StarCraft: The Dark Templar Saga Book Two. Christie Golden
terrifying sight of writhing cables emerging from walls to fasten onto his friend Savassan. Though the outcome had been wholly positive, it had deeply disturbed Temlaa and, through that long-ago protoss, Jacob Jefferson Ramsey in the here and now.
His head suddenly hurt again.
“Yeah,” Rosemary said. “Go on.”
“Well … it didn’t look like we were going to be able to escape Valerian and Ethan’s ships.”
“No kidding,” R. M. snorted. “Five Wraiths and a Valkyrie from Val plus whatever Ethan wanted to throw at us.”
Rosemary’s voice was completely calm as she mentioned Ethan Stewart’s name. It was as if he were a stranger to her, and after Ethan had betrayed R. M. so badly, Jake supposed she thought of him that way. Nevertheless, even if someone had betrayed him—as indeed, the woman lying in front of him busily rerouting wiring had—he couldn’t have done what Rosemary had—fired a rifle at point-blank range into the chest of a former lover. Ethan had dropped like a stone, blood blossoming like a crimson flower across his white shirt.
Jake looked away. He was grateful for Rosemary’s coldheartedness in a way. It’d saved his life and Zamara’s more than once.
I told you we would need her, Zamara reminded him.
Yes. You did.
“So?” Rosemary prompted, her eyes on her work.
Jake continued. “Well … I knew what had happened to the protoss when they first were exposed to the Khala. And I thought, what if I shared that feeling with everyone in the surrounding area?”
Rosemary fixed him with intense blue eyes. As always, Jake felt something flutter inside him at that gaze. “You linked everyone in the Khala, Jake?” Anger and a hint of fear flitted across her face. He didn’t have to read her thoughts to know what she was thinking—was she going to have her brain rewired, as his had been?
“No, no,” he said. “That’s not possible. We’re not protoss, for one thing. Our brains can’t handle something like that directly. And even the protoss needed to touch the khaydarin crystals to experience it, at least at first. Not sure about it now; Zamara hasn’t taken me that far yet. What I did was share the memory of how it felt, and for a brief moment I opened your minds to each other. You all—we all—did the rest.”
She regarded him for a few seconds, then shook her dark head. “Wow” was all she said, but it was heartfelt.
“Yeah,” Jake replied, his monosyllabic comment equally sincere. He wondered, as he had right before they had made the jump, if something more lasting than his immediate escape would come of that instant when, for the first time, nearly a thousand humans had had the briefest, palest hint of what it was like to have minds and hearts joined as one.
He hoped so.
Rosemary swore. “I thought as much. Rot in hell, Ethan.”
“What’s wrong?” Jake asked worriedly.
“He’s got a tracking device integrated into the navigation system. He—”
—sticks it in there, a tiny little thing, easy to miss if you didn’t know what you were looking for and if you didn’t know the bastard’s little trick of—
“Hey!” Rosemary’s voice cracked like a whip, and the anger that rolled off her was a one-two punch. Jake blinked. She was out from under the console and jabbing a finger in his face so fast he’d barely seen her move. “Get the hell out of my head! Don’t you dare do that again without asking me. Do you understand?”
She was angry out of all proportion to what she was thinking, but Jake knew that wasn’t the point. She had very recently been through a profound experience that she was still trying to integrate. And besides, although he was getting used to the idea of his thoughts being known by another as they popped into his mind, Jake well remembered the outrage he himself had felt when it started to happen.
The color was high in her cheeks, and her blue eyes sparkled. Jake winced. “Sorry,” he said. “I just was anxious to know what had happened and I didn’t even think about it. It won’t happen again.”
That is not a safe promise to make, Jacob, came Zamara’s warning voice. There may be a time when we need to violate it.
She’s proven herself amply, in my opinion. You’re so used to doing this casually, as part of who you are. For humans, it’s much more an invasion of privacy.
Rosemary does have difficulty trusting others, Zamara agreed.
That’s the understatement of the year.
Rosemary searched his gaze and then nodded. She took a deep breath, composed herself, and returned to her task. “This is an old trick of Ethan’s. He integrates the tracking device completely into the navigation system, so that every adjustment and every coordinate goes right back to the source. You don’t just know where this ship is, you know where it’s been. It’s also impossible to remove.”
Jake blanched, and he felt Zamara’s concern as well. “What does that mean?”
“It means we need to get an entirely new nav system.”
He stared at her. “How are we going to do that? We’re on the run in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I have a good idea where we can start looking safely. But first, I want to have a look at the damage. I’ll suit up and check it out. You and Zamara … don’t touch anything.”
She scooted out from under the console and got lithely to her feet. Purposefully, she strode toward the locker and began to suit up for a space walk.
She is deliberately withholding information. She will not tell us where she intends to go.
Let her cool off, Jake replied to Zamara. She’s mad, and I don’t blame her a bit. That was a stupid thing to do. I guess that bump on the head rattled me more than I thought.
If an alien consciousness inside one’s mind could sigh, Zamara did. When this is all taken care of and the vessel is repaired, our destination must be Aiur.
Jake thought about the homeworld of the protoss. Lush, verdant, tropical. Rich with vegetation and animal life, dotted with heart-stoppingly gorgeous relics of the xel’naga in their strange, twining, mysterious beauty. He smiled softly.
Rosemary, now encased in a suit that would enable her to move around in the cold darkness of space, threw him a glance and scowled a little. “See that light?” She pointed to the console. He looked where she indicated and saw a small button, currently dark. He nodded. “Once I get outside and the doors seal shut again, it’s going to turn green. It’ll stay green the whole time I’m out there. If it turns red and an alarm starts sounding, I’m in trouble. At that point I will give you permission to read my mind so that you can get me safely back inside. Got that?”
“Yes,” he said. He understood what she was saying. She was putting her life in his hands.
“Okay then.” She moved to the back of the cabin and touched a button. A door irised open and she stepped through without a backward glance. A few seconds later, the button came to life, glowing green just as R. M. had said. He sighed. His head was still hurting.
We will head for the underground chambers that Temlaa and Savassan discovered. There is great technology there. It will help me to complete my mission and keep my people safe.
Jake asked excitedly, “The chambers? That underground city?” Zamara had given him only the briefest tantalizing glimpse of the vastness that comprised the hidden city of the xel’naga. Most of Temlaa’s memories concerned a few very specific places, one of which was a chamber in which the desiccated protoss bodies had been stored. He wanted to close his eyes and relive that memory, now that Zamara had informed him that was their destination, but he had a duty. Rosemary had entrusted him with her safety.