Shadow of the Xel'Naga Read online

  “I've always got repair work to do,” she said.

  Outside, the storm reached a crescendo. Lars and Octavia sat together in weary silence, just waiting out the disaster. “Do you want to play cards?” he asked.

  Then all the lights inside their dwelling went out, leaving them in pitch blackness lit only by flares from the laser-lightning.

  “Not tonight,” she said.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE QUEEN OF BLADES.

  Her name had once been Sarah Kerrigan, back when she'd been something else . . . back when she'd been human.

  Back when she'd been weak.

  She sat back within the pulsing organic walls of the burgeoning Zerg Hive. Monstrous creatures moved about in the shadows, guided by her every thought, functioning for a greater purpose.

  With her mental powers and her control over these awful and destructive creatures, a transformed Sarah Kerrigan had established the new Hive on the ashen ruins of the planet Char. It was a gray world, blasted and still smoldering from potent cosmic radiation. This planet had long been a battlefield. Only the strongest could survive here.

  The vicious Zerg race knew how to adapt, how to survive, and Sarah Kerrigan had done the same to become one of them. Raised as a psi-talented Ghost, a telepathically powered espionage and intelligence agent for the Terran Confederacy, she had been captured by the Zerg Overmind and transformed.

  Her skin, toughened with armor-polymer cells, glowed an oily, silvery green. Her yellow lambent eyes were surrounded by dark patches of skin that could have been bruises or shadows. Her hair had become Medusa spines—jointed segments like the sharp legs of a venomous spider. Each spike writhed as plans continuously burned through her brain. Her face still had a delicate beauty that just might lull a human victim into a moment of hesitation—giving her enough time to strike.

  When she caught a reflection of herself, Sarah Kerrigan occasionally recalled what it had been like to be human, to be lovely—in a human sort of way— and that she had once even begun to love a man named Jim Raynor, who was also very much in love with her. Human emotions and weaknesses.

  Jim Raynor. She tried not to remember him. She would have no scruples now against killing the burly, good-natured man with his walrus mustache, if such was required of her. She did not regret what had happened to her, since she had a more important mission now.

  Sarah Kerrigan was much more than just another Zerg.

  The various Zerg minions had been adapted and mutated from other species that they had infested during their history of conquest. Drawing from a sweeping catalog of DNA and physical attributes, the Zerg could live anywhere. The swarms were as much at home on bleak Char as they had been on the lush Terran colony world of Mar Sara.

  A truly magnificent species. The Zerg swarm would sweep across the worlds in the galaxy, consuming and infesting every place they touched. Because of their nature, the Zerg could suffer overwhelming catastrophic losses and still keep coming, keep devouring.

  But in the recent war against the Protoss and the Terran Confederacy, the almighty Overmind had been destroyed. And that had nearly spelled the end for the Zerg swarms.

  At first, their victory had seemed secure as the Zerg infested the two Terran fringe colony worlds of Chau Sara and Mar Sara. Their numbers grew while the rest of the Confederacy remained oblivious to the danger. But then a Protoss war fleet—never before seen by humans—had sterilized the face of Chau Sara. Though the unexpected attack obliterated the Zerg infestation there (and also slaughtered millions of innocent human colonists), the Terran Confederacy had responded immediately to this unprovoked aggression. The Protoss commander had not had the stomach to destroy the second world of Mar Sara, and so the Zerg infestation grew there unchecked.

  Eventually, the Zerg minions had wiped out the Terran Confederate capital of Tarsonis. And Sarah

  Kerrigan, human Ghost, a covert psi-powered operative, had been betrayed by her fellow military comrades and infested by the Zerg. Recognizing her incredible telepathic powers, the Overmind had decided to use her for something special. . . .

  But then, on the nearly conquered Protoss home planet of Aiur, a Protoss warrior had killed the Overmind in a suicidal explosion that made a hero of him and decapitated the Zerg Hive.

  Leaving Sarah Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, to pick up the pieces.

  Now the control of the vicious, swarming race lay in her clawed hands. She faced the tremendous challenge of transforming the planet into a new nexus for the perfect Zerg race. The swarms would rise again.

  Under her guidance, a few surviving Drones had metamorphosed into Hatcheries. Kerrigan's Zerg followers had found and delivered enough minerals and resources to convert those Hatcheries into more sophisticated Lairs . . . and then into complete Hives. With the numerous new larvae generated by the Hatcheries, she had created Creep Colonies, Extractors, Spawning Pools. Before long, the organic mat of Zerg Creep spread over the charred surface of the planet. The nourishing substance offered food and energy for the various minions of the new colony.

  It was everything she needed to restore the wounded, but never defeated, Zerg race.

  Kerrigan sat surrounded by the light. Her mind was filled with details reported to her by the dozens of surviving Overlords, huge minds that carried separate swarms on missions dictated by their Queen of Blades. She did not relax, she never slept. There was too much work to do, too many plans to lay . . . too much revenge to achieve.

  Sarah Kerrigan flexed her long-fingered hands, extended the rapier-like claws that could disembowel an opponent— any opponent, from the treacherous rebel Arcturus Mengsk, who had betrayed her, to General Edmund Duke, whose ineptitude had led to her eventual capture and transformation.

  She looked down at one claw, thinking of how she could draw it across the throat of the jowly iron-edged general and watch his fresh hot blood spill out. Though they had not intended it as a favor, Edmund Duke and Arcturus Mengsk had made it possible for her to become the Queen of Blades, to reach the full power and fury of her potential. How could she be angry with them for that?

  Still . . . she wanted to kill them.

  In the Hive around her, Zerglings moved about, each the size of a dog she had once owned as a young girl. They were insect-shelled creatures shaped like lizards, with clacking claws and long fangs. Zerglings were fast little killing machines that could descend like piranha onto an enemy army and tear the soldiers to pieces.

  Sarah Kerrigan found them beautiful, just as a mother would view any of her precious children. She stroked the gleaming greenish hide of the nearest Zergling. In response, it ran its claws over her own nearly indestructible skin, then dusted her with the feathery touch of its fangs, a caress that might have been fondness. . . .

  Hideous Hydralisks patrolled the perimeter of the colony, some of the most fearsome of the Zerg minions. Flying, crablike Guardians soared overhead, ready to spew acid that would destroy any ground-based threat.

  The Zerg swarm was safe and secure.

  Sarah Kerrigan wasn't worried, and certainly not afraid, but she was careful. She moved about restlessly on powerful muscles, though she could see everything through the eyes of her minions if she chose.

  Along with her remaining human ambition and the emotional sting of betrayal, she also felt the relentless conquering urge that came from her new Zerg genetics.

  In aeons long past, the mysterious and ancient race of the Xel'Naga had created the Zerg race, their perfect design relentless and pure. Kerrigan smiled at the delicious irony of it. The Zerg had been so perfect they had eventually turned on their creators and infested the Xel'Naga themselves.

  Now that the leadership of all the swarms was in her own hands, Kerrigan promised herself that she would lead the Zerg to the pinnacle of their destiny.

  But when she sat back in her Hive and watched the swarming creatures going about their business, gathering resources and preparing for war, the Queen of Blades felt the tiniest remnant of human sympat
hy stirring in her heart.

  She felt sorry for anyone who got in her way.

  CHAPTER 3

  AS IF TAUNTING THEM WITH THE WEATHER'S capriciousness, the next morning on Bhekar Ro dawned bright and clear. It reminded Octavia of the photo-images the original survey crew had shown her grandparents to lure them and the first group of desperate settlers here.

  Maybe it wasn't all lies after all. . . .

  As she and Lars cracked open the door seal of their dwelling, a trickle of rainwater ran down from the entryway, pattering onto the soft ground. High overhead, the angular shape of a glider hawk cruised along, searching for the flooded-out bodies of drowned lizards.

  Octavia trudged across the drying muck to the robo-harvester. With a shake of her short brown curls, she set to work. She ran an experienced eye over the hull and noticed dozens of new hail craters pounded into the metal, making it look like the rind of a sourange. Of course, nobody on Bhekar Ro cared much about shiny paint jobs, as long as the equipment worked. She was relieved to find that the storm had done no serious damage to the machinery.

  Up and down the town streets, ragged colonists woke up and emerged from their houses to assess the damage, as they had done so many times before. From a nearby dwelling, Abdel and Shayna Bradshaw were already squabbling, dismayed at the amount of repair work they would have to do. From across the street Kiernan and Kirsten Warner waved to Cyn McCarthy, who trotted toward the mayor's house at the center of town, an optimistic smile on her freckled face in spite of the disaster. Good-natured Cyn had a habit of offering her help wherever it might be needed, though the copper-haired young woman often forgot to do what she had promised.

  Because the rough weather came at unpredictable times, with no identifiable storm season, the settlers had a continuous battle to repair what was broken. They constantly planted the cleared fields, rotating crops from whip-barley to triticale-wheat to salad-moss, hoping to harvest more than they lost, striving to get two steps ahead before they had to take one step back again.

  Among the casualties of the devastating spore plague had been four of the colony's best scientists. Cyn McCarthy's husband, Wyl, a second-generation chemical engineer, had been one of them. For the first decades, the scientists had worked with the planet's resources and environment, concocting biological modifications of the crops and animals to increase their chances of survival. Free Haven had been stable for a while, the arable land slowly increasing.

  But the deaths of these educated people left the rest of the untrained settlers too busy with simple survival to learn any new specialties. The colonists went about their tasks as farmers, mechanics, and miners, their daylight hours filled with urgent matters that left no time for exploration or expansion. The general consensus, voiced by Mayor Nikolai, was that investigation and scientific pursuits were a luxury they could return to at some later date.

  “Any real damage?” Lars asked his sister as she finished her inspection of the big robo-harvester.

  Octavia rapped her knuckles on the pitted and scarred door. “A few more scrapes. Just cosmetic.”

  “Beauty marks. Adds character.” Lars opened the door, and melted hailwater ran out of the cab and down through the flat metal treads. “We need to get out to the Back Forty and check on those seismographs and the mining stations. That quake hit them pretty hard.”

  Octavia smiled, knowing her brother well. “And, since we're out there, you'll want to see if the tremors uncovered anything.”

  He gave her that grin again. “Just part of the job. We registered some pretty hefty seismic jolts. Could be significant. And you know none of the other settlers is going to bother taking a look.”

  The decades-old weather stations and seismographs the scientists had set up at the valley perimeter continued to take readings, and occasionally Lars would retrieve the data. For the most part, the settlers stayed within their safe cultivated valley, growing enough food to stay alive, mining enough minerals to repair their facilities, but never expanding beyond their capabilities.

  In the past, other colonists had tried to establish settlements beyond the main valley. Some had moved away from Free Haven, searching for better farmland. But one by one each of those distant farms had fallen to blight, plague, or natural disaster, and the few survivors had made their way back to the colony town in defeat.

  Octavia climbed aboard the robo-harvester with Lars as he powered up the engines. She swung the door shut just as the thick treads began to move. Other settlers set out in their own vehicles to inspect their fields, clearly anticipating the worst.

  Octavia and Lars took the robo-harvester far out toward the foothills. Lars had the true pioneer spirit, always wanting to find new mineral deposits, productive Vespene geysers, fertile land. He would be happy just to make discoveries, while Octavia hoped to fulfill her parents' dream and actually transform Bhekar Ro into a place where they could be proud to live. Someday.

  As the big vehicle trundled across the valley floor, she could see that many of the fragile crops had been hammered by the storm. The hail and sonic thunder had battered tall stalks to the mucky ground or bruised unripened fruit; the laser-lightning had set stunted orchards on fire.

  A few hardy farmers were already out trying to salvage what they could. Gandhi and Liberty Ryan, sweating in their overalls, worked hard to erect protective bubbles over the seedlings, assisted by their adopted hand, Brutus Jensen, and three children of their own. The family members were too tired even to talk to one another as they went about their labors. Brutus Jensen managed to give them a half-hearted wave, while the Ryans could barely nod.

  Kilometers farther along, the road dwindled to little-more than a path marked on a navigation screen. They paused briefly at the far edge of the officially settled area.

  Lars kept the robo-harvester's engine running as he called out in the direction of a shack and some storehouses. “Hey, Rastin! Get out of that puttering refinery and hook us up so we can fill our tanks. Or have you been sniffing too much Vespene gas?”

  The lanky old prospector strode around the hissing and throbbing stations he had built around the cluster of chemical geysers where he had staked his claim. Old Blue, his mastiff-sized dog, came out from his sleeping hole under the corrugated metal porch.

  The dog's lips were curled back and his sky-blue fur bristled as he growled, but Octavia climbed out of the robo-harvester and clapped her hands. “You don't fool me, you grouch of a dog.”

  With a happy bark, Old Blue bounded toward her, his thick tail wagging. She patted his head and high shoulders, trying unsuccessfully to keep his muddy paws off her jumpsuit.

  Rastin and Lars exchanged complaints and insults—because that was the way the old prospector conducted business—but Rastin wasted no time filling up their vehicle. Octavia had never been able to decide whether the codger was an efficient worker or just anxious to get rid of any visitors so he could go back to his solitude.

  One of the few surviving original settlers, Rastin had been independent and alone on Bhekar Ro for forty years. He had always wanted to get away from the Terran Confederacy, and might actually have preferred an empty habitable world all his own; the small group on this planet had been the best he could do.

  Rastin lived in an often-repaired shack made out of spare components. He had erected his refinery over a cluster of four Vespene geysers, one of which was already played out. The remaining trio of geysers produced enough of the fuel to meet the colony's modest needs.

  Having fueled the robo-harvester, the old prospector sent them off with a gruff wave that looked very much like a gesture of disgust. Octavia patted Old Blue's big head again before she stepped back up onto the vehicle's muddy treads. The dog bounded off with the grace of a jumping mule as it spotted a hairy rodent dashing between broken rocks.

  Rastin went back to tinkering with his equipment, grumbling because after the earthquake another of the geysers had stopped producing. He delivered a swift kick to the pumping station, but even th
is tried-and-true repair procedure did not wake the geyser.

  Leaving Rastin's homestead, Lars and Octavia ascended into the steep foothills toward the boundary ridge. The terrain became much rougher. Their Back Forty extended far past where the potential cropland had been demarcated by the cooperative families. Out here, the mineral and resource rights had been up for grabs to anyone with the spare time or ambition to increase their acreage. So Lars and Octavia had staked out a claim, in addition to the fields their parents and grandparents had tilled.

  As the morning grew warmer and the orange sun climbed into the sky, bleaching away shadows, the robo-harvester clawed up a steep ridge, following paths that only Lars had ever driven. “Our mining stations are still off-line,” he said, his voice flat. “And that's the most I can say.”

  As he brought the robo-harvester to a halt, Octavia could see to her dismay that the automated installations were tilted on their anchor pads, obviously damaged and unable to function.

  “Go to it, Octavia—you're the expert.”

  With a sigh, she descended from the vehicle and hunkered down to see how much repair the mining stations would require. She studied the control panel of the processing turret, surprised at how many red warning lights were illuminated at the same time.

  Under normal operation, the clunky machines would wander over the rocky slopes, taking mineral samples and marking desirable deposits. Then processing turrets would be erected so that the mining and extraction activities could continue until a valuable vein had been processed, while the mechanized scout continued to search for more sites.

  Lars left his sister to her work. “I'm going up to the top of the ridge to see about those seismographs. Maybe I can fix them myself.”

  Octavia suppressed a disbelieving snort. “Be my guest.”