galaxy.” He shook his head before Jacen could ask the inevitable question. “I don’t know how it’s possible. It just is.”
“There is one who can answer your riddle. Let us find her.”
Tassadar clambered down off of the Cerebrate’s corpse, Zeratul’s body in his arms. The other alien was wrapped in Tassadar’s cloak; the dark blue and gold of the templar’s bare cuirass and raised pauldrons shown ethereally in the light of the looming energy beam.
The Chief stared pointedly at the wrapped remains as they moved towards the platform.
“Do not concern yourself with the body, Spartan. He will not burden us for long.” After a few more strides, Tassadar laid Zeratul on the smooth stone of the causeway. “No sentient being deserves to rot in that foul heap, especially not him.”
Kneeling at Zeratul’s head, he closed his eyes, and Jacen felt the resonance of thoughts that only other Protoss could comprehend. Tassadar placed both hands on the covered skull, and with an exhalation, blue-white fire spread from his fingertips across the body until it was covered with roiling arcs of energy. There was a momentary flash of blinding light, and when it cleared, only a scattering of ash marked the spot where Zeratul had lain.
Tassadar stood and waved an arm across the spot, sending the remains scattering into the artificial wind.
“May these ashes find their master upon the Path,” Tassadar said, straightening. “Let us hope that he receives them, for nothing can find a Dark Templar who wishes to remain hidden.”
Last edited by Noble Ire on 2008-06-07 03:32pm, edited 1 time in total.
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
-
Darth Ruinus
- Jedi Master
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Finally an update! This makes me very happy. 
"I don't believe in man made global warming because God promised to never again destroy the earth with water. He sent the rainbow as a sign."
- Sean Hannity Forums user Avi
"And BTW the concept of carbon based life is only a hypothesis based on the abiogensis theory, and there is no clear evidence for it."
-Mazen707 informing me about the facts on carbon-based life.
- Sean Hannity Forums user Avi
"And BTW the concept of carbon based life is only a hypothesis based on the abiogensis theory, and there is no clear evidence for it."
-Mazen707 informing me about the facts on carbon-based life.
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JointStrikeFighter
- Worthless Trolling Palm-Fucker
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The Vortex Empire
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The Grim Squeaker
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Excellent new chapter, and some fantastic prose on Tassadar's Coupe de Grace
Photography
Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
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Darth Ruinus
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Well, dont the Forerunners have some crazy space-time bending technology (able to build stars or planets inside bases?) so maybe they got to other parallel galaxies in the Rift universe.The Vortex Empire wrote:Excellent chapter, Ire. I wonder how Forerunner structures could be present in the ST and Halo universes...
"I don't believe in man made global warming because God promised to never again destroy the earth with water. He sent the rainbow as a sign."
- Sean Hannity Forums user Avi
"And BTW the concept of carbon based life is only a hypothesis based on the abiogensis theory, and there is no clear evidence for it."
-Mazen707 informing me about the facts on carbon-based life.
- Sean Hannity Forums user Avi
"And BTW the concept of carbon based life is only a hypothesis based on the abiogensis theory, and there is no clear evidence for it."
-Mazen707 informing me about the facts on carbon-based life.
My apologies for the long absence, Ire, but school and other commitments have been absolutely insane this year.
You've certainly made some impressive progress these last few months. The battle for Earth was more than suitably epic in scale, and that goes doubly so on the space front - that particular part of the battle was rather reminiscent of the opening minutes of Episode III, a comparison I never thought to make in a Star Trek context.
The action on Earth has also been quite interesting, and I'm sure we Halo fans were all glad to see the Chief in action again after quite a long, er, 'retirement.' You convey the desperation of this mad plan rather well, I think. And that was a fine sendoff for Tassador's friend; a very well-written scene indeed. Judging by your other memorable sendoffs in this fanfic, I'd say that you have a certain knack for writing effective pathos.
And yes, given the existence of Forerunner ruins on Star Trek's Earth, I'm now almost convinced that those meddling Forerunners are (or rather, were) somehow responsible for the rift which caused this mess. After all, consider Ghosts of Onyx...
You've certainly made some impressive progress these last few months. The battle for Earth was more than suitably epic in scale, and that goes doubly so on the space front - that particular part of the battle was rather reminiscent of the opening minutes of Episode III, a comparison I never thought to make in a Star Trek context.
The action on Earth has also been quite interesting, and I'm sure we Halo fans were all glad to see the Chief in action again after quite a long, er, 'retirement.' You convey the desperation of this mad plan rather well, I think. And that was a fine sendoff for Tassador's friend; a very well-written scene indeed. Judging by your other memorable sendoffs in this fanfic, I'd say that you have a certain knack for writing effective pathos.
And yes, given the existence of Forerunner ruins on Star Trek's Earth, I'm now almost convinced that those meddling Forerunners are (or rather, were) somehow responsible for the rift which caused this mess. After all, consider Ghosts of Onyx...
"There is a high statistical probability of death by gunshot. A punch to the face is also likely." - Legion
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
Danke schön, everyone. Sorry about the long delay.
If nothing else, relatively short weapons ranges make for good drama.
As to the ruins, well, hopefully, none of you will have to wait too long for an answer. Until then, let's just say that there's a clue sitting right in front of you.
Not at all. I just hope that you and all of The Rift's readers can forgive my own slowness with updates of late, for similar reasons. Hopefully, I will be a bit more timely with the coming of summer. I hope to be finished with the tale by the end of August, but I can't make any guarantees (I still have some work commitments, even if the load is lightened).Dominus wrote:My apologies for the long absence, Ire, but school and other commitments have been absolutely insane this year.
Star Trek is actually quite conducive to that sort of frantic, close-quarters combat, I've found. I tried to emulate the battles of the Dominion War on Deep Space 9, but I will admit, the Battle of Coruscant did come to mind now and then.You've certainly made some impressive progress these last few months. The battle for Earth was more than suitably epic in scale, and that goes doubly so on the space front - that particular part of the battle was rather reminiscent of the opening minutes of Episode III, a comparison I never thought to make in a Star Trek context.
If nothing else, relatively short weapons ranges make for good drama.
I'm glad you liked the scene. Zeratul is one of my favorite characters from the Starcraft universe, and I had wanted to give him a bigger role in The Rift, but the demands of plot and setting made it infeasible. Nevertheless, I was able to give him a role in the story, more than can be said for another character I'm fond of who died unnamed: I had planned on Half-Jaw of Halo 2 and Halo 3 fame playing a role in the Covenant story arc, but the way first contact between the Empire and the Covenant worked out, I really couldn't have him suvive.The action on Earth has also been quite interesting, and I'm sure we Halo fans were all glad to see the Chief in action again after quite a long, er, 'retirement.' You convey the desperation of this mad plan rather well, I think. And that was a fine sendoff for Tassador's friend; a very well-written scene indeed. Judging by your other memorable sendoffs in this fanfic, I'd say that you have a certain knack for writing effective pathos.
As to the ruins, well, hopefully, none of you will have to wait too long for an answer. Until then, let's just say that there's a clue sitting right in front of you.
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Nichts zu danken, Ire. I think most of us can forgive the wait between chapters easily enough. Real life does have a way of complicating the best laid plains.
) Ah well - at least his Starcraft counterpart got to make an appearance, however brief. We are in the endgame, after all.
Aye, I'd quite forgotten about that. And it's not even unique to Star Trek; the writers of nBSG used relatively short weapons ranges to good dramatic effect in the second half of the Pegasus special. I suppose I've been spoiled by the truly vast weapons ranges of higher-tier science fiction settings like Star Wars and 40k; not to mention that it's been at least several years since I've seen an episode of Star Trek that involved ship-to-ship combat. Ah well, that is as good an excuse as any to watch a few reruns on the Sci-Fi channel...Noble Ire wrote:Star Trek is actually quite conducive to that sort of frantic, close-quarters combat, I've found. I tried to emulate the battles of the Dominion War on Deep Space 9, but I will admit, the Battle of Coruscant did come to mind now and then.
If nothing else, relatively short weapons ranges make for good drama.
One of the marks of a good writer is that he can make the reader empathize with characters with whom we are not familiar - as I said, Zeratul's sendoff did just that, even though I possess only a tangential familiarity with the Starcraft franchise. As for old Rtas, I still mourn the fact that the Empire effectively ended any chance he may have had for a role in this story. 'Vadum was one of my favorite Sangheili, especially in Halo 3. (Did you ever linger near the downed Pelican to listen to the amusing radio chatter broadcast from the Shadow of Intent on the Ark?I'm glad you liked the scene. Zeratul is one of my favorite characters from the Starcraft universe, and I had wanted to give him a bigger role in The Rift, but the demands of plot and setting made it infeasible. Nevertheless, I was able to give him a role in the story, more than can be said for another character I'm fond of who died unnamed: I had planned on Half-Jaw of Halo 2 and Halo 3 fame playing a role in the Covenant story arc, but the way first contact between the Empire and the Covenant worked out, I really couldn't have him suvive.
) Ah well - at least his Starcraft counterpart got to make an appearance, however brief. We are in the endgame, after all.Bah. Blasted Forerunners and their bloody meddling... they're getting to be just like the Ancients in Stargate.As to the ruins, well, hopefully, none of you will have to wait too long for an answer. Until then, let's just say that there's a clue sitting right in front of you.
"There is a high statistical probability of death by gunshot. A punch to the face is also likely." - Legion
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
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Themightytom
- Sith Devotee
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or the Race that built Centerpoint station in Star Wars, or the preservers from Star Trek TOS or the First ones from B5, or the guys who built the peacekeepers from that show nobody watches, or the Ship of Lights from oldBSG.Dominus wrote:
Bah. Blasted Forerunners and their bloody meddling... they're getting to be just like the Ancients in Stargate.
kind of becoming a trend in Scifi now a days to create an uber race that hath passed before but designed that which we see. Its a sweet way of promoting the intelligent design model withoutt addressing the debate over teh existencce of God.
oh except in Star Trek they DID address the issue of God, Spock blew his head off with a disrupter.
"Since when is "the west" a nation?"-Styphon
"ACORN= Cobra obviously." AMT
This topic is... oh Village Idiot. Carry on then.--Havok
I must concur; it seems that cannot even throw a rock these days without hitting some hyper-advanced-yet-convenient-absent progenitor race in sci-fi. Even 40k has them in the form of the Old Ones and their nemesis (the Necrons).Themightytom wrote:kind of becoming a trend in Scifi now a days to create an uber race that hath passed before but designed that which we see. Its a sweet way of promoting the intelligent design model withoutt addressing the debate over teh existencce of God.
"There is a high statistical probability of death by gunshot. A punch to the face is also likely." - Legion
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
Chapter Seventy One
The remnants of Tassadar’s battle with the Cerebrate disappeared beyond the circular lip of an enormous shaft that slowly swallowed the platform and its luminous pylon. The metal beneath two pairs of human feet and Tassadar’s heavy boots barely vibrated and the beam of energy that seemed to anchor it remained constant, but impenetrable walls of dark stone quickly rose up around them, consuming everything save the skyward dome. For a few moments, air currents from the chamber above echoed about the three, amplified by the enclosed space, but soon the sound faded, leaving only the faint reverberation of the surface beneath them and a gentle, magnetic hum to break the silence.
The Chief stepped back from the terminal he had located, his hands free to reclaim his blaster pistol. The control panel was made up of what appeared to be several thin, adjoining sheets of luminescent glass, dotted with geometric glyphs and blocky forms that crisscrossed its surface in regular, purposeful patterns. In actuality, the surfaces hovered at an angle to the plate below, holographic projections that had nonetheless given purchase to the Spartan’s open palm and activated the lift at his touch.
The three stood in silence as the platform continued to descend. None had spoken since Tassadar’s brief valediction, and the Protoss was once more drawn within himself, his bright eyes lowered and subdued.
Jacen was the first to break the restless silence.
“What is this place, Chief?” His voice echoed with more volume than he had intended and the Jedi tensed at the sound, but the reverberation faded harmlessly into the shaft’s immovable walls.
“I’m not sure,” the Spartan replied. “The only Forerunner structures I’ve seen have been Halos. Massive space stations with artificial atmospheres and landmasses. Their interiors were similar to this place, but I can’t tell you what they built it to do.”
Jacen frowned. “Forerunners?”
“That’s what the AI Cortana and I found in one of the Halos called its creators. Apparently, they all died hundreds of thousands of years ago in a war with the Flood, a parasitic organism we found on the instillations.” The Chief paused, glancing up the lengthening tube. “One that we woke up.”
Jacen’s own galaxy had its share of ancient, lost civilizations, evidenced only by enigmatic constructs they left adrift in the depths of space or scattered across remote worlds. In his experience, such wonders were rarely benign.
“And the Halos? What were they built to do?”
“They are weapons. I don’t know how they work, but the Forerunners built them to combat the Flood. If activated, the Halos kill almost every living thing within a galaxy. They used them once, tried to stop the Flood and killed themselves in the process. I almost activated it again.”
“Why?” Jacen asked, surprised.
The Chief stared at the younger man through his opaque visor, impassive.
“The first Halo’s AI just told me it was a weapon, one I thought the UNSC could use against the Covenant. Cortana interfaced with the instillation’s computer and stopped me in time, told me what it really did.”
Jacen pondered this, but before he could ask another question, he sensed movement above and jerked his eyes up.
Descending from an unseen conduit or opening, a single, metallic entity sank into a relative stop a few meters above them, its repulsors emitting an audible hum. The dim light glinted dully off the polished, silver sheen of its casing, an elongated, torso-sized cube with a trio of angular appendages splayed at its front like a segmented shield. Behind these plates, a single, robotic eye gazed at Jacen and his companions, lit with the same ethereal light that guided their platform downward. A fourth appendage hung slightly below the machine’s chassis, its small, forward aperture dark.
Jacen inhaled sharply and raised his lightsaber blade to guard against the new arrival, but it seemed to ignore the weapon, drifting side to side slightly, inspecting each of the figures below in turn.
“Wait!” the Chief cautioned. His blaster was clutched tightly in his right hand, but the Spartan had not aimed it at the machine. “It’s a sentinel. The Forerunners built them to guard their facilities.”
“Like the one we’re wandering around in, unwelcome?” Jacen asked, not taking his eyes off the odd observer.
“Its weapon isn’t charged,” the Chief said, indicating to the ventral appendage. “And there’d be more of them if it was here to kill us.”
Slowly, Jacen lowered his lightsaber. The sentinel turned its lambent eye on him again, pivoted slightly back and forth on its axis, turned, and then raced up wards on an ephemeral trail of light, vanishing quickly into the darkness of the shaft’s walls.
Before any of them could ponder the machine’s appearance and equally abrupt exit, the platform noticeably slowed its decent. A moment later, a full half of the continuous circle of stone and metal beyond the lift gave way to open space. There was a blast of air current and echoing noise, and a chamber far larger than the one they had just left rose into view.
The Chief felt his muscles tighten.
This place, I do remember…
The space was circular, easily two hundred meters across and capped by a vaulted dome so far above that it was barely visible in the dim light. Evenly-spaced around its perimeter, three more dark shafts identical to their own sat empty, their central energy columns inactive. Leading from each, broad causeways that appeared to be composed mainly of frosted, semi-transparent glass converged on the center of the cavernous chamber. Near the center, they terminated into a single, continuous circle of walkway that left dozens of meters at the very middle of the chamber completely open, a gaping well that led down into nothingness. Beneath the walkways, themselves anchored only to the walls around the lift shafts, dark, solid walls tapered into a wide funnel and then plummeted down beyond sight.
Jacen and the Chief were still taking in the impressive, artificial vista when their lift eased to a stop, aligning perfectly with its causeway. The platform, like the rest of the massive space, seemed to be quite empty. And yet, as he took it all in, Jacen sensed a profound, vital presence that seemed to resonate from the artificial cavern itself, strange, familiar, and wholly alien all at once. The place positively sang with ancient power, untouched by transient beings for countless millennia.
And yet…
Tassadar advanced between the two humans and stepped from platform to causeway, both as unyielding as solid granite. His eyes were veiled no longer, and his gazed was fixed straight ahead.
And then, at last, Jacen saw her. A single figure stood at the lip of the circular walkway with its back to him, its form obscured by the light of a long array of floating displays, similar to the one that had controlled the lift. At such a distance, the Jedi could barely make out the humanoid silhouette, but he knew in an instant to whom it belonged. He had never come face to face with the Queen of Blades, but he had sensed her from a distance, and seen her corrupt handiwork up close.
This was Kerrigan, heart of the Swarm.
The Chief and Jacen kept close behind Tassadar as he advanced towards her, unspeaking. The humans scanned the suspended causeways and empty air with cautious eyes, wary of more of Kerrigan’s Zerg vanguard, but there was no sign of movement anywhere else in the chamber, and no sound saved the steady, slow clap of their boots on the smooth, unsettlingly transparent surface. Kerrigan was herself motionless, seemingly absorbed in the display before her and ignorant of the intruders. Steeling himself, Jacen reached out towards her, attempting to gauge something, anything about the being they had traveled so far and lost so much to face, but she was a hole in the Force, her malice and dark energy folded into an impenetrable psychic rampart. If Tassadar had more success he gave no sign of it, and walked onward unshaken.
Finally, when they were only a few dozen yards from Kerrigan and her green-gray skin and serrated, bony carapace were plainly visible, she turned to face them. Her muscular arms spread wide, clawed hands open in a show of welcome. The pair of barbed, wing-like appendages that spouted from beneath her shoulder blades mirrored the gesture, flaring like the grasping feet of a bird of prey. Pools of impenetrable black welled in her fine, yellow eyes.
Suddenly, the eyes filled Jacen’s vision and obscured his other senses, searing through carefully-honed mental defenses as though they were wisps of idle fancy. He stumbled and started to reach for his head with his free hand, instinctively compelled to dash the foreign image from his mind, but he forced his arm to stop.
No! Not this easily! Not so soon!
He smothered the desperate, defensive urge and pushed back instead. He focused on the eyes, staring back with all his resolve. If Kerrigan thought she could break his will with the cursory assault and simple mental projection, she was sorely mistaken. He was a Solo, a Skywalker, and would not be bullied so. Another push, and the gilded voids evaporated.
Glancing to one side, Jacen could see that the Chief had faltered as well, but as the Jedi moved to lend him some of his own strength, the Spartan straightened up and squared his broad shoulders.
“Keep up with the Protoss,” he growled, breathless, but in control.
Jacen looked at the man’s opaque faceplate with fresh respect. Kerrigan’s telepathic assault had been limited, only half serious, but it still should have been enough to send a human without the appropriate mental barriers to his knees. Fleetingly, the Spartan reminded him of his father; Han wouldn’t have been easily cowed, either.
He would have never allowed such an insult to his ego, Jacen reflected before pushing the errant thoughts aside. Dad would say that the Chief has a bit of Corellian blood in him.
Tassadar came to a stop less than ten meters from Kerrigan, completely unfazed by the unseen attack. Kerrigan moved a step from her controls, and a broad smile spread across her stained lips.
“Welcome, brave Templar, to my humble keep,” she said, her voice saccharine. “I hope you and your companions found the stroll here pleasant.” She made a show of glancing around Tassadar’s armored frame. “I had expected more guests, but I suppose my guardians can be a little overzealous when it comes to my privacy. Nevertheless, I do usually demand a bit more… respect be paid to my servants. I was rather fond of the lump you gutted in my antechamber.” Something dangerous flashed across Kerrigan’s face, but in a moment it was gone, replaced once again by macabre good humor.
“But that is all behind us.” She waved an arm extravagantly at the high walls and ceiling. “Extraordinary, wouldn’t you agree? Feels a bit like home, doesn’t it?”
The Chief and Jacen had moved alongside Tassadar by now, and Kerrigan turned her gaze on the former. “You feel it, don’t you, Master Chief?”
The Spartan’s only reply was to raise his blaster pistol and point it squarely at her chest.
“Oh come on, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117… or perhaps, just John. Yes, that will do nicely.”
Jacen could sense anger rising in the Spartan, but he remained motionless, his armored finger just off the blaster’s firing stud. He kept control.
Kerrigan cocked her head slightly to one side, and the spines above her head swayed in tune with the movement. “Not in a sociable mood, John? Perhaps some old friends, to lighten the mood.”
“Eyes up!” the Chief barked.
Jacen saw a dozen sentinels rise from the empty space to either side of the causeway and form staggered lines in the air above them. They were identical to the one in the shaft, save that their lower appendages were noticeably extended. Apparently that, and the malevolent glee obvious in Kerrigan’s face, was enough to mark them firmly as threats in the Chief’s mind, and Jacen was not inclined to disagree.
As the humans turned their weapons towards the machines, Kerrigan spun around and reached out for something lying on a flattened area of the hard-light display. She returned with a large metal sphere gasped firmly in one hand. Its metal shell was similar to that of the sentinels, partially split to make room for a bulbous, eye-like lens, now dark and glassy.
“This little guy was quite upset when I found the facility. The place’s caretaker and artificial intelligence, I think. It called itself Insoluble Vector, or something. It flitted here and there, whining about my broods upstairs or blathering about its mission and how I was disturbing the machinery. It put up a rather disappointing fight when I finally decided to be rid of it.” She pondered the lifeless, artificial shell glumly, staring into its empty eye, cracked, Jacen could now see, and then tossed it carelessly to one side. The vacant machine bounced and rolled along the walkway until it came to its edge, teetered for a moment, and then tumbled soundlessly into the abyss.
Kerrigan turned her attention back to her audience, and smiled once more. “These sentinels proved far more useful, once I was able to bypass their old command protocols. For all they know, they’re doing what they’ve always done, keeping watch on my sanctum and making sure that any unwelcome guests are kept properly contained. Far more subtle than any of my organic creations. No risk of damaging what’s down here.”
One of the sentinels drifted out of line, dipped low over the walkway, and then wound lazily up behind Kerrigan until it was just above her right shoulder. She raised a hand and ran a single, razor-tipped finger delicately along one of its forward plates.
Suddenly, the sentinel twitched violently, and Kerrigan’s hand drew sharply back. Blue-white flame manifested itself on the sentinel’s armored chassis, and the light behind its single eye flared. With a crackle of arcane energy and dying machinery, the robot was consumed by the fire and fell at Kerrigan’s feet, a blackened mass of crumpled metal.
“Enough of your games, Dark One!” Tassadar boomed, his right hand raised. The space between them crackled palpably with charge.
The Queen’s stare grew cold as it turned once more onto the Templar. Jacen and the Chief watched as the remaining sentinels drew back from the trio, their forward plates splaying further and their low-slung apertures coming to life with golden light. There was no cover available, should the machines open fire, and no place to run save the yawn darkness below. Kerrigan had them in the palm of her hand.
And yet, Tassadar seemed barely even aware of the threats above, or the men on either side, for that matter. He beheld Kerrigan alone.
“You have called me here, Empty Queen, and I have come of my own free will. Now, you shall lay your plans bear, and tell me why and how you have dragged me to this realm. Then, and only then, will we have our reckoning.”
Kerrigan regarded him in silence, her lips pursed. The moment stretched, and Jacen felt the wash of a bubbling of power or raw emotion. As he tried to keep his guard on both the Queen and her stolen servants, the Jedi realized he could no longer be sure from which presence the feeling emanated. The life-force of Protoss and hybrid seemed to enmesh, immaterial tendrils clashing and knotting in an invisible duel.
“I suppose that would be only… fair.” The words rolled from Kerrigan’s slowly, cloyingly temperate. “You have answered my call, after all. Very well, I’ll tell you a story. But don’t think that you can fade away again if you don’t like what you hear, my slippery friend. There is no way out of here, at least not…”
She trailed off, a self-assured smile forming again. Tassadar said nothing.
“My thanks, to start, Templar. Without your courageous sacrifice on Aiur, my ascension would have been impossible. As much as he was fond of his new toy, the Overmind would have never truly left me to my own devices, and his sniveling, sycophantic Cerebrates would have remained an insufferable impediment. As it was, they had to be dealt with, but with the Swarm’s old master gone, it was a simple matter to subvert and eliminate the last hold-outs.”
“The Terrans and your crumbling empire – and proud Aiur was quite lost even before I even had a chance to lay eyes on it, I’m afraid – put up a more satisfying fight, but in time, their flimsy alliances were easily rotted, their heroes corrupted, and their peoples consumed. A few stragglers here and there, but nothing left worthy of the notice of the Queen of Blades and her loyal hordes. I even followed the Terrans all the way back to their homeworld.”
She looked upward dramatically. “I have to say, this version of Earth was much prettier when I found it. Heavy industry can take quite a toll on a biosphere. Well, I think my modest renovations improved on both worlds. A nice balance of efficiency and aesthetics, I think. You’re welcome to disagree, but I wouldn’t waste too much energy on it.”
“Anyways, I found myself master of, well, everything. Any planet I saw, I could have. Any organism, new genetic material for my Swarm. It was all… so very easy. I tried to distract myself with little projects, tinkering with species I had harvested, adding augmentations and culling evolutionary dead-ends. But I wanted more, knew that there was something else out there that was mine to claim. A supreme challenge for the ultimate lifeform. Maybe that’s why the Overmind created me.”
She aped an introspective air. “Perhaps I should give the old flesh ball a bit more credit.”
“My next conquest lay in the past. Relics. You know the ones, Tassadar. Xel’Naga monoliths and ruins, scattered from one side of the Galaxy to the other. The great progenitors, architects of entire sapient species, the creators of the Protoss and the Zerg. You know the legend, wise Templar, the ancient scripture of your race. How their creations grew too quickly, how they became too powerful, and turned on their masters, pushing them from known space.”
She paused again, seemingly for dramatic effect. Kerrigan seemed excited and thoroughly engrossed in her own story, for once almost human, but Jacen still could not feel her. If there was any humanity left in the being it was purely superficial, left intact to disarm and distract.
“But how could this happen, Tassadar? How could a species so ancient and so powerful fall before the tantrums of a pair of children? Where was the might that had forged a boundless empire and the will that had bent the foundations of life to their purposes? Why had they fled so easily? Where was their power? The answer was there all along, in the carved, abandoned rocks that Protoss and Zerg alike revered for their ancient energies. And I found it.”
“The key was on Shakuras, the great Xel’Naga temple that your Dark Templar claimed as their holiest ground. As soon as I set foot in its halls, I could feel the potential of the place, but the ancient’s would not give up their secrets easily. I knew it was a weapon, one that its acolytes had used to slow my advance, but there was so much more there, just out of reach. Its true power and purpose was locked away, and even I could not seize it by my energies alone. So, I recruited another to supplement my own psionic talents.”
Kerrigan tilted her chin down and frowned, plainly for Tassadar’s benefit. “Poor Zeratul. The strain was too great for him, I guess. He never was the same when it was over.”
Tassadar’s eyes flashed with blue-white fire.
“I tire of this, Dark One. You may have lured other with your petty goading, but I will not be ensnared. Tell me what I must know, or I will tolerate your musings no longer! I have slipped through your grasp before, and I can do so again.”
Kerrigan loosed a throaty chuckle. “Impatience, Tassadar? I expected a bit more from you. But you are right, of course. My thoughts do wander. No one’s perfect, right?”
“When the Dark Templar’s energies flared with my own, the temple at last opened to me, and I was swept up by a flood of insight. New, alien power poured into me, and I could see everything. I could understand it all! The true power of the Xel’Naga had not been lost. We had never really seen it at all! The empire that the Zerg and Protoss fought off was just a vestige of a far grander whole, cut off from its nexus, dying like a severed limb. The entity that our ancestors destroyed was already doomed!”
For once, Tassadar’s iron focus seemed to slacken slightly. Jacen could not blame him; either by some psionic trick or the sheer force of her will, Kerrigan’s tale was enthralling.
“The Xel’Naga’s greatest achievement was not a weapon or a monument or some new pet! It was this!”
She threw her arms back and on cue, a beam of blinding light pierced the emptiness at the chamber’s center, bisecting it from dome to bottomless deep. The column of energy and luminance was superficially similar to the lift’s anchor, but it was far wider, and indescribably more powerful. The beam dimmed slightly and began to widen, pulsing with cascading hues that Jacen’s conscious mind could barely comprehend.
A shockwave slammed into them, and both the Jedi and the Master Chief were forced to step back, bracing themselves. The sentinels above buffeted violently, some smacking into each other as their repulsors tried to compensate for the sudden turbulent. Only Tassadar and Kerrigan held their ground.
“A passageway, Tassadar! A gate to worlds that you and I cannot imagine! Galaxies unreachable by the most powerful starship! Even time is not beyond its reach! No dark age of the past or shrouded future horizon was barred to them! This is power! Resources, secrets, entire universes ripe for conquest! Unlimited power!”
Behind her, the column pulsed faster, and the empty air between it and the walkway seemed to solidify. From nothing, a cloud of distortion bent light and absorbed sound, swelling until it almost touched the thin surface on which they stood. The strange, ancient vitality Jacen had sensed before bloomed and roared in his mind, flooding him with psychic sensation.
“With devices like this one, the ancients spread well beyond the confines of their own reality, laying claim to galaxy after galaxy and bending them to their own will. Monuments like this were constructed in each, gateways that bound their mighty empire together. A trillion species felt their influence, and each of you have seen the undying remnants of their dominion. The Xel’Naga. The Forerunners of your world, soldier. The forgotten builders of your realm, Jedi, and this one as well. All of them, the same great architects. The greatest conquerors of this or any reality has ever known! And all because of these gates!”
The massive distortion, still fed by the towering beam of light, had stabilized into a great sphere of constant movement and spiraling charge. As Jacen followed wave after overlapping wave of warping space, he realized all in an instant that this was a rift. The mysterious phenomenon that had spat the Enterprise ravaged into Imperial space and propelled the Republica from peril to peril sat before them, a tear in the fundamental structure of reality. Even the Force seemed to change in its presence, its barely-perceptible veins made erratic and its very aura impregnated with the awesome presence.
Air current whipped about Kerrigan, but she did not turn to face the storm of essence and energy. Face broad with exhilaration, her gaze had locked firmly with Tassadar’s.
“But even these great creators were not invincible. An unstoppable foe encroached on their home realm, and the war that followed pushed the ancients to the brink of defeat. Their only chance to stop the invaders from finding these gates and spreading to every corner of their empire was to annihilate all life in their own homeland, nexus of the network. When their ultimate weapon was unleashed, the gates fell silent, their heart damaged by the blast and the final release of so many of its masters. The survivors were isolated, their lifelines cut, left to fend for themselves alone in galaxies they had only begun to tame.”
“In the end, they were not as magnificent as their constructs. One by one, the scattered remnants vanished, destroyed by rebellious natives and each other. Others simply wander off into the endless cosmos or went to ground on forgotten backwaters, letting all that they once were slip away. Now, all of them are gone, and only these gates remain. My gates.”
Kerrigan took one step towards Tassadar, paused, and then took another. He was utterly motionless, his eyes bound to hers.
“And now we come to your role in this little tale, dear Templar. You see, I was too greedy. When knowledge of the gates flowed into me, I bent all my power into awakening them from their dormancy. It worked, but the effort was draining, and I could not resist the portal when it opened over the temple.”
“When I awoke, I was weary and beaten, cast on the surface of a world I had never seen or heard of. My Swarm was gone; only the lone Protoss and a handful of my attendants had been pulled through the gate with me. I was angry at first, perhaps even… afraid, but soon I could sense another gate out amongst the stars, flush with new life and waiting for its new master to claim it. All I had to do was wait, bide my time until I could claim the artifact and probe its power more carefully. It did not take long for a Starfleet vessel to happen upon me, and it was a simple matter to corrupt its captain and crew. My influence spread quickly throughout the Federation, and all the while I bred fresh Zerg strains from those few that had accompanied me and the DNA pumping through my veins.”
“At last my strength returned and I maneuvered myself secretly to Earth. Finding this instillation was not difficult. This place called to me. I am the one who reignited it, its long-awaited master.”
“The true capabilities of this gate are incredible. After using Federation scientists and its own caretaker to discover its secrets, I realized that it was not limited to projecting rifts here, in this chamber. It could generate passageways anywhere in this realm, connected to any other dimension, and any other time, that the ancients had anchored with another gate. Causeways for war fleets between galaxies, as large and as permanent as I desire. Fleeting rifts capable of plucking individual starships or settlements and casting them into the farthest reaches of time and space. Tiny portals that grab sleepers from their beds or whisk them from transporter beams. Nothing is beyond its power!”
“Unfortunately, the amount of psychic energy required to accurately direct the device is considerable. It can work without such guidance, but it is greatly limited. Projected rifts appear erratically, both in time and place, varying unpredictably in size and duration. Often, they only manifest on areas of high energy. Even this rift’s end-point is variable. I needed more energy to bend it to my will, and your Zeratul was spent. Only Protoss, of all the species I had encountered and could obtain, had the necessary degree of power.”
Kerrigan was now only a few paces away from Tassadar. Jacen and the Chief had drawn back, weapons at the ready, but Tassadar seemed to be frozen in place.
“I don’t know how many rifts and portals I scattered across reality, using my Federation agents to follow up each subspace distortion and secure every being I managed to pull into this reality. So many dead ends and useless weaklings. And then, one of my pet admirals received word of a strange ‘transporter accident’ from Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise-D. Among the roster of unusual, displaced sapients, there was a Protoss face. Your face, Tassadar.”
“Of course the rifts would have found you eventually. Your battle with the Overmind must have been simply magnetic for the wandering portals. You can imagine my joy when I dispatched a ship to retrieve you… and my rage when Picard used one of my own rifts to escape.”
“I searched for years, but still you eluded me. Each new portal brought more disappointment, and eventually I resigned myself to this limited, weak realm. When my broods were ready, I swept aside the rotted Federation and its allies with contemptible ease. More frustration.”
“And then, you returned. What was more, you presented me with your ship, a tool I could use to crush the last, annoying remnants of this pitiful galaxy, and, of course, your own psionic power. I knew I had to be careful, draw you in slowly to ensure that you did not flee again. But you have come, in the end, and with a gift to replace the one your companions stole from me. I thank you, Tassadar, sincerely. It would have taken years to hunt down the defiant fools who are dying overhead right now in your name. But most importantly, I thank you for delivering yourself to me. With your power, I can make this gate complete.”
Kerrigan’s void-like pupils had widened until now her eyes were both impenetrably, irresistibly black.
“With your help, Tassadar, every being on every world in every universe will know my name. By your hand, the Queen of Blades will stand alone.”
Jacen expected a gout of the familiar white-blue flame to burst from the Templar, to sweep over the Zerg Queen at point-blank range. For all his Jedi training, for all his old masters’ admonitions about the necessity of restraint and their warnings about preemptive action, he would have attacked Kerrigan now were he in Tassadar’s place. Wearily hefting his lightsaber in her direction, he silently admitted to himself that he wouldn’t have let her get within five meters.
And yet, Tassadar was still. The Jedi could feel nothing from him. Surely, he should be able to feel something piercing the invisible pall cast by Kerrigan’s presence.
“Templar,” the Chief warned.
Kerrigan’s right arm extended towards the Protoss’ unarmored face.
“Tassadar!” Jacen shouted, fear suddenly stabbing at him. He had waited at the Templar’s side, certain that Tassadar was biding his time, waiting to strike when Kerrigan had divulged what he had so desperately wanted to know.
But Tassadar did not move, did not speak, did not even brush the edge of Jacen’s mind with his own. He was paralyzed, trapped in Kerrigan’s gaze.
Jacen and the Chief shot a quick glance at one another, thinking the same thing. Surrounded as they were, something had to be done. Kerrigan had to be stopped before she could claim her prize.
The Spartan’s trigger finger tensed. Jacen tried to clear his mind, focusing on the pommel in his hand and Kerrigan’s outstretched arm.
Neither man saw Kerrigan move. One moment, she was still beyond Tassadar, the next, she stood between them, the huge, bony spike on her back sweeping outward, low to the ground. The thick, hard tines caught Jacen in chest and legs with tremendous force. In a terrible, agonizing instant, he felt the bones in his legs creak and his knees buckle almost to breaking.
The world before his eyes reeled up and back. His lightsaber slipped from his grasp. He felt himself falling.
Instinctively, he pushed back to soften his impact on the ground, but he immediately realized that there was no ground. Kerrigan had knocked him clear of the causeway, and he was falling into the abyss. He felt his body tense and the swirling world around him seemed to slow. Numb with pain and shock, he reached out and did the only thing he could think of doing.
Miraculously, both his hands grasped the smooth, slightly raised edge of the causeway. The jolt of his own weight against his arms knocked his head from side to side, but his grip held fast.
There was a crack of lashing claws from above, and a mass of dull green rolled off the other edge of the suspended platform.
The Chief!
Jacen knew that he could not halt the armored man’s fall, especially not as he hung on for his own life, but…
With artificial rigidity and supernatural speed, even for a Spartan, the Chief’s left arm shot straight up and his fingers closed on the walkway’s narrow lip. An impulse flashed through his impact-clouded mind, and the fingers clamped onto the metal, vice-like. The joints of his gauntlet scrapped thin lines on the surface as his immense weight pulled him downward, but the right hand joined the left, and he found purchase again.
All this happened in a matter of seconds, but before either could take stock of their precarious new situation, a low chorus of hums heralded the approach of Kerrigan’s vanguard. Eleven silver-plated machines swung into view from either side of the walkway, dipping slightly below their targets and orienting their angular bodies in the humans’ direction. Jacen saw the golden glow, and knew at once he had to move or be skewered by whatever the sentinels could spit forth.
Swiftly checking his physical and mental reserves, the Jedi knew he could shoot himself straight upwards, back over the lip.
But the Chief…
Looking across the underside of the causeway, Jacen caught the other man’s gaze through his faceplate. The Spartan jerked his up.
Go!
Not pausing to think, Jacen summoned all the energy he could to him and pushed up. The Force felt strange, colder than it normally did when he manifested it, but it complied nonetheless. Bouncing off of his palms, Jacen shoot up three meters, landed back on the causeway in a roll, and then shoved himself up onto his haunches. Casting about for his lightsaber, he saw it just out of arm’s reach, less than half a meter from a very long drop.
As the sentinels rose back up over the lip, resolutely tracking their assigned target, the pommel was in Jacen‘s hand and lit. A swift slash caught a machine that had risen too close. A spherical energy barrier appeared around the sentinel to deflect the blow, but Jacen pushed through it, shattering the shield and cutting the device cleanly in half. Before the sparking fragments had the chance to fall more than a meter, four lances of golden light erupted from the firing apertures of the other sentinels.
Jacen felt the heat of the beams, saw them carve through the clear air, each aimed precisely, just above his breastbone. The Jedi ducked and thrust his lightsaber lengthwise in front of him. The beams intersected with the glowing blade almost at the same point, continuous bursts of energy that sent a wave of heat like lava over Jacen’s hands. He grunted as the skin of his knuckles blistered, but he pushed back, angling his blade forward and up. Like the refracted rays of sunlight on a mirror, the energy beams angled off wildly. Two grazed an unfortunate sentinel, overwhelming its shield and sending it spinning beyond sight, its rear chassis smoking. The others scattered to avoid the ricochet.
Taking advantage of their momentary withdrawal, Jacen looked down to the other side of the causeway. The lip was smooth and straight, without any sign of armored fingers.
Jacen inhaled sharply and rushed across the walkway, looking down and expecting to see nothing but sentinels circling down out of sight. Instead, one of the machines shot upward, just centimeters from Jacen’s face. Its movements were erratic and jerky, and it took the Jedi only an instant to realize why.
Clinging to the sentinel’s upper pair of forward plates, the Master Chief swung precariously back and forth, his stomach as flat as he could manage on the thing’s stubby drive section. It dipped back and forth and up and down like an insect with a broken wing, trying to shake the unwelcome passenger free and unburden its straining repulsors. Around it, the other sentinels watched the bizarre display at a distance, momentarily unsure of their targeting protocols.
Jacen knew that their hesitation would not last long, but before he could try to assist the soldier, a trio of energy beams slashed across the causeway in front of him and he was forced to jump back, lightsaber on guard.
Jacen spotted two of the machines floating close together overhead, and jabbed at them with an open palm. The two suddenly found their directional fins non-functional and smashed into each other at speed, triggering both of their defensive screens. They tried to move apart and reorient themselves, only to be flung into the shield of the third device. The last had been firing its weapon at that moment, and the shot went wild, catching both of the units that had impacted it. Their spherical screens absorbed the raking blow, but the confused fray distracted them for precious seconds, just as Jacen had intended.
One of the sentinels observing the Chief finally resolved to override its friendly-fire subroutines and angled a beam intended to clear the offending human off of its fellow machine’s back. The Spartan saw the blast coming and hauled back on his makeshift handholds, sending his sentinel into a reluctant backwards spin. The beam cut into the unprotected underside of the machine, and the hum of its repulsors revved and sputtered loudly.
Fortunately for its passenger, the sentinel bucked wildly before its drives gave way, sending the human sprawling through mid-air and onto the causeway a few meters from Jacen. Even more fortunately, the energy beams that followed him were all wide. One managed to sweep across his left shin, but his own energy shield saved the leg, and the Chief tugged the limb away from the searing lance.
Jacen ran in the prone soldier’s direction, and as he did, something bumped against one boot. Glancing down, he saw it was the Chief’s blaster, lost after Kerrigan’s assault. Still running, he swept his arm towards the Spartan, and the weapon turned and tumbled along in its wake.
“Chief!”
The Spartan’s head turned in his direction. He took in the motile blaster in a glimpse, reached out, caught it, and then rolled sharply right to avoid more lances of lethal energy. Jacen sent another wave of Force pressure at the sentinels, sending them spinning away even as the others recovered from their disorientation and shot back towards the causeway.
As the Jedi turned to deflect the next volley of brilliant lances, the Chief picked himself up and searched the platform for their immediate priority. Kerrigan had moved to the very edge of the huge sphere of distortion that still hung at the center of the chamber. Tassadar was slouched against one of her legs, pinned there by the Zerg Queen’s flexible spines. Kerrigan’s back was turned on the humans, and she seemed to be entering something into the large holo-display at the walkway’s edge. The Protoss was still motionless.
The Chief raised his blaster, sighted along his arm, and fired. The burst of crimson hit Kerrigan full in the back, and she slumped against the controls. The Spartan pulled the firing stud again, but this time Kerrigan seemed to swipe the bolt from the air with her dorsal appendages, absorbing the burning plasma with reinforced chitin.
Her movement left Tassadar free to slump onto the causeway. His head hit the smooth surface, and his clouded eyes burst back to life. He felt sluggish and inordinately weak. At first, he couldn’t remember anything, not even his own name, but as his eyes filled with the swirling, cascading surface of the gateway’s rift, everything flooded back. His mission, Zeratul, what Kerrigan had told him, confident that the psionic trap she was laying while she spoke would bind him utterly to her will. Wisps of the spell still hung behind his eyes, dark threads that receded from the fire of his thoughts.
Dark Templar psionic technique, no doubt stolen from the mind of Zeratul or one of his comrades. Tassadar cursed himself for not detecting the familiar tendrils of coercion and paralysis-inducing apathy. He had been too desperate to learn some reason, some rationale behind the madness of the last weeks and months. Kerrigan had given that, at least, and now he felt his mind clear, his purpose crystallize.
His right hand shot out and grasped hold of Kerrigan’s spurred ankle. He pumped psionic energies through the limb, and heard the abomination scream. Good, he thought, she can still feel. Trillions demanded justice, and he vowed silently that each would exact its own painful vengeance.
Enormous claws slashed down his face and his body, each of them spitting its own searing psionic charge. He felt the armor at his waist melt away, and an enormous barb plunged deep into his side. Tassadar roared, and felt a foot plant itself on his side.
“Willingly or not, Protoss,” Kerrigan sneered down at him. “You are mine.”
Jacen had just sent another sentinel tumbling away into the blackness, scorched by its own weapon, when he felt Tassadar reach out to him. Whirling about, he saw the Templar lying on his side. Kerrigan stood above him, her back spines withdrawing from wounds on the Protoss’ vulnerable form. In that instant, Tassadar was looking past her, directly at the Jacen.
My people, Jedi.
With that, he was gone. Kerrigan had rolled him off the platform with his foot, straight into the throbbing surface of the rift. Jacen didn’t even see him hit it. The Zerg Queen arched her back, splayed her spines wide above her head, and barked a laugh of triumph. In an instant, she had vanished, too.
The sentinels did not cease their attack, but the departure of their master seemed to make the machines sluggish, and Jacen and the Chief made short work of them. Only when the last had fallen out of sight could either fully appreciate what had happened.
Jacen deactivated his lightsaber and let his arms fall to his sides. He stared at the massive bubble of distorted space. The rift was unaffected by the passage of the pair, its surface an uninterrupted tide of folding, barely-perceptible waves and burst of indescribable color. Only now, the Jedi noticed that the anomaly was utterly silent. Indeed, with the elimination of the sentinels, the chamber felt as soundless as deep space. The raw, living power of the rift still roared at him in within his skull, tugging his perception of the Force this way and that, but even that waterfall of sensation had dulled, as if it had started to pour its energy inwards.
My people, Jedi.
Jacen knew that Tassadar had intended it as a farewell, a last, desperate request. It left the Jedi feeling utterly helpless. The unspoken words hung on him like bricks of durasteel, crushing him to the floor. It was a request he did not know how to satisfy, the plea of a being that knew its time was near an end. He was certain that Tassadar still intended to destroy Kerrigan, but…
He remembered the huge gash in the Templar’s chest, and the Dark Queen’s feral joy.
“No more contacts on my sensors. We’re clear, for the moment.” The Master Chief stopped alongside Jacen, holstering his blaster. “The interference is gone and I’ve got comms. We’re pretty deep, though. I might not be able to reach anyone through the rock.”
“Truul’s team?” Jacen said numbly.
“Already searching,” the Chief replied, tapping the side of his helmet with two fingers.
They were silent for a moment, simply staring at the rift.
“We’ve failed,” Jacen said at last. “Kerrigan’s escaped.”
“She’s gone,” the Chief acknowledged. “And if our Intel was right, the Zerg fleet is falling apart right now.”
“So we saved them, what’s left of them, for what, a day?” Jacen shook his head. “You heard Kerrigan. If she manages to control one of these gateways, she’ll be all but unstoppable. All we’ve done is deliver Tassadar to her.”
The Chief stared at the younger man, and he suddenly felt his tinge with red.
“This was Tassadar’s plan. No one pushed him here. Not you. Not me. He’s in that thing with her right now, and I wouldn’t count him out of the fight yet.”
Jacen’s eyes fell. The Chief was right, of course. Tassadar had risked everyone, himself included, for the chance to get within striking range of Kerrigan – Jacen remembered his own anger at the prospect - and he had managed to do precisely that. Tassadar was one of the most powerful beings he had ever encountered, and the Protoss had saved all of their lives more times than he could remember. If anyone could destroy Kerrigan, he could.
And yet, there was the wound.
The Chief’s helmet crackled with static.
“Sierra, do you copy?”
“I copy, Beta. What is your status?”
The sound of weapons fire echoed from the transmitter, followed by a gruff, booming voice.
“Watch that door, Galmak! Catch them as they enter! Show these creatures what it means to match blade and claw with Klingons!”
There was a burst of static, and then Truul’s voice returned. “Don’t encourage ‘em, Commader! It’s bad enough that they had to bring so many damn knives and swords with ‘em. We’ve got these things beat, and I don’t want to have to drag along another fool who got his arm gnawed off because he didn’t think his disruptor was good enough for the job!”
“Sierra, we found your tunnel, and were making our way down into the mountain. We got to these damn huge tunnels before the Zerg found us. Hard going since, and I’ve got casualties. The pressure’s just cut, though. Fewer of the blasted things, and they’re not as coordinated. Did you upend a Cerebrate or something?”
“Affirmative, Beta. My unit has advanced what appears to be the command center of the facility. Alpha has engaged the Primary.”
There was a pause. “Please repeat, Sierra. Is Kerrigan dead?”
Jacen looked up. They wouldn’t ever know if Tassadar succeeded or failed, at least not until Kerrigan emerged again with the rifts and a new army bent to her will. And then, it would be too late.
“Negative, Beta,” the Chief replied. “Alpha and the Primary…” he trailed off, apparently unwilling to explain over the comm. “We’ve lost contact with both. I’ll fill you in when your unit gets here. Follow this signal until you reach a shaft. I’ll send the lift up for you when you signal.”
“Got ya, Sierra. I’ll shout if there are any more problems.”
The Chief muted the line and turned back towards Jacen. The Jedi was still staring at the rift, silent. Slowly, the Chief looked away and started back down the causeway towards the waiting lift.
“I’ll stay with the lift until the Major arrives. If you notice any new contacts, let me know.”
“I’m going in.”
The Chief stopped mid-stride.
“What?”
The two turned to face one another again, and the Chief saw that younger man’s face was hardened with resolve.
“We have to be sure that Tassadar has destroyed Kerrigan. I’m going to follow him, and help him if I can.”
“You’re not stupid, Jedi,” the Chief said briskly. “We have no idea how that thing works, or where it leads. Even if you were to survive the transit, there’d be no way of contacting you or getting you back. This is in the Templar’s hands now. We still have our duty here.”
“We failed in our duty when she stepped into the rift, Chief! Tassadar’s alone with her, who knows where, and she’s on the verge of accessing a power we can barely comprehend, much less stop. If she survives, all we’ve fought for is for nothing! We’re dead, and so is everyone in this galaxy. Eventually, my home will fall, too, and so will yours.”
He shook his head. “I’m not a soldier, but I take my duty just as seriously as you do. On this world or any other, I am a Jedi, and it is my responsibility to preserve peace and defend life, no matter the personal cost. Kerrigan threatens that and everything else I care about. I must follow her and make sure that she cannot spread her ruin anymore, even if I have to become one with the Force to do so. That is my duty, Chief, and I will fulfill it, just as you must fulfill yours.”
With that, Jacen turned his back on the Spartan, clipped his lightsaber to his side, and stalked towards the ethereal vortex. The Chief watched his back for a while, and then glanced down at his hands.
Worn armor. Veteran of too many firefights and daring escapes. The paint was thin and chipped, burned off in places, and number of dings and minute fractures in the metal probably would have made its designers recoil.
The blank-faced helmet shook back and forth slowly. Who was he to tell anyone else not to take stupid risks for what they believed in?
“Wait.”
Jacen had stopped near the edge of the circular walkway already, and he glanced back, his face still set.
“Even bad ideas should have contingency plans. If you go in there, find Kerrigan and eliminate her, do you want to be stuck alone on the other side of that without a way to get back?”
Jacen shoulder’s drooped slightly. “I don’t see how I have many options.”
“Wait a moment,” the Chief said, and reactivated his comm link.
“Beta, are you in contact with the Fleet?”
“Haven’t tried for a while, Sierra, but I can give it a shot.”
“Patch me to Flagship Vulcan, if you can.”
“All right, give me a bit.”
Jacen was giving him a quizzical look, but there was still a good chance the Chief sudden inspiration would fall flat, and he avoided the gaze.
After a tense half-minute, there was a hiss and burst of static so loud that it echoed up to the chamber’s high dome, and then a voice, scratchy and distant, but entirely recognizable.
“Strike Force Earth? Major Truul, is that you? What is your status?”
Jean-Luc Picard’s faint voice sounded nearly as excited as it did weary.
“Captain, this is Sierra. The Master Chief, sir. We’ve breached Kerrigan’s fortress and secured her control room.”
“Acknowledged, Master Chief. The Zerg armada is collapsing. We had thought we’d just hit another Cerebrate, but I suppose you and your men deserve the credit. Is Kerrigan dead?”
“No, sir. She entered some kind of device at the base of the facility with Tassadar when we attempted to engage. The device is secured and we’re prepared to pursue, but I want someone down her who can control the machine and pull us back when the mission’s been accomplished.”
There was a long pause, and the voice that finally replied was not Picard’s.
“What have you found us this time, Chief?”
The Spartan smiled for the first time in what felt like years. It had been far too long since he had heard Cortana’s smooth, confident voice.
“Forerunner. An entire facility, buried under Mount Kilimanjaro.”
“Forerunner?” Cortana was understandably bewildered, but none of the apprehension in her voice was doubt. “How is that possible?”
“I’m still not entirely sure, but we’ve found out what brought us all here and what’s been making the anomalies. Kerrigan found some sort of projection device, and she’s been using to try and lure Templar Tassadar here. They’ve disappeared into a rift, and Jacen Solo and I are going to follow them, but I need you to get down here and figure out exactly what this thing is and how to use it. We’ll need a way back when the job’s done.”
“Wait, Chief. You’re going into it before I figure out how it works?”
“It can’t wait. Tassadar and Kerrigan have already been gone too long. We can’t even be sure it will stay open much longer.”
“All the more reason to be careful about this.” Cortana’s agitation was painfully clear. “The battle up here is over. Without Kerrigan, the Zerg ships are all but dead in space. Can’t we wait and follow her later, when we have more data?”
The Chief paused.
“No.”
“Are you sure about this, Chief?”
He grinned. “Do I ever jump into anything if I’m not sure I’ll come out of it?”
“No jokes! Just… tell me.”
“I’ll come back, Cortana. I promise.”
The AI was silent for a moment, an eternity for the artificial mind.
“How long do you need?”
The Chief considered for a moment. “Three hours. If you can figure out how to get us back at all.”
“If that thing’s Forerunner, Chief, you’ll have your evac. Three hours, no longer.”
“Acknowledged. Give my regards to the Captain. Sierra out.”
Immediately upon ending the transmission, the Spartan activated his mission clock, a tiny numeral that wound slowly up on the corner of his vision.
“We?” Jacen asked when he had finished.
“As you said, Jedi, duty.”
Jacen smiled slightly.
Everyone has someone to protect.
“What about Major Truul?”
With speed and efficiency that still impressed the Jedi, the Chief traversed the long causeway, activated the lift and loped back off of it before it could rise more than half a meter, and informed Truul of the change of plans, ordering him to secure the chamber in their absence and wait for Cortana. In less than a minute, they were standing side by side at the edge of the walkway, the distortion rippling silently before them.
“Take my hand,” Jacen said, offering it to the Spartan. “We can’t be separated. You won’t know where you’re going in there.”
“And you will?”
Jacen sighed, glanced at the anomaly once more, and raised his hand higher. The Spartan took it, careful not to clasp it too hard.
“On count of five,” the younger man said, squaring himself before the rift and taking in a deep breath.
“It’s better if you just jump.”
Before Jacen could protest, he felt the pull of the Chief’s weight on his arm, and both were gone.
---------------------------------------------
The remnants of Tassadar’s battle with the Cerebrate disappeared beyond the circular lip of an enormous shaft that slowly swallowed the platform and its luminous pylon. The metal beneath two pairs of human feet and Tassadar’s heavy boots barely vibrated and the beam of energy that seemed to anchor it remained constant, but impenetrable walls of dark stone quickly rose up around them, consuming everything save the skyward dome. For a few moments, air currents from the chamber above echoed about the three, amplified by the enclosed space, but soon the sound faded, leaving only the faint reverberation of the surface beneath them and a gentle, magnetic hum to break the silence.
The Chief stepped back from the terminal he had located, his hands free to reclaim his blaster pistol. The control panel was made up of what appeared to be several thin, adjoining sheets of luminescent glass, dotted with geometric glyphs and blocky forms that crisscrossed its surface in regular, purposeful patterns. In actuality, the surfaces hovered at an angle to the plate below, holographic projections that had nonetheless given purchase to the Spartan’s open palm and activated the lift at his touch.
The three stood in silence as the platform continued to descend. None had spoken since Tassadar’s brief valediction, and the Protoss was once more drawn within himself, his bright eyes lowered and subdued.
Jacen was the first to break the restless silence.
“What is this place, Chief?” His voice echoed with more volume than he had intended and the Jedi tensed at the sound, but the reverberation faded harmlessly into the shaft’s immovable walls.
“I’m not sure,” the Spartan replied. “The only Forerunner structures I’ve seen have been Halos. Massive space stations with artificial atmospheres and landmasses. Their interiors were similar to this place, but I can’t tell you what they built it to do.”
Jacen frowned. “Forerunners?”
“That’s what the AI Cortana and I found in one of the Halos called its creators. Apparently, they all died hundreds of thousands of years ago in a war with the Flood, a parasitic organism we found on the instillations.” The Chief paused, glancing up the lengthening tube. “One that we woke up.”
Jacen’s own galaxy had its share of ancient, lost civilizations, evidenced only by enigmatic constructs they left adrift in the depths of space or scattered across remote worlds. In his experience, such wonders were rarely benign.
“And the Halos? What were they built to do?”
“They are weapons. I don’t know how they work, but the Forerunners built them to combat the Flood. If activated, the Halos kill almost every living thing within a galaxy. They used them once, tried to stop the Flood and killed themselves in the process. I almost activated it again.”
“Why?” Jacen asked, surprised.
The Chief stared at the younger man through his opaque visor, impassive.
“The first Halo’s AI just told me it was a weapon, one I thought the UNSC could use against the Covenant. Cortana interfaced with the instillation’s computer and stopped me in time, told me what it really did.”
Jacen pondered this, but before he could ask another question, he sensed movement above and jerked his eyes up.
Descending from an unseen conduit or opening, a single, metallic entity sank into a relative stop a few meters above them, its repulsors emitting an audible hum. The dim light glinted dully off the polished, silver sheen of its casing, an elongated, torso-sized cube with a trio of angular appendages splayed at its front like a segmented shield. Behind these plates, a single, robotic eye gazed at Jacen and his companions, lit with the same ethereal light that guided their platform downward. A fourth appendage hung slightly below the machine’s chassis, its small, forward aperture dark.
Jacen inhaled sharply and raised his lightsaber blade to guard against the new arrival, but it seemed to ignore the weapon, drifting side to side slightly, inspecting each of the figures below in turn.
“Wait!” the Chief cautioned. His blaster was clutched tightly in his right hand, but the Spartan had not aimed it at the machine. “It’s a sentinel. The Forerunners built them to guard their facilities.”
“Like the one we’re wandering around in, unwelcome?” Jacen asked, not taking his eyes off the odd observer.
“Its weapon isn’t charged,” the Chief said, indicating to the ventral appendage. “And there’d be more of them if it was here to kill us.”
Slowly, Jacen lowered his lightsaber. The sentinel turned its lambent eye on him again, pivoted slightly back and forth on its axis, turned, and then raced up wards on an ephemeral trail of light, vanishing quickly into the darkness of the shaft’s walls.
Before any of them could ponder the machine’s appearance and equally abrupt exit, the platform noticeably slowed its decent. A moment later, a full half of the continuous circle of stone and metal beyond the lift gave way to open space. There was a blast of air current and echoing noise, and a chamber far larger than the one they had just left rose into view.
The Chief felt his muscles tighten.
This place, I do remember…
The space was circular, easily two hundred meters across and capped by a vaulted dome so far above that it was barely visible in the dim light. Evenly-spaced around its perimeter, three more dark shafts identical to their own sat empty, their central energy columns inactive. Leading from each, broad causeways that appeared to be composed mainly of frosted, semi-transparent glass converged on the center of the cavernous chamber. Near the center, they terminated into a single, continuous circle of walkway that left dozens of meters at the very middle of the chamber completely open, a gaping well that led down into nothingness. Beneath the walkways, themselves anchored only to the walls around the lift shafts, dark, solid walls tapered into a wide funnel and then plummeted down beyond sight.
Jacen and the Chief were still taking in the impressive, artificial vista when their lift eased to a stop, aligning perfectly with its causeway. The platform, like the rest of the massive space, seemed to be quite empty. And yet, as he took it all in, Jacen sensed a profound, vital presence that seemed to resonate from the artificial cavern itself, strange, familiar, and wholly alien all at once. The place positively sang with ancient power, untouched by transient beings for countless millennia.
And yet…
Tassadar advanced between the two humans and stepped from platform to causeway, both as unyielding as solid granite. His eyes were veiled no longer, and his gazed was fixed straight ahead.
And then, at last, Jacen saw her. A single figure stood at the lip of the circular walkway with its back to him, its form obscured by the light of a long array of floating displays, similar to the one that had controlled the lift. At such a distance, the Jedi could barely make out the humanoid silhouette, but he knew in an instant to whom it belonged. He had never come face to face with the Queen of Blades, but he had sensed her from a distance, and seen her corrupt handiwork up close.
This was Kerrigan, heart of the Swarm.
The Chief and Jacen kept close behind Tassadar as he advanced towards her, unspeaking. The humans scanned the suspended causeways and empty air with cautious eyes, wary of more of Kerrigan’s Zerg vanguard, but there was no sign of movement anywhere else in the chamber, and no sound saved the steady, slow clap of their boots on the smooth, unsettlingly transparent surface. Kerrigan was herself motionless, seemingly absorbed in the display before her and ignorant of the intruders. Steeling himself, Jacen reached out towards her, attempting to gauge something, anything about the being they had traveled so far and lost so much to face, but she was a hole in the Force, her malice and dark energy folded into an impenetrable psychic rampart. If Tassadar had more success he gave no sign of it, and walked onward unshaken.
Finally, when they were only a few dozen yards from Kerrigan and her green-gray skin and serrated, bony carapace were plainly visible, she turned to face them. Her muscular arms spread wide, clawed hands open in a show of welcome. The pair of barbed, wing-like appendages that spouted from beneath her shoulder blades mirrored the gesture, flaring like the grasping feet of a bird of prey. Pools of impenetrable black welled in her fine, yellow eyes.
Suddenly, the eyes filled Jacen’s vision and obscured his other senses, searing through carefully-honed mental defenses as though they were wisps of idle fancy. He stumbled and started to reach for his head with his free hand, instinctively compelled to dash the foreign image from his mind, but he forced his arm to stop.
No! Not this easily! Not so soon!
He smothered the desperate, defensive urge and pushed back instead. He focused on the eyes, staring back with all his resolve. If Kerrigan thought she could break his will with the cursory assault and simple mental projection, she was sorely mistaken. He was a Solo, a Skywalker, and would not be bullied so. Another push, and the gilded voids evaporated.
Glancing to one side, Jacen could see that the Chief had faltered as well, but as the Jedi moved to lend him some of his own strength, the Spartan straightened up and squared his broad shoulders.
“Keep up with the Protoss,” he growled, breathless, but in control.
Jacen looked at the man’s opaque faceplate with fresh respect. Kerrigan’s telepathic assault had been limited, only half serious, but it still should have been enough to send a human without the appropriate mental barriers to his knees. Fleetingly, the Spartan reminded him of his father; Han wouldn’t have been easily cowed, either.
He would have never allowed such an insult to his ego, Jacen reflected before pushing the errant thoughts aside. Dad would say that the Chief has a bit of Corellian blood in him.
Tassadar came to a stop less than ten meters from Kerrigan, completely unfazed by the unseen attack. Kerrigan moved a step from her controls, and a broad smile spread across her stained lips.
“Welcome, brave Templar, to my humble keep,” she said, her voice saccharine. “I hope you and your companions found the stroll here pleasant.” She made a show of glancing around Tassadar’s armored frame. “I had expected more guests, but I suppose my guardians can be a little overzealous when it comes to my privacy. Nevertheless, I do usually demand a bit more… respect be paid to my servants. I was rather fond of the lump you gutted in my antechamber.” Something dangerous flashed across Kerrigan’s face, but in a moment it was gone, replaced once again by macabre good humor.
“But that is all behind us.” She waved an arm extravagantly at the high walls and ceiling. “Extraordinary, wouldn’t you agree? Feels a bit like home, doesn’t it?”
The Chief and Jacen had moved alongside Tassadar by now, and Kerrigan turned her gaze on the former. “You feel it, don’t you, Master Chief?”
The Spartan’s only reply was to raise his blaster pistol and point it squarely at her chest.
“Oh come on, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117… or perhaps, just John. Yes, that will do nicely.”
Jacen could sense anger rising in the Spartan, but he remained motionless, his armored finger just off the blaster’s firing stud. He kept control.
Kerrigan cocked her head slightly to one side, and the spines above her head swayed in tune with the movement. “Not in a sociable mood, John? Perhaps some old friends, to lighten the mood.”
“Eyes up!” the Chief barked.
Jacen saw a dozen sentinels rise from the empty space to either side of the causeway and form staggered lines in the air above them. They were identical to the one in the shaft, save that their lower appendages were noticeably extended. Apparently that, and the malevolent glee obvious in Kerrigan’s face, was enough to mark them firmly as threats in the Chief’s mind, and Jacen was not inclined to disagree.
As the humans turned their weapons towards the machines, Kerrigan spun around and reached out for something lying on a flattened area of the hard-light display. She returned with a large metal sphere gasped firmly in one hand. Its metal shell was similar to that of the sentinels, partially split to make room for a bulbous, eye-like lens, now dark and glassy.
“This little guy was quite upset when I found the facility. The place’s caretaker and artificial intelligence, I think. It called itself Insoluble Vector, or something. It flitted here and there, whining about my broods upstairs or blathering about its mission and how I was disturbing the machinery. It put up a rather disappointing fight when I finally decided to be rid of it.” She pondered the lifeless, artificial shell glumly, staring into its empty eye, cracked, Jacen could now see, and then tossed it carelessly to one side. The vacant machine bounced and rolled along the walkway until it came to its edge, teetered for a moment, and then tumbled soundlessly into the abyss.
Kerrigan turned her attention back to her audience, and smiled once more. “These sentinels proved far more useful, once I was able to bypass their old command protocols. For all they know, they’re doing what they’ve always done, keeping watch on my sanctum and making sure that any unwelcome guests are kept properly contained. Far more subtle than any of my organic creations. No risk of damaging what’s down here.”
One of the sentinels drifted out of line, dipped low over the walkway, and then wound lazily up behind Kerrigan until it was just above her right shoulder. She raised a hand and ran a single, razor-tipped finger delicately along one of its forward plates.
Suddenly, the sentinel twitched violently, and Kerrigan’s hand drew sharply back. Blue-white flame manifested itself on the sentinel’s armored chassis, and the light behind its single eye flared. With a crackle of arcane energy and dying machinery, the robot was consumed by the fire and fell at Kerrigan’s feet, a blackened mass of crumpled metal.
“Enough of your games, Dark One!” Tassadar boomed, his right hand raised. The space between them crackled palpably with charge.
The Queen’s stare grew cold as it turned once more onto the Templar. Jacen and the Chief watched as the remaining sentinels drew back from the trio, their forward plates splaying further and their low-slung apertures coming to life with golden light. There was no cover available, should the machines open fire, and no place to run save the yawn darkness below. Kerrigan had them in the palm of her hand.
And yet, Tassadar seemed barely even aware of the threats above, or the men on either side, for that matter. He beheld Kerrigan alone.
“You have called me here, Empty Queen, and I have come of my own free will. Now, you shall lay your plans bear, and tell me why and how you have dragged me to this realm. Then, and only then, will we have our reckoning.”
Kerrigan regarded him in silence, her lips pursed. The moment stretched, and Jacen felt the wash of a bubbling of power or raw emotion. As he tried to keep his guard on both the Queen and her stolen servants, the Jedi realized he could no longer be sure from which presence the feeling emanated. The life-force of Protoss and hybrid seemed to enmesh, immaterial tendrils clashing and knotting in an invisible duel.
“I suppose that would be only… fair.” The words rolled from Kerrigan’s slowly, cloyingly temperate. “You have answered my call, after all. Very well, I’ll tell you a story. But don’t think that you can fade away again if you don’t like what you hear, my slippery friend. There is no way out of here, at least not…”
She trailed off, a self-assured smile forming again. Tassadar said nothing.
“My thanks, to start, Templar. Without your courageous sacrifice on Aiur, my ascension would have been impossible. As much as he was fond of his new toy, the Overmind would have never truly left me to my own devices, and his sniveling, sycophantic Cerebrates would have remained an insufferable impediment. As it was, they had to be dealt with, but with the Swarm’s old master gone, it was a simple matter to subvert and eliminate the last hold-outs.”
“The Terrans and your crumbling empire – and proud Aiur was quite lost even before I even had a chance to lay eyes on it, I’m afraid – put up a more satisfying fight, but in time, their flimsy alliances were easily rotted, their heroes corrupted, and their peoples consumed. A few stragglers here and there, but nothing left worthy of the notice of the Queen of Blades and her loyal hordes. I even followed the Terrans all the way back to their homeworld.”
She looked upward dramatically. “I have to say, this version of Earth was much prettier when I found it. Heavy industry can take quite a toll on a biosphere. Well, I think my modest renovations improved on both worlds. A nice balance of efficiency and aesthetics, I think. You’re welcome to disagree, but I wouldn’t waste too much energy on it.”
“Anyways, I found myself master of, well, everything. Any planet I saw, I could have. Any organism, new genetic material for my Swarm. It was all… so very easy. I tried to distract myself with little projects, tinkering with species I had harvested, adding augmentations and culling evolutionary dead-ends. But I wanted more, knew that there was something else out there that was mine to claim. A supreme challenge for the ultimate lifeform. Maybe that’s why the Overmind created me.”
She aped an introspective air. “Perhaps I should give the old flesh ball a bit more credit.”
“My next conquest lay in the past. Relics. You know the ones, Tassadar. Xel’Naga monoliths and ruins, scattered from one side of the Galaxy to the other. The great progenitors, architects of entire sapient species, the creators of the Protoss and the Zerg. You know the legend, wise Templar, the ancient scripture of your race. How their creations grew too quickly, how they became too powerful, and turned on their masters, pushing them from known space.”
She paused again, seemingly for dramatic effect. Kerrigan seemed excited and thoroughly engrossed in her own story, for once almost human, but Jacen still could not feel her. If there was any humanity left in the being it was purely superficial, left intact to disarm and distract.
“But how could this happen, Tassadar? How could a species so ancient and so powerful fall before the tantrums of a pair of children? Where was the might that had forged a boundless empire and the will that had bent the foundations of life to their purposes? Why had they fled so easily? Where was their power? The answer was there all along, in the carved, abandoned rocks that Protoss and Zerg alike revered for their ancient energies. And I found it.”
“The key was on Shakuras, the great Xel’Naga temple that your Dark Templar claimed as their holiest ground. As soon as I set foot in its halls, I could feel the potential of the place, but the ancient’s would not give up their secrets easily. I knew it was a weapon, one that its acolytes had used to slow my advance, but there was so much more there, just out of reach. Its true power and purpose was locked away, and even I could not seize it by my energies alone. So, I recruited another to supplement my own psionic talents.”
Kerrigan tilted her chin down and frowned, plainly for Tassadar’s benefit. “Poor Zeratul. The strain was too great for him, I guess. He never was the same when it was over.”
Tassadar’s eyes flashed with blue-white fire.
“I tire of this, Dark One. You may have lured other with your petty goading, but I will not be ensnared. Tell me what I must know, or I will tolerate your musings no longer! I have slipped through your grasp before, and I can do so again.”
Kerrigan loosed a throaty chuckle. “Impatience, Tassadar? I expected a bit more from you. But you are right, of course. My thoughts do wander. No one’s perfect, right?”
“When the Dark Templar’s energies flared with my own, the temple at last opened to me, and I was swept up by a flood of insight. New, alien power poured into me, and I could see everything. I could understand it all! The true power of the Xel’Naga had not been lost. We had never really seen it at all! The empire that the Zerg and Protoss fought off was just a vestige of a far grander whole, cut off from its nexus, dying like a severed limb. The entity that our ancestors destroyed was already doomed!”
For once, Tassadar’s iron focus seemed to slacken slightly. Jacen could not blame him; either by some psionic trick or the sheer force of her will, Kerrigan’s tale was enthralling.
“The Xel’Naga’s greatest achievement was not a weapon or a monument or some new pet! It was this!”
She threw her arms back and on cue, a beam of blinding light pierced the emptiness at the chamber’s center, bisecting it from dome to bottomless deep. The column of energy and luminance was superficially similar to the lift’s anchor, but it was far wider, and indescribably more powerful. The beam dimmed slightly and began to widen, pulsing with cascading hues that Jacen’s conscious mind could barely comprehend.
A shockwave slammed into them, and both the Jedi and the Master Chief were forced to step back, bracing themselves. The sentinels above buffeted violently, some smacking into each other as their repulsors tried to compensate for the sudden turbulent. Only Tassadar and Kerrigan held their ground.
“A passageway, Tassadar! A gate to worlds that you and I cannot imagine! Galaxies unreachable by the most powerful starship! Even time is not beyond its reach! No dark age of the past or shrouded future horizon was barred to them! This is power! Resources, secrets, entire universes ripe for conquest! Unlimited power!”
Behind her, the column pulsed faster, and the empty air between it and the walkway seemed to solidify. From nothing, a cloud of distortion bent light and absorbed sound, swelling until it almost touched the thin surface on which they stood. The strange, ancient vitality Jacen had sensed before bloomed and roared in his mind, flooding him with psychic sensation.
“With devices like this one, the ancients spread well beyond the confines of their own reality, laying claim to galaxy after galaxy and bending them to their own will. Monuments like this were constructed in each, gateways that bound their mighty empire together. A trillion species felt their influence, and each of you have seen the undying remnants of their dominion. The Xel’Naga. The Forerunners of your world, soldier. The forgotten builders of your realm, Jedi, and this one as well. All of them, the same great architects. The greatest conquerors of this or any reality has ever known! And all because of these gates!”
The massive distortion, still fed by the towering beam of light, had stabilized into a great sphere of constant movement and spiraling charge. As Jacen followed wave after overlapping wave of warping space, he realized all in an instant that this was a rift. The mysterious phenomenon that had spat the Enterprise ravaged into Imperial space and propelled the Republica from peril to peril sat before them, a tear in the fundamental structure of reality. Even the Force seemed to change in its presence, its barely-perceptible veins made erratic and its very aura impregnated with the awesome presence.
Air current whipped about Kerrigan, but she did not turn to face the storm of essence and energy. Face broad with exhilaration, her gaze had locked firmly with Tassadar’s.
“But even these great creators were not invincible. An unstoppable foe encroached on their home realm, and the war that followed pushed the ancients to the brink of defeat. Their only chance to stop the invaders from finding these gates and spreading to every corner of their empire was to annihilate all life in their own homeland, nexus of the network. When their ultimate weapon was unleashed, the gates fell silent, their heart damaged by the blast and the final release of so many of its masters. The survivors were isolated, their lifelines cut, left to fend for themselves alone in galaxies they had only begun to tame.”
“In the end, they were not as magnificent as their constructs. One by one, the scattered remnants vanished, destroyed by rebellious natives and each other. Others simply wander off into the endless cosmos or went to ground on forgotten backwaters, letting all that they once were slip away. Now, all of them are gone, and only these gates remain. My gates.”
Kerrigan took one step towards Tassadar, paused, and then took another. He was utterly motionless, his eyes bound to hers.
“And now we come to your role in this little tale, dear Templar. You see, I was too greedy. When knowledge of the gates flowed into me, I bent all my power into awakening them from their dormancy. It worked, but the effort was draining, and I could not resist the portal when it opened over the temple.”
“When I awoke, I was weary and beaten, cast on the surface of a world I had never seen or heard of. My Swarm was gone; only the lone Protoss and a handful of my attendants had been pulled through the gate with me. I was angry at first, perhaps even… afraid, but soon I could sense another gate out amongst the stars, flush with new life and waiting for its new master to claim it. All I had to do was wait, bide my time until I could claim the artifact and probe its power more carefully. It did not take long for a Starfleet vessel to happen upon me, and it was a simple matter to corrupt its captain and crew. My influence spread quickly throughout the Federation, and all the while I bred fresh Zerg strains from those few that had accompanied me and the DNA pumping through my veins.”
“At last my strength returned and I maneuvered myself secretly to Earth. Finding this instillation was not difficult. This place called to me. I am the one who reignited it, its long-awaited master.”
“The true capabilities of this gate are incredible. After using Federation scientists and its own caretaker to discover its secrets, I realized that it was not limited to projecting rifts here, in this chamber. It could generate passageways anywhere in this realm, connected to any other dimension, and any other time, that the ancients had anchored with another gate. Causeways for war fleets between galaxies, as large and as permanent as I desire. Fleeting rifts capable of plucking individual starships or settlements and casting them into the farthest reaches of time and space. Tiny portals that grab sleepers from their beds or whisk them from transporter beams. Nothing is beyond its power!”
“Unfortunately, the amount of psychic energy required to accurately direct the device is considerable. It can work without such guidance, but it is greatly limited. Projected rifts appear erratically, both in time and place, varying unpredictably in size and duration. Often, they only manifest on areas of high energy. Even this rift’s end-point is variable. I needed more energy to bend it to my will, and your Zeratul was spent. Only Protoss, of all the species I had encountered and could obtain, had the necessary degree of power.”
Kerrigan was now only a few paces away from Tassadar. Jacen and the Chief had drawn back, weapons at the ready, but Tassadar seemed to be frozen in place.
“I don’t know how many rifts and portals I scattered across reality, using my Federation agents to follow up each subspace distortion and secure every being I managed to pull into this reality. So many dead ends and useless weaklings. And then, one of my pet admirals received word of a strange ‘transporter accident’ from Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise-D. Among the roster of unusual, displaced sapients, there was a Protoss face. Your face, Tassadar.”
“Of course the rifts would have found you eventually. Your battle with the Overmind must have been simply magnetic for the wandering portals. You can imagine my joy when I dispatched a ship to retrieve you… and my rage when Picard used one of my own rifts to escape.”
“I searched for years, but still you eluded me. Each new portal brought more disappointment, and eventually I resigned myself to this limited, weak realm. When my broods were ready, I swept aside the rotted Federation and its allies with contemptible ease. More frustration.”
“And then, you returned. What was more, you presented me with your ship, a tool I could use to crush the last, annoying remnants of this pitiful galaxy, and, of course, your own psionic power. I knew I had to be careful, draw you in slowly to ensure that you did not flee again. But you have come, in the end, and with a gift to replace the one your companions stole from me. I thank you, Tassadar, sincerely. It would have taken years to hunt down the defiant fools who are dying overhead right now in your name. But most importantly, I thank you for delivering yourself to me. With your power, I can make this gate complete.”
Kerrigan’s void-like pupils had widened until now her eyes were both impenetrably, irresistibly black.
“With your help, Tassadar, every being on every world in every universe will know my name. By your hand, the Queen of Blades will stand alone.”
Jacen expected a gout of the familiar white-blue flame to burst from the Templar, to sweep over the Zerg Queen at point-blank range. For all his Jedi training, for all his old masters’ admonitions about the necessity of restraint and their warnings about preemptive action, he would have attacked Kerrigan now were he in Tassadar’s place. Wearily hefting his lightsaber in her direction, he silently admitted to himself that he wouldn’t have let her get within five meters.
And yet, Tassadar was still. The Jedi could feel nothing from him. Surely, he should be able to feel something piercing the invisible pall cast by Kerrigan’s presence.
“Templar,” the Chief warned.
Kerrigan’s right arm extended towards the Protoss’ unarmored face.
“Tassadar!” Jacen shouted, fear suddenly stabbing at him. He had waited at the Templar’s side, certain that Tassadar was biding his time, waiting to strike when Kerrigan had divulged what he had so desperately wanted to know.
But Tassadar did not move, did not speak, did not even brush the edge of Jacen’s mind with his own. He was paralyzed, trapped in Kerrigan’s gaze.
Jacen and the Chief shot a quick glance at one another, thinking the same thing. Surrounded as they were, something had to be done. Kerrigan had to be stopped before she could claim her prize.
The Spartan’s trigger finger tensed. Jacen tried to clear his mind, focusing on the pommel in his hand and Kerrigan’s outstretched arm.
Neither man saw Kerrigan move. One moment, she was still beyond Tassadar, the next, she stood between them, the huge, bony spike on her back sweeping outward, low to the ground. The thick, hard tines caught Jacen in chest and legs with tremendous force. In a terrible, agonizing instant, he felt the bones in his legs creak and his knees buckle almost to breaking.
The world before his eyes reeled up and back. His lightsaber slipped from his grasp. He felt himself falling.
Instinctively, he pushed back to soften his impact on the ground, but he immediately realized that there was no ground. Kerrigan had knocked him clear of the causeway, and he was falling into the abyss. He felt his body tense and the swirling world around him seemed to slow. Numb with pain and shock, he reached out and did the only thing he could think of doing.
Miraculously, both his hands grasped the smooth, slightly raised edge of the causeway. The jolt of his own weight against his arms knocked his head from side to side, but his grip held fast.
There was a crack of lashing claws from above, and a mass of dull green rolled off the other edge of the suspended platform.
The Chief!
Jacen knew that he could not halt the armored man’s fall, especially not as he hung on for his own life, but…
With artificial rigidity and supernatural speed, even for a Spartan, the Chief’s left arm shot straight up and his fingers closed on the walkway’s narrow lip. An impulse flashed through his impact-clouded mind, and the fingers clamped onto the metal, vice-like. The joints of his gauntlet scrapped thin lines on the surface as his immense weight pulled him downward, but the right hand joined the left, and he found purchase again.
All this happened in a matter of seconds, but before either could take stock of their precarious new situation, a low chorus of hums heralded the approach of Kerrigan’s vanguard. Eleven silver-plated machines swung into view from either side of the walkway, dipping slightly below their targets and orienting their angular bodies in the humans’ direction. Jacen saw the golden glow, and knew at once he had to move or be skewered by whatever the sentinels could spit forth.
Swiftly checking his physical and mental reserves, the Jedi knew he could shoot himself straight upwards, back over the lip.
But the Chief…
Looking across the underside of the causeway, Jacen caught the other man’s gaze through his faceplate. The Spartan jerked his up.
Go!
Not pausing to think, Jacen summoned all the energy he could to him and pushed up. The Force felt strange, colder than it normally did when he manifested it, but it complied nonetheless. Bouncing off of his palms, Jacen shoot up three meters, landed back on the causeway in a roll, and then shoved himself up onto his haunches. Casting about for his lightsaber, he saw it just out of arm’s reach, less than half a meter from a very long drop.
As the sentinels rose back up over the lip, resolutely tracking their assigned target, the pommel was in Jacen‘s hand and lit. A swift slash caught a machine that had risen too close. A spherical energy barrier appeared around the sentinel to deflect the blow, but Jacen pushed through it, shattering the shield and cutting the device cleanly in half. Before the sparking fragments had the chance to fall more than a meter, four lances of golden light erupted from the firing apertures of the other sentinels.
Jacen felt the heat of the beams, saw them carve through the clear air, each aimed precisely, just above his breastbone. The Jedi ducked and thrust his lightsaber lengthwise in front of him. The beams intersected with the glowing blade almost at the same point, continuous bursts of energy that sent a wave of heat like lava over Jacen’s hands. He grunted as the skin of his knuckles blistered, but he pushed back, angling his blade forward and up. Like the refracted rays of sunlight on a mirror, the energy beams angled off wildly. Two grazed an unfortunate sentinel, overwhelming its shield and sending it spinning beyond sight, its rear chassis smoking. The others scattered to avoid the ricochet.
Taking advantage of their momentary withdrawal, Jacen looked down to the other side of the causeway. The lip was smooth and straight, without any sign of armored fingers.
Jacen inhaled sharply and rushed across the walkway, looking down and expecting to see nothing but sentinels circling down out of sight. Instead, one of the machines shot upward, just centimeters from Jacen’s face. Its movements were erratic and jerky, and it took the Jedi only an instant to realize why.
Clinging to the sentinel’s upper pair of forward plates, the Master Chief swung precariously back and forth, his stomach as flat as he could manage on the thing’s stubby drive section. It dipped back and forth and up and down like an insect with a broken wing, trying to shake the unwelcome passenger free and unburden its straining repulsors. Around it, the other sentinels watched the bizarre display at a distance, momentarily unsure of their targeting protocols.
Jacen knew that their hesitation would not last long, but before he could try to assist the soldier, a trio of energy beams slashed across the causeway in front of him and he was forced to jump back, lightsaber on guard.
Jacen spotted two of the machines floating close together overhead, and jabbed at them with an open palm. The two suddenly found their directional fins non-functional and smashed into each other at speed, triggering both of their defensive screens. They tried to move apart and reorient themselves, only to be flung into the shield of the third device. The last had been firing its weapon at that moment, and the shot went wild, catching both of the units that had impacted it. Their spherical screens absorbed the raking blow, but the confused fray distracted them for precious seconds, just as Jacen had intended.
One of the sentinels observing the Chief finally resolved to override its friendly-fire subroutines and angled a beam intended to clear the offending human off of its fellow machine’s back. The Spartan saw the blast coming and hauled back on his makeshift handholds, sending his sentinel into a reluctant backwards spin. The beam cut into the unprotected underside of the machine, and the hum of its repulsors revved and sputtered loudly.
Fortunately for its passenger, the sentinel bucked wildly before its drives gave way, sending the human sprawling through mid-air and onto the causeway a few meters from Jacen. Even more fortunately, the energy beams that followed him were all wide. One managed to sweep across his left shin, but his own energy shield saved the leg, and the Chief tugged the limb away from the searing lance.
Jacen ran in the prone soldier’s direction, and as he did, something bumped against one boot. Glancing down, he saw it was the Chief’s blaster, lost after Kerrigan’s assault. Still running, he swept his arm towards the Spartan, and the weapon turned and tumbled along in its wake.
“Chief!”
The Spartan’s head turned in his direction. He took in the motile blaster in a glimpse, reached out, caught it, and then rolled sharply right to avoid more lances of lethal energy. Jacen sent another wave of Force pressure at the sentinels, sending them spinning away even as the others recovered from their disorientation and shot back towards the causeway.
As the Jedi turned to deflect the next volley of brilliant lances, the Chief picked himself up and searched the platform for their immediate priority. Kerrigan had moved to the very edge of the huge sphere of distortion that still hung at the center of the chamber. Tassadar was slouched against one of her legs, pinned there by the Zerg Queen’s flexible spines. Kerrigan’s back was turned on the humans, and she seemed to be entering something into the large holo-display at the walkway’s edge. The Protoss was still motionless.
The Chief raised his blaster, sighted along his arm, and fired. The burst of crimson hit Kerrigan full in the back, and she slumped against the controls. The Spartan pulled the firing stud again, but this time Kerrigan seemed to swipe the bolt from the air with her dorsal appendages, absorbing the burning plasma with reinforced chitin.
Her movement left Tassadar free to slump onto the causeway. His head hit the smooth surface, and his clouded eyes burst back to life. He felt sluggish and inordinately weak. At first, he couldn’t remember anything, not even his own name, but as his eyes filled with the swirling, cascading surface of the gateway’s rift, everything flooded back. His mission, Zeratul, what Kerrigan had told him, confident that the psionic trap she was laying while she spoke would bind him utterly to her will. Wisps of the spell still hung behind his eyes, dark threads that receded from the fire of his thoughts.
Dark Templar psionic technique, no doubt stolen from the mind of Zeratul or one of his comrades. Tassadar cursed himself for not detecting the familiar tendrils of coercion and paralysis-inducing apathy. He had been too desperate to learn some reason, some rationale behind the madness of the last weeks and months. Kerrigan had given that, at least, and now he felt his mind clear, his purpose crystallize.
His right hand shot out and grasped hold of Kerrigan’s spurred ankle. He pumped psionic energies through the limb, and heard the abomination scream. Good, he thought, she can still feel. Trillions demanded justice, and he vowed silently that each would exact its own painful vengeance.
Enormous claws slashed down his face and his body, each of them spitting its own searing psionic charge. He felt the armor at his waist melt away, and an enormous barb plunged deep into his side. Tassadar roared, and felt a foot plant itself on his side.
“Willingly or not, Protoss,” Kerrigan sneered down at him. “You are mine.”
Jacen had just sent another sentinel tumbling away into the blackness, scorched by its own weapon, when he felt Tassadar reach out to him. Whirling about, he saw the Templar lying on his side. Kerrigan stood above him, her back spines withdrawing from wounds on the Protoss’ vulnerable form. In that instant, Tassadar was looking past her, directly at the Jacen.
My people, Jedi.
With that, he was gone. Kerrigan had rolled him off the platform with his foot, straight into the throbbing surface of the rift. Jacen didn’t even see him hit it. The Zerg Queen arched her back, splayed her spines wide above her head, and barked a laugh of triumph. In an instant, she had vanished, too.
The sentinels did not cease their attack, but the departure of their master seemed to make the machines sluggish, and Jacen and the Chief made short work of them. Only when the last had fallen out of sight could either fully appreciate what had happened.
Jacen deactivated his lightsaber and let his arms fall to his sides. He stared at the massive bubble of distorted space. The rift was unaffected by the passage of the pair, its surface an uninterrupted tide of folding, barely-perceptible waves and burst of indescribable color. Only now, the Jedi noticed that the anomaly was utterly silent. Indeed, with the elimination of the sentinels, the chamber felt as soundless as deep space. The raw, living power of the rift still roared at him in within his skull, tugging his perception of the Force this way and that, but even that waterfall of sensation had dulled, as if it had started to pour its energy inwards.
My people, Jedi.
Jacen knew that Tassadar had intended it as a farewell, a last, desperate request. It left the Jedi feeling utterly helpless. The unspoken words hung on him like bricks of durasteel, crushing him to the floor. It was a request he did not know how to satisfy, the plea of a being that knew its time was near an end. He was certain that Tassadar still intended to destroy Kerrigan, but…
He remembered the huge gash in the Templar’s chest, and the Dark Queen’s feral joy.
“No more contacts on my sensors. We’re clear, for the moment.” The Master Chief stopped alongside Jacen, holstering his blaster. “The interference is gone and I’ve got comms. We’re pretty deep, though. I might not be able to reach anyone through the rock.”
“Truul’s team?” Jacen said numbly.
“Already searching,” the Chief replied, tapping the side of his helmet with two fingers.
They were silent for a moment, simply staring at the rift.
“We’ve failed,” Jacen said at last. “Kerrigan’s escaped.”
“She’s gone,” the Chief acknowledged. “And if our Intel was right, the Zerg fleet is falling apart right now.”
“So we saved them, what’s left of them, for what, a day?” Jacen shook his head. “You heard Kerrigan. If she manages to control one of these gateways, she’ll be all but unstoppable. All we’ve done is deliver Tassadar to her.”
The Chief stared at the younger man, and he suddenly felt his tinge with red.
“This was Tassadar’s plan. No one pushed him here. Not you. Not me. He’s in that thing with her right now, and I wouldn’t count him out of the fight yet.”
Jacen’s eyes fell. The Chief was right, of course. Tassadar had risked everyone, himself included, for the chance to get within striking range of Kerrigan – Jacen remembered his own anger at the prospect - and he had managed to do precisely that. Tassadar was one of the most powerful beings he had ever encountered, and the Protoss had saved all of their lives more times than he could remember. If anyone could destroy Kerrigan, he could.
And yet, there was the wound.
The Chief’s helmet crackled with static.
“Sierra, do you copy?”
“I copy, Beta. What is your status?”
The sound of weapons fire echoed from the transmitter, followed by a gruff, booming voice.
“Watch that door, Galmak! Catch them as they enter! Show these creatures what it means to match blade and claw with Klingons!”
There was a burst of static, and then Truul’s voice returned. “Don’t encourage ‘em, Commader! It’s bad enough that they had to bring so many damn knives and swords with ‘em. We’ve got these things beat, and I don’t want to have to drag along another fool who got his arm gnawed off because he didn’t think his disruptor was good enough for the job!”
“Sierra, we found your tunnel, and were making our way down into the mountain. We got to these damn huge tunnels before the Zerg found us. Hard going since, and I’ve got casualties. The pressure’s just cut, though. Fewer of the blasted things, and they’re not as coordinated. Did you upend a Cerebrate or something?”
“Affirmative, Beta. My unit has advanced what appears to be the command center of the facility. Alpha has engaged the Primary.”
There was a pause. “Please repeat, Sierra. Is Kerrigan dead?”
Jacen looked up. They wouldn’t ever know if Tassadar succeeded or failed, at least not until Kerrigan emerged again with the rifts and a new army bent to her will. And then, it would be too late.
“Negative, Beta,” the Chief replied. “Alpha and the Primary…” he trailed off, apparently unwilling to explain over the comm. “We’ve lost contact with both. I’ll fill you in when your unit gets here. Follow this signal until you reach a shaft. I’ll send the lift up for you when you signal.”
“Got ya, Sierra. I’ll shout if there are any more problems.”
The Chief muted the line and turned back towards Jacen. The Jedi was still staring at the rift, silent. Slowly, the Chief looked away and started back down the causeway towards the waiting lift.
“I’ll stay with the lift until the Major arrives. If you notice any new contacts, let me know.”
“I’m going in.”
The Chief stopped mid-stride.
“What?”
The two turned to face one another again, and the Chief saw that younger man’s face was hardened with resolve.
“We have to be sure that Tassadar has destroyed Kerrigan. I’m going to follow him, and help him if I can.”
“You’re not stupid, Jedi,” the Chief said briskly. “We have no idea how that thing works, or where it leads. Even if you were to survive the transit, there’d be no way of contacting you or getting you back. This is in the Templar’s hands now. We still have our duty here.”
“We failed in our duty when she stepped into the rift, Chief! Tassadar’s alone with her, who knows where, and she’s on the verge of accessing a power we can barely comprehend, much less stop. If she survives, all we’ve fought for is for nothing! We’re dead, and so is everyone in this galaxy. Eventually, my home will fall, too, and so will yours.”
He shook his head. “I’m not a soldier, but I take my duty just as seriously as you do. On this world or any other, I am a Jedi, and it is my responsibility to preserve peace and defend life, no matter the personal cost. Kerrigan threatens that and everything else I care about. I must follow her and make sure that she cannot spread her ruin anymore, even if I have to become one with the Force to do so. That is my duty, Chief, and I will fulfill it, just as you must fulfill yours.”
With that, Jacen turned his back on the Spartan, clipped his lightsaber to his side, and stalked towards the ethereal vortex. The Chief watched his back for a while, and then glanced down at his hands.
Worn armor. Veteran of too many firefights and daring escapes. The paint was thin and chipped, burned off in places, and number of dings and minute fractures in the metal probably would have made its designers recoil.
The blank-faced helmet shook back and forth slowly. Who was he to tell anyone else not to take stupid risks for what they believed in?
“Wait.”
Jacen had stopped near the edge of the circular walkway already, and he glanced back, his face still set.
“Even bad ideas should have contingency plans. If you go in there, find Kerrigan and eliminate her, do you want to be stuck alone on the other side of that without a way to get back?”
Jacen shoulder’s drooped slightly. “I don’t see how I have many options.”
“Wait a moment,” the Chief said, and reactivated his comm link.
“Beta, are you in contact with the Fleet?”
“Haven’t tried for a while, Sierra, but I can give it a shot.”
“Patch me to Flagship Vulcan, if you can.”
“All right, give me a bit.”
Jacen was giving him a quizzical look, but there was still a good chance the Chief sudden inspiration would fall flat, and he avoided the gaze.
After a tense half-minute, there was a hiss and burst of static so loud that it echoed up to the chamber’s high dome, and then a voice, scratchy and distant, but entirely recognizable.
“Strike Force Earth? Major Truul, is that you? What is your status?”
Jean-Luc Picard’s faint voice sounded nearly as excited as it did weary.
“Captain, this is Sierra. The Master Chief, sir. We’ve breached Kerrigan’s fortress and secured her control room.”
“Acknowledged, Master Chief. The Zerg armada is collapsing. We had thought we’d just hit another Cerebrate, but I suppose you and your men deserve the credit. Is Kerrigan dead?”
“No, sir. She entered some kind of device at the base of the facility with Tassadar when we attempted to engage. The device is secured and we’re prepared to pursue, but I want someone down her who can control the machine and pull us back when the mission’s been accomplished.”
There was a long pause, and the voice that finally replied was not Picard’s.
“What have you found us this time, Chief?”
The Spartan smiled for the first time in what felt like years. It had been far too long since he had heard Cortana’s smooth, confident voice.
“Forerunner. An entire facility, buried under Mount Kilimanjaro.”
“Forerunner?” Cortana was understandably bewildered, but none of the apprehension in her voice was doubt. “How is that possible?”
“I’m still not entirely sure, but we’ve found out what brought us all here and what’s been making the anomalies. Kerrigan found some sort of projection device, and she’s been using to try and lure Templar Tassadar here. They’ve disappeared into a rift, and Jacen Solo and I are going to follow them, but I need you to get down here and figure out exactly what this thing is and how to use it. We’ll need a way back when the job’s done.”
“Wait, Chief. You’re going into it before I figure out how it works?”
“It can’t wait. Tassadar and Kerrigan have already been gone too long. We can’t even be sure it will stay open much longer.”
“All the more reason to be careful about this.” Cortana’s agitation was painfully clear. “The battle up here is over. Without Kerrigan, the Zerg ships are all but dead in space. Can’t we wait and follow her later, when we have more data?”
The Chief paused.
“No.”
“Are you sure about this, Chief?”
He grinned. “Do I ever jump into anything if I’m not sure I’ll come out of it?”
“No jokes! Just… tell me.”
“I’ll come back, Cortana. I promise.”
The AI was silent for a moment, an eternity for the artificial mind.
“How long do you need?”
The Chief considered for a moment. “Three hours. If you can figure out how to get us back at all.”
“If that thing’s Forerunner, Chief, you’ll have your evac. Three hours, no longer.”
“Acknowledged. Give my regards to the Captain. Sierra out.”
Immediately upon ending the transmission, the Spartan activated his mission clock, a tiny numeral that wound slowly up on the corner of his vision.
“We?” Jacen asked when he had finished.
“As you said, Jedi, duty.”
Jacen smiled slightly.
Everyone has someone to protect.
“What about Major Truul?”
With speed and efficiency that still impressed the Jedi, the Chief traversed the long causeway, activated the lift and loped back off of it before it could rise more than half a meter, and informed Truul of the change of plans, ordering him to secure the chamber in their absence and wait for Cortana. In less than a minute, they were standing side by side at the edge of the walkway, the distortion rippling silently before them.
“Take my hand,” Jacen said, offering it to the Spartan. “We can’t be separated. You won’t know where you’re going in there.”
“And you will?”
Jacen sighed, glanced at the anomaly once more, and raised his hand higher. The Spartan took it, careful not to clasp it too hard.
“On count of five,” the younger man said, squaring himself before the rift and taking in a deep breath.
“It’s better if you just jump.”
Before Jacen could protest, he felt the pull of the Chief’s weight on his arm, and both were gone.
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Last edited by Noble Ire on 2008-06-27 05:32am, edited 1 time in total.
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
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When the Republica had first traveled through one of the holes in reality, Jacen had been at a viewport to watch the galaxy slip away. The distant starfield had faded into bland nothingness, and then, for a few unforgettable moments, the space beyond him had blossomed with impossible vibrancy. Undulating bands of primal energy had danced and intertwined as he sat back, safe within the warship’s hull as glorious and unknown sensation washed over him. They had been guided by Cortana then, and the AI had only just barely been able to deliver them to their desired destination, an effort that had succeeded through sheer guile and intuition, and not without misadventure.
Jacen had hoped that the experience this time would be similar, and that he would be able to latch onto whatever cosmic current Cortana had located.
He had been wrong.
At first, the Jedi had thought that they had simply fallen through the portal, victims of yet another trap. When he had looked down, however, there was no yawning pit to swallow him up. No wind lashing at his face.
There was nothing at all. No sight. No sound. No feeling. The only thing that proved that he existed at all was the pressure of the Master Chief’s gauntlet on his hand. He tried to squeeze back, and dimly, he could feel fingers that must have been his pressing against cool metal.
The sensation, remote as it was, anchored him, and he began to calm, his mind focusing. It no longer felt as though they were falling, but when Jacen tried to move his arms and legs, he found no purchase. Indeed, it didn’t feel like he had a body at all. Trying to look around, the Jedi realized why it was so impenetrably dark. It wasn’t for lack of light; his eyes, and the head around them, weren’t there at all. The only part of him that seemed to exist was his enveloped hand, and as he focused on it again, even that faded away, leaving only a subtle, disembodied pressure, and the inkling of another mind nearby.
Jacen could sense agitation from the Chief, the sensation far sharper in the absence of physical distractions. He tried to think of some way of reaching the other man, to calm him, but the agitation had already begun to subside, replaced by ordered, basic thoughts. Vaguely, could discern memories, a name, ranks, a long series of numbers… the Chief was falling back on training, centering himself.
Just as I should be doing.
Jacen thought back to his youth, the earliest years of his guidance in the ways of the Force and the tenants of the Jedi Order. He was a child again, no older than four or five, sitting cross-legged in a sun-lit room within the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4, his eyes squeezed shut. There was a voice, warm, calm, and familiar. Uncle Luke.
Don’t think about me, or the room, or the sun. Do even think about your own body. Let it all go, and look inward. Let your mind drift. Don’t try. Just… let it come to you. You’ll see a new light deep down, eventually. Just wait for it to come.
Jacen felt it now, the little spark that had always seemed like it was hiding in his chest. Gradually, at an almost imperceptible rate – time seemed to mean little in this place – the spark grew, flared, and he felt warmth flow from it. The gentle heat expanded outwards, and Jacen could sense a bit of his body again with its growth, as though it was thawing after a bitter winter.
And then Jacen could see them. Four stars hung before him, impossibly distant and just within reach, if only he had the arms and hands to take them. Each burned with a slightly different radiance, and as he focused on one, it seemed to have its own texture or smell or taste or tone, a distinct note that combined with the others to form the same irresistible, living roar that he had sensed in Kerrigan’s chamber.
He could have sunk into the feeling, let the raw power and primal beauty of it permeate his being, become part of the chorus forever…
“Don’t leave me waiting.”
Jacen remembered the transporter room and Laura’s final words to him before they had parted for the attack on Earth. The gaze that didn’t break his even it was swept away by a glinting veil of blue.
Enough! Focus!
Jacen tried to push through the sensation, and to his surprise, it faded obediently into the back of his mind. The four stars were before him again, and he bent his will towards one, selecting it at random.
Tassadar!
He felt minds. An endless sea of being, and with them, fleeting images of cities, planets, stars, galaxies. The sudden torrent almost overwhelmed him again, but he pulled away, back to the quartet of lights. None of the feelings within the stream had been familiar.
Jacen tried another, and again almost fell into a river of alien thoughts and foreign places. He pulled back, and felt panic and desperation returning.
They had waited too long. He should have followed sooner…
The third star hit Jacen like a tidal wave as soon as he touched it, and this time the Jedi truly felt as though he was drowning in the surge. A trillion horizons blended with uncounted minds and Jacen felt everything else begin to wash away under the onslaught. Tassadar. Laura. Even the steadfast pressure on his hand began to slip away.
And then he felt it, rushing past with all the rest. Familiarity.
Jacen lunged for the minute jewel as though it were a lifeline, not caring who held it or where it led. The fragment burned bright, and the flow cringed at its light, wrenching and twisting to avoid the point. Incomprehensible eternities drained away, and the spot became Jacen’s world.
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“Jedi? Can you hear me, Solo?”
Two heavy hands were closed on Jacen’s shoulders.
Shoulders? He had had one of them at some point, he thought. Two, in fact. Their precise purpose eluded him for the moment, but they had apparently come back.
“Solo!”
“I always liked them,” Jacen mumbled blearily. “Now, what were the other bits?”
His reply came in the form of a firm shake that rattled his bones and roused nerves all the way down his body.
One at a time, his eyelids rolled back, revealing a muddy, distorted image of his own face.
“Chief,” Jacen said groggily, proceeding to arch his legs in an attempt to drive off a lurking cramp.
“On your feet, Jedi.”
The Spartan drew back, his helmet shifting out and back into focus, and Jacen craned his neck to see an offered hand. He took it, and immediately regretted the choice.
“I suppose I had this coming.” Jacen had steady himself, and was staring at his left hand. Its edges were tinged with crimson, and several fingers had begun to swell.
“You were slipping,” the Chief replied. Memories of their transit still jostled and swirled about inside Jacen’s head, but he did distinctly recall the pressure, and how it had given him focus. “Next time I’ll try to be gentler.”
Jacen gave the hand a shake and let it fall to his side. The pain would pass, and it was far better than the alternative.
“Next time, you’re taking those things off before we go.”
The Jedi looked up into the Spartan’s faceplate, and wished he could see the man’s face.
What did you see in there?
The Chief held his head in place for a moment, and then turned away, and Jacen nodded slightly.
Another time, perhaps.
They were at the end of a long, sun-lit hallway. Rather than the ancient, geometrically-carved stone of the Kilimanjaro instillation, the floor was layered with wide, polished tiles of lustrous jet, and the walls were a soft gray. One side of the hall was dotted periodically with sealed, vertical-seam doors, and the other was adorned with large windows, one of which was only a few meters away. Except for him and the Chief, it was quite empty.
“Did you see any sign of Tassadar or Kerrigan?” Jacen asked quickly, his chest tight.
The Chief shook his head, and looked towards the wall to his left, where the hallway ended. Jacen followed his gaze, and could see that the flat, featureless surface was rippling like a pond on a windy day. Without thinking, he reached for it, but the Chief grabbed his arm. Centimeters from the Jedi’s outstretched fingers, the entire wall gave a shudder, bowed inward, and then rapidly stilled. Waves of distorted space and matter converged to a point the size of a coin, gave a last bubble, and then vanished.
Jacen stared dumbly at the blank wall.
“If felt him…” Even as the words rolled of his tongue, though, he began to doubt them. What had he felt, really, in that final instant? He had been thrashing about for the familiar aura of the Protoss, touched something that he knew…
Eyes squeezed shut, Jacen focused on the Templar’s essence. The alien manifested clearly in his mind, his power, his dignity, the strange concurrence of his foreign energies with the Force. He reached out to the dimmest edges of his perception, ignoring all else for the smallest inkling of the Protoss’ wake.
Nothing.
Jacen’s head dropped and he felt a palm slapped against the wall. It did not yield.
“What now?” the Chief asked.
Jacen’s breath was coming in gasps now. He felt helpless. Useless. Unbelievably, unforgivably stupid. He had failed again, and now not only was Tassadar beyond all assistance, he and the Chief were lost as well. If Cortana couldn’t figure out the gateway device, both of them were wholly cut off from the rest, probably forever.
“I don’t know.”
Jacen pushed away from the wall and stalked past the Chief, purposefully avoiding the other’s gaze. As he paced down the hallway, he made a halfhearted attempt to collect his thoughts again, but mounting contempt with himself made the attempt fall flat. The lack of control served only to inspire further self-loathing.
He would have likely stormed down the length of the corridor if two sensations hadn’t simultaneous stopped him in his tracks. The first was a hazy glint from the window he had been passing, and he glanced out the wide, translucent portal. In the distance, a sun was setting behind an uneven horizon, partially hidden by a multitude of massive shapes. Jacen squinted through the glare, and his heart skipped a beat. The shapes were artificial, tiered skyscrapers and glassy spires.
Then, before he could fully process the scene, Jacen realized that he could still sense the familiar presence he had felt in the surging depths of the rift. It was faint and almost unrecognizable. It was no wonder why he had not appreciated it until now, but his mind had been jarred by the sight of the skyline, and now it was working furiously. He slumped back against the window, bringing a hand to his forehead.
It’s not possible…
“You’d better take a look at this, Jedi.”
The Chief was staring at a plaque mounted next to one of the sealed doorways, just above a simple control panel. He couldn’t read the script engraved into the metal, but the twin symbols that anchored the beginning and end of the line of text needed no translation. A circle enclosing a wheel with six spokes.
It was the standard of an empire.
When the Republica had first traveled through one of the holes in reality, Jacen had been at a viewport to watch the galaxy slip away. The distant starfield had faded into bland nothingness, and then, for a few unforgettable moments, the space beyond him had blossomed with impossible vibrancy. Undulating bands of primal energy had danced and intertwined as he sat back, safe within the warship’s hull as glorious and unknown sensation washed over him. They had been guided by Cortana then, and the AI had only just barely been able to deliver them to their desired destination, an effort that had succeeded through sheer guile and intuition, and not without misadventure.
Jacen had hoped that the experience this time would be similar, and that he would be able to latch onto whatever cosmic current Cortana had located.
He had been wrong.
At first, the Jedi had thought that they had simply fallen through the portal, victims of yet another trap. When he had looked down, however, there was no yawning pit to swallow him up. No wind lashing at his face.
There was nothing at all. No sight. No sound. No feeling. The only thing that proved that he existed at all was the pressure of the Master Chief’s gauntlet on his hand. He tried to squeeze back, and dimly, he could feel fingers that must have been his pressing against cool metal.
The sensation, remote as it was, anchored him, and he began to calm, his mind focusing. It no longer felt as though they were falling, but when Jacen tried to move his arms and legs, he found no purchase. Indeed, it didn’t feel like he had a body at all. Trying to look around, the Jedi realized why it was so impenetrably dark. It wasn’t for lack of light; his eyes, and the head around them, weren’t there at all. The only part of him that seemed to exist was his enveloped hand, and as he focused on it again, even that faded away, leaving only a subtle, disembodied pressure, and the inkling of another mind nearby.
Jacen could sense agitation from the Chief, the sensation far sharper in the absence of physical distractions. He tried to think of some way of reaching the other man, to calm him, but the agitation had already begun to subside, replaced by ordered, basic thoughts. Vaguely, could discern memories, a name, ranks, a long series of numbers… the Chief was falling back on training, centering himself.
Just as I should be doing.
Jacen thought back to his youth, the earliest years of his guidance in the ways of the Force and the tenants of the Jedi Order. He was a child again, no older than four or five, sitting cross-legged in a sun-lit room within the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4, his eyes squeezed shut. There was a voice, warm, calm, and familiar. Uncle Luke.
Don’t think about me, or the room, or the sun. Do even think about your own body. Let it all go, and look inward. Let your mind drift. Don’t try. Just… let it come to you. You’ll see a new light deep down, eventually. Just wait for it to come.
Jacen felt it now, the little spark that had always seemed like it was hiding in his chest. Gradually, at an almost imperceptible rate – time seemed to mean little in this place – the spark grew, flared, and he felt warmth flow from it. The gentle heat expanded outwards, and Jacen could sense a bit of his body again with its growth, as though it was thawing after a bitter winter.
And then Jacen could see them. Four stars hung before him, impossibly distant and just within reach, if only he had the arms and hands to take them. Each burned with a slightly different radiance, and as he focused on one, it seemed to have its own texture or smell or taste or tone, a distinct note that combined with the others to form the same irresistible, living roar that he had sensed in Kerrigan’s chamber.
He could have sunk into the feeling, let the raw power and primal beauty of it permeate his being, become part of the chorus forever…
“Don’t leave me waiting.”
Jacen remembered the transporter room and Laura’s final words to him before they had parted for the attack on Earth. The gaze that didn’t break his even it was swept away by a glinting veil of blue.
Enough! Focus!
Jacen tried to push through the sensation, and to his surprise, it faded obediently into the back of his mind. The four stars were before him again, and he bent his will towards one, selecting it at random.
Tassadar!
He felt minds. An endless sea of being, and with them, fleeting images of cities, planets, stars, galaxies. The sudden torrent almost overwhelmed him again, but he pulled away, back to the quartet of lights. None of the feelings within the stream had been familiar.
Jacen tried another, and again almost fell into a river of alien thoughts and foreign places. He pulled back, and felt panic and desperation returning.
They had waited too long. He should have followed sooner…
The third star hit Jacen like a tidal wave as soon as he touched it, and this time the Jedi truly felt as though he was drowning in the surge. A trillion horizons blended with uncounted minds and Jacen felt everything else begin to wash away under the onslaught. Tassadar. Laura. Even the steadfast pressure on his hand began to slip away.
And then he felt it, rushing past with all the rest. Familiarity.
Jacen lunged for the minute jewel as though it were a lifeline, not caring who held it or where it led. The fragment burned bright, and the flow cringed at its light, wrenching and twisting to avoid the point. Incomprehensible eternities drained away, and the spot became Jacen’s world.
-----------------------------------------------
“Jedi? Can you hear me, Solo?”
Two heavy hands were closed on Jacen’s shoulders.
Shoulders? He had had one of them at some point, he thought. Two, in fact. Their precise purpose eluded him for the moment, but they had apparently come back.
“Solo!”
“I always liked them,” Jacen mumbled blearily. “Now, what were the other bits?”
His reply came in the form of a firm shake that rattled his bones and roused nerves all the way down his body.
One at a time, his eyelids rolled back, revealing a muddy, distorted image of his own face.
“Chief,” Jacen said groggily, proceeding to arch his legs in an attempt to drive off a lurking cramp.
“On your feet, Jedi.”
The Spartan drew back, his helmet shifting out and back into focus, and Jacen craned his neck to see an offered hand. He took it, and immediately regretted the choice.
“I suppose I had this coming.” Jacen had steady himself, and was staring at his left hand. Its edges were tinged with crimson, and several fingers had begun to swell.
“You were slipping,” the Chief replied. Memories of their transit still jostled and swirled about inside Jacen’s head, but he did distinctly recall the pressure, and how it had given him focus. “Next time I’ll try to be gentler.”
Jacen gave the hand a shake and let it fall to his side. The pain would pass, and it was far better than the alternative.
“Next time, you’re taking those things off before we go.”
The Jedi looked up into the Spartan’s faceplate, and wished he could see the man’s face.
What did you see in there?
The Chief held his head in place for a moment, and then turned away, and Jacen nodded slightly.
Another time, perhaps.
They were at the end of a long, sun-lit hallway. Rather than the ancient, geometrically-carved stone of the Kilimanjaro instillation, the floor was layered with wide, polished tiles of lustrous jet, and the walls were a soft gray. One side of the hall was dotted periodically with sealed, vertical-seam doors, and the other was adorned with large windows, one of which was only a few meters away. Except for him and the Chief, it was quite empty.
“Did you see any sign of Tassadar or Kerrigan?” Jacen asked quickly, his chest tight.
The Chief shook his head, and looked towards the wall to his left, where the hallway ended. Jacen followed his gaze, and could see that the flat, featureless surface was rippling like a pond on a windy day. Without thinking, he reached for it, but the Chief grabbed his arm. Centimeters from the Jedi’s outstretched fingers, the entire wall gave a shudder, bowed inward, and then rapidly stilled. Waves of distorted space and matter converged to a point the size of a coin, gave a last bubble, and then vanished.
Jacen stared dumbly at the blank wall.
“If felt him…” Even as the words rolled of his tongue, though, he began to doubt them. What had he felt, really, in that final instant? He had been thrashing about for the familiar aura of the Protoss, touched something that he knew…
Eyes squeezed shut, Jacen focused on the Templar’s essence. The alien manifested clearly in his mind, his power, his dignity, the strange concurrence of his foreign energies with the Force. He reached out to the dimmest edges of his perception, ignoring all else for the smallest inkling of the Protoss’ wake.
Nothing.
Jacen’s head dropped and he felt a palm slapped against the wall. It did not yield.
“What now?” the Chief asked.
Jacen’s breath was coming in gasps now. He felt helpless. Useless. Unbelievably, unforgivably stupid. He had failed again, and now not only was Tassadar beyond all assistance, he and the Chief were lost as well. If Cortana couldn’t figure out the gateway device, both of them were wholly cut off from the rest, probably forever.
“I don’t know.”
Jacen pushed away from the wall and stalked past the Chief, purposefully avoiding the other’s gaze. As he paced down the hallway, he made a halfhearted attempt to collect his thoughts again, but mounting contempt with himself made the attempt fall flat. The lack of control served only to inspire further self-loathing.
He would have likely stormed down the length of the corridor if two sensations hadn’t simultaneous stopped him in his tracks. The first was a hazy glint from the window he had been passing, and he glanced out the wide, translucent portal. In the distance, a sun was setting behind an uneven horizon, partially hidden by a multitude of massive shapes. Jacen squinted through the glare, and his heart skipped a beat. The shapes were artificial, tiered skyscrapers and glassy spires.
Then, before he could fully process the scene, Jacen realized that he could still sense the familiar presence he had felt in the surging depths of the rift. It was faint and almost unrecognizable. It was no wonder why he had not appreciated it until now, but his mind had been jarred by the sight of the skyline, and now it was working furiously. He slumped back against the window, bringing a hand to his forehead.
It’s not possible…
“You’d better take a look at this, Jedi.”
The Chief was staring at a plaque mounted next to one of the sealed doorways, just above a simple control panel. He couldn’t read the script engraved into the metal, but the twin symbols that anchored the beginning and end of the line of text needed no translation. A circle enclosing a wheel with six spokes.
It was the standard of an empire.
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
-
JointStrikeFighter
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