by Timothy Zahn
She couldn’t tell them that during the war and its aftermath, she’d nurtured a private but enduring contempt for the protoss for the burning of Chau Sara. Never mind that they thought they had a good reason. Never mind that they thought they were halting the spread of zerg infestation. The cold, grim, bottom line was that they’d killed innocents for nothing, and intelligent beings ought to be better than that.
Now she, Dr. Erin Wyland, so high and mighty and incomparably moral, had done exactly the same thing to the adostra.
She winced, her ribs twinging with the sudden shift in weight as Tanya attached the fuel tank to her armor. She couldn’t bring back the innocent lives she’d helped destroy. But she had one final chance to preserve this last group.
And she would do whatever she had to.
“I make it about thirty klicks to Point Three,” Whist said when they were ready. “That’s two hours at a decent jog.”
“I think we can do better than that,” Dizz said.
“I think we damn well better do better than that,” Whist said. “Move it out. And watch each other’s backs. Remember, they don’t need all of us to get to Point Three alive.”
—
The shuttle dropped to the hangar deck with a dull thud. Its hatch opened, and a single protoss emerged. He looked around, spotted Cruikshank standing with his troops and mechs, and strode toward them.
“Great,” Cruikshank muttered to no one in particular, for about the fourth time in the past hour. Bad enough that he was about to take on a whole planet full of zerg with forty marines, three reapers, five goliaths, and his last remaining Warhound. Bad enough that fielding even that minuscule force had all but stripped the Hyperion of any internal security.
But to order him to ride in a protoss shuttle instead of loading everyone aboard good, solid Dominion dropships was just plain over the line.
The protoss stopped. I am Alikka, his voice came in Cruikshank’s brain. I am a Nerazim, a dark templar. I speak for Rahas. You are Colonel Abram Cruikshank?
“I am,” Cruikshank confirmed, clamping a lid hard on his sudden surge of extra annoyance. Typical arrogant protoss, deliberately using short sentences as if his listener were a child struggling his way through a first-reader book. “I command the Dominion ground forces.”
Alikka’s eyes flicked over the marines, reapers, and mechs standing silently behind Cruikshank. I would think a major would be a more appropriate commander for such a small force. Were you not informed of the agreement regarding security for your ships?
Cruikshank ground his teeth. “You mean the one about your ships guaranteeing our ships’ safety in case of a zerg attack?”
That is the agreement I refer to, yes, Alikka said. There is thus no need to leave any of your war force aboard your ships.
“Sure,” Cruikshank said. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t simply take your word for it.”
The irritating part was that he had been ordered to do just that: to trust that the protoss would beat off any zerg that tried to attack and board the Dominion ships, and to take everything he had left to the surface.
He’d done it, albeit under protest. But there was no way he was going to tell Alikka that. Protoss thought too highly of themselves as it was. “But don’t worry about our numbers,” he added. “We’ll do just fine.” He hesitated, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up. “Better than your people did at Point Two, anyway.”
Alikka bristled, his eyes flickering with blue light. Cruikshank tensed, but the eyes went back to normal as the protoss regained control of his emotions. Apparently, he and the deck crew weren’t going to be treated to the sight of a dark templar flashing some psionic energy around the hangar. We were taken by surprise, he insisted stiffly. It will not happen that way again.
“I’m sure it won’t,” Cruikshank said. “But enough chitchat. We’re ready to board whenever you’ve got space cleared out for us.”
You may come now, Alikka said. You will take care not to get in our way. Either aboard ship or when we reach the planetary surface.
Without waiting for a response—probably not really wanting one, either—he turned and strode back toward the shuttle.
“And people wonder why I hate protoss,” Cruikshank muttered. “All right, you heard him,” he went on, raising his volume to drill-sergeant level. “Mount up. Mind you don’t step on anyone’s toes along the way.”
The marines set off in brisk double time, the reapers behind them, the goliaths clumping along at the rear. Grabbing the handholds on his Warhound, Cruikshank started climbing to the cockpit.
Still, at least Alikka was an honestly arrogant SOB protoss. Cruikshank didn’t like them, but he knew how to work with them. Not like that wimpy, waste-of-space researcher Ulavu, whom Valerian had insisted on sending with the survey team.
He snorted. You will take care not to get in our way, Alikka had warned. Better he should warn Ulavu not to get in Halkman’s way.
Bad enough that the team was saddled with a human civilian. But to have two civilians was just pushing the hell out of the numbers.
And protoss or not, the bottom line was that Ulavu was a civilian. If his lack of military competence got someone killed, he would damn well answer for it.
Cruikshank would personally guarantee that would be an experience the protoss would never forget. No matter how hard or how long he tried.
The team had covered barely five kilometers when they hit the ambush.
Whist, in front, took the brunt of the attack. Four zerglings appeared without warning over a rocky rise and hurled themselves at him. He barely got his C-14 up before the first slammed into him, knocking him backward off his feet. A second later two of them were swarming on top of him while the other two hit the ground, changed direction, and charged straight at Tanya.
Which was, Tanya reflected, their first and last mistake. The team was traveling in its usual order, with Whist in front, Tanya and Ulavu behind him, Erin behind them, and Dizz bringing up the rear. Even as Tanya fell back a couple of quick steps, Ulavu darted between her and the charging zerg, the focusers on the backs of his wrists blazing as he activated his warp blades. Tanya waited just long enough to see him slice open the first zergling, and then she did a quick one-eighty, putting her back to the second attacker. A small frontal assault was often a diversion, which suggested something nasty might be sneaking up from the rear.
It was. Slipping through the woods behind Dizz were two more zerglings, with a baneling behind them, trying to keep up. Even as Dizz skidded to a halt and leveled his P-45 at the zerglings pinning down Whist, Tanya stretched out with her power and sent a pair of quick one–two blasts to the new attackers’ interiors, dropping them with crackling thuds into the undergrowth. Dizz spun around at the sound and blasted a couple of bursts into the baneling.
The baneling slowed, and Tanya finished it off with a blast to its lungs. A second blast to its heart, just to make sure, and she turned back to Whist, wondering if he’d made it through the attack alive.
To her relief, he was already getting to his feet, the carcasses of the four zerglings scattered around him. Ulavu was standing over him, looking back and forth as he scanned the area for more trouble.
“Never a dull moment around here; that’s for sure,” Dizz commented as he and Erin hurried forward to join the rest of the group. “We should market this place as an adventurer’s paradise. You okay, Whist?”
“Yeah,” Whist said with a grunt. “Luckily, the damn things weren’t really going for me.” He eyed the multiple lacerations in the bag over his shoulder, then reached down and picked up what was left of a C-14 magazine. “They wanted the ammo and the spare guns. I guess even psyolisks don’t like getting shot at.”
“So they’d rather have a marine alive and kicking and disarmed than no marine at all?” Dizz asked. “Interesting. Also kind of stupid.”
“Oh, they’d have gotten around to me sooner or later if Ulavu hadn’t been so quick on the uptake,” Whist
assured him. “For a wimpy little researcher type, Ulavu, you’re a damn good fighter. Thanks.”
You are welcome, Ulavu said. Gingerly, he pressed a hand against his side. But they were not merely attempting to disarm you. I fear that this was also a reconnaissance mission. The master of our opponents wished to learn whether we had sustained injuries during the attack and forced landing.
“Yeah, we usually just call that a crash,” Dizz said.
“How are you doing?” Tanya asked, running a critical eye over Ulavu’s tunic. There were no fresh bloodstains, but with his injuries fully bandaged, that might not mean much.
The strain of fresh battle appears to have reopened one of my wounds, Ulavu admitted. Possibly two of them. But I do not believe my combat skills will be seriously affected.
“Yeah, we’ll see how you do when the psyolisks get started on you,” Whist said grimly. “How’d you get hit, anyway? I thought you dark templar could turn invisible or something.”
“He was trying to be incognito, remember?” Tanya said, giving Whist a warning glare. Criticizing protoss battle tactics was not a smart thing to do.
Either Whist missed the look or he just didn’t care. “Yeah, keeping your fighting skill a secret is great until it gets you killed,” he said. “So?”
I agree, Ulavu said calmly. In this case, that was not my intent. The psyolisks’ psionic attack at Point One was sufficiently enervating that I found myself unable to achieve light-bending at the same time that I was wielding Void energy offensively. Under the circumstances, it seemed best to choose attack over defense.
“Terrific,” Whist said. “So you’re saying we’ve got only about half a dark templar.”
“That’s enough, Whist,” Tanya said stiffly.
“I’m just running the numbers,” Whist said, glaring back at her. “We’re short on ammo. We’re short on portage capacity, and now we’re short half a protoss. Not exactly something to cheer about. Especially since what we’re not running short of is psyolisks.”
“Actually,” Erin put in, “we might be.”
“Come again?” Dizz asked, frowning.
“We may be running low on psyolisks,” Erin said. “I’ve been thinking about them, and about their connection with the adostra.”
“I thought we decided there wasn’t a connection,” Whist said, crouching and sifting through the scattered debris of his ammo bag.
“Of course there is: xel’naga essence,” Erin said. “I don’t know anything about xel’naga, but I do know a fair amount about zerg genetics and how they’re incorporated into the various species they conquer and adapt. If we assume Abathur used similar percentages to create the psyolisks, we have a baseline for how much xel’naga essence he would have needed to sneak out from his adostra assembly line.”
“I see where you’re going,” Dizz said. “Those six empty pods at Point One?”
“Exactly,” Erin said. “He would have told Zagara how many adostra he could make from the xel’naga essence they had on hand.”
“Or she might have been able to confirm the number independently,” Tanya said.
“Right,” Erin said, nodding. “Either way, he tells her he can make, say, a hundred eighty adostra, or sixty for each focal point. But he then only creates a hundred sixty-two, leaving himself ten percent of the xel’naga essence to play with.”
“Which he then uses to make psyolisks,” Tanya said. “Presumably he needs less of it since all he wants is to add projective psionic power to an existing zerg base.”
“Right,” Erin said again. “From their overall looks, I’m guessing he took the hydralisk baseline and made them smaller. He probably took out the poisoned needle spines, too—they didn’t use anything like that at Point One, and they surely would have done so if they’d been available.”
“Designed for close-in combat,” Whist murmured. “Buzz the target’s brain and just go for the slash attack, and you don’t need needle spines.”
In addition, psionic attacks are most effective at close range, Ulavu pointed out. Retaining needle-attack capability would be of little use to their primary attack strategy.
“And making them zergling size lets them get into places hydralisks can’t,” Whist said. “Oh yeah, these were designed by a master, all right.”
“I just hope he hasn’t figured out a way for them to breed,” Dizz said darkly.
“Zagara said they couldn’t use normal spawning pools,” Tanya reminded him.
“She only said they couldn’t use them for adostra,” Dizz corrected. “She never mentioned the psyolisks.”
“Because she doesn’t know about them,” Tanya said.
“So we assume,” Dizz said. “That hasn’t yet been proved.”
“A standard spawning pool would certainly require some serious modifications,” Erin said. “I’m guessing Abathur will eventually figure out a way, though it might depend on how much xel’naga essence is in the psyolisks.” She lifted a finger for emphasis. “But that also assumes he’ll have enough psyolisks left at the end of this to experiment with. Which brings us back to what I said about us running short of psyolisks.”
“You really think he’s running out?” Tanya asked.
“Think about it,” Erin said. “At Point One he probably figured we’d kill a couple of them at the most before they killed us.” She made a face. “Or rather, you. Only it didn’t work out that way, and he lost all forty, plus the four Whist and Ulavu took out on the way in. At Point Two, he was probably figuring the disruptor would destroy the adostra cavern but leave most of his psyolisks alive.”
“He doesn’t know much about disruptors, then,” Whist said.
“Hey, we barely know about them,” Dizz pointed out. “They’re pretty new, aren’t they, Ulavu?”
They are, Ulavu confirmed. I was not even aware the Dominion knew their full capabilities.
“Considering Cruikshank didn’t bother with a defensive crouch and got knocked flat on his butt, I’m guessing we don’t,” Whist said.
“That would also fit with the overall personality profile we’ve always assumed for the evolution masters,” Erin said. “Abathur would know a lot about terrans and protoss as species, certainly enough to know how to tune the psyolisks’ psionics against us. But he would have far less interest in our tech, except where it impinges on his efforts to advance the zerg.”
“And don’t forget, he’s been pretty busy lately,” Tanya said. “First there was Kerrigan; then there was the intelligence and comprehension upgrade she ordered for Zagara, and then the whole Amon thing. Reading protoss tech manuals is probably low on his priority list.”
“So if he is running short of psyolisks,” Dizz said, “it makes perfect sense to aim for our weapons instead of us. He still wants us to invade Point Three and destroy the adostra, but he doesn’t want to lose any more of his shock troops than he has to.”
“Which begs the question of whether he knows about Tanya,” Whist said thoughtfully. “Maybe he hasn’t figured out yet what she can do.”
Tanya frowned. That one hadn’t occurred to her. “Why wouldn’t he?”
“Why would he?” Whist countered. “Except for the times you start a fire on the outer carapace, what you’re doing is pretty invisible.”
“But the zerg have a psionic connection with each other,” Erin said. “That’s why we need the psi blocks. Wouldn’t he find out that way?”
You have forgotten that the psyolisks are a radical departure from other zerg forms, Ulavu said. Their psionic communication may be on an entirely different level.
“Though they’re close enough to normal zerg that they can order them around,” Tanya pointed out. “They are the ones ordering the normal zerg, right?”
“Well, they’re the ones on the scene, so I assume so,” Whist said. “But that’s not what I’m talking about. That kind of control is local. I’m talking about detailed information going from psyolisks to the zerg hive-mind network to Abathur. That may not be possib
le, in which case he still might not know about our pyrokinetic.”
“And of course, there’s no reason he has to be communicating with them in real time, either,” Dizz said. “That’s a point in our favor. Standard orders in this case would be pretty simple: kill half the humans and protoss, let the survivors destroy the adostra pods, then kill them, too.”
Erin shivered. “You have such a way with words.”
“Comes with the territory,” Dizz told her. “Be thankful you’re just slumming today.”
“I’ll never complain about a nice quiet lab again,” Erin agreed. “Too bad we didn’t save one of the psyolisks. An autopsy could have told us a lot.”
“Given that we burned all of ours and Cruikshank sent his to the four winds, that would have been a little tricky,” Whist said.
“If you’d like, we can try to save you one from Point Three,” Dizz offered. “Is that everything, Whist?”
“Everything useful,” Whist said sourly as he got back to his feet, three intact C-14 magazines stretched across his palms. “They left us a grand total of three mags. Whoop.”
“Plus the spikes still left in the ruined ones,” Tanya pointed out. “We could bring them along for reloading.”
“What, in the middle of battle?” Whist shook his head. “Not a chance.” He hefted the slashed bag. “Besides, this thing’s also on the casualty list.”
He crumpled the bag and tossed it to the side. “We’ll just have to count on Abathur still wanting to leave us alive long enough to torch Point Three.” He inclined his head to Tanya. “Come on—we’ve wasted enough time. Move it out.”
“And stay sharp,” Dizz added. “Like Whist said, they don’t need all of us to get there alive.”
—
Valerian was in his cabin, trying to grab an hour of sleep, when the urgent call came.
Matt was waiting for him at the bridge hatchway. “We spotted it about ten minutes ago,” he said as the two men hurried toward the sensor station. “It’s moving slowly—almost drifting—but definitely coming this way.”
“And you’re sure it’s a devourer?”