Shadow Hunters (28 page)

Professor Ramsey, what are you doing?
Devon Starke again, in his brain.
Cease
this attack at once! Rosemary Dahl will listen to you!

Jake effortlessly erected a barrier around his thoughts so that the mental conversation went one way and yeled to Rosemary, “They know it’s you.”

“Good” was her response, folowed by another ramming of a Wraith.

This must cease or we will be forced to open fire.

When he relayed this to Rosemary, she shot back, “They might fire on us, but they won’t try to kil us. Both Valerian and Ethan want you alive. You’re too precious to risk serious injury to. Dropships can take whatever they throw at us, and their Wraiths are getting the worse end of the deal right now.”

Wham.
Jake’s teeth rattled in his skul as Rosemary sought to prove her point. Then the dropship rocked violently and he realized that Devon was as good as his word.

They were indeed being fired upon.

Professor, please—we truly have no wish to harm you in any way. But you
cannot be permitted to elude us again. As a scientist, surely you understand
what is at stake!

It was Devon and Valerian who didn’t understand. Jake’s own life was what was at stake. That and some profound, universe-rattling secret that Zamara had yet to let him in on. Both were more important to him than satisfying the idle curiosity of an emperor’s son.

The attacks increased. Smoke started to seep into the cabin, and Jake and Rosemary coughed. “We’re almost there,” Rosemary said, her voice raw from coughing, her eyes watering from the acrid smoke. “Which is good, ’cause this thing won’t hold out much longer.”

Another shot and the dropship listed badly. Jake wasn’t sure he could hold out much longer either.

His queen was not pleased. Her anger seared Ethan as, through the eyes of her consort, she watched her quarry escape. Neither he nor she cared about the dozens of zerg who were reduced to stains on the Aiur landscape, blown to bits, impaled by steel spikes, or burnt to crisp, smoking corpses. Her supply of zerg was infinite.

Her patience was not.

“How did Valerian find them?”

“My queen, I know not,” Ethan said. “But Ramsey shal not escape me a third time.”

They were desperate words, but they were the only ones he could muster. If Jake Ramsey and Rosemary Dahl had alied with the Dominion after al, despite everything they had seen from Valerian, then there would in truth be little Ethan could do to recover the archeologist. He had traveled here as the other zerg did, safely inside an overlord, having no need of the technological assistance of a ship despite the ability to operate one. Now he cast about desperately for a way to folow and stop Jake’s escape. A swift mental command brought a mutalisk hastening toward him, and with the grace granted him by an extra set of limbs and his vastly increased strength, Ethan climbed swiftly atop it. It and its companions rose into the air, hel-bent on destroying the ships that were escorting the dropship that contained his queen’s desire.

And then he laughed aloud as the dropship slammed into the Wraith next to it.

“Ah, Trouble,” he said, his voice nostalgic. He should have known better. Jake and Rosemary were not going with Valerian. They’d tricked the young Heir Apparent, and were heading toward the only place on the planet where they could possibly make an escape: the warp gate.

He directed his creatures there, and secured his grip on the mutalisk as he flew to join them.

“Okay, here we—wow.” Rosemary’s voice was subdued. “Looks like the zerg beat us here. Some of them, anyway.”

Jake strained to see. From his position, he couldn’t see much, so he brushed Rosemary’s mind and saw what she had seen. A battle had been fought here four years ago, almost the same one that would be fought now—escaping protoss against determined, directed zerg. The debris of that battle was everywhere, but at some point, either then or in the last few hours, the protoss had used their own falen vessels and even zerg corpses as bulwarks. The area around the warp gate was now at least somewhat defensible, but Jake saw with a wrench in his gut that many of Those Who Endure had falen while awaiting his and Zamara’s arrival. Few were left, and more and more zerg were coming.

My heart aches too for my fallen brethren,
Zamara said,
but far, far worse than
this awaits if my mission fails, Jacob.

While the dropship had plenty of armor, which had kept them safe thus far, it had no weapons. Other than whatever handheld weapons were in the lockers, they were bringing the embattled Shel’na Kryhas no new ways to hold back the increasing tide of zerg.

That’s not quite right, Jacob. Valerian wishes you alive, which means that the
Dominion will inadvertently aid our escape.

Even as she spoke the words in his mind, Jake knew that they were true. Valerian wasn’t about to let him become zerg chow. The ship landed hard. Jake braced himself for the hel that awaited them outside.

“Damn!” Valerian pounded his fist on the desk, and Whittier jumped. “Starke, can’t you bring them down?”

“Negative, sir, not without significant risk to Ramsey. Dropships are built precisely to withstand attack. Dahl knows this and is ramming the Wraiths quite severely. We’re not sure where she thinks she can run.” Valerian ran a hand through his golden hair, thinking furiously. Was Dahl running away from capture or toward something else?

She had sent Ramsey’s medical information to him early on, and Valerian had spent many an hour analyzing it. He’d seen the initial spate of abnormal and seemingly uncontroled cel division in Ramsey’s brain—bad news no matter how one looked at it—and suspected that the protoss in Jake’s head had taken the professor to Aiur to aid him. Were they heading there now? Or just trying to flee from Valerian’s pursuit?

It didn’t matter. Healthy or not, Jake had to be captured as soon as possible.

“Ramsey must not be harmed; that’s the top priority here. Direct al forces toward eliminating the zerg, and stay in touch with Ramsey. You have to convince him that we’re not going to harm him. Because—damn it, it’s the truth.”

Starke nodded. “Yes, sir. I know it. But one can lie in a telepathic link, and Ramsey knows it. The evidence is against you.”

Valerian sighed. “Do what you can, Starke. Neutralize the protoss and capture Ramsey alive. Do whatever you have to do to achieve those goals.”

Rosemary leaped out first, firing with seeming abandon but with absolute precision.

The others closed in around Jake, shielding him and Zamara with their bodies and their weapons as they fought. Jake felt close to losing it. Al around him he heard the screams of dying zerg, smeled the stench of burning bodies and blood. He was pressed tight against the protoss. Two of them even linked arms with him and when he stumbled, dragged him forward until he could get his feet underneath himself again.

He couldn’t even see where they were heading, as the protoss al towered above him. But he trusted them, and he trusted Zamara, and he let them propel him forward.

He craned his neck, and through the haze of smoke he saw the outline of the warp gate high above him. Twin tides of hope surged through him—his own, and that of Zamara.

How do these things function?
he asked Zamara.

The gates are xel’naga technology. Each gate is able to connect to any other
active gate, unless it has been programmed not to do so. When the protoss fled
four years ago, Fenix and the others who chose to stay behind disabled the
gate, so that it could not open on Shakuras. Some zerg had already gotten
through; more, and they would have destroyed Shakuras as surely as they did
Aiur, and that could not be permitted to happen.

The cocoon of enclosing protoss bodies parted and Jake stared, horrified, at the controls. Or rather, what was left of them.

Looks like they did more than disable it.

Zamara’s despair flooded him for just a second, before she exerted her usual rigid control. He didn’t need to be a protoss to know it looked bad. It looked as if someone had wanted to make sure that the gate would never be reactivated, for the controls had been physicaly damaged.

I stood here on that day, Ladranix said, with my old friend Fenix, and our new
friend James Raynor.

Jake opened to the memory Ladranix was sharing with him.

“We must disable the gate,” Fenix said. “We cannot permit more zerg to go
through.”

Raynor threw him a glance. “Buddy, that’s the only way off this place for us.”

Fenix nodded. “Yes, it is.” Nothing more needed to be said or even thought.

Neither of them would put his own life before those of the innocent protoss
fighting for survival even now, both on Auir and on Shakuras, both traditional
pro-toss and so-called “dark” protoss. Ladranix watched them both, and
understood why Fenix thought of Raynor as a pro-toss in spirit, if not in flesh.

He did not see what Fenix did. He turned to fight against the fresh wave of
snapping, chittering creatures who crawled as thoughtlessly over the bodies of
their own fallen as they did over the blasted soil of a once-fertile world. But he
did turn to see what happened when Raynor said, “My turn to contribute,” and
lifted his rifle.

Jake saw in his mind’s eye, as clearly as if he had witnessed it himself, what part of the console exactly Raynor melted to bits, what kind of weapon he used, and for how long he fired.

I came here planning on and capable of reopening the gate—of reprogramming
it to open onto Shakuras. But I cannot accomplish both that and repair the
physical damage to this in time,
Zamara admitted bitterly.
As it stands now, the
zerg will be upon us by then.

Jake couldn’t believe it. Had they come so far, endured so much, to be stopped by one human’s wel-meaning and indeed necessary blast to the controls? Zamara’s knowledge rippled through the protoss. They simply nodded, then turned to the seemingly ceaseless wave of zerg that, despite the onslaught from Valerian’s troops, were now beginning to gain ground.

If protoss knew nothing else, Jake thought with mingled grief, helplessness, and respect, they knew how to look death in the face.

IT WAS HARD TO SEE. THE CRUSHING DESPAIR was wrenching his gut and causing his eyes to fil. Jake blinked quickly, his fists baling, good old human stubbornness surging to the fore amidst the stoic pro-toss acceptance al around him.

No. There had to be another way, there had to be a—

His gaze fel on a tiny figure, dwarfed by the towering protoss, firing and reloading with a grim determination.

“Rosemary,” he breathed. Maybe—could she … He turned without thinking and charged toward where she stood, feet braced on the body of a slain zergling, firing with deadly effect into the surging tide. He sent the thought quickly, naturaly, and showed her what had been done four years ago.

If you got any parts, I bet Zamara and I could fix it,
she shot back in his mind.

Just as she lowered her rifle, Ladranix sent them al a chiling message. “More are coming.”

Sure enough, Jake could just make out in the distance a roling dust bal that seemed to reach up to the sky. Of course. It wouldn’t have taken a genius to figure out the only place Jake would have gone, and Ethan was far from a fool. He had of course immediately redirected his zerg, and now here they were closing in, and a figure, tiny in the distance now, was perched atop one of them.

“I swear, next time I’m putting the muzzle right against his temple,” Rosemary said.

Nonetheless, despite her deeply personal grudge, she tossed her rifle to one of the unarmed protoss, jumped down from the embankment of zerg bodies, and hurried over to Jake. Another protoss came with her, and Jake realized that they were communicating quickly and privately. Rosemary, it seemed, had lost most of her reluctance to have her mind read. Perhaps it was only the direness of the situation, but Jake was glad of it.

“Okay,” the young woman said. “What do you need me to do, Zamara?”

Zamara moved into the forefront, linking swiftly with Rosemary. Jake was not technicaly inclined at the best of times, and now he paid scant attention to them, more worried about the fighting raging about him.

Any warp gate can open onto any other,
Zamara was teling Rosemary, explaining it to her as she had to Jake.
What Fenix did was program it so that it would not
be able to open onto Shakuras, so the zerg could not follow and devastate that
world as they had Aiur. What James Raynor did …

… was physically damage the controls so that they’d be extra-hard for anyone
else to tinker with.
Rosemary’s thoughts as she examined the panel, sharp and pure and bright, stood in contrast with Zamara’s almost muted, rich mental voice.
Not a
traditional panel, is it? I wonder if I can do something to jump-start it … maybe
bypass or reroute the pathways to make a direct connection. It seems almost to
be growing in there. Wait … I think I understand now….

Jake’s body was standing beside Rosemary as she and Zamara worked together. He watched as he placed his hands on the surface of the portal. It was dark now, and it reminded him somewhat of the xel’naga temple whose mystery had set his feet on the path that had led him here. He was not a religious man, but he felt a deep prayer weling up within him that soon this surface would thrum to new life, that his friends would make it through, that this mission would succeed—that he would live.