by Jeff Grubb
And he didn’t want to be caught stuck in the shower if Kerrigan needed him.
As Mike moved through the ship, he thought about the tech he had spoken with over the comm unit. Now that he noticed, most of the crew on the Hyperion were strangers: members of the Alpha Squadron as opposed to Mengsk’s original rebels from before Antiga Prime. One by one, those original revolutionaries had fallen by the wayside or been promoted to other ships. Part of a plan by Mengsk to spread his agents among all the ships of his fleet, or part of a plan by Mengsk to move the old guard aside in favor of professional soldiers?
Whichever it was, Mike was sure that it was part of a plan by Mengsk.
Mike was almost to the wardroom when the door exploded, and two men in combat armor tumbled out.
It was Raynor and Duke, locked in each other’s arms. The former lawman had already ripped off the shoulder plate of the general’s suit and spiderwebbed the man’s visor with a steel-shod fist. Duke was no slouch, however, and there were several new dents in Raynor’s already-rumpled chest plate.
“Jim!” shouted Mike. Despite himself, Raynor turned toward the reporter.
General Duke did not miss the opportunity, slamming both fists into the side of Raynor’s helmet. The former marshal staggered back a step, but did not fall.
Now free of his opponent’s neosteel embrace, Duke went for his side arm, a nasty needle-gun that could penetrate bulkheads. Raynor recovered as the general brought the weapon up and grabbed the older man by the wrist. Then, the servos in both sets of armor squealing, Raynor slammed Duke’s arm against the bulkhead.
Once. Twice. On the third time something cracked in Duke’s gauntlet and the general screamed. He dropped the gun and sank to the deck. The needler went skittering across the floor. Mike knelt down, grabbed it, and rose, clamping it to his own belt for safekeeping.
Only then did Mike become aware that they were not alone in the hallway. Ahead and behind them were armed marines, their weapons leveled on Raynor and himself.
“Y’all just signed your own death warrant, boy!” Duke snarled. There was blood at the corner of his mouth, and he cradled his pistol hand. More than metal had been shattered by Raynor’s blows.
“You just signed the death warrant of your home planet, General!” Mike snapped. To the marines he said, “He just set off the emitters. He called the Zerg here! Dammit! He and Mengsk didn’t even give the Confederates a chance to surrender! The Zerg are coming here, and this bastard is the one who rolled out the welcome mat!”
Some of the marines lowered their weapons. They seemed suddenly to be having second thoughts about the revolution, or were suddenly worried that the Zerg were going to show up on their doorstep. Others kept a flinty-eyed, neutral glare, and their weapons remained aimed at Raynor’s chest.
Mike figured the ones who were hesitating were the ones who weren’t neurally resocialized. The others were waiting for the kill order.
“I’ll have you court-martialed!” said the general. Mike let out a thin breath. Duke was threatening, not ordering Raynor’s death. He was concerned that Mengsk might not approve.
“You want my rank, you can have it,” Raynor said hotly. “And I’m not in your chain of command. I answer to Mengsk, same as you. You can’t do squat without Mengsk’s say-so.”
“And whose orders do you think I was following when I activated the emitters, boy?” said Duke, smiling despite his pain.
“You set off a dozen emitters on Tarsonis!” said Raynor. “The populace will be swarmed!”
“We set them off in strong Confederate locations,” said Duke, “and evacuated most of our regular troops. Hell, boy, didn’t you realize that we were planting one more when we picked you up?”
Mike suddenly thought of the ghost and the tech crew, and the way Kerrigan had reacted. Of course Mengsk wouldn’t care about information. He was after control of the entire realm of human space.
Raynor spat. “You son of a . . .” He took two steps toward the general.
General Duke, in his armored battle suit, held up his good arm. Not to attack, but to ward off a blow. The general was afraid, an old man quailing in a neosteel shell.
Raynor paused for a moment, then spat again. He wheeled and headed for the lift to the observation dome.
None of the marines in the hall stopped him. Some didn’t have the guts to open fire on one of their own. Some didn’t have the orders. And some didn’t know which man was the true criminal.
Mike followed Raynor. Behind them General Duke bellowed for the soldiers to get back to their stations.
Mike laid a hand on Raynor’s shoulder, and the big man turned. For a moment Mike was afraid that Raynor was going to take a swing at him, but the fire in the man’s eyes was replaced with deep, bitter sadness.
“They didn’t even give them a chance,” he said. “They could have used it as a threat, but they just set them off. No warning, nothing. While we were en route back to the ship. They set them off.”
“So what are you going to do?” Mike asked.
“I’m going to have it out with Mengsk himself,” said Raynor. “He’s got to be made to see reason.”
“You’re not going up there. Right now Duke is probably on the blower with him, calling for your hide. You’ve got about ten minutes before he convinces some of his followers to arrest you. With or without Mengsk’s permission.”
“Yeah,” Raynor said bitterly. “And the way I feel right now, I’d probably take a shot at Mengsk as well.”
“Well, there’s that. And Mengsk will have you killed if you do that.”
“So your prescription is, Doctor Liberty?” said Raynor.
“Go find some allies. The rest of your unit from planetside. Any of the old colonial militia from the Sara system, if any of them are left on board. Go there and stay there until I call for you. And here.” He passed the pack to him. “Hold onto these. There’s juicy gossip on those disks.”
“Where are you going?” Raynor asked.
“I’m going up to the observation deck. I need to talk to the great man himself. I’ll try not to hit him.”
Raynor nodded and stomped off, the bag of secrets looking small and insignificant in his heavy hand. Mike took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and repeated the mantra.
“I am not going to hit him,” he said softly. “I am not going to hit him.”
The doors to the lift opened, and Kerrigan stalked out. Her face was a roiling storm cloud of anger and doubt.
Mike jumped back as if she had been General Duke swinging an armored fist.
“Lieutenant,” he said. “Sarah, what’s wrong?”
“I spoke with Arcturus,” said Kerrigan, and for the first time that Mike could remember, she stammered, unsure of how to phrase her next words. “He . . . he explained himself. And his explanation was full of examples and buzzwords and quotes and omelets and breaking eggs and freedom and duty and everything else. And he had me believing, Mike. I really wanted to believe that he had information we didn’t, like there were Zerg queens in the heart of Tarsonis itself, calling the shots through puppet rulers, sacrificing the populace, and eating babies in the streets.”
She took a deep breath. “But as I listened, I watched the map of Tarsonis on the planet behind him.”
Mike said, “I know the screen. It’s his favorite toy.”
Kerrigan gave a derisive snort. “As I watched, that screen turned red. All of it, red from the Zerg arriving.” She looked at Mike, looking for confirmation in his eyes.
“There were no Zerg on Tarsonis until he set off the psi emitters,” she said in a small voice. “None at all. It wasn’t like the Sara planets, or even Antiga Prime, where there were some already there and we had already lost the world. There was nothing there to threaten us but other humans.”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “And now the Zerg are coming from everywhere. They’re on the planet. Arcturus didn’t recall any of the units currently in combat. He didn’t even bothe
r to get the teams that placed the psi emitters off-planet. He left them there. ‘Sacrifices must be made,’ he said, and he said it in that calm, pleased voice as if he were ordering coffee.”
Mike thought of the team that landed at Atkin’s Square, and hoped that Kerrigan was too upset to pick up his suppositions. Instead he said, “All right. He told you this. And then what happened?”
“And then word came up from the bridge about a fight between Jim and Duke.” Kerrigan’s face was a storm cloud again. “And he dismissed me. Just told me I had to go, just like that. And I . . . I lost my temper with him.”
“There’s been a lot of that going around. And for good reason.”
“Mike, there was no rationale for him to do this. I thought it was a bluff, or that Tarsonis was already infected, or that there was a master plan. It was just that Arcturus has a hammer, and when you have a hammer, every problem seems to be a nail.”
Mike remembered Mengsk making the same quote earlier. It seemed like half a lifetime ago.
“It’s okay,” Mike said, reaching up to hold her by the shoulders. She did not turn away.
“And Mike”—her voice was a whisper—”when I got mad at him, I looked. I mean I really looked into him.”
Michael waited for her to continue, but she just shook her head. When she spoke, it was in a low hiss. She spat, “That bastard.”
Mike said, “Look, I sent Jim down to his quarters and told him to keep his friends around him. I think you qualify.”
Kerrigan looked up at Mike, and for the briefest moment she looked unsure. Then a wry smile tugged at the corners of her lips and she said, “No, I don’t think so. I’m so upset right now . . . Jim would just make me feel . . .” She let out a long breath and shook her head. “I need to be alone for a little while. I need to know that I can still rely on myself. To make sure I know that I can do what needs to be done. Despite this, I’m still a good soldier, and I have a job to finish. Maybe some good will come out of this. Okay?”
Mike disagreed, but he said, “It’s okay.”
Kerrigan grinned. “Even if I weren’t a telepath, I’d know you’re lying. Mengsk is right about that. You want to save everyone from themselves. I want you to know that it’s . . . appreciated.”
“You watch out.”
“I can take care of myself.” Kerrigan managed a sure, wide-lipped smile. “I’m no one’s martyr. Hell, some days I even believe that. Just tell Jim . . .” She paused and shook her head again.
“What?” Mike asked, expecting her next words.
“Nothing,” she said at last. “Tell him to just watch out, too, okay? For me.”
And she was gone, heading down to the dropship bays. Mike watched her stride down the hall, shedding unease and unsureness like a butterfly leaving its chrysalis behind.
Mike just wished that his stomach didn’t hurt so much, and he was sure that it would be a long time before he saw her in the flesh again.
Mike took the lift up to the observation deck. Arcturus Mengsk was there, his hands behind his back, watching the screen of Tarsonis fill up with red triangles. They were nearly a blur on the screen itself, broken by the hot yellow marks of Confederate troops.
Mike noticed that the chessboard had been thrown across the room, and the pieces were scattered about. Kerrigan had definitely lost her temper.
Mengsk turned away from the map, his salt-and-pepper beard now looking more white than black. “Ah, the third of my brilliant rebels,” he said. “I was wondering when you were going to turn up. Actually, I expected you to be the first one to march in here with demands and insults, not the good lieutenant. You must have really gotten to her.”
“I didn’t do anything,” said Mike, “but stand by her while you consigned another planet to its death.”
“One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
“Do you keep a database of quotes to justify your excesses?” Mike asked, his eyes narrowing.
Mengsk smiled grimly. “I take it that this means you’ve finally given up trying to save my soul? I hope not, because after we succeed, I’ll need men like you more than ever, to help form the new universal order. To help form the needed order to repel the alien menace.”
“Alien menace?” Mike sputtered the words. “That would be the menace that you yourself brought down on this world? Is that the alien menace you mean?”
Mengsk tilted his head and pursed his brows, as if disappointed in Mike’s response. Behind him, the screen continued to throb and glow, and now blue-white triangles were moving in from the edge of the screen.
What Mengsk said was, “I didn’t anticipate Sarah coming up here. And I didn’t expect Raynor to pick a fight with a general. That was foolish. And inconvenient. I’m going to have to smooth over some harsh feelings there.”
“Harsh feelings? They nearly killed each other just now.”
Mengsk shook his head again, and Mike realized that the man was minimizing the problems, just as he was minimizing the situation on Tarsonis. Minimizing them to the point where they could be ignored, glossed over, forgotten.
His own reality-warping field, thought Mike.
“General Duke is,” the rebel leader said, “at heart a coward. I provide him with the spine he needs to go forward. James, on the other hand, is all courage and honor looking for a place to explode. A loaded gun looking for targets. I’ve given him direction. I’ve given him targets. Both men are very useful at what they do, and once we’ve taken Tarsonis, all this will wash out. Neither man can really survive without me, and to stay viable, they’ll realize they will have to follow my directives.”
“Are they just chess pieces to you?” Mike asked.
“Not chess pieces. Tools. Talented, useful tools. And yes. Raynor, Duke, the Zerg, the Protoss. Yes, even you and dear Lieutenant Kerrigan are all tools to achieve a greater good, a better future. Yes, things look dark right now, and I’ll admit my culpability. But think of this: if things are terrible now, think how good we’ll look when we take over, eh?”
“Don’t look now,” Mike said, looking past Mengsk, up at the screen, “but I think some more of your tools are attacking your other tools.”
“Eh?” Mengsk spun in place and looked at the board. Already the first blue-white triangles, the symbols of the Protoss, were making planetfall. The red Zerg triangles were dispersing in their wake in ripples. It was as though the Protoss were stones thrown into a crimson pond.
“This is bad,” Mengsk said softly. “Very bad. I did not expect them to arrive so quickly. This is very bad indeed.”
“Oh my God. You really didn’t expect this,” Mike said, blinking in surprise. Then the nervousness in his stomach turned to chill fear, and he added, “Why doesn’t that make me feel any better?”
CHAPTER 16
FOG OF WAR
Let’s not kid ourselves, we got our heads handed to us by the Zerg and the Protoss. Yes, they were like nothing we had ever seen before. Yes, their biology was different. Yes, their technology, or what we would call their technology was more advanced than ours in dozens of areas. And of course, they were belligerent and aggressive in the extreme, they knew and where we were, they had the advantage of surprise.
But (and this is a rather large but) we humans are about the most ornery cusses in the galaxy. We had been fighting among ourselves for as long as we’ve been in the sector, and we had honed our own battle technologies to the point where we were their equal in many ways. We had the advantages of interior lines of supply (that’s military for “surrounded”) and native terrain (that’s military for “we’re fighting them in our living rooms”). We could have taken them if we had gotten our act together.
So what happened? The very thing that made us good warriors—the fact that we had fought among ourselves—also made us horrible at banding together in our hour of crisis. We could not unite under one banner or even form a coalition. In fact, every time there was a chance for that, one faction or another did something to
enhance the advancement of their own political agenda over the other factions. Often at the expense of the rest of humanity. I can’t imagine the hive-minded Zerg or the glowing Protoss falling prey to such basic human drives as greed and power and raw pig-headedness.
Of course, those are all basic human drives, and that’s why nonhumans were cleaning our clocks.
—THE LIBERTY MANIFESTO
“YOU REALLY DIDN’T KNOW, DID YOU?” MIKE asked. “You didn’t know the Protoss would get here? How could you not know?”
“Impudent pup,” said Mengsk, stalking to his console and scanning a dozen screens at once. “Of course I knew the Protoss would get here. They follow the Zerg around like housewives chasing flies with a rolled-up newspaper, looking for them to alight so they can swat them. I just didn’t expect them to get here so soon.”
Despite himself, Mike smiled. Anything that disturbed the great Arcturus Mengsk was enough to make him happy. And, upon consideration, if the Protoss had been in contact with Mengsk, they probably saw him for the two-faced politico he was, and they were just hanging out in warp space waiting for him to do something like this.
Mengsk cycled through a number of screens, then cursed under his breath. Finally he opened a toggle and said, “Duke!”
The battered face of the general appeared on the screen. “Sir, have you considered my request regarding Captain Raynor?”
“Spare me your petty bickering,” Mengsk snapped. “Get the local commanders on-line. The Protoss are here.”
“Yes, sir, we know,” Duke said proudly. “But they’re avoiding our forces, concentrating primarily on the Zerg hives.” He paused and blinked, completely unaware that this might be a bad thing.
“If the Protoss forces engage the Zerg,” Mengsk said, enunciating each word, “then the Zerg are fighting them instead of the Confederates. If the Protoss engage the Zerg, the Confederates may escape. The Old Families may get away, and with them the heart of Confederate power!”