CHAPTER THREE

THE NEW RESISTANCE

"The beginning of all things are small. Ominium rerum principia parva stunt."

Cicero (43-106 BC), De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum

Hardheart Café, Downtown Tir Nanog

Bountiful, 36 Aegis System, Korprulu Sector

THERE was commotion by the doorway—instinctively, Raynor and the remainder of his men went for their weapons, ensconced in their booth in the dim of the Hardheart Café. Raynor felt the cold metal of his handgun under his calloused fingers—the revolver had a single bullet left, one last round left to dispatch the hierarch that had disposed of Kerrigan—but it looked like he might have to use it up sooner.

Still keeping his eyes trained on the doorway, he spoke sideways to his newly promoted second in command; Major Iván Pereira. "Check it out, Five."

"Roger that, Six", replied Pereira, the 'six' referring to the military vernacular of any unit's commanding officer.

As Pereira stood—a lethal-looking gauss pistol in his hand—and obscured their vision of the door as he stalked to see the bouncer about what the trouble was, Raynor sighed and creased his sweat-laden eyebrow. He shiftily regarded the twenty or so men that were still with him at the Hardheart Café—all that had survived from the hasty retreat from Camp Chenoweth onto Bountiful's monorail system to Tir Nanog. They'd shed their power armor—lest they instantly attract attention by barging onto a midway subway with CMC combat suits—and then made their way to the metropolis. Some of the survivors in Raynor's outfit used to be from Bountiful, dragged into the Confederate Marine Corps as part of a massive forced conscription ("grab, wipe, and play" program, referring to the mindwipe and resoc procedures of the Marines' crude conscription programs) operation.

As the shit had gone down with the Great War, then the Brood War and Mengsk's betrayal, many of the resocced Marines from Bountiful had eventually defected to the Dominion as Dominion agents told them that they'd been abducted and resocced by the Confederacy. Once their "programming" had been pharmacologically wiped, these Confederate troops had signed up with the Dominion. And after they'd seen how Mengsk had thrown Kerrigan, Raynor, and Mike Liberty out like dirty laundry, they'd joined up with Raynor.

These Bountiful vets knew the best places to keep low in Tir Nanog—the Hardheart Café was one of them. Before they sat down for midday drinks (the day they lost Hyperion and goddamn near lost the entire Raiders outfit was the best day to get hammered), Raynor had found that the pub indeed had many attractive avenues of escape. And the brew—"Wraith Whiskey", referring to the popular DF/A-17 Wraith starfighters—wasn't half bad, nor were the deep-fried wings, which were creatively named "Muta Wings", referring again to zerg mutalisks. The proprietor obviously had military experience and a wry sense of humor.

A cute waitress with a short skirt and a perky smile sauntered by their table.

"What can I get for you? Want to try our Firebat 'Fries?"

Raynor rolled his eyes and waved her away.

"No, thanks."

Lifting the grimy glass to his lips and letting the acrid ale trickle into his mouth, the shock of alcohol did not dull the throbbing pain, but rather Raynor found that it accentuated it, bringing him to realize their present situation with immaculate clarity. Here they were—a well-organized rebel organization, the tattered remnants of which had lost their flagship and were currently drinking at noontime in a desolated pub. When Horner—bless his heart—had reported that the Dominion carrier battle group had arrived in orbit, Raynor had never been so sure of his death. Now that he had escaped his certain ending, there was a strange sense of liberation, of carefreeness—that he had once again eluded lethal circumstances, and thus, he was living on borrowed time. But with this insouciance, he could not fight off damning guilt.

Matt Horner, Rory Swann, Egon Stentman, and all the rest were dead.

He didn't realize what it meant yet—but he knew that later tonight, as he drained the last strains from his bottle and collapsed into the motel's bed, closing his eyes, forgetting reality and immersing himself into the reality of his own thoughts, that he wouldn't forget their—

"Look who it is", said a voice of malice.

Raynor whirled around, all pretense abandoned, his revolver raised in the air.

And was surprised to see Pereira—gauss pistol in one hand, the other free hand cletching the cloak of an all-too-familiar figure. The remainder of the Raiders drew their weapons in a single, fluid motion. As Raynor inconspicuously cast his gaze from side to side to see how the other patrons were reacting, he saw they didn't give a damn—just another lunchtime gang execution.

"You can kill him—just don't break anything", sauntered out a voice from the bar; the witty proprietor at work again.

The writhing man in Pereira's tight grip had features evocative of a man that Raynor loathed—from the crown of oily obsidian hair speckled with grey strands and the plush, unscarred palms that bespoke of a lifetime bereft of manual labor—though his anxious, terrified expression was chiaroscuro to the previously snide and arrogant expression that Raynor had last seen on him.

"Professor Gardner. I see that you join our company again."

"Let. Me. Go!"

Pereira roughly let the elderly academic go, causing the man to collapse in a heap on the floor as he gingerly stood on uneven feet, expression wild with anger and with blood and saliva flecked over his hollow cheeks.

"Let me ask you something", said Raynor. "How much did they pay you?"

"What?"

"Perhaps you assume that all of us… 'others' without a degree are stupid."

Raynor's sarcastic comment coaxed some malicious snorts from his assembled soldiers.

"But, 'ya know, I've been piecing things together from a few hours ago. And you very conveniently showing up on our doorstep only lends confidence to the conclusion of mine."

"What conclusion?" asked Gardner pedantically.

"Cuz, first—that room I found you in. It was a saferoom, I realize now. You shoulda been in the prison cells with the rest of the convicts. I find it very curious why, when we attacked, you somehow were in an armored and locked saferoom, all by your lonesome."

"I escaped from my cell", boiled Gardner.

There were titters of laughter.

"Yeah. Okay there. You… escaped from your guards and made your way up there, just for me to conveniently find you?"

"Yes."

"And the fact that the Dominion kept you in a saferoom—"

"They didn't put me in a fuckin' saferoom."

"—combined with your coldness. I shoulda recognized when you rejected us. That shit you were saying. No rational man would've said that to us when we rescued them. The only reason that someone would be so cold when he was being rescued from the Dominion… would be if that person was working for the Dominion", concluded Raynor.

"Are you going to let me defend myself, or are you going to ramble on with your crackpot ideas?"

"And now… you very conveniently escape a prison full of battling Raiders and Dominion troops, somehow follow us on the monorail, and then track us all the way here. Out of four hundred thousand people in this fuckin' city… you somehow find us here. Look here, Gardner, it doesn't take a teep to figure out that you're on someone else's leash. Working like a bitch for someone else."

"If you think I'm working for the Dominion, you're fucking crazy", denied Gardner.

"I'm fuckin' crazy?" asked Raynor dramatically, gesturing to himself with his revolver.

He looked at Pereira.

"Whaddya think, Five?"

Pereira nodded. "This guy was turned. When do you want me to kill 'em?"

"After we cut off his balls!" erupted one of the Raiders.

"Look, here", said Raynor. "Professor Gardner… you have cost me. Very dearly." A mad, twisted rage began to dement his words.

He ticked off his fingers. "Hyperion. Nike. Sprite. One thousand crewmen… and nearly three hundred and fifty soldiers. One could say that you destroyed Raynor's Raiders here on Bountiful… and being Raynor, I don't like when somebody—fucks!—with my Raiders."

"I didn't kill anyone."

"Oh yeah, right. You just lured us here to Bountiful, got an entire Dominion battle group called in, got all of us fuckin' massacred against a legion of enemy troops. Nope, this is what every fuckin' day is like for us, you think?"

Pereira cocked his gauss pistol at Gardner's withered head.

"Please, listen to what you're saying", said Gardner, a small peal of pleading entering his voice. "I didn't ask you to come here to Bountiful. You came of your own accord."

"And you fucked us, Professor Gardner!" exploded Raynor. "I've lost everything because of you—lost all of my fuckin' men, lost my fuckin' ship. You destroyed my life!"

"I didn't do anything, the Dominion did—"

"Wrong fuckin' answer!" snapped Raynor. His voice was slurred—Gardner realized that he was inebriated.

He turned to Pereira. "Do your thing. Get this motherfucker outta here. He's blocking the light."

"General, sir", acknowledged Major Pereira. "Come, doctor, your head has an appointment with the bathroom toilet."

The situation had deteriorated almost instantaneously—Gardner had found himself in a reversal of fortune. He had fled the wild crossfire at Chenoweth, furious at being abandoned—and by the peculiarities of circumstance, had stumbled upon the rebel kingpin. He had, for a moment, thought that Raynor would be his salvation—until he had seen the rebel commander's disposition. Gardner had, in his analysis, realized that he had failed to fully appreciate the precariousness of Raynor's situation. Undoubtedly, the massacre of his entire rebel movement had derailed the commander more than Gardner had cared to holistically appreciate.

As Pereira's hand formed a vice grip scissoring on his trachea and the rebel officer impassively dragged his flailing figure away from the rebels, who looked down upon him coldly—Raynor had already turned away and was taking massive swings from his ale—Gardner realized that he was about to die at the hands of this brutish enforcer if he enacted no effective action. The ephemerality of life had never been so impressed on him—one moment, walking through the door of a bar, now being carried to his unsightly execution in the men's room. If not for the adrenaline and anger bubbling in his veins and marrow, he would have found his change in circumstances curious, perhaps even humorous.

"No!"

His voice was lost in a gargle as Pereira tightening his grip on his windpipe and unceremoniously banged Gardner's head on the door that was going to lead them into the bathroom and his metaphorical guillotine, choking in the feces-infested water of some toilet.

While he still had control of his mental faculties before the fear totally took over his autonomous nervous system, he cried "I'll tell you my source!"

As Pereira hauled away the pathetic Dominion agent to his death, Raynor tipped the glass into his mouth, extracting every heliotrope droplet of the liquid, feeling the tinge of alcohol on his breath as he sat back in his seat with a sigh, feeling the blood pool.

Some chaotic noises—Gardner's whining voice, undoubtedly pleading for some respite before Pereira waterboarded him, castrated him, then shot him.

Not looking in anyone in particular, he asked airily, "What did the fucktard say?"

One of the marines grumbled, "Says he'll tell us his source of som'ing like that."

There was another frantic cry and a string of words as Pereira slammed the man again violently against the bathroom door, too bothered to actually open the door with his hands and instead letting Gardner's head do the opening.

"What did he say again?"

"Says that the source was…"

The Marine regarded Raynor seriously. "He says his source was his wife."

Raynor sighed. This day was becoming far too convoluted and heavy for him. Enough shit filled today to fill a year's worth of shit.

"Jesus Christ. Okay, tell Five to back off. Sit the fucker down over here."

Pereira and another Raider dumped Gardner's figure on a chair facing the booth of twenty or so Raiders—trickles of uncoagulated blood ran freely from his torn lips, the intellectual had a necrotic swelling in one of his eyes, and his golden overcoat had turned several shades darker—it was soaked with toilet water. Raynor saw that Pereira had decided to acquaint Gardner with the execution routine's earliest phases before finally letting him go. Gardner was collapsed in the chair, head limp on the table, breathing ragged.

"Your wife?" asked Pereira incredulously.

"That's fuckin' right", replied Gardner defensively, cracking open his eyes. The beating he received was like a sexual violation—another humiliation atop how the Dominion had broken him in the past four years.

"Pretty convenient", commented Raynor airily. "Let's no end to the shit, huh? Your kind can't take pain—you'll say anything even if it keeps you alive for a second longer."

"I swear to fuckin' god, man."

There was a beat—Gardner saw that the Raiders' bizarre collection of firearms were still squarely leveled at him. He tried to straighten himself, look authoritative—anything that might make them believe he was telling the truth.

"Her name was Danielle Gardner neé Wilson. I just called her 'Dana'."

"Explain how she got access to the Dominion's most highly classified kill orders and OPORDS", belted Raynor.

"She was a Wrangler", explained Gardner—his voice was slow as his mind processed the words his mouth was saying; the ghosts of the past began to coalesce again in his mind as he remembered who she'd been—what had happened—

"What?" asked one of the gruntish Marines.

"A Wrangler", said Major Pereira for the benefit of the rest. "A low-level psionic, not enough to be a Ghost, but enough to seek out other psionics. The Ursa Academy uses them to track down 'gifted kids' for recruitment", he said, referring to the current Dominion Ghost Academy on Ursa IV.

"Right", said Gardner. "But at the time, she… was with the Confederacy. When Mengsk took over the Program"—referring to the Ghost Program's handle name—"most of the Wranglers jumped ship. Before I was captured… she had been working for the Dominion for a few months."

"Save the fuckin' tears for yourself", said Raynor cuttingly. "No one cares that you got locked up. I wanna hear about your wife. So how did she get access to the OPORDS and the Combined Effects Priority Target List?"

"She was working alongside Dominion forces, and she was a teep. She could 'hear' the officers talking about their orders."

Pereira said authoritatively, "Impossible. Most wranglers don't have PI to listen to thoughts. If your wife had enough PI to be telepathic, she would've been in the fuckin' Ghost Program itself."

"Rare exceptions", said Gardner without a trace of a smile. "She didn't want to become a Ghost—when the Confeds administered the 'Psionic Aptitude Test' to her as a kid, she'd heard enough about what going into the Program entailed. She faked her score to be a bit lower than it really was—got posted to the Wranglers instead. Searching for other kiddos to kidnap to become Ghosts."

"But yeah, for sure she was a teep. That was… how we were together. She knew everything on the tip of my tongue before I said it—exactly how I felt. I think that it was the… first time anyone really understood me. Really knew me."

Though Pereira's expression was still scrunched in implacable fury, Gardner observed silently that the demeanor on Raynor's face had changed—he didn't have to guess to think about what memories of his own that Gardner's words were invoking from within the guerilla.

"Yes", said Raynor suddenly. The power structure had changed, though few of them could perceive it—Gardner felt somehow that Raynor now had some confidence in him.

"So your wife 'heard' their thoughts?"

"Yes. It was… much safer than anyone actually trying to break into a mainframe or crack the security or something. The Dominion officers did all of that to get their orders on the CEPTL and Mengsk's kill orders. It was much easier to simply skim the orders from these officers' minds after they'd done all the work to retrieve and decrypt their orders."

"At first, she couldn't help it, you know? Dana said it was being a teep—you can't stop hearing everyone's thoughts around you. For a few weeks, it was OK. Business as usual, just more SF officers getting assassination orders. But then, she became scared—the names she heard began popping up on the news as people who were killed in car crashes or shuttle accidents. This was the base of a massive, systematized assassination program that was going to kill off everyone that might even have a second thought against the Dominion. And she was listening to all of it—people's names being whispered just days before they were gonna disappear. It was like listening to Satan and who he was going to take away tomorrow. When Dana heard a name, that person just vaporized a little while later."

"When did you become informed about the nature of the CEPTL program?" asked Raynor.

"It was hard at first", admitted Gardner. "Dana—my wife and I—were not very close. We hadn't talked for a long time."

"And why's that?"

Gardner painfully closed his eyes. "Please don't ask."

"I need to make sure you're telling the truth", continued Raynor coolly. "So, if you would please."

The Raiders had stopped their vulgar cajoling.

"Well, I was there at the University on Brontes. And Dana was away, flying on some battlecruiser or something with a thousand fit, clean-shaven Dominion grunts onboard. She was cute—and when she heard people's thoughts, if she could read their orders, she could definitely hear what they thought about her body and what they wanted to do to her. It didn't take me a long time to think that while she was on deployment she was sleeping around like a—" He couldn't stop himself. "Whore."

The word ricocheted in his mind, echoing—the word bringing back the memories of a petty slap on his face, the arguments at night, the feeling of—

"Please, this is enough. You have your memories and I have mine. No matter what you think of me, please respect me."

"A conceivable contingency", admitted Raynor. There was a faraway look to the man's eyes—Gardner realized that the two of them—both being with a teep once—had much in common; perhaps something exploitable in the future.

"We can skip this part if you want."

"Yes, thank you" replied Gardner. "Anyways, we had our years together—a little girl too—and then things… kind of drifted apart. Like entropy—everything eventually becomes a bit loose at the seams. It was easy getting used to her not being there; I was used to her being on 'deployment' all the time, so she was never at home."

"But one night when I came home to my flat, I found her there, waiting for me. It'd been—far too many years since I last saw her. She was very beautiful; you had no idea what she meant to me."

"My heart leapt to see her—I thought she'd had come back to apologize, but after a moment, I realized I didn't give a damn anymore if she apologized or not. I would've done anything to hang onto her—live in the present, let the past be bygones. But then she told me about CEPTL and the hit list."

"She was scared?"

"Yes. Very. She had… well, she claimed that she hated me", Gardner biting off the words.

"I thought you hated her."

"Yes. Because of… whatever she did when she was away, and also because, naturally, she was a member of the Confederacy and the Dominion. That's some horrible shit—sensing out 'gifted' kids and marking them to be wrested away in the night. I couldn't live with that, hated her. Dana naturally rebelled and using whatever feminine mental contrivances somehow conceptualized that serving the government—thought it was a dictatorship—was honorable. Well, after CEPTL, she got off her feet, came clean with me and told me everything."

"Did she actually sleep with the Marines?" asked Pereira.

"Yes."

"But—it doesn't matter anymore", Gardner said a bit too quickly.

"Okay. So what happened after that?"

"She went back to her posting—but whenever she 'heard' about the CEPTL or a new kill order, she told me about it. I didn't know what else to do with the information; I knew that it must be preserved so that one day, when the reckoning came, there would be a record of all the atrocities that the Dominion did…"

"So you wrote the diary, and it goes on from there."

"Yes", said Gardner.

There was a pregnant pause.

"Do you know where your wife is?"

"No", replied Gardner. "Don't you remember what I said to you in the Commandant's Office? That's what I wanted to do—find my fuckin' family."

"I remember you said that", said Raynor. "At the time, I thought it was standard bullshit that was being served. I understand now, though."

"Is your wife still with the military and is on the inside?"

"I have no fucking clue. Where do you think I've been for the past four years?"

Raynor looked seriously at Gardner.

"Your wife could be the key of all of this, Professor. If we had someone on the inside—knowing all the Dominion's next moves—"

Raynor's movements became animated with an energy that his men hadn't seen for a very long time.

"We could get this all on the road again. Strike back even harder than we could before. We could know the position of every Dominion asset. Everyone, everything, when, where, why. Everyone they wanted to kill. Where they'll strike next."

The outlaw had holstered his weapon—he turned to Gardner.

"So it looks like there's two of us that wanna find your wife."

"Yes."

"May I … consider you a member of the Raiders, then?"

There were many reasons to say 'no'. Gardner, with whatever rational faculty left at his disposal, perceived these reasons extremely clearly. Raynor was emotional, off his hook, irrational—blindly groping for the woman he loved, now immortalized into the sepulchral Queen of Blades. Raynor had no whims labeling someone as a Dominion agent, ordering someone's execution, and then a minute later, welcoming him with open arms. There were other reasons too—this was an invitation to join an outlaw terrorist organization against which the entire Dominion Armed Forces were arrayed—this invitation was an invitation to his own coffin. Not to mention, the Raiders' perverted methods of operation. They fought as dirty as the Dominion did—Gardner had no compunctions that any of the Raiders here would mind blowing himself up as a suicide bomber to kill Dominion military personnel.

Yet, there was something… fantastic about the feeling he had now. A heady sense of… freedom? Liberation? Liberation from the confines of prison, from enslavement, from tyranny—perhaps a change could be effected. He was a free man again—and with the Raiders at hand, perhaps… something could be done. That a freedom or transcendent change never before realized in the Korprulu could finally be instated.

Perhaps it was the feeling of loneliness—being alone, away from Dana for all these years, then again in prison—and the prospect of another friend or human being to animate his life.

There were many reasons to say 'no', and in the end, Gardner didn't care. And as the words trickled from his lips, he felt like this was the consummation of his existence up until now—things were going to change from here on out.

"Yes."

A ribald grin split Raynor's face.

"Fuckin' awesome. Welcome to the crew, Professor Gardner. Welcome to the Raiders… or what's left of it, anyways."

Esplanade Court, Downtown Tir Nanog

Bountiful, 36 Aegis System, Korprulu Sector

"Hello there."

The hotel concierge turned to find a young lady standing there askance in the hotel corridor's halls—with a reckless beauty on her young features and sleek raven hair gathered in a slender ponytail, it would be remiss to call her anything but attractive.

She offered a polite smile. "Hi. I'm Ariadne."

"Well, hello there too."

Well, perhaps she wasn't as naïve as she led him to believe—there was a coyness in the smile of her dark lips, and her next words only reified this impression.

"I was… out for dinner at the grille last night, and saw a man by the name of … Austin Gardner, I think. Would you happen to know what room he's staying at?"

When he hesitated, she produced a thousand credit chit from somewhere on her strapless dress and impressed it into his closed hands.

"Thank you", she said curtly. "And now, Gardner's room?"

The concierge expression soured. Undoubtedly, another of the unscrupulous incestuous young women populating Tir Nanog's lower classes, waiting for assignation to yet another romantic liaison—hungry after last night's "dinner" and coming back for more.

The aide stowed away the chit, and produced a handheld—Ariadne was alarmed momentarily that perhaps it was a remote to summon security, but relaxed slightly when she saw that it was one of the hotel's interfaces for guest bookings and housekeeping services.

"Austin Gardner… yes, he checked in several hours ago though." His expression became quizzical. "He wasn't here last night, though. You couldn't have seen him at the hotel grille—he just signed in a bit after noon, today."

A silent sense of alarm was beginning to infect the concierge—this unassuming seductress certainly had malicious intent.

Her bubbly laugh tried to wash away the tension, but failed to dislodge his exponentially rising suspicions. "Oh, probably wasn't last night that I met him… Well, I met him a few nights ago" she said with a conspiratorial wink. "Haven't talked to him in awhile—just want to stop by and say hello."

"Room eight-two-eight", he said, not wanting to have anymore to do with this insidious deal.

"Thank you. And, umm, have you heard of anyone by the name of Raynor that's staying here?"

"Like James Raynor?" he asked incredulously.

"No—of course not", she said politely. "Well, thank you for your time."

She flirtatiously turned around—giving him an excellent vista of her toned figure; perhaps unnaturally athletic and toned.

As she stepped away, a handful of anonymously dressed, muscular men fell in behind her, their angular strides clearly betraying them as having martial or military training, and together, they strode upwards on the stairwell in concerted lockstep, gloved hands grasping conspicuous briefcases.

Oh my God—what've I done to this Gardner?—thought the concierge as "Ariadne" and her companions departed with lethal intent.

Or—what are they going to do to him?

Notes Added in Proof: This chapter has not been proofread yet, but I will finalize it shortly (I finished its rough draft while on a long plane flight).

"Tir Nanog" refers to the mythological Celtic Land of the Ever Young, capturing the essence of Bountiful's spirited and community-driven culture.

OPORDS is a U.S. Army military acronym for "operations order", an order for a military operation written in a typified and standardized format. The fictional "Joint Effects Priority Target List" is a reference to the real world NATO "Combined Effects Priority List" - in both the series and in real life, both lists are essentially lists of people demarcated for assassination.