OASIS
“Umojan? That doesn’t make sense.”
Kelerchian and Nova Terra were walking down a narrow rutted street in the town of Oasis. The day was hot and unusually still. Nova kept part of her attention on the dusty, cracked windows of the shanties that lined either side of the street. The smell of cooking fires and sweat wafted through the air. She could hear the random thoughts of the people hiding inside, watching from the shadows or doing other, less savory things. It was like listening to a hundred comms all tuned to different channels, but she was alert to anything that might matter to the investigation.
Unfortunately, the majority of the citizens in Oasis had little of use to say, if they were conscious at all. But so far Nova and Kelerchian had gleaned a few interesting pieces of information, one of them being this report from a smuggler of a Umojan spy who appeared in town several weeks ago.
“I read his thoughts,” Nova said. “He was telling the truth, or at least he believed it himself.”
“Hmmm,” Kelerchian said. “How the flick would he know a Umojan spy from a hole in the ground?”
“Claims he had met the guy before during one of his smuggling runs. Recognized him when he came into the tavern looking for supplies.”
“Personally I wouldn’t trust these people to recognize their own mothers, but let’s say he’s right. What would Umojans be doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Nova said. “But I would bet it has something to do with that refinery.”
They reached the edge of town, where a dropship waited at the rendezvous point, just beyond the tentlike structures and steel-sheet-covered ground holes that passed for shelters in this part of Oasis. Agent X72341R was already there, drinking from a jug of water. He was a tall, gaunt man with black hair and eyes, one of the first to arrive at the Palatine after Mengsk’s orders had gone out. There were six new arrivals now in total, four men, two women, three working the town for intel and three others assisting Hauler’s crew with cleanup at the refinery.
Several more were on their way from farther corners of the sector, but the first would not arrive for another few days. It was the best they could do on short notice. Psionic abilities were rare enough, and ghosts had short life expectancies. Combined with the disappearances lately, that meant their ranks were growing thin.
X72341R was a survivor, though. His top secret dossier reported that he was a veteran of Mengsk’s Uprising, and he was particularly skilled at stealth interrogation, which meant that he could not only read minds well, but draw things from a subject’s subconscious that he or she might not even be aware of: suppressed memories or knowledge that had been otherwise wiped clean.
“Nothing on UED activity,” X72341R said. “This town is a sewer.” He spat on the dusty ground and passed the jug of water to Kelerchian. “Oasis, my ass. I’ve probed more dirty minds today than the past six months combined. There are seven murderers, fifteen wanted smugglers, twenty-three prostitutes, and more thieves and dealers than I can count. But not one flicking UED terrorist.” He sighed. “I’ve got two more buildings to clear, then as far as I’m concerned, we can move on.”
“Check them carefully,” Nova said. “Watch for smugglers’ hatches and hidden rooms. And mark them in your computer. I don’t want a single space unaccounted for.”
The other ghost nodded. “You got it.” He moved back down the street, activating his cloaking device and winking out of sight.
“Ever worked with that guy?” Kelerchian said. He took a long swig of water, wiped his mouth, and offered it to Nova, who shook her head.
“I don’t know. He doesn’t feel familiar. But my memory is not exactly reliable.”
“Well, he’s got one thing right: the sooner we leave this hellhole in our dust, the better.”
“Hauler’s group has to finish the zerg cleanup, and I want to go over that refinery again, centimeter by centimeter,” Nova said. “Maybe there’s something we missed.”
“Maybe. Fekk, at least they recovered my ship,” Kelerchian said drily. “And she’s none the worse for wear, apart from the claw damage and the zerg drool. Replace that engine, and she’ll be flying before you can say ‘Umojan.’” He winced and touched a button on his belt that released more analgesic. “Too many damned ghosts around here,” he grumbled. “My head’s about to split right down the middle.”
November Terra.
Nova whirled around. The voice inside her head had been as clear as if someone had been standing right next to her. But the street was empty.
She hadn’t had much time to consider what had changed with her since the earlier events on Altara and her exposure to whatever toxin had been floating around in the atmosphere. Luckily, whatever it was had dissipated now. But since then the disjointed flashes of her past had kept her on edge, and she had felt an electricity inside her veins and a heightened awareness that went beyond her already off-the-charts psionic abilities. More frightening than that was the urge to have more of it, whatever it was, a desire that nipped at her like thirst after a long stretch without water.
“Jumpy, ain’t we?” Kelerchian said. He was studying her carefully.
“Thought I heard something.”
“I’ve been hearing voices ever since I woke up in the med unit. Whispering, mostly, nothing I can make out. Maybe that bump on my head scrambled me a bit more than I realized.”
Nova stared at the ramshackle buildings leaning in the sun. Red dust swirled and lifted as a hot wind passed through. A chill raised the hairs on the back of her neck.
“At least the gas is gone,” Kelerchian was saying. “That stuff took a mild headache and turned it into a jackhammer to my brain. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was engineered specifically to be a pain in my backside …” His voice trailed off. “Hey, did you say something?”
Nova was barely listening. Someone was nearby, and whoever it was felt different to her than the others hiding among the many dusty, cluttered rooms: more focused and bright and alert, a presence she couldn’t easily explain.
(felt that with the protoss on Braken)
Suddenly she was running through the thick jungle, her cloaking device damaged and useless, breathing hard, others closing in …
Why was I there?
Nova blinked out again and shook her head, fighting through the vivid memory and the disorientation that washed over her. She had been on Braken, although she had no idea why or when. But she had felt the same sensation of being in the presence of another creature more powerful and capable than she had thought possible.
“There’s someone here,” she said. “Watching us.”
“Probably about two dozen of them,” Kelerchian said. “Beggars, liars, and thieves, all waiting to cut our hearts out if given the chance.”
“No,” she said, “not them.” She stared up at the nearest window, feeling a second heartbeat in her own chest. “It’s hard to explain … I can feel everyone here, every breath, every thought, and it’s stronger than it’s ever been for me. But they’re all in shades of gray. This one is like a splash of bright yellow. Do you feel it?”
“Not that strong. But now that you point it out, I guess maybe I do. My head sure feels like it wants to explode.”
Nova looked back up at the window and saw a flash of movement.
Peekaboo.
A sound in her head like laughter. As she stared through the dusty second-floor glass, a face like an eyeless mask appeared and then winked away into nothing.
“There, Mal,” she said, pointing. “I’m going in! Go around back, cut him off.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Her heart thundered in her chest as she ran for the nearest door, reaching out a hand and teeking it inward, ripping it from its hinges. Power leapt from somewhere deep inside her, and the feeling was so delicious she almost cried out. She felt none of the normal pain in her head at such an effort as the door crashed to the floor; it had been like nothing more than flicking her wrist. She knew that this might be a trap, but she didn’t care. She felt invincible, as if she could take on an entire zerg hive at once without breaking a sweat.
As she ducked inside, something moved on her right, and she came within a millisecond of lashing out before she realized it was only a girl cowering beneath a table. The girl’s thoughts were of terror and death, and nothing more. Nova kept going, racing through the room to the set of stairs in back, reaching out with her mind to search for that patch of bright yellow in a sea of gray. But it was gone.
She took the stairs three at a time, propelling herself upward to the narrow landing at the top, then down a short dark hallway toward the room where she had seen the face.
As she crashed through the door and faced an empty, dust-filled room, reddish sunlight trickling faintly through the glass, she was already beginning to doubt herself. After all, she had been having flashbacks to memories that felt half real, half dream, and maybe the face had been something like that: her subconscious intruding upon her conscious mind. She knew these flashbacks were having an effect on her mental state, eroding her self-confidence. Whatever presence she might have felt was gone now, the space before her devoid of anything but a lonely chair near the window, its cracked, crooked form a symbol of the decay and despair that haunted this godforsaken town.
All of that might have convinced her she was seeing things, except for the footprints.
They were clearly marked in the dust that coated the floor, a single set of boots that had gone to the window, circled there, and then returned toward her in a straight line. The print looked similar to a ghost suit boot. They ended just a meter away.
As she stared in shock a new print appeared out of thin air, one step closer.
Nova threw herself into a backflip and lashed out with a kick, feeling a satisfactory thud as her own boot met with something solid. She sprung off her hands and landed on her feet, facing into the room again, but it was still empty and she sensed absolutely nothing at all.
A ringing blow crashed into the side of her head, knocking her back into the open door, and this time she clearly heard the laughter again. She focused on where it appeared to be and shoved hard with her mind, sending whoever or whatever it was flying into the wall fast enough to crack wood, and ending the laughter abruptly.
Not bad, Nova. But you’ll have to do a lot better than that.
Dust swirled around a moving form still invisible to the naked eye. Nova drew her sidearm and launched herself forward, but her attacker was too fast, and as she brought the gun up she felt a blow to her side, driving her to the floor.
She went into a roll and regained her feet, but she could already hear whoever it was moving down the stairs. She leapt down the steps to the first room, following the sound of footsteps to the back of the building. She heard a thud, and someone cried out as she entered a narrow rear hallway and followed it to a back door.
When she emerged into the red-tinged sunlight, gun up and ready, she found Agent X72341R sprawled in the dirt in an alley between two buildings, blood trickling from his mouth. “What the flick was that?” he said. He got to his feet gingerly, touching the blood with two fingers and palpating his jaw. “Something hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t even get the chance to move.”
“Did you see which way it went?”
“I didn’t see a thing,” the other ghost said. “One second I was standing here watching the back, the next I’m on my ass.”
“Where’s Mal?”
“No idea.” The ghost shook his head. “I’m seeing stars. Never been hit that hard before without seeing it coming. No chance to roll with it.”
Nova wasn’t paying him much attention anymore. She was following that same line of prints in the dust. It led down the alley for about three meters, went left, right up to the wall of the adjacent building, and disappeared.
“Vanished into thin air?” X72341R stood beside her, staring at the prints. “That’s the craziest thing I ever saw. What, did he go right through? Must have been some kind of cloaking device to get by me.”
“If it was a cloak, it somehow had the ability to block thoughts too. I sensed something at first, but then it disappeared.” Nova stared up and down the alley. She watched for more prints to appear, but nothing happened.
“Everyone okay?” Kelerchian entered the alley from the right.
“I found someone up in that room,” Nova said. “Whoever it was got away. Nobody passed you?”
Kelerchian shook his head. “Nobody I could see.”
Or maybe they’re still here, she thought. And we just don’t know it.
They all whirled around. The girl who had been hiding under the table was standing in the open doorway to the alley, her small, thin shoulders hunched as if anticipating a blow. She might have been about ten years old, but it was tough to tell with the grime on her face and her malnourished body. She wore a tattered dress and no shoes, and her feet looked raw and swollen.
Nova walked slowly toward her, hands out, palms up. The girl took a half step back inside. She felt the girl’s fear radiating outward like a siren. Her thoughts were full of confusion, terror, and loneliness.
No no no stay away scary monster don’t hurt me …
“It’s okay,” Nova said. “I won’t hurt you. I promise.” She sensed the girl relax just enough to keep her from bolting. Nova crouched centimeters in front of the doorway, keeping her face friendly. She had little experience with children …
(Delta little Delta Emblock)
She was back at the academy, Dylanna from Team Red accusing her of letting her team down in simulated combat, feeling angry and ashamed and leaving Team Blue and the others behind as she caught a form ducking into the library, giving chase only to find a child doing spelling exercises, who introduced herself as Delta …
Nova had more questions than answers. Delta Emblock had been a young recruit at the academy; she remembered that much. But she wasn’t sure about anything else. These memories that came out of nowhere and yanked her back to another time, another world, threatened to shatter the hard mental shell she had built to protect herself.
When she came out of it, the girl was staring at her. The girl’s eyes, already large, appeared even larger now within the sharp lines of her cheekbones and broad forehead.
“Spectres,” she said. She gestured toward the open alley. “Shadowblade.”
“I don’t know,” Nova said. “I can’t get much else out of her, and when I read her thoughts, all I see is the same thing: an image of something invisible and terrifying, some kind of ghost or monster coming to get her that she calls a spectre. And the word Shadowblade.”
Colonel Jackson Hauler scratched his neatly trimmed goatee. “You find her parents?”
“No sign of them.”
They both looked at the girl, who was sitting on the edge of one of the dropship’s ramps just outside of Oasis as a sour stench wafted faintly through the air. She stared out into the distance, seemingly unaware of the firebats in armor who thumped back and forth in the dust, their flamethrowers still ticking as they cooled. Most of the troops had returned from the site of the zerg battle, and they still smelled of burned alien flesh. Hauler had considered quarantining the entire planet at first, concerned with seepage from the ground where the refinery had gone up, but the gas pocket seemed to be depleted, and the site itself was remote enough to keep any curious onlookers away.
“Looks brain-panned,” Hauler said. “Maybe whatever that thing was, it did something to her other than planting a name in her head.”
“If you grew up in a place like this, you’d probably be like that too.”
“Yeah.” Hauler shrugged. “I guess we can cut her loose. Meanwhile, we’re about done with the cleanup. All evidence of the zerg has been destroyed, by orders of the emperor. Nothing much to salvage from the refinery site. Let’s pack up and head back to the Palatine.”
He went to find Ward. Nova approached the girl. She hadn’t been entirely truthful with Colonel Hauler, which shocked her when she thought about it; with her training and neural inhibitor, she should not have been able to hold anything back at all, and yet she had gleaned a few more nuggets of information from reading the girl’s thoughts that seemed important to keep to herself. Perhaps this was yet another effect from the gas …
The girl’s name was Lila, and she was twelve years old. She had come from a wealthy family on Pridewater, but after a terrorist attack had killed her parents, she had been sold into slavery and force-addicted to hab, somehow ending up here on Altara after several years of drifting from place to place in a drug-induced fog. She had been living with someone she called Oma until a few days ago, when a man broke into their tiny apartment to rob them and started shooting. She ran and hadn’t dared go back since. It hadn’t been the first time someone had broken into her Oma’s place, but the girl seemed to know that this time it was worse, and that Oma was dead.
All this didn’t seem relevant to their investigation, and Nova felt a strange desire to protect the girl’s privacy. There was something about her that seemed familiar. It wasn’t just Nova’s sudden returning memories of Delta, but rather something more personal. A young girl without a family, on the run from people who would use her or kill her without a second thought if it suited them. The world was a hard and dangerous place, as she knew from experience.
At least I had my psionic abilities to protect me when I was alone in the Gutter. She has nothing.
Or maybe that wasn’t quite true. There was something about this girl … She stopped in front of the child and waited until she looked up. Lila’s large eyes focused on Nova’s face, but she didn’t change expression.
“You want something to eat, Lila?”
That seemed to make an impression. Lila nodded, wide-eyed.
(you can read thoughts?)
“I can. But I try not to do it unless I have to. People deserve to have their privacy. Wait here.” Nova ducked inside the dropship and found a marine MRE and a canister of filtered water. When she returned, she handed them to the girl. “It tastes like paste, but it’s good for you.”
Lila took the package and tore into it, eating as if she hadn’t seen food for days. Judging by the way her ribs showed through her worn clothing, that might not have been far from the truth.
“You said a few things back there,” Nova said, gesturing toward the building where they had found the girl. “I’d like to know more about what you meant. Shadowblade. What’s that?”
The girl froze with the half-eaten food at her mouth, glancing around furtively under her brows, everywhere but at Nova’s face.
(no no no no no no)
“Easy,” she said, hands out, palms up. “You’re safe here. I just want to try to find the person who scared you so badly. Was it, what did you call it, one of these spectres?”
The girl glanced at her and then away. Her mind filled with an image of a hulking, shadowy figure that moved so quickly it was impossible to track. Nova could sense that Lila could see this thing, but others in town could not. She’d even said something to Oma once, but the old woman had dismissed it as nightmares or a vivid imagination.
“Is that your name for these things?”
(that’s what they call themselves)
It didn’t make any sense, but Nova could see that she wouldn’t get much else from the girl. Her heart rate had sped up, and her breathing had gone fast and shallow. The images flying through her head were overwhelming her.
Nova made a sudden decision. “We could take you back with us, to the ship,” she said. “Would you like that?”
(afraid)
“You don’t have to be scared, Lila. I know these soldiers might seem like bad guys, but we’re friends. We’ll find a good place for you on Korhal. Maybe even a school for you.”
(home here)
“I know it feels that way now, but it’s dangerous, Lila. You’d be better off in another place, somewhere that doesn’t have thieves and murderers.”
(every place has those you’re good but scary I can tell sometimes I can read minds too)
The girl blinked, her huge eyes growing slightly moist, from either the dust or the heat. Nova sensed that the slave traders had used her gift, a low-level teep ability, to steal from people, and that Oma had done the same here on Altara. Lila had been exploited her entire life, and yet she still wanted to believe that Oma had wanted her there for something more than that; she wanted to believe that the woman had loved her. Now Oma was dead in another act of senseless violence, and Lila was alone.
(I want to be like you)
Then the girl stood up and bolted, her long, coltish legs pumping fast and carrying her quickly away until she disappeared between two narrow buildings.
Nova let her go, a feeling of sadness and loss in her gut. The truth was, she couldn’t offer a safe passage to Korhal, and even if she could, there was no telling what might become of the girl once she got there. If Lila really did have a higher than normal psi index, she’d be shipped away to the Ghost Academy for further testing. Once upon a time Nova would have accepted that without a second thought, but now it seemed a bit more complicated. Her mind was swirling with unfamiliar emotions, events that had been buried deep in her subconscious for years, and she had no idea how to handle them.
But that wasn’t the only reason she felt an uneasiness in her belly. As Lila had disappeared she’d sent a much sharper thought Nova’s way: the image of a human form dressed all in black, with a black mask across the face, looking menacing and evil, along with that single, mysterious word again.
Shadowblade.
Nova had no idea what it meant. But she had a feeling she was about to find out.