Shadow Hunters (30 page)

“Watch.”

Recovering, Jake could only stare at his friend in awe. What was Adun
managing to do? What kind of breakthrough in psionic power had he just
achieved?

The dark templar were seemingly as confused as anyone, but they understood
protection, and they moved forward into the vessel. When the last ones had
nearly made it through—a party of elderly protoss and small children—the
curving, graceful doors of the ancient xel’naga vessel began to close.

Adun stood, back arched, hands up to the sky, eyes now open. He was swathed
entirely in the radiant blue cloud, and as Jake watched, Adun’s armor, too,
began to glow.

And his hands … and his face—

Blue light everywhere, glorious, intense, too much to behold. Jake had to look
away but he could not bear to, could only stare in stunned disbelief and wonder
as Adun himself glowed like a star in the night sky, bright, magnificently bright;
but stars that burned so brightly always—

“—burn themselves out,” Jake breathed.

Bright, too bright; Jake squinted, but he saw what happened. Saw, and for the
rest of his life wondered at it. Tried to understand it, and failed.

Adun’s form glowed as brightly, as truly, as a star falling to the ground,
transient in its glory, but breathtaking. For a moment, the light came from him,
but as Jake watched, it began to consume the executor. Before Jake’s horrified
gaze his friend began to disintegrate. And a moment later, he was gone.

A mental cry of shock and anguish went up among the assembled templar and
Conclave. And although Jake did not feel it, he knew that the dark templar
were stunned and confused and in pain as well. The blue glow that had taken
Adun with it when it departed was gone, and after a few moments, some of the
appalled Conclave channeled their grief toward the beings that, Jake realized,
they believed had caused his death.

“Go!” he shouted to the dark templar. “Hurry!”

They snapped out of their paralysis and the last few ducked quickly through the
door before further harm could befall them. The door closed right before the
first rush of angry Conclave had made it up the ramp, at once sealing the exiles
safely away from the anger of their former brethren and entombing them. Their
destiny lay in the hands of the gods now.

Nothing was left of Adun’s body. Jake reached into the Khala, frantically
searching for his old friend, trying to fathom what had happened. For the first
time, there was no trace of Adun’s bright and shining spirit in the Khala. He
was—gone. Utterly, inexplicably gone, and already the stories were beginning
to grow around him, mere moments after his—death? Ascension? What in the
world could they even call it?

Jake bowed his head, even as the ship lifted off, bearing the dark templar away
from the only home they had ever had and into the face of the unknown. Taking
with them, Jake suspected, the truth and the true greatness of what Adun had
done.

“Adun, my friend … wil this world ever see your like again?”

The grief Jake felt was not entirely that of Vetraas or the long-ago Conclave. Much of it was his own. Adun had not made the choices he had easily or lightly; he had struggled with his conscience and done the best he could to save innocent lives, going against a code of forthrightness in order to attempt to teach others how to integrate into society without compromising their beliefs.

Jake understood now why Zamara had shown him this. He was limited in his thinking.

He’d thought that merely by having the protoss conjure up the storms that had once devastated their world—because every one of them had more experience than the dark templar—al would be wel. But bearing witness to Adun’s final act of heroism had put that idea in context. Not only had Adun tried to bring together traditional and dark protoss by teaching the dark protoss how to use their psionic abilities, at the very last, he had understood that both types of power were necessary. Both types of
protoss.

The storms alone weren’t enough.

There was no time for planning, or first attempts. They would have to succeed the first time or fail spectacularly, both Forged and Those Who Endure, human and protoss and preserver together. The only thing they had going for them right now was the fact that neither Valerian nor Ethan wanted them dead. They would have to defeat Ulrezaj, or at the very least drive him back enough so that everyone could safely escape.

I cannot guide this. My attention is needed here—I am close to awakening the
gate to Shakuras. And your mind—cannot handle another experience with the
Khala without my guidance.

They will have to do it themselves,
Jake sent back.
They are protoss.

He sent the thought to the protoss, complete with the memories of Adun and Vetraas.

The entire exchange took a heartbeat. He felt their stunned awe, their anger at the deception, but now was not the time to react. Now was the time to do what Adun had done—embrace the two types of protoss psionic powers, the wild and the regimented, the dark and the light.

The Forged, with the exception of Alzadar, were stil suffering from the dampening effects of the Sundrop. They could not enter the Khala. They could share thoughts, as the dark templar could, but until they had cleansed themselves of the drug they could not share emotions.

But they had also been changed by the Sundrop. They, like the dark templar had done so long ago, potentialy could summon storms of devastating power.

Those Who Endure would be their guides, their lifelines, their protectors. They could draw strength and calm and support from one another as they linked to the Forged to shield them from the storms once they were created. They could not individualy use both types of power, as Adun had, but as a group, as a united species—

The earth trembled and nearly everyone, zerg and protoss and terran alike, lost their footing. Ulrezaj was nearly upon them and Jake felt wind and electricity stir his hair as the atmospheric effects from Ulrezaj’s outer nimbus reached them. Dark tendrils of shadow began to snake across the ground, and protoss and zerg jumped away to avoid them. Those that did not …

A little time to prepare,
begged both Alzadar and Ladranix, but Jake was implacable.

“There’s no time!” he screamed, reverting to habit in this moment and shouting the words aloud as wel as thinking them. “Start figuring it out
now!”

VALERIAN STARED AT THE JUMPY IMAGES THAT were coming in on the view screen. He had patched in feed from six different ships, including the one that carried his ghost. On the screens now was something that looked like—like radiant darkness.

“What the hel
is
that?” he demanded of Starke.

“Sir, I—can’t rightly tel you.” Starke’s voice was shaking and uncertain. “It is extremely psionicaly powerful, and the energy readings from it are off the scale.”

Valerian could see that. Spurts of dark energy seemed to erupt from the being like magma, and anything that was in their path—even in their general vicinity—was destroyed. Including one of his ships, he surmised, as one of the screens suddenly went dark.

“It’s—
aaah!”

In al the time Valerian had known the man, Devon Starke had never raised his voice above a calm, reasoned pitch. To hear him cry out in pain startled the youth. “Devon

—what’s happening?”

“He—it—them—he doesn’t see me as a specific threat, or else I’d be”—a growl of pain—“dead.”

Valerian watched the swathe of destruction this monstrous thing was causing and did not doubt that statement for a second. “Stay out of its way. You’re too valuable to lose.”

“Aye, sir.”

“What is it targeting? Is it after Jake?” Valerian stared raptly at the figure, a glorious swirl of death and darkness and destruction. Valerian thought it was a very good thing that his father wasn’t present. Mengsk Senior would probably happily sacrifice Ramsey and the protoss entity inside him in exchange for somehow being able to trap and harness this dark storm of energy. It would make a powerful weapon.

“Everything, sir. He’s fighting the protoss and the zerg alike. He’s moving directly for the warp gate, though. My guess is that he wants Ramsey, just like the rest of us.”

That day when he had sat with Jake Ramsey in his study, discussing the temple and toasting the discovery of wonder, Valerian had never anticipated it coming to this—a bitter, bloody fight between three races and a monster on an al-but-dead world. He had not yet developed his father’s calousness when it came to sending men to die, but gave the orders even as he felt a wave of regret.

He would make it up to Jacob Ramsey. Somehow.

“See to it that the thing doesn’t get him” was al he told Starke.

* * *

Kerrigan’s voice in Ethan’s mind cracked like a whip. She was surprised, and angry at being surprised, and he quailed slightly at her wrath. “Yet nothing so simple as that, I think. Where did it come from?”

“I know not, my queen, but we are engaged in battle with it now.”

“Is it attacking you or the protoss?”

“It seems to be bearing down upon Ramsey and the gate,” Ethan confessed haltingly.

“It seems we al have an interest in the professor.”

“But there is only one faction that can prevail, and that must be ours. Use our forces fuly, my consort. We are fortunate in that it does not matter, nor do we care, how many of our soldiers fal, so long as we obtain our goal. The preserver inside him is valuable beyond measure to me. She must not be alowed to die here.”

“She shal not,” Ethan vowed. His queen’s consciousness left him, flitting away to other things, other minions, and he sagged slightly.

She was his world. She had made him, improved him, re-created him to serve and love her, and so he did. Part of him knew that he was not choosing this of his own volition, but he did not care. She was his queen, he adored her, he would die for her, and kiling for her was a joyful task.

* * *

“I have nearly completed my task as wel,” Zamara said. “Once I am finished, we wil have six minutes to get everyone through before a self-disabling sequence is employed.”

“Whoa, wait, we’ve only got six minutes once it’s set?” Jake turned and looked out to where the battle was stil taking place. The realization suddenly hit him: There was no way that everyone was going to make it through. Many of his friends would die here.

Ladranix, of course, read his thoughts. “Four years ago I stood in this very spot, with Raynor, and Fenix, and dozens of my people, who stood to hold back the tide that threatened to wash away everything I loved. We have a saying, Jacob Ramsey: ‘My life for Aiur.’ I thought to give it then, but such was not my fate. I lived to help protect and defend those who could not protect themselves. But today I stand ready to fulfil that destiny, for I believe it to be mine.”

“Ladranix …” Jake was not in the Khala, not as the protoss were, but he did not have to be for the templar to feel his emotions.

“I can think of no greater honor than protecting a preserver, or of aiding my people.

Truly, I am glad that I did not die that day so that I might stand here at this moment.”

“I wil fight alongside you, as we have before,” said Alzadar. “I wil atone for what I have done. What I have unwittingly enabled. The obscenity that marches upon us now was fed in part by my hand. My servitude—my wiling, foolish, blind servitude—

aided him. I wil find redemption when my blood is spiled to stop him. I wish to greet the gods a templar again.”

“Brother,” said Ladranix, with deep sincerity, “you are already redeemed. But I understand. It wil be an honor to die with you.” He extended his hand.

“My life for Aiur,” said Alzadar.

“Our
lives for Aiur,” replied Ladranix simply.

With no more words, the two protoss hurried to join the others. Jake looked after them for a long moment, then turned to see Rosemary watching them as wel. There was respect, admiration, and a hint of sorrow on her beautiful features.

Rotten time to fall in love,
he thought, then turned his attention to the gathering protoss.

There was in truth little time. The accidental alies of protoss, zerg, and Dominion were slowing Ulrezaj, but only for the moment. Debris from both Dominion and protoss vessels, crushed or smoking or actively burning, littered the ground, bits and pieces of metal entwined with chunks of flesh from zerg mowed down in numbers almost too vast to comprehend. The remnants of Those Who Endure and the Forged clustered together as far back behind the fighting lines as possible, reaching out toward one another, physicaly joining hands as they mentaly began to link minds.

Jake didn’t know if it would work. Nor did Zamara, nor Ladranix, nor any of the others who, on his word—his, not even Zamara’s, honestly—were wiling to open themselves to the wildness they feared and mistrusted on such a deep level.

But Jacob, truly—there is little else we can do. There are insufficient numbers
for disciplined tactics to achieve much more than senseless death. The only
hope is the most desperate gambit. Your instincts were sound.

Could the templar control and direct the storms their Forged brethren were going to summon? Or would the energies spiral out of control, wreaking dreadful havoc upon the very people they were supposed to protect? There was no way of knowing, no way of teling—only the doing of it.