STARCRAFT™: LIBERTY’S CRUSADE Page 17

  Duke blinked again, then his face fell. “We need to stop the Protoss, then. I can send them a transmission telling those glowing buzzards to back off.”

  Mengsk ignored him and hit some other toggles. “Send Lieutenant Kerrigan with a strike force to engage the Protoss advance party. Captain Raynor and General Duke will stay behind with the command ship.”

  Raynor’s angry face, as red as the surface of Tarsonis, popped up on another screen. “First you sell out every person on this world to the Zerg, and now you’re asking us to go up against the Protoss? You are losing it. And you’re going to send Kerrigan down there with no backup?”

  Mengsk’s face had already changed from surprised agitation to calm reassurance. The reality bubble was disrupted, but not broken. Mike wondered how much more would be needed to ring down the entire facade the man projected. And what would happen once the mask dropped? Was there any center at all to the man to be revealed?

  Mike realized he could stay, poking and arguing, and maybe even getting an angry response out of the terrorist. Mengsk was starting to look as though he might be at the end of his tether, but he was right about one thing: Michael Liberty had given up trying to save Arcturus Mengsk’s soul.

  And there were other, more deserving recipients of his aid.

  Mike started for the lift. Behind him, Mengsk was saying calmly, “I have absolute confidence in Kerrigan’s ability to hold off the Protoss.”

  The lift doors closed as Raynor’s voice said, “This is bullsh—” And then Mike was dropping down to where, he hoped, Raynor had gathered some allies.

  And despite himself, he hoped that Kerrigan had changed her mind and would be there as well.

  There were about two dozen men in Raynor’s barracks. Some were already strapped into their battle armor. Others were hastily suiting up. Raynor was at the comm unit.

  Kerrigan was not there in body. Instead her voice, tinny over the wrist-mounted receiver, bounced upward through the room.

  “But you don’t owe him this!” said Raynor. “Hell, I’ve saved your butt plenty of—”

  Kerrigan interrupted him. “Jimmy, drop the knight-in-shining-armor routine. It suits you sometimes. Just not . . .”

  She paused for a moment, as if reconsidering her words. “. . . not now,” she said. She sounded tired and worn. Almost defeated. “I don’t need to be rescued. I know what I’m doing. Once we’ve dealt with the Protoss, we can do something about the Zerg.”

  She took a deep breath. “Arcturus will come around,” she said, but she sounded to Mike as though she didn’t hold out much hope. “I know he will.”

  Raynor’s lips were a thin line framed by his sandy blond beard. “I hope you’re right, darlin’ . . . Good hunting.”

  He closed the link and looked up at Mike.

  “We’re going after her,” said Mike. A flat statement of fact.

  “You bet your ass we are. Suit up. Bring your gear. We may not be welcome back here afterwards.”

  Mike slipped into one of the empty combat suits. “Mengsk screwed up in one other place,” he said, his hands now flying automatically over the fittings and seals. “Once Kerrigan engages the Protoss, they’re going to treat us as hostiles. All of us. And there’s a lot of Protoss hardware floating around in the system right now, orbiting Tarsonis.”

  Raynor grunted agreement as he ran the check systems on his own suit. He had patched up most of the damage inflicted by Duke earlier, but Mike noticed that some of the telltales were still flashing a nasty yellow warning beneath his visor.

  “So we have to dodge Protoss birds as well as Zerg,” said Raynor. “It’s never easy around here.”

  “That’s why we love the challenge,” Mike said, more to himself than to anyone else. He hefted the knapsack of stolen data and, on the spur of the moment, shoved his old coat, the gift from the newsroom, on top. It had been singed by laser fire and spattered with lood and less recognizable fluids, and baked under foreign suns. It was tattered and ragged and bleached.

  A lot like myself, Mike thought, shoving the coat down hard into the backpack, making everything fit. There was nothing else he wanted from the locker. He hoisted the sack, slung it across the back of his armor, and followed Raynor out.

  The ship had gone to red alert with the first appearance of the Protoss, and now Raynor’s men moved through crimson-lit hallways to the dropship bays. Mike could feel the g-forces through the deck plates; the big command ship was weaving through something, but he could not tell if it was debris or enemy fire.

  “Think we can get off the ship?” Mike asked as they stepped into the landing bay.

  “Yeah,” said Raynor. “The dropship pilots are good old boys. They aren’t afraid of Duke’s wrath, or anything else for that matter. They can always say I threatened them into bringing us down.”

  “They may not be afraid of my wrath, but you should be,” said General Duke from the shadows to one side.

  The lights flashed from red to yellow, and Mike saw Duke standing there among the dropships with two squads of marines. They had their weapons aimed at Raynor’s men. Duke was cradling his own weapon, a borrowed gauss rifle, in his off hand, his right hand hanging uselessly at his side.

  “Going somewhere, boy?” said Duke, a hearty smile appearing above the sealing rim of his helmet. There was still dried blood at the corner of his mouth. Perhaps he thought it was a badge of honor, Mike thought, or a slight to be avenged.

  “We’re going after Kerrigan,” said Raynor. “She needs backup, regardless of what Mengsk says.”

  “That girl needs what Mengsk says she needs,” Duke drawled. “But it’s nice of you to go to the effort. Now I have solid proof of mutiny, and I can provide the traitors to go with it.”

  Mike scanned the marines. They were all neurally resocialized and, worse yet, already pumped to the gills with stims. Their eyes were practically pupiless. In this state they were effectively hard-wired into Duke’s nervous system. Once the general gave the command, they would automatically jump, or fire, or drop for twenty pushups, without thinking twice.

  So the solution would be to keep the general from giving that order.

  “Mengsk would be very disappointed if you killed us,” Mike said.

  Duke laughed. “I’ll just throw one of his old quotes back at him: ‘It’s easier to seek forgiveness than to gain permission.’ Now, you boys with Raynor, you drop the weapons now and surrender. I might even let you live if you do.”

  Raynor didn’t move. Behind him, Mike could hear some of their rangers slowly laying their rifles on the deck.

  Then the Hyperion pitched to one side, hard. Something big had slammed into its side. The marines, in their bottom-heavy boots, rocked in position, and Duke’s aim was thrown off for a moment.

  When he could bring his weapon back around, Raynor had his own rifle unslung and ready.

  “This just gets better and better,” Duke said, smiling through yellowed, peg-like teeth.

  “I don’t think you have the guts,” said Raynor.

  “You so much as link, boy, and my men will fill you with so much metal you can run a scrap drive. Now drop your weapon by three. One . . . Two . . .”

  There was a high-pitched whine, and Duke’s left shoulder exploded in a shower of molten metal. Duke’s marines all jumped and brought their weapons around, but did not fire. They had been ordered to wait for the command.

  The general slowly dropped to his knees, his own weapon clattering to the ground. His armor hissed as locking rings isolated the wounded shoulder and medpacks pumped narcotics into the general’s blood-stream.

  Smoke curled from the barrel of the needle-gun. Mike thumbed the hammer of the weapon back, and another round clicked into place.

  “I think it’s time you just shut up,” Mike said to the general.

  “I can have you burned where you stand,” said Duke. The meds in the armor were already taking effect, and his voice was slurred.

  Mike took two steps forward
and said, “Go ahead. You’ll go first. Give the order, General.”

  Duke hesitated, his eyes unfocusing for a moment as the drugs hit his system hard. He was striving to stay awake on sheer cussedness.

  “You don’t have the guts,” he managed.

  “Try me,” said Mike. “I’ve finally learned to shoot a human target.”

  There was silence in the landing bay for a moment, then Raynor said, “Men, pick up your weapons. We’re moving out.”

  Raynor’s men picked up their guns and threaded their way through the rebel marines. Without Duke’s specific orders, they would not fire on possibly friendly targets. Raynor paused by Mike and the kneeling Duke.

  “Go ahead,” said Mike. “I’ll catch up.”

  Duke’s face was ashen, and his eyes were milky and pupilless. No rational thought was left, only hatred and cowardice warring in his mind. He hissed, “If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”

  “Then get a good look at my back,” said Mike, “because that’s the only way you’ll get a shot off in time.”

  Then the drugs took full control and Duke pitched backward.

  Mike turned to the zombie-faced marines. “Get him to sickbay pronto, and clear the bay for liftoff.” The marines managed a grunt and left, taking their fallen leader with them.

  Mike ran for the dropship. The engines were already starting to whine as he charged up the gang-plank.

  Raynor had been right about the dropship pilots. The pilot had the coordinates punched in and clearances made before Mike had gotten on board. Now the atmosphere was evacuated and the dropship pitched out of the Hyperion and into the chaos beyond.

  Space was being ripped apart all around them. The Hyperion was flying through a debris field, pieces still burning as the air bled out of a pierced hull, the remains of some other human ship that had fallen in the path of the Protoss. Energy beams sliced through the vacuum, blistering the retinas of observers.

  Mike slid into the nav/comm console behind the pilot’s rig.

  “I’m going to try to raise Kerrigan’s unit,” Mike said.

  “She’s not going to like it,” Raynor said grimly, then added, “Do it anyway.”

  The huge carriers of the Protoss slid like great beasts through space, their attendant flocks of fighters dancing around them like golden flies. Crescent-shaped ships corkscrewed toward the planet, and needle-like fighters and scouts made of silver and gemstones lanced through the debris field.

  Behind them, the Hyperion itself was burning in a half-dozen spots. Nothing major, but at the moment Mengsk would be worried about more than just a group of AWOL former supporters. The battlecruiser’s Yamato cannon split the sky with repeated shots, breaking up units of Protoss fighters.

  “We got more company!” said the dropship pilot. “Strap in and hold tight!”

  Now the Zerg were rising from Tarsonis. The great flying cannons, orange with purplish wings, came aloft and splattered in the hundreds against the Protoss carriers. They were followed by the larger flying crab-things, which seemed less affected by the small fighters than the mutalisks were. As Mike watched, one of the crab-things flew into the intake of a carrier, and the entire Protoss ship went up in a ball of blue-white flame.

  A pair of the winged mutalisks noticed the dropship and banked toward them, their gullets vomiting forth coiling globules of bilious matter.

  The rebels had precious little in the way of defense on the dropships, and the pilot cursed and tried to bank away from the intercept course.

  They weren’t going to make it, Mike realized, and braced for the impact with the Zerg acid-spittle.

  A trio of bolts ripped the attacking mutalisks into organic tatters, shredding their wings with laser fire. A trio of A-17 Wraiths swooped through the remains of the Zerg, and Mike caught a glimpse of Confederate insignia on the pylons of the ships. Then they were gone as well, looking for new allies and new targets.

  “Any luck?” Raynor asked, leaning over Mike’s shoulder.

  “Lots of traffic right now,” Mike snapped. “Hold on. Got a lock. She’s broadcasting. I’m putting it on the screen.”

  “This is Kerrigan.” Her face on the screen was now drawn and haggard. Frightened, Mike thought, and a cold chill ran through him. “We’ve neutralized the Protoss ground units, but there’s a wave of Zerg advancing on this position. We need immediate evac.”

  Another screen winked into existence, and Mengsk’s face fluttered into view. Something was sparking erratically near that face, causing him to appear and disappear like a Cheshire cat. “Belay that order,” the rebel leader spat. “We’re moving out.”

  Raynor punched the microphone button. “What? You’re not just going to leave them?”

  If Mengsk had heard Raynor’s comment, he gave no outward sign. Given the interference, it was likely he hadn’t heard. Instead he said, “All ships prepare to move away from Tarsonis on my mark.”

  A burst of static broke up Kerrigan’s signal. Something big had hit near her. Then she was back. “Uh, boys? How about that evac?”

  “Damn you, Arcturus,” Raynor said through gritted teeth. “Don’t do this.”

  Mengsk continued to fade in and out. Finally he came in, crisp and clear. “Signal the fleet and take us out of orbit. Now!”

  “Arcturus?” said Kerrigan, in comparison to Mengsk now nothing more than a ghost on the screen. “Jim? Mike? What the hell’s going on up there . . . ?”

  Then the fog of war swallowed her entirely, and the screens registered nothing but static.

  Raynor pounded the nav/comm console in frustration.

  “You break it, you bought it,” said the pilot, throwing the dropship into a tight spiral to break off pursuit by a pair of crab-things. With steel nerves the pilot dropped the fleeing shuttle beneath a Protoss scout, and the crab-things set up to attack it instead.

  Mike tracked the location of Kerrigan’s broadcast and fed the coordinates into the helm. The ship rocked and swayed onto its new course.

  Around them a hundred new stars were born and died in a matter of instants. The greatest danger now was debris from the stricken ships, and the pilot cursed a couple times as he had to lurch suddenly to avoid catching a large piece in the hull.

  Finally they were in the atmosphere itself, the screens tinged orange from the reentry fires. Most of the battle was now above them. They only had to worry about surface units now.

  But as above, so below. They were coming in low across the rubble-strewn surface of the planet itself. The great cities of Tarsonis were burning, the broad plazas filled with debris and the sunward spires now nothing more than a set of jagged, erratic teeth. The glass of the great buildings had been completely shattered, leaving only the twisted wreckage of the steel skeletons beneath. One great swath had been leveled through three blocks, ending in the crippled wreckage of a Protoss carrier, venting unearthly radiation from every broken seam.

  The buildings decreased in size as the rebels flew toward the farmlands and suburbs, but the devastation was still severe. Mike could see craters where ships had augured into the surface. There were sweeping fires here as well, consuming homes and fields, and moving among them there were warriors from all sides.

  Now there were new buildings as well along the scorched landscape—those of the alien invaders. The creep was everywhere, and deadly poppy-headed structures uncoiled toward the sky. Nests surrounded with pulsing eggs dotted the landscape.

  There were other structures, too, among the debris. These were golden, with impossible buttresses and sweeping shells, and mirrored surfaces of unshatterable glass. The Protoss were setting up their defenses on Tarsonis.

  Perhaps they thought there was something here worth saving, Mike thought. That means they had more faith in humanity that Mengsk did.

  The ground beneath them roiled with the Zerg, and among them, like shining knights, the Protoss warriors strode, leaving a wake of dead, oozing bodies. Four-legged mechanical spiders crawled through the ruins, a
nd huge things that looked like armor-plated caterpillars assaulted the Zerg hives. Lance-thin fighters strafed the hulking scythe-Zergs that swept the Protoss warriors aside like a farmer threshing wheat.

  Mike said, “We should be close now.”

  The radio scratched and spat, and a male voice, young and frightened, came on, “. . . looking for an evac. We got civilians and wounded. We can see your craft. You got room on that tub?”

  Raynor was on the radio. “Lieutenant Kerrigan, are you there?”

  “No Kerrigan, sir,” came the crackling response. “But we’re really hurting. The Zerg are everywhere, and coming in with another assault. If we don’t leave now, we’re not leaving.” There was a tremor of fear in the voice.

  Mike looked at Raynor. The large man’s face was unreadable, a clay sculpture of the real thing. Finally he said, “We’re going down. Tell them we’re coming.”

  Mike nodded and said, “But Kerrigan . . .”

  “I know,” said Raynor, and over the background hiss of the comm unit Mike could swear he heard the sound of a heart breaking. The former lawman took a deep breath and added, “Mengsk would abandon these people like the rest. We won’t. I hope that’s why we’re better than he is.”

  The dropship grounded itself at the edge of a school-turned-bunker, and refugees had begun streaming out even as the pilot hit the retros. They were led by a lanky kid who wore the tatters of a combat suit. Some volunteer from a Fringe World for Mengsk’s rebellion. Mike had never seen him before.

  The kid saluted Raynor and said, “Damn glad to see you. Heard the bug-out order, but no one came for us. There are Zerg all along the northern flank. Some Protoss hit them a while back, bought us a breathing spell, but I think the bugs are coming back. The creep’s halfway here already, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  Raynor just said, “What unit is this?”

  The youngster blinked. “We’re not any unit at all, sir. There are about a half-dozen units, or what’s left of them, that holed up here. Confederate and rebel both, sir. When the Zerg started swarming and the Protoss started blasting, it was every human for himself.”