Flashpoint

by Christie Golden

  That ugly thought hadn’t occurred to Raynor. He glanced over at Kerrigan’s stretcher. When the red alert had sounded, the scientists had frozen in place, awaiting orders. Precious seconds were ticking by while Mengsk Junior and Senior argued. He caught Valerian’s eye and jerked his head in Kerrigan’s direction. Valerian nodded almost imperceptibly, and the scientists left at once.

  Jim wanted to go with them, but even more, he needed to know if Valerian was going to continue to stand his ground.

  “I knew all about your little plan, Son, and it’s a waste of time. Kerrigan needs to be put down like the mad dog she is.”

  Jim couldn’t help it. He retorted, “Just like anyone who disagrees with you, eh, Arcturus? It’s so like you to send a hardened convict to put a spike through the brain of a naked, helpless woman.”

  Arcturus chuckled. “Oh, Raynor, you’re just a fool in love. Sarah Kerrigan hasn’t been helpless since the day she came out of her mother’s womb, and you know it.”

  And then Valerian said something that took both his father and Jim aback.

  “She’s more than a ghost or a zerg—she is the fulfillment of a prophecy!”

  Jim gaped at him. How had Valerian known that?

  He himself wouldn’t have known if his old friend, the dark templar prelate Zeratul, hadn’t sought him out at great risk to himself to give Jim a crystal that shared that protoss’s encounter with Kerrigan.

  They were coming back. The xel’naga were coming back. What had Zeratul said? “You will hold her life in your hands. And though justice demands that she die for her crimes, only she can save us.”

  If Zeratul believed that, Jim did too. And apparently, so did Valerian.

  Arcturus Mengsk’s bushy brows drew together over his eyes. “What the hell are you blathering on about?”

  “I’ve not been idle, Father. Over the last few years, I have learned a great deal. The protoss are an ancient race, and they believe that their creators, the xel’naga—the same beings who made these artifacts I’ve been collecting, which appear to have turned Kerrigan human again—are coming back. And that Sarah Kerrigan might be our only hope when they do.”

  “And you believe this?” Arcturus Mengsk’s voice was a combination of incredulity and contempt.

  “Whether or not I believe it, the prophecy exists, and it’s important. Too important for us to act rashly until we know more. We could be sealing our own fates if we kill Kerrigan now.”

  “The only fate I’m interested in is the one I make, boy. And that should be the only fate to interest you as well. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re humans—not protoss, not zerg—and anything those knobby-skinned mystics have told you is likely to be full of more stardust and fantasy than anything solid. Now be a good son. Kill that mistake of a woman who just happens to be your father’s worst enemy, not to mention humanity’s, or give her to me and let Daddy do the dirty work.”

  “Valerian, you can’t let—”

  Valerian lifted a hand, silencing Raynor. He looked away for a moment, then returned his gaze to his father.

  “No, Father. I cannot, and I will not, obey a command I deem to be shortsighted and potentially devastating.”

  “What would be shortsighted and potentially devastating is saving a mass murderer! We’re talking billions dead, Valerian! You choose the zerg bitch and that traitor Raynor over your own father?”

  “What I choose,” Valerian said, his voice growing stronger with each word, “is not to sacrifice this sector to rashness and my father’s personal vendetta. And we both know that’s what it is. I’m not excusing what she’s done—I’m calling you on what you’ve done.” He stepped forward, hands clenching. “You can still choose with me, Father. Take a step back from your revenge. See with the eyes of a true leader all that’s really at stake here—all that you are placing in jeopardy for your own selfish reasons!” He forced his hands to unclench and extended one imploringly. “Let us study the prophecy together, and be ready if the xel’naga do indeed come as has been foretold!”

  Even on a viewscreen the emperor’s eyes seemed to grow cold and hard. “If you won’t give her to me,” Arcturus said, his voice low, “then you may rest assured that I will come and take her. I won’t let anyone, not even you, stand in my way.”

  The image disappeared. Valerian stood where he was for a moment, then, slowly, lowered his hand.

  “Valerian,” Jim began.

  The prince’s golden head whipped around. “Go to sick bay,” he said. “It’s where you belong. Whatever Kerrigan’s done . . . for the love of everything sacred and beautiful and true, keep her safe, Jim.”

  And at that moment, the Bucephalus, the flagship of the Dominion, carrying the Heir Apparent, came under attack by its emperor.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Matt Horner slouched in his chair, grimly thinking, I knew it. I knew this day would come.

  The day when Arcturus Mengsk would actually find the “terrorist” group known as Raynor’s Raiders and bring to bear the full wrath of the Dominion upon the vessel that had once been his flagship.

  With the calm balance that was such an ingrained part of his nature, Matt immediately realized that only half of the Dominion fleet was bearing down on them. The other half—originally twenty-five and now a total of fourteen battlecruisers and their contingents of Wraiths, dropships, and so on—was under the control of another Mengsk and firing back at Daddy’s ships. Valerian had patched in the Hyperion on the conversation between father and son, so Matt knew which Mengsk he should be attacking. His friend and commander James Raynor was still on the Bucephalus as well.

  Regardless, it was not by any stretch of the imagination a pleasant event, and Matt wasn’t at all sure they’d be able to escape this time. The emperor seemed to be quite willing to let familial love go by the wayside when his desires were being thwarted, and he was now actively attacking the vessels under his son’s command. Hard.

  So far, that was the only advantage, if one could call it that. The viewscreen was filled with the ugly red-orange planet Char and the ugly red-orange blossoms of fire as ships were struck. It was a war of titans, a battle of battleships, and the carnage was certain to be vast. The great battlecruisers moved more slowly than the Wraiths as they fired and were fired upon, and the spectacle was horrifically awe-inspiring.

  “And I thought the zerg were going to be our biggest worry,” Matt muttered to himself. Then he said more loudly, “Lock in on the Bucephalus.”

  “Locked, sir,” said the navigator, Marcus Cade.

  The image on the screen shifted and the Gorgon-class battlecruiser appeared. It had already sustained damage but was dealing as good as it was getting. Matt knew that as the flagship of Mengsk’s fleet, it had the most up-to-date weaponry and defenses and was the most massive ship humanity had ever seen. Even as Horner watched, the Bucephalus fired its Yamato cannon. The small, focused nuclear explosion hurtling from the cannon struck its target with devastating results. The older and less well equipped Behemoth-class battlecruiser on the receiving end didn’t stand a chance. A roiling ball of fire appeared, and the attacked ship slowed drastically, starting to drift. It, and the six thousand souls upon it, no longer represented a threat.

  But another two Minotaur-class ships were closing in. As the Hyperion pulled closer, Horner saw a green field go up around the Bucephalus. The battlecruiser was operating its defensive matrix, and with any luck, it would hold until the Hyperion got within firing range.

  There was a sudden blur outside.

  Zerg.

  The mutalisks were undirected but just as vicious as ever, and Matt gave orders to fire. Every second they spent blasting the zerg that were descending in near-suicide attacks was a second when the ship that housed Jim and several other Raiders was in danger.

  “Destroy the zerg, every one of them that comes within range,” Matt said. “And on a separate screen keep tracking the Bucephalus. We’ll—” He paused. “Belay that order.”

&n
bsp; “Sir?” asked Marcus Cade.

  “Fire toward the zerg, but not at them. Get their attention focused solely on the Hyperion. Draw them away from the Dominion ships and get them coming after us instead.”

  Cade looked puzzled, but obeyed. “Two more ships from Valerian’s fleet are moving to intercept. He’s down to fourteen now from twenty-five, and several of them look pretty bad.”

  “I hear you,” Matt said. “Let’s keep moving toward them.”

  With a whole bunch of really pissed-off zerg in tow, he thought, and he permitted himself a small, wry smile.

  * * *

  The Bucephalus rocked slightly under the attacks from outside. Jim didn’t waste a thought on worry. There was nothing he could do now for either Valerian’s ship or his own. They would get out of this (or not) without his aid.

  There was one person he could do something for. Maybe.

  The sick bay aboard the Bucephalus was similar to that of the Hyperion, but more advanced to Jim’s inexpert eye. It was large, almost cavernous, and appeared coldly efficient.

  Sarah was finally on a proper hospital bed. She was hooked up to several IVs, and a display panel above her head ticked information off in gold electronic lettering. Jim could read the words but didn’t understand most of them. The three doctors and one scientist, however, were glued to the readouts.

  Jim, out of his armor now, was in a chair by her side. He took her hand in both of his and whispered quietly, “I know these boys are scary looking, but you’re safe now. Everyone here’s going to try to help you. And if they don’t, I’ll personally kick their asses out an airlock.”

  For a long moment, he thought she was still asleep. Then her eyes fluttered open and she blinked a few times. She looked around and then finally met his gaze.

  “ . . . Jim?”

  “Right here, darlin’,” Jim said, smiling down at her.

  She started to smile too, and then he could almost see the thoughts click into place. The smile froze, became a grimace, and she closed her eyes and turned away from him.

  “Whatever you did,” she murmured, “I wish you hadn’t.”

  His breath caught for an instant, but he kept his voice calm. “You don’t mean that,” he said. “Let these boys do their job. Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry?” Her head jerked back and she stared at him, her lips curled and her voice rising on the last note. It seemed to startle the doctors out of their fascination with her statistics, and they glanced over to regard the patient instead of the numbers. “How can you say that to me? Jim, I know what I did. I remember. Billions dead . . . because of me!”

  “That was not you,” Jim said firmly. “That was the Queen of Blades. What they made you into. You’re back to being Sarah again. And we’re together now. So just hush, honey.”

  He had put off touching the strange tentacles that adorned her head in place of hair. Everything else was so human, so much the woman he remembered, but that . . . . Now he did so, keeping her fingers entwined with his as he reached with his other hand to gently stroke back the spiny protuberances. He steeled himself for the contact. To his surprise, they felt warm beneath his touch, like skin. Like Sarah’s skin. And any hesitation he’d had about still loving her—hesitation he had pushed down so deep into his soul that he himself hadn’t been aware of it until right now—vanished like a bad dream.

  But the touch didn’t comfort her. She turned her head, trying to pull away. Respecting her needs, Jim withdrew his hand.

  “It doesn’t matter. Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of Blades . . . you don’t understand,” she murmured. “Maybe you can never understand. I’ve always been a destroyer of things. Anything I touch, anything I care about . . . that’s why they picked me, Jim. Because I’m a destroyer of things . . . . ”

  She closed her eyes and slipped into unconsciousness. Jim sat back, trying to sort out what she had said. How much of it was real, and how much was the pain talking?

  And despite what he had told Sarah—despite what he kept telling himself—he couldn’t help but wonder how much of the massacre of billions had been only the Queen of Blades . . . and how much had been Sarah Kerrigan.

  * * *

  It was the most beautiful thing in the world, the whole world, and she had caught one, and she was going to show it to Mama and Papa.

  Sarah’s short legs pumped as she ran through the field of yellow flowers, their faces turned up to the sun. She held the most beautiful thing in the whole world carefully in the cage of her hands. She could feel it fluttering; it was frightened, but she would let it go free once she had shown it to her parents.

  “Sarah Louise Kerrigan!”

  Sarah’s footsteps slowed. Belatedly, as she gazed at her parents on the front porch, Papa checking his pocket watch and Mama frowning, she remembered that they were going into town today.

  “I’m sorry. I forgot,” she said. Her huge smile returned as she extended her still-clasped hands. “But look what I—”

  “Look at your hair!” her mother snapped, exasperated. She began to pluck the flower petals from Sarah’s red hair, attempting to smooth the wild mane into a ponytail. “What are we going to do with you? You’ve got dirt all over yourself, and we don’t have time to wash you, do we?”

  “Well,” said Papa, consulting the watch, “you’ll both have to hurry.”

  “Why couldn’t we have a nice little girl who liked to look pretty, and not some messy little—”

  The words hurt, but Sarah had heard them before. It was all right. Mama would be as astonished and full of wonder as Sarah herself, once she saw what her little girl had found. Her mother’s tirade faded into an angry buzz as Sarah opened her hands, anticipating the moment happily.

  It was dead. The most beautiful thing in the world was dead.

  And Sarah had killed it.

  “Oh, now look what you’ve done, Sarah! You’ve smashed the bug, too, and gotten it all over your hands—”

  Sarah screamed.

  She screamed in fury at her mother’s words. She screamed in horror at the death literally on her small hands and out of guilt that she had whispered promises of safety to this fragile creature.

  The red went everywhere.

  It pattered, warm and wet, on Sarah’s face, on the porch floorboards, on the rocking chair, gore moving too slowly to be real, too dreamily to be so horrific.

  Dimly Sarah heard her father screaming incoherently, but it was like listening to something underwater—muffled and indistinct and far, far away. She was transfixed by the sight of her mother’s head—well, where her mother’s head used to be. Because now there wasn’t anything left but part of a lower jaw and jagged bits of bone and blood and brain.

  The body collapsed like a puppet whose strings had suddenly been cut. And with merciless abruptness the strange dreaminess went away, and everything came into sharp, brutal focus. Sarah understood then what her father was screaming over and over again.

  “Her head came apart . . . her head came apart . . . !”

  * * *

  “What the hell’s happening to her?” cried Jim.

  Sarah had gone rigid as a board. Her green eyes had snapped open, and they were staring at nothing Jim could see, but the horror in their depths tore him up. Dr. Frederick came over, pale with worry, and checked Sarah’s stats.

  “She should be fine. No reaction to the meds—” Frederick stopped short of saying, “I don’t know,” but the words didn’t need to be uttered.

  Sarah gasped sharply and then began to thrash. Jim hadn’t liked the idea of the restraints but was now glad his protests had been overruled. Sarah was prevented from hurting not just someone else but also herself.

  * * *

  Valerian stood on the bridge. His fists were clenched and his gray eyes were as hard as neosteel as he watched the battle unfolding.

  He supposed he should have expected this. He hadn’t thought he was clouded with ideals about Arcturus’s nature, but apparently the son hadn’t really
expected the father to go quite so far. Anywhere from four to six thousand people were aboard each battlecruiser. The lives of others truly meant nothing to his father.

  Not even that of his child.

  It wasn’t going well. Four of Valerian’s remaining fourteen battlecruisers—the Aeneas, the Amphitrite, the Metis, and the Meleager—hung dead in space. More of his vessels were severely damaged. Debris as big as a city suburb turned and floated, interfering with attacks. Now and then there was a sudden, sharp blaze as a piece of wreckage went too near the atmosphere and caught fire. The ten other battlecruisers kept up the harrying, and one of Arcturus’s ships was taken out of play under a well-coordinated assault by the Antigone and the Eos. Each closed in from a different side, and despite a valiant effort, the enemy battlecruiser was destroyed. Valerian said a silent thanks to the men and women aboard all his ships, who could easily have fled to the safety of the other side. Few would have blamed them—not even Valerian.

  He had been a fool not to plan for this contingency. Arcturus had once told him, “You still have much to learn.” And the bastard had been right.

  “Sir, the Hyperion is closing in on us,” said Captain Everett Vaughn. Young but already going gray, he had done surprisingly well with the sudden turn of events over the last few days on this, his first command. “I’ve just gotten a message from Captain Horner. He says . . . ” Vaughn looked slightly confused. “He says to watch out for the stray dogs.”

  “What?”

  The Hyperion moved slowly into viewing range, and then Valerian understood. A slow smile crossed his lips, and he recalled a quote from a playwright whose works were even older than the opera he had been listening to earlier: “Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war.”

  The Hyperion was swarming with zerg.

  Some were directly attacking it; others flew earnestly in its wake. They buzzed about it like bees, with even less mindfulness than those insects. And the Hyperion was on what appeared to be a collision course with the White Star—the ship that carried Arcturus Mengsk.