Chapter Seventy
One by one, the ten remaining members of Alpha and Sierra units moved down a long, enclosed corridor, silent as the countless tons of rock that hemmed them in on all sides. The Master Chief led the company, his keen eyes scanning the path ahead for any interruptions in the smooth, geometric lines of the octagonal passageway. The bland sameness of the space contrasted sharply with the frantic spasms of activity that crowded the short-range motion tracker of his helmet's HUD; masses of Zerg somewhere above or below, or the composition of the mountain and its unlikely interior structure, had rendered it useless. Similarly, the helmet's integrated flashlight sat inactive; lambent nodes embedded in the narrow corridor's walls cast the space in dusky, bluish light.
Behind him, Jacen, Tassadar, and their diminished escort of Alliance marines and Starfleet officers kept pace. Like the rest, the Jedi held his weapon at the ready, but his apprehension over their continued descent into Kerrigan's fortress was mitigated by simple curiosity. Jacen wasn't sure what he had expected the heart of the Zerg hive to look like, but he certainly hadn't imagined subtly-carved, mathematically-precise passageways and anterooms reminiscent of Coruscanti museums. Even the Federation members of the party seemed confused by the network's presence, and a passing scan of the Chief revealed an even stronger, if carefully restrained, sense of astonishment.
Next to the impending threat of the Swarm, however, the strange architecture seemed almost welcoming, and when the Spartan had guided them from the darkness of a larger passage into the almost claustrophobic area, no one had objected. The sudden illumination of the tunnel by some unseen trigger had seemed more comfort than threat; the further Jacen progressed, the more the Jedi felt as though the mountain's interior structure was quite disparate from its Zerg occupiers, and beyond even their dark mistress.
Perhaps it was just the twilight illumination and the steady, almost imperceptible hum that resonated from the plated floor. They seemed undeniably… permanent, more than any living being could be.
The Master Chief slowed to a stop, and the rest followed suit. Before them, the way was blocked by a sealed doorway. A pair of narrow windows was set in its surface, but all that was visible beyond them was the same eerie dusk that filled the corridor. Eight pairs of hands leveled blasters and phasers at the barrier, and the Spartan took a tentative step forward.
Obediently, the door split into three segments and vanished into the walls and ceiling, revealing a small, circular chamber adorned only by a single, central pillar.
"A dead end?" one of the Starfleet officers, Richardson, asked as the group filed into the room. The space was barely large enough to accommodate them all, and there appeared to be no other hatches or doorways that would permit further progress.
The Chief did not reply immediately. Instead, he rounded the central pillar, scanning its streamlined, mechanical surface intently. Finally, he found what he was looking for: an illuminated, rectangular panel, precisely at waist-height. Shifting his rifle, the Chief extended his right palm towards the panel, and just before he touched it, Jacen thought he saw the outline of a humanoid hand on the surface.
There was a hiss of ancient hydraulics from above, and the members of the party drew back from the central column. A puff of pressurized gas escaped its upper seam, and the entire cylinder retracted into the ceiling with dull thud. The movement revealed a sizeable hole in the floor, down which was visible an inclined shaft of indeterminate length.
The Chief turned to Tassadar. "The Cerebrate is below us?"
"It is."
The Spartan inspected what was visible of the shaft for a moment, slid his rifle onto the magnetic clamps affixed to the back of his armor, and removed the compact blaster pistol from his hip.
"If the shaft is safe and the landing secure, I'll call back up. If not, find another way to the Cerebrate. Don't waste our time looking for me."
"Sir…" one of the Allied soldiers ventured apprehensively, but the Spartan had already slipped into the hole.
The sound of metal on metal echoed back up the shaft for a few seconds, and then stopped. Jacen reached out, trying to follow the Chief's life force, but before he could find him again…
"Clear!"
"All right," the Jedi said, relieved. "One at a time, now." He gestured to Tassadar. "High Templar?"
The Protoss slid into the opening without complaint and the rest followed, most easing their way into the dark shaft with obvious trepidation. When the last had vanished, Jacen counted a few breaths, and then swung his legs over the gap. Inhaling, he let go, and let the steep, metallic incline guide him down. Almost immediately, Jacen made out new light beyond his feet, but before the sensation could even fully register, an all-too-familiar feeling shot up his spine.
Danger.
A few seconds later, the Jedi hit the ground at a crouch with his lightsaber ablaze. A quick look around the new chamber yielded only the surprised faces of the other members of the squad, still in the process of recovering from the lengthy fall, so Jacen turned his attention upward. Three meters above his head, the shaft yawned, narrow and empty, but the abrupt sound of scrabbling held his focus there. A moment later, the tusked, beady-eyed bulk of a Zergling plummeted straight downward at Jacen's head, its spiky limbs flailing.
An upward slash and swift sideways roll ensured that the Jedi escaped the beast unharmed and that it was dead before it finished its fall, but the creature was only the first to tumble from the shaft. Within a few moments, three more Zerglings had dropped upon their slain brood-mate.
The Chief and the other soldiers were quick to respond, backing to the encircling wall and focusing fire on the center of the small chamber, and the trio fell before they could move more than a few steps. Jacen scrambled to his feet, keenly aware that he was well within their field of fire.
"Solo!"
The Chief's shout coincided with another burst of premonition, and Jacen spun back towards the smoking heap, but before he could react further, his legs fell out from underneath him. One of the creatures must have only been stunned by the initial volley, and had thrown itself at him upon recovering.
Jacen pushed out with the Force to break his fall, but a slash of pain across his thigh shattered his focus, and he tumbled onto exposed belly of one of the other Zerg minions. In an instant, the creature was on top of him, and he felt the serrated hide of one of its forelimbs rip across his left cheek. Realizing that the fall had knocked his lightsaber from his grasp, Jacen pushed up against the beast's center mass, trying to avoid its gaping, toothy maw.
Before he could summon the pulse of pressure needed repel the Zergling, an impact drove the creature full onto his chest, knocking Jacen's breath away and prompting a throaty yelp from his attacker.
The two lay stunned for a moment as the air filled with the sound of energy discharges. One of the beast's glassy, red eyes was pressed centimeters from Jacen's own. A burst of sensation swept over the Jedi. The same manifestation of empty malice and hunger that he had sensed in the Zerg on the approach to Kerrigan's fortress was here to, but now it appeared to be nothing more than a flimsy veil. Beyond it, a greater entity dwelled, a being with an intelligence of its own, and for a moment their minds touched.
They are close.
Fear that was not his own tore at Jacen, and the Zergling howled. The thing reeled back, and the pressure on the Jedi's chest lessened. Acting on instinct, Jacen summoned all the energy he could to the small space between their bodies and pushed. The creature shot backward through the air for a full meter before grinding into the metallic floor and coming to a stop in a confused heap.
Pulling himself to one knee, Jacen looked about him to see that two more Zerg bodies had joined their fellows on the growing mound at the room's center. Several others had made it to the encircling line of Allied soldiers, and Jacen saw one leap for a pair of Alliance marines. Skirting around the pile of Zerg corpses, he spied the hilt of his lightsaber next to the body of the first fallen Zergling and summoned it to his outstretched palm with barely a thought.
The report of a blaster rifle cut the air, and the Zergling Jacen had spotted collapsed onto one of the soldiers. He grunted under the sudden weight, but immediately began to extricate himself, apparently uninjured. Jacen looked back towards the origin of the shot, and caught sight of the Chief. He stood by the chamber's single exit, through which the rest of the squad was hurriedly stumbling.
The Spartan gestured to him earnestly, but another pulse of insight pulled Jacen's attention to the other side of the small chamber. In a flash, he perceived the spiny back of yet another Zergling, and beneath it, Tassadar's robed form. With a shout, Jacen charged towards his companion, ready to tear the beast from him, but he stopped short after only a few steps. The air around the Zergling seemed to crack with energy, and both Zerg and Protoss glowed white. Light burst from the creature's thick hide in an expanding web of brilliance, and with a crack, it fell away. When the glare cleared, all that remained of the attacker was a smear of gore across the curving wall.
Tassadar stepped quickly past the remains without a second look and moved past Jacen towards the door. The Jedi's eyes lingered on the bloody smudge for a moment before he followed.
The power of the dark with the control of the light.
Tassadar's power was alien, and yet it still awed him as much as any feat of his old masters.
The corridor beyond the chamber was identical to the one they had left levels above. The Chief, Tassadar, and the others pelted along it as quickly as they could, eager to put some distance between themselves and the shaft before any more Zerg could emerge. As Jacen sought to catch up, a flare of pain on his side reminded Jacen of the gouge on his thigh. He glanced at the bloody gash, and tried to focus on the blood flowing into his lower extremities. The bleeding slowed, but he kept on running and it did not cease entirely. He would have to leave it until they had a moment to rest. The pain also lessened, but his lower body still tingled with it.
He could feel no poison flowing from the wound. Jacen grimaced. There was that, at least.
Pulling up behind Tassadar, Jacen called to him.
"I sensed the Cerebrate back there."
"We are almost upon it," Tassadar replied without breaking his long, powerful stride. "And it knows we are here. It must be eliminated quickly, before the brunt of the Queen's vanguard is brought upon us."
"Will we be able to face it directly?" Jacen asked. "It must be well-defended, and we don't have that much manpower. I don't know about the Chief, but the others are wearing down, and I can only fight so many."
"I do not think that the creature expected any intruder to penetrate this far. We must be cautious, but…"
Tassadar trailed off, and to Jacen it looked as though the Protoss was lost in thought.
"What is it?" Jacen asked, moving closer.
The templar faltered. "It is calling… he is calling to me."
"The Cerebrate is trying to communicate?"
Tassadar did not turn his head. "No… it is nothing. We will be able to reach the creature, but we must hurry. There is little time."
The templar raised his voice. "Spartan, the next doorway!"
A small door mounted in the right wall led them into a somewhat more spacious passageway, lit with the same bluish light but brighter than the others had been. There was also a familiar, fetid tang in the air, and the arching walls and plated floor bore more scrapes and claw marks.
"Do you hear that?" one of the soldiers ahead of Jacen whispered to a companion.
As they advanced quickly along the gradually-curving passage, the sound became more apparent: wind, and faint echoes. It was like they were approaching an exit to the mountain, and yet Jacen knew that they had to be hundreds of meters deep within its stony bulk. More ominously, the Jedi was beginning to perceive individual glimmers of life ahead of them, resolving from the mass of clouded activity that had pressed upon him since the squad had penetrated Kilimanjaro. Among them, one emerged with particular clarity, the same that he had touched vicariously only minutes before. Jacen drew back from it, attempting to minimize his own psychic presence.
"Do not restrain your senses, Jedi," Tassadar said, his eyes fixed on the path ahead. "It already knows that I am coming, and it perceives only me. I have made sure of that."
Abruptly, the passageway straightened out, and the floor inclined upward steeply. Above them, the roof gave way, revealing a vaulted ceiling of dark stone and patterned metal far above. They crept up the incline in tight formation, each with their weapon at the ready, but the broad space beyond presented no obvious foes.
The unit emerged into what appeared to be a sort of nexus. Behind and far in front of them, walls like vertical cliffs towered dozens of meters until they met the ceiling. The base of each was studded with small doors and inclined openings like their own. Higher up, rows of protrusions extruded from the flat surface, some like open pipes, others sealed hatches studded by rhythmically-blinking lights. A broad causeway stretched to either side between the walls, hemmed in by the blank, imposing faces of twin gates. The left barrier was set into a third, huge wall, but the right was built into a sheer rampart that extended less than halfway to the ceiling. Beyond it, the vaulted ceiling transformed into the underside of a shallow dome, from which most of the huge chamber's illumination seemed to emanate.
The group formed up around Tassadar and moved quietly onto the causeway. The soldiers at the perimeter swept their weapons back and forth over closed doorways and imposing columns, conscious of the slightest movement of sound. A gentle breeze brushed past from them from the domed area, and Jacen realized that the current must have been born of the room's ventilation systems. Unfortunately, the circulator seemed incapable of dealing with the growing stench of exposed flesh.
"Watch those openings," the Chief warned, nodding at the protruding, pipe-like structures high above them. "I've been surprised by them before."
Jacen shot a quizzical glance at the Spartan, but he seemed not to notice it.
"The right wall," Tassadar said. "The Cerebrate is just beyond it."
"But where are its guards?" a Starfleet officer asked, stepping over a particularly deep gouge in the floor. "And their black growth? The creep?"
The Protoss looked from the far wall to the man. He stared back nervously, but Tassadar seemed lost in thought once again.
"The creep is corrosive. It will consume all that is not Zerg in time. The Queen… she wanted this place to remain intact."
"What? Why?"
Tassadar closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened then again. "No. No, we must hurry. Come, to the wall."
The right gate sat fully sealed, but as they approached, a pair of smaller openings to either side of the main entrance came into view, set into low blocks of protruding dark stone. Careful to avoid full view of the smaller entry points, the group came to a halt at one of the house-sized protrusions, and the Chief stepped forward. He sized the barrier wall up carefully, taking in the blocks, both of which were less than a meter taller than he was, as well as the construct's other sparse features.
"There's another raised platform set against the wall above this protrusion," the Spartan said at last. "The wall is inclined near the top. I should be able to climb up and reconnoiter the area before we advance. The rest of you, hold position here."
Jacen offered no complaint, and Tassadar seemed lost within his own head once again. With the soldiers, they moved up against the wall, trying to make the open corner at the base of the sheer barrier as defensible as possible. Behind them, the Chief stowed his weapon, and with a single standing leap, caught hold of the lip of the protrusion and hefted his half-ton weight up with little effort. With practiced finesse, he silently moved across the flat roof, scaled the secondary platform, and then shimmied up the inclined crest of the wall. The barrier arched skyward at almost ninety degrees, so the Spartan was forced to lodge his back against the vertical face of the adjoining wall and laboriously wedge his way up with carefully-coordinated movement of his legs and left arm, but he reached the top nonetheless, with surprising speed.
After securing himself to the barrier's upper edge, the Chief's optically-enhanced visor took in everything that lay below. Thirty meters away the causeway gave way to a huge circular platform, anchored far below the dome they had seen below. The source of its illumination was now apparent; a sizeable hole marked the platform's center, and through this gap a continuous beam of blue-white light rose up until it disappeared into some sort of emitter affixed to the dome's apex. The platform itself seemed to be quite barren.
A large alcove flanked either side of the causeway. The Chief could not see into the one closest to him, but the other was more than enough to draw his attention. Filling it was a creature that could only have been the Cerebrate. The being was huge, easily larger than an Ultralisk, and yet it barely even seemed to be alive. A folded, oblong mass of pulsating brown flesh affixed to a small expanse of the Zerg creep by a collection of thick, purple tentacles, the Cerebrate lacked any overt sensory organs or recognizable features of any sort. Like all components of the Swarm, it had been bred and grown to be just what it needed to be, with no unnecessary embellishments or vestigial limbs. It was a brain, utterly dependent upon the minions that were its eyes and ears, its hands and its protective shell.
As he turned his magnified viewer away from the thing, the Chief was grateful for his suit's dedicated air filters. Whatever waste the Cerebrate excreted, it must have done so directly into the surrounding creep.
A handful of large, crab-like creatures the Chief had never seen before clustered about the Cerebrate, grooming its perpetually-undulating creases with their proboscises or trimming the edges of the surrounding creep. Others scuttled around a pair of sagging, conical growths that flanked the Cerebrate. Eight Hydralisks also slithered back and forth before the immobile entity, watching the wall and the far platform with empty, hateful eyes. These creatures were half again as large as most of the same breed that the Chief had faced before, and their chitinous exoskeletons shown a dusky crimson in the light of the nearby energy pillar.
The Chief was about to take a closer look at the organic mounds adjacent to the Cerebrate when a shout from below drew him back to the other side of the wall. The Allied soldiers had drawn into a tight semicircle against the gated rampart, and their weapons were aimed purposefully back down the causeway. Jacen stood before them, the green of his lightsaber clear against the dull stone.
Zerglings and Hydralisks had begun to pour from the passageways at the other end of the huge chamber. A chorus of clacking-hisses reached the Chief's aural receptors, and he watched as the closest Hydralisks reared back and loosed volleys of lethal spines. A few found their way to the crest of the wall, but the Spartan was already sliding back down, unhooking his rifle as he went. The Chief hit the upper platform firing, adding his blaster's coughing report to the rising symphony of weapons fire reverberating from below. As he began to topple advanced warriors, the Spartan failed to notice that Tassadar was no longer sheltered amongst his squad's ranks.
Boil's massive bulk shuddered with relief as he sensed a throng of his warriors descend upon the human interlopers. The clutch of Hunter-Killers arrayed before him stiffened at the sound of weapons fire just beyond the barrier wall to their left, but they did not break away from their master to hunt the intruders. They were Hydralisks of the purest, most power breed, and for several long minutes, they had been the only beings between Boil and debilitating panic. His final line of defense, the eight warriors were all that Kerrigan allowed him to retain so close to her hive's heart. He had never questioned her insistence that lesser Zerg be kept from the core of the mountain complex, nor was he capable of doing so now, but he was nevertheless relieved that his master had temporarily lifted the restriction to stop the human's advance.
The Cerebrate did not fear death; as long as the Queen of Blades persisted, his consciousness would persist and be grown a new corporeal form. Rather, he had feared that he would fail in his mandate to protect her inner sanctum. This anxiety was not born of potential punishment or even the thought of not being created anew; loyalty to his mistress was part of what he was.
Boil had tracked the small group of humanoids since they arrived at one of the fortress's upper egress maws, near the mountain's summit. At first, he has thought little of them, suspecting that they were simply stragglers of the larger group that his forces had ambushed as they established a beachhead just meters from the hive's sealed entrance. These first attackers had displayed little of the cunning that had frustrated the Cerebrate during the human's initial incursion; by the time that they're metallic conveyances had offloaded the pitiful strike force, his perimeter broods had already burrowed themselves into the sand and soft rock below they're feet. The slaughter had been quite satisfying.
The latecomers, however, had posed an unexpected challenge. After killing a large number of his underlings, they had been able to slip into an excavation tunnel carved months earlier by the brood tasked by the Queen with establishing her seat on the human homeworld. Boil had believed that all such entrances had been collapsed, but somehow, the intruders had managed to use it to gain access to the mountain's interior. The Cerebrate had become nervous as soon as his perimeter forces lost the group; the preexisting, artificial complex that the Queen had adopted as her throne was left more or less intact at its lower levels, and thus lacked the sensory organs that would have allowed Boil to pinpoint the human's exact movements in a comparably-sized superorganism.
He had been forced to flood the portions of the facility that his Queen had not restricted with all the minions he could recall, weakening the fortress's defenses. Moreover, he had resorted to personally directing their search, an effort that distracted him from the other enemy forces scattered across the surrounding plain; the destruction of Boil's other brother had left him in sole command of the continent's broods. After a period of mounting agitation, a group of lesser minions had finally stumbled across the offending humans, who had evidently used the complex's conduit network to penetrate hundreds of meters down, to Boil's own level. One of them had touched his mind, and the Cerebrate had realized that, for the first time in his short life, he was in real danger. Desperately, he had called all the warriors within his reach to him, and attempted to track the alien mind as it approached. Even that effort had failed; another psionic power had repelled his mental tendrils, and mounted its own psychic assault.
The creature's dreadful, alien presence in his own thoughts still sickened him, even though it had been fleeting. Foreign as the hostile mind was, he could comprehend it fully, and he felt a portion of his being reach out in response. The momentary, uncontrollable reaction confounded and terrified him.
Through all of this, his Queen had left Boil almost entirely to his own devices. She seemed content to simply observe, and it did not even occur to him to question her passivity. He was tasked with defending her, and he threw himself upon the task with every measure of his will.
Nostrils of a dozen remote bodies captured the iron-heavy tang of human blood, and Boil began to calm down. Extraordinary nuisances they might have been, but no lesser organisms could withstand the fury of the Zerg for long. Confident that the threat had been dealt with, Boil extended his psionic presence outward once more, eager to oversee the extermination of the remnants of the force that had slain his brothers.
A wave of psionic energy washed over the Cerebrate, and his restored view of creep-covered vistas dissolved into blackness. Boil felt the solid metal and stone of the floor beneath him break asunder and give way, and he was falling, blind and alone, unable to even scream. Bursts of searing flare erupted across his pulpy hide, and with each one, a pulse of pain shot from end of his bloated body to the other. The tortuous void became solid again in an instant, and Boil felt the impact with every ounce of shivering biomass and every iota of sentience.
Reeling, the Cerebrate shot mental tendrils out in every direction, desperate to re-anchor himself in the corporeal realm. First, he felt the creep he was rooted in, then the floor, and the sheltering walls above, all still quite intact. The drones that had milled been milling about his body, grooming and sustaining it, lay dead, their tiny minds fried by his sudden outpouring of shock and disorientation. Beyond, his guardians coiled around one another, tense and confused, but still very much alive. Outwardly, the world seemed virtually unchanged.
Boil knew different. The Queen was gone.
She had not disappeared entirely, for as Boil concentrated, he could barely detect the familiar resonance of her thoughts, but it appeared as though perceived from a vast distance, like an eclipsed star a galaxy away. The gulf was crushing. From his first thought, she had been with him. The ebb and flow of her passions was his heartbeat. Her designs and machinations were his dearest dreams. It was as though his very ability to feel had been torn from him, and only the crushing ache of its memory had been left to him.
He needed to reach his Queen again. He needed to lose his mind in hers. He would find the thing that had severed them. He would take her back.
Boil felt the unending fury and blind bloodlust of his minions, and took the fire as his own. As his intellect began to boil away, he lashed out with all his will, and all at once, the demon that had stolen his essence was before him.
Tassadar walked calmly from the far entryway in the barrier wall, his blazing eyes fixed firmly on the Cerebrate. The attendant Hydralisks spotted the Protoss, simultaneously loosed keening wails that drowned out the echoing sounds of battle, and charged. Their claws scythed the empty air in furious anticipation, and the scales of their armored carapaces gouged wakes of stone as they surged forward on tails of knotted muscle.
The templar's resolute, steady pace did not slow, and he spared the leading Hunter-Killer's only a momentary glance before turning his gaze back on the heaving mass of the Cerebrate. The fiends stopped short, almost collapsing backwards from their own inertia. The inky eyes within their serrated skulls went wild, and primal fury overcame the tenuous hold that genetic conditioning and psionic influence had on their basic instincts. Suddenly, everything that moved was enemy and prey, and each Hydralisk found an adversary within claw's reach.
Tassadar sidestepped the ball of gnashing jaws and shattering chitin, pushing the pair from his mind even as they smashed into the sealed gate, tearing at each other's arched throats. The six remaining beast fell upon the templar, unfazed by his effortless dismissal of their brethren. As the first blade plunged down upon his unprotected head, Tassadar flung back his dark cloak and thrust his arms out to both sides. The air before him cracked with blue and white, and lattice of pure energy burst into being from nothingness, mirroring the cool fire in the Protoss' eyes. Synapses of psionic force pulsed through open space and the bodies of the Hunter-Killers, unimpeded by their meticulously-evolved exoskeletons. Organs and soft tissue burned as bodily fluids boiled, and one by one, the Zerg warriors exploded.
When Tassadar looked again at Boil through a sinking red mist, the Cerebrate could finally see the isolating shroud that had severed him from his mistress. The obscuring, impenetrable fog poured from the Protoss' every orifice. In Boil's mind's eye, Tassadar became the miasma, a singularity anchored to the world only by conflagrations of cerulean and jet that erupted from where his skull should have been.
Terror lashed at Boil, and the rage he had manifested within his prone body burst forth. The pyramidal growths that flanked the Zerg coordinator came to life. Their sagging crests turned towards Tassadar, revealing circular maws dripping with nameless, toxic fluids that withered the creep where it fell. With great, wet inhalations of oxygen, the living towers vomited forth twin globes of writhing biomatter. Steeped in pustules of corrosive chemicals, each projectile swam with lethal bacterial spores.
Tassadar stiffened as the wave of filth hurtled at him, but he did not attempt to evade it. The projectiles washed over him, and his lanky form faded from being in a flash of blue light. Boil's bulk trembled with a silent roar of triumph, but it died as he watched three new dark-robed Protoss emerge from the empty space only a dozen meters before him, untroubled by the loss of their duplicate.
Illusions!
Boil's spore belchers lobbed another volley of corrosive missiles, obliterating a pair of the phantom templars, but the third leapt free of the withering impacts and broke into a run, thrusting his palms forward as he did. The firing mouths of constructs exploded in showers of blue sparks, and the organic towers collapsed in on themselves in eruptions of caustic fluid.
Tassadar leapt, clearing the creep entirely and burying his splay-toed boots in Boil's soft, livid flesh. The Cerebrate thrashed with all his might, almost tearing his barely-motile tentacles from the ground, but Tassadar held fast, climbing further up the bucking mass and clasping hold of its blistered surface.
When he felt the Protoss' long, delicate fingers on his body, Boil no longer could articulate the emotions that flooded his mind, kept so carefully in check for its entire existence. Fear, anger, and despair coalesced into madness, and the last thing that the Cerebrate perceived was an expanding point of darkness deep within its very skin, disrupting the last of the creature's cascading neural impulses as it reached out for Tassadar's careful grasp.
Then there was light.
The Master Chief knelt in the narrow archway. He held a Starfleet phaser in his right hand and his blaster pistol in his left. His favored rifle lay somewhere out on the open causeway, cleaved in half by a Hydralisk he let get too close. Methodically and with supernatural precision, he fired each weapon one after the other in short bursts. The right sent a Zergling skittering to the floor. The left punched a hole in the chest of an arachnidan horror that the Spartan could not name.
The right. The left. Two more monstrosities dead. The Chief ignored the flashing, red indicators on his HUD that tracked the ammunition and charge levels of both weapons. They still fired when he engaged their firing studs, and so he held his ground.
Behind him, Jacen Solo dragged a Starfleet officer deeper into the dark, confining passageway that ran through the barrier wall. Even through the spattering of blood and grime on her face, he recognized her as the officer who had cut them a passage into the mountain. As gently as he could, the Jedi leaned her up against one wall. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing was shallow. Jacen's hands and tunic were covered with the woman's blood. Looking down, he saw that the jagged stump where her left arm had been was still bleeding furiously.
"I'm out!" the Chief shouted, and Jacen stood. Turning towards the archway, he palmed and ignited his lightsaber, illuminating the barren passage and the Spartan's worn battlesuit. Over its shoulder, the Jedi saw that the open chamber still writhed with fresh Zerg bodies, eager to pile after their wounded prey. Jacen stepped carefully over the unconscious woman and moved to join the Chief in the doorway. The Spartan had thrown aside both exhausted weapons, and now faced the ravening hoard with his gauntlets alone.
Another Zergling leapt at them, and all Jacen could hear was the rapid thud of his own heart. The others had all died so quickly after their makeshift line had been overrun. Somehow, it seemed quite natural that he would join them. He was mortal, just like the rest of them, and mortals died. They had fallen short of their goal and their deaths would bear little lasting meaning, but, didn't that seem like a very mortal end?
The Chief caught the air-borne Zergling with a sharp elbow just below the jaw. Robbed of its momentum, the beast tumbled to the blood-stained floor, but its spiked, dorsal limbs swung up and into the supersoldier's chest. His energy shields exploded into sparks and he was forced back a step, but the defensive field absorbed the brunt of the blow, and the Chief was able to grab both appendages before their owner could bring them back for another attack. His armored fingers locked on the bony shafts and he yanked up and back, twisting his wrists as he did. With a wet crack, the upper halves of the limbs broke away in the Chief's hands, and the Zergling loosed a pained shriek. A plated boot silenced the cry, and before the creature could bite down on it, the Chief slammed the foot to the floor with a sickening crunch.
Not bothering to shake away the gore, the Chief brace himself for the next attacker, but the only thing that greeted him through his spattered and scratched visor was a heap of broken and burned Zerg corpses. The rest were now halfway across the chamber, running or staggering for the hatches and openings from which they had come, wailing as they went. Several dashed against each other as they fled, hissing and clawing as they stumbled to the floor and then uneasily picked themselves up again. Within a few more seconds, the causeway was devoid of life.
Warily, the Chief stooped to recover his blaster and reloaded it from a compartment on his leg. No Zerg had shown itself by the time he had finished checking the weapon, so he withdrew deeper into the passage, where Jacen knelt again next to the Starfleet officer.
"Zerg aren't intimidated that easily," he said.
Jacen shook his head. "It wasn't that. I felt… something, very close by. It must have scared them off."
He looked up at the Chief. "Tassadar! He slipped away just before the attack!"
"He must have found the Cerebrate," the Chief agreed. "Lucky for us. We should find him before the effect on its minions wear off."
The Spartan paused. Jacen had torn a piece of his tunic and was tying it around the wounded officer's stump. She wasn't moving. The Chief had seen hundreds of battlefield injuries in the course of his service, and he was a reasonably good a gauging them.
"You can't save her. She's already lost too much blood."
Jacen ignored him. Tying off the tourniquet, he leaned closer to the woman and gently placed his hands on the wounded area. He closed his eyes, and concentrated. Almost immediately a measure of color returned to the officer's ashen features and chest swelled with a ragged breath. The Chief stepped back and fell quiet.
Jacen withdrew a hand. It came up caked with blood, but none of it was new. Satisfied that the bleeding had stopped, he moved his hands to the woman's face. In the dim light, in her Starfleet uniform, she reminded him of Laura. Taking a deep breath, he placed each palm on her cheeks and laid his forehead on hers. She took another drag of air, and then another. The Chief saw an eye flutter, but the third breath was weaker, and after the fourth, no others came.
After fifteen seconds of motionless silence, the Chief placed a heavy hand on Jacen's shoulder.
"You did all you could, Solo. We have to go. We have to find Tassadar."
Slowly, Jacen lifted his head from the cooling body. His hands fell away, but his eyes lingered on her bruised, pallid face for a few more moments.
The Chief was already at the other archway.
"Solo."
"Just a moment," he called back, and then took a long, deep breath. "I'm with you."
Jacen tried not to look back.
Cautiously avoiding the entwined bodies of a pair of Hunter-Killers, the two survivors found Tassadar standing in the midst of a massive mound of charred, oozing flesh, three times the Chief's height even in its ruined form.
"I guess he didn't need our help after all," the Spartan said, kicking a loose segment of shriveled tentacle.
The Protoss was kneeling waist-deep in the blasted remains, cradling a limp hunk of the dead Cerebrate in his arms. Wading closer, Jacen realized that the object was moving, if only slightly. Trying to shake away the disorientation of the last few minutes, the Jedi realized that there were two minds alive in the muck. Two very similar minds.
Carefully, almost tenderly, Tassadar swept a layer of purple ichor and white veins away from the top of the mass, and a face came into view. Its skin was rough and gray, and it seemed to lack any facial features save for a pair of clouded, half-open eyes. A faint glimmer of yellow light appear in them, and the being's neck twitched, shaking organic detritus from its pronounced, back-swept forehead.
"Another Protoss?" Jacen whispered.
"A friend."
For the first time since Jacen had met the templar, the psychic resonance that was his voice lacked its stern, commanding tone. The words were almost a whisper.
"Zeratul, I am here," he continued, pressing his head close to the other Protoss. "You are free."
The gore-covered alien twitched again, and his eyes opened a fraction wider.
"See with eyes unclouded, my friend. The Cerebrate will trouble you no longer."
"It was… a dream."
Zeratul's voice was even softer than Tassadar's, purely psychic, lacking the resonance that carried the templar's thoughts into the physical world.
"Trickery."
"I am no illusion, Zeratul," Tassadar said gently. "Although… I must appear so."
"You died. On Aiur. I saw it." Zeratul shivered, and his eyes began to inch closed. "More deception. But I will do no more. Your prize is spent, O Concubine of the Zerg."
Tassadar pulled him closer.
"You know me, Zeratul! You know the energy that flows through me. It is as much a part of you as it is of me! You felt it when you reached out to me, and you feel it now."
Zeratul said nothing for a long moment, and Tassadar's arms slackened.
"I feel one who has walked the path of shadow."
The glimmer beneath Zeratul's heavy eyelids brightened.
"Death suited you well, Tassadar. The stain of your association with me was washed away. They spoke of you as they did of Adun. En taro Tassadar, they would say. En taro Tassadar…"
Zeratul's eyes undulated flicking over Jacen where he stood nearby, but he did not appear to see him. Staring back, the Jedi remembered a conversation he had shared with Tassadar weeks previously, all but an eternity. He recalled mention of one of the templar's mentors, a teacher who had expanded his thinking and broadened his powers to combat the Zerg. A Dark Templar.
The emaciated Protoss soon settled on the high templar once more.
"How?"
"I do not know, my friend. When I plunged my flagship into the Overmind, I was ready to walk Khala's Path. Instead, when I awoke, I found a different road ahead of me."
Zeratul shivered again, but he did not speak.
"Though I Was far from home, an old enemy found me. The human… the terran Kerrigan."
Zeratul made a sound Jacen did not understand. "Ah. She found me, too."
Tassadar nodded slowly. "I must find her, Zeratul. I must discover how she brought me to this place, so far from home. And then she must be stopped, before she carries her curse to any other worlds."
"Tell me, my friend, if you are able, how did you come to this place? Why did she bring you here?"
Zeratul's eyes slid shut, and there was another long silence. Jacen heard footsteps behind them, and turned to see that the Chief had moved towards the huge, circular platform beyond, his opaque faceplate still turned warily towards the barrier wall.
"The creation exceeded its master. Queen… the corrupted terran rose with the Overmind's fall. Under her, the Swarm consumed the terran empires and pushed our people back to my world. We fought as one, like the Protoss of old, but even with the ancient artifacts of the Xel'Naga, we could not withstand forever."
"When Shakuras was finally overrun, I was taken. Some escaped… fled to the stars, but all the rest… consumed. She brought me to the apex of the Great Temple. She did something to the sacred machine, and then made me fight her. I attacked… summoned what energy I could…"
For a third time, Zeratul shivered, more violently than the last. Tassadar raised a hand to his the other's face, but he shook it off, opening his eyes once again.
"Something happened to the machine, and we left Shakuras. Far, far… She was too strong. I, too weak. She kept me locked away. Used new terrans, pitted them one against the other. She…" The Protoss cringed at some unseen stimulus. "She broke it. My mind. Took the secrets, like she had from the others. The dark… she used it to corrupt…"
"Deep Space Nine," Jacen whispered. "That's why the commander went mad!"
Zeratul seemed not to hear him.
"Then… here. She brought me here. Gave me to the Cerebrate. I tried to fight, but… I slept… everything. Everything stolen. Everything lost."
The final words seemed to have exhausted Zeratul, and he slumped again into Tassadar's arms.
The templar held him close. "Not all is lost, my friend. I will destroy her, and I will bring you home.
Zeratul's eyes had diminished to slivers of yellow again, and their light had faded noticeably.
"I am meant for shadow, Tassadar, and the light has already begun to fade. But not all of us are gone. Some still live, lost amongst the stars. They need guide."
Zeratul's right arm, virtually atrophied beyond recognition, shifted free of a mass of matted debris and inched up agonizingly until Tassadar clasped his friend's hand firmly in his own.
"Find them, Tassadar. Guide them home."
"By Aiur, Zeratul, I will."
The withered Protoss' eyes closed on distant embers.
"Shadows, at last. Adun toridas."
"Adun toridas," Tassadar said quietly, laying Zeratul's hand upon his sallow chest. It tightened, and then was still.
Neither Jacen nor Tassadar spoke until the Chief returned.
"We've got to move out," he said. "I don't know how badly losing this Cerebrate hurt the Zerg, but we can't count on them not coming back."
"The Queen is not far," Tassadar said, still facing the fallen Protoss. "We must go deeper."
"I found a control panel I recognize on that platform. It should take us down."
Jacen looked up. "A control panel you recognize?"
The Chief paused a moment before replying. "I've been in structures like this one before, in my galaxy." He shook his head before Jacen could ask the inevitable question. "I don't know how it's possible. It just is."
"There is one who can answer your riddle. Let us find her."
Tassadar clambered down off of the Cerebrate's corpse, Zeratul's body in his arms. The other alien was wrapped in Tassadar's cloak; the dark blue and gold of the templar's bare cuirass and raised pauldrons shown ethereally in the light of the looming energy beam.
The Chief stared pointedly at the wrapped remains as they moved towards the platform.
"Do not concern yourself with the body, Spartan. He will not burden us for long." After a few more strides, Tassadar laid Zeratul on the smooth stone of the causeway. "No sentient being deserves to rot in that foul heap, especially not him."
Kneeling at Zeratul's head, he closed his eyes, and Jacen felt the resonance of thoughts that only other Protoss could comprehend. Tassadar placed both hands on the covered skull, and with an exhalation, blue-white fire spread from his fingertips across the body until it was covered with roiling arcs of energy. There was a momentary flash of blinding light, and when it cleared, only a scattering of ash marked the spot where Zeratul had lain.
Tassadar stood and waved an arm across the spot, sending the remains scattering into the artificial wind.
"May these pieces find their master upon the Path," Tassadar said, straightening. "Let us hope that he receives them, for nothing can find a Dark Templar who wishes to remain hidden."
