THE LOST
The cloaked ship slid silently into the landing bay, its engine noise canceled out by a sophisticated antiwave system aided by the pilot’s own psionic abilities. Originally developed under the umbrella of the top secret Kal-Bryant operation Sector 9, the device had been supplied by Umojan researchers who had helped with its installation, and they had done the same with the spectres’ more advanced propulsion and cloaking systems.
The deal he and General Bennett had made with the Ruling Council had served Project: Shadowblade well, Tosh thought. Umojan technology allowed them to move about completely undetected by Dominion forces, even as they left Korhal airspace right under the noses of over ten battlecruisers and endless vikings and dropships. In return, the Umojans and former Dominion senator Corbin Phash had received assurances that Emperor Mengsk would be removed from power, permanently. They had also received a tidy sum of money.
It was a badly kept secret that the Umojan Protectorate—terrans who had arrived in the Koprulu sector along with everyone else after the twenty-third–century colonization mission from Old Earth, but had never joined the Confederacy of Man—was willing and able to support any separatist group intent upon destroying the Dominion. Although they had originally been allies bent on helping Emperor Mengsk to overthrow the Confederacy, relations between the two governments had begun to sour quickly, coming to a head when the emperor visited Umoja and was very nearly assassinated by Confederate Resistance Forces. He believed the Umojans had known about the attack, and perhaps had even been involved in the attempt on his life.
The years since had been spent in political jockeying, economic blockades, and the spread of underground propaganda. The Umojan Ruling Council knew full well that the Dominion military was too large and powerful for them to fight head-to-head, and so they publicly remained peaceful while working to support splinter groups whenever they could.
A particular target of theirs was the Ghost Academy, a program they had deemed both immoral and corrupt even before former senator Phash and his psionic son, Colin, had defied the academy and sought refuge with the Umojans. Colin had been forced to join the academy against Corbin’s wishes, and he had fought tooth and nail to get his son back. He had succeeded, but they had been hunted down like animals as a result and had to take shelter among the Umojans, where Colin had become the youngest member of the Umojan Shadowguard due to his advanced abilities. After that, the Ruling Council had helped spread anti-academy propaganda across dozens of Dominion worlds. Which had made the council Gabriel Tosh’s lifelong friends.
But Tosh found it difficult to keep his mind on all that now as he settled the ship gently into place on Gehenna’s plascrete landing floor. His thoughts were on his fallen comrades back in Augustgrad, and the failure of their mission. Mengsk was not under their control, and Nova Terra was not yet a spectre.
It was the first real failure of Project: Shadowblade, and General Bennett would not be pleased.
And yet they had accomplished something important, laying the groundwork for convincing Nova to join them. Tosh powered down the engines and unstrapped from his pilot’s chair before going back in to get the others. They disembarked in silence, supporting the two ghosts they had taken from Augustgrad after the battle, who were unable to walk under their own power. Dylanna had already disabled their neural implants while in transit and would remove them entirely once they reached the medical unit. If she had been a bit too rough, that was understandable, Tosh thought, considering what had happened inside the city walls. They were all upset. He could feel Dylanna’s anger seething just beneath the surface, and it joined and mingled and multiplied with his own until he was buzzing with energy and desperately needing a release.
They be needing their leader to honor those they lost, Grandma Tosh said. A moment of ceremony. Lay the spirits of the dead to rest, Gabriel, or you risk a haunting.
Tosh nodded. Lately his grandma had taken up permanent residence inside his head and often spoke without bothering to appear before him the way she had before. That was fine; she provided wise counsel, and he was grateful to have her. She was right this time too. He needed to make a statement.
Tosh stopped in the middle of the hangar and asked that the two ghosts be set down on the floor. Join me in a moment of silence for our fallen comrades, he directed his teammates as they stood in a rough circle. Talen, Jara, and Karl. Your sacrifices will be remembered. Rest in peace.
The silence was broken by Dylanna, who had been fidgeting back and forth on her feet. “What about their suits and weapons?” she said. “Mengsk has them now.”
Tosh looked angrily at her. “The suits self-destruct after vital signs have ceased. You know that.”
“But what if that didn’t work? His scientists will be able to replicate our advances.”
“It don’t matter. The Dominion will be ours before they can do anything with it.” Tosh looked around at what remained of his team and saw uncertainty in their faces for the first time. What had happened in Augustgrad was bad enough, but Dylanna was making it worse. He should put her in her place, but he just couldn’t find the strength to do it. His hold over all of them had been broken, and he couldn’t seem to care enough to get it back.
“Take the two new recruits to the prepping chambers,” he said to them. “Lio’s got them ready. Remove the implants and dress them for conversion and stasis. I’ll be speaking with the general.” Then he turned and left them there.
The two ghosts had been wounded, but neither of them was critical, which was a good thing, since they would help replace the three spectres who had been lost once the ghosts had begun treatment and had been convinced to join the cause. Neither ghost had a psi index that was off the charts, but with terrazine and jorium to help them, they would be capable enough warriors. If he could get Nova into the fold, the spectres would be a formidable force.
He should be preparing now for a larger battle, gearing up the troops and finalizing their plans with General Bennett. Instead, he was suddenly wracked with self-doubt and reeling from the failure in Augustgrad.
He waited for more advice from Grandma Tosh, but she was uncharacteristically silent; had he angered her with his handling of Dylanna? He needed her to help him understand where to go from here. Project: Shadowblade was at a crossroads.
Tosh had learned of Shadowblade not long after he’d gone AWOL from the academy. After what had happened with Kath and his subsequent escape, he had gone into a deep depression. He had been living off the grid in a Tyrador IX slum, trying to regroup after what had been done to him; by then his friends had thought he was dead, the ghost program had still been hunting him down, and everything he’d believed about his life had turned out to be a lie. The Dominion, to which he had pledged his life, no longer existed for him; Nova’s mind blast had changed all that. He knew he could never return. He was a soldier without a cause, a man without a god, and he had turned to hab to take his mind off the pain.
He managed to keep ahead of those people looking for him, and it wasn’t long before he’d started taking small security jobs for spending money. Soon after that, someone else took notice of his talents. They hadn’t known who he was, and they hadn’t seemed to care, but the larger jobs they funneled his way led to a man who claimed to be the brother of someone incarcerated at New Folsom Prison—an inmate who swore he knew the details of a top secret Dominion project to study the effects of something called terrazine on psionics. The man said that the emperor had locked his brother away forever in the maximum-security prison and had had him brain-panned to erase his memory of the project, but the procedure hadn’t worked. Apparently the gas not only restored the memories of mind-wiped terrans, but it also raised psi levels through a genetic mutation, and had been revered by a sect of the protoss for many years for its effects. The prisoner had been smart enough to keep his facts to himself, but had finally shared some of them with his sibling.
Tosh had been intrigued; he’d been looking for something to believe in again, a cause to awaken him from a deep and mournful sleep. Perhaps this was it.
He went on a quest, and after months of passage on pirate ships across the sector chasing false leads, crooks, and thieves, he finally found someone he scanned who seemed to know about a mysterious gas like the one he described. He ended up alone on Altara, fumbling through dark, abandoned caverns that led deep into the ground, where he found a rift in the rock that was leaking a greenish, foul-smelling substance. It didn’t take long for him to realize what it could do. The power and enlightenment he experienced during those first days on Altara had taken his breath away.
He had been longing for a way to return to his friends and let them see what he had seen. He wanted to set them free from the ghost program, and show them that the Dominion had become a corrupt and evil government, no better than the one it had replaced. Now he seemed to have an answer to his prayers.
A few weeks later he met General Bennett, a former member of that secret terrazine project who had ambitious plans of his own. He had his reasons for hating Emperor Mengsk and the Dominion. He used his knowledge of what had happened under Sector 9 and reached out in private to Colin Phash, but Colin would never join him; the Umojans considered him far too valuable, and it was not his way. But Tosh helped Bennett broker a secret deal with the Umojan Ruling Council to gather resources for a coup.
Together they vowed to resurrect Project: Shadowblade and bring down the Dominion in the process.
Gabriel Tosh stumbled through Gehenna’s corridors toward the comm room. He felt dizzy and weak, his mouth was dry, and he couldn’t focus his thoughts. The rock-hewn walls of Gehenna Station seemed to flex in and out at him along with his own trembling breaths, while below his feet he sensed the dreamless sleep of thousands of soldiers, ready to rise up and overwhelm him.
He took his bottle of terrazine off his belt with shaking hands, the need alive in him and demanding relief. It felt nearly empty, and panic almost unmanned him before he put the valve to his lips and pushed the button, inhaling deeply.
There was just enough. Terrazine fire prickled his lungs and tore through his bloodstream, rushing to his head and making him want to cry out with satisfaction. Immediately he felt his focus return, and the world snapped back into place. He could see every crack and ridge in the rock, hear the rush of air through the ventilation system, the rustle of people in motion, cleaning bots scrubbing, the hum of electricity running through the giant pipes under the floor. He felt as if he could sense every star in the galaxy and every living soul within it.
Along with the increased focus, his rage returned with a vengeance, and he began to wonder if it might be time to put Dylanna Okyl down. She had challenged him once again in front of the team. This could not be allowed to stand.
Tosh’s remote console chirped, distracting him. He looked at the screen. Your General Bennett is waiting, Lio wrote. You’re late.
“Caught up with new recruits,” he typed. “And Dylanna is causing trouble.”
A pause, and then: Your approach lacks the proper controls.
Tosh let a hiss of breath escape between clenched teeth. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
You are straying from the parameters of this experiment. You’re treating Kath like you might treat a prisoner of war, not a friend. She’s frightened and she is not embracing the truth about her father. That will have untold consequences.
“I’m doing what is necessary. She doesn’t understand, but she will. You know this. We have plenty to show her.”
Perhaps. But the logic of your approach with Nova is flawed as well. And your insistence on remaining in Augustgrad even as the ghosts were alerted to your presence was a needless risk. I have no more tolerance for deviations in intent. The new way thrives on order, precision, ones and zeros in exact sequence.
“The new way?”
The next stage of human consciousness.
Tosh stared at the screen, his unease growing. He wondered again whether Mengsk’s private message getting through Lio’s communications net back at Augustgrad had been a mistake, or whether he had some other agenda. A lot was riding on Lio’s ability to disrupt the Dominion’s computer systems. He had previously assumed that Lio’s motivations for joining Project: Shadowblade were the result of his treatment at the hands of the academy and a thirst to make the Dominion pay for what it had done to him, along with lingering feelings of affection for his old friends.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
“You’re not in charge here, Lio. I have to know that you’re with us.”
Terran hierarchy no longer interests me. I am assisting you because some part of me still values friendship, camaraderie, human interaction. And I am curious to see the results of what you have proposed.
“Remember Team Blue, Lio. Remember what we meant to each other. I have to go talk to the general.” Trying to ignore the churning in his gut, Tosh cut the feed from the unit and strode through the hallways to the comm room.
Bennett was already up on the holo, and when Tosh entered the room, the general wasted no time making his feelings known. “You had Mengsk at your mercy. Why didn’t you bring him back with you, or kill him there?”
The general’s face was red and his voice was loud. Tosh looked down and saw a cara beetle near his own feet. One wing was extended, damaged somehow, the other still tucked tightly as it fluttered and walked in circles. The colors of its carapace swirled like oil on water. He had no idea how it had gotten here, but it wouldn’t last long. It seemed like some kind of symbol, a warning. Tosh thought about picking it up and keeping it with him, but instead he crushed it with his boot.
“He was in the safe room,” Tosh said. “We couldn’t get to him before the ghosts arrived.”
“I know where he was,” Bennett said. “Why should that stop you? You had plenty of time.”
“Nova got in the way.”
“I thought you were going to persuade her to join us—”
“We captured two of them. Nova’s gonna be more difficult. If we had killed the emperor in front of her, we would never have a chance to show her we’re on the right side.” Tosh felt his own anger rise again. Why couldn’t Bennett understand that this was a delicate process? She was not like the others. She was loyal to a fault, and her loyalty could not be bought, threatened, or stolen. They would never convince her that way, and she was far too important for them to lose now; as a spectre, her abilities would be more powerful than anyone other than the Queen of Blades.
He thought about mentioning his conversation with Lio and decided against it. He would deal with that himself.
“Then bring her in by force,” General Bennett said. “We are at a turning point, and now we’re going to have to regroup. Our success hinges on our actions during the next few days. You know that.”
“We can’t force her. We lost three of our team—”
“Casualties of war.” General Bennett waved a hand, as if dismissing the importance of the thought. “You think the protoss spend a moment crying about their dead in battle? Or the zerg? If we aim to be as ruthless as they are, we need to focus on the ultimate goal: victory. Mengsk must be brought to Gehenna and made to answer for his crimes.” Bennett smiled grimly. “Except we don’t have Mengsk as we’d planned, and he will be even more highly protected when we try again.” The smile turned into a scowl. “You assured me that you could get the job done and bring in Nova Terra in the process. You said she would trust you. If that’s not true, I’m afraid I may have to take matters into my own hands. Nova is too important now. Her connection to the emperor is our way back in. She’s either with us or out of the way. Permanently.”
“We need more time—”
“Time,” Bennett said, “is overrated. All I’ve had is time. To act, Gabriel, and act decisively, that is the most important thing.” He gestured toward the terrazine bottle on Tosh’s belt. “Are you regulating your intake properly? You seem … jumpy. You know the effects can be dangerous. We have proof enough of that. I can’t afford to have a hallucinating, out-of-control addict in charge of the spectres, not at such a critical juncture.”
“I’m fine.” Tosh wanted to explode at him, reach right through the holo and wring his neck. Instead, he pushed the rage back down inside, holding it tightly within, where it coiled and writhed and burned. He had made a deal with the general to support Project: Shadowblade for two reasons: he wanted to free his fellow ghosts, and he wanted a very public revenge on Arcturus Mengsk for his crimes. Bennett had been an easy partner at first. But now Tosh began to feel that their ultimate goals might not be in such perfect alignment after all. Tosh wanted to bring Team Blue together once again, and he wanted Mengsk humiliated in front of the Dominion, forced to admit his crimes. He wanted to outthink and outmaneuver the great strategist, harass and terrify him until he begged for mercy.
Bennett, it seemed, wanted power and control. Everything else was secondary.
Even with the spectres back on board, Kath Toom still felt utterly alone.
She had tried on the suit located in her locker after her run-in with Lio, getting used to the feel of it on her skin and wondering if she would ever be comfortable wearing it outside of these rocky walls, or if she even wanted that to happen. It was similar to the more familiar ghost hostile environment suit, but thicker, more substantial, and she felt the power of its muscle fiber weave like a well-tuned engine purring against her flesh. She had to admit that it felt right. When she settled the HUD over her face and began to play with the interface, she quickly realized that the technology behind the suit was remarkably advanced, and yet clearly terran in nature. Who had designed such a thing? And why did the Dominion’s best warriors not have access to it?
Lio might have been able to answer her questions, but she had refused to talk to him for the rest of the time she had been alone on board, and the silent treatment had continued even as he had reached out to her through every means possible, his messages appearing on holo-screens as she passed them, AAI units, even the HUD after she had booted it up. Surveillance cameras swiveled to follow her, and bots stopped and seemed to plead silently as she walked the halls. At first this was creepy and invasive, but she soon got used to it; Lio was just being Lio, after all, and he didn’t mean it in a menacing way. He had been insecure around others when he was mortal, but now he was close to godlike in his abilities, and normal terran concerns like privacy no longer seemed to bother him.
She felt more confused than ever. Gabriel Tosh had been the love of her life once, and now that he had found her again, the idea of walking away was nearly impossible to face. What she now knew about the Dominion’s ghost program and how she had been treated made her wonder whether he was right; maybe Mengsk had become drunk with power and hopelessly corrupt, and maybe it was her duty to expose him and help replace him with someone better.
There were other things that continued to nag at her, like the way the spectres were going about seizing control—and the growing unease about what had happened to her father. But mostly, she worried about the terrazine. Its influence continued to both amaze and terrify her. She felt her new teek abilities gathering strength every day and had mastered them enough to feel more confident, and her ability to sense her environment and read minds had sharpened as well. She had never felt this invincible. And yet the nightmares and hallucinations had continued, popping up at unexpected times and places, each more vivid than the last, and she felt a restlessness inside her that would not stop. More important, she craved the terrazine more and more each day, finding it difficult to wait until she slept to get it. By the time she went to sleep her entire body was on fire and shaking, her limbs weakened and her mouth as dry as the dust on Altara. Yesterday she had returned to her sleeping chamber early just to get the taste of terrazine on her lips. She didn’t see how this could continue without terrible consequences, but she also couldn’t imagine stopping it.
And then there was Gabriel. She had sensed his return a short while ago, had felt him probing for her location, but she had remained distant. She couldn’t imagine where he and the others had gone. Wherever it had been, three of them had not returned, and when she scanned those who were left, she felt the loss like a blow to the stomach. Dylanna, in particular, seemed anxious, the energy humming from her like a nuclear weapon about to melt down. Toom avoided her as well, keeping to the areas of Gehenna where the others did not seem to go.
Still, she knew it was only a matter of time before Gabriel checked in on her. He would surely ask her whether she was ready to become a member of the spectres. She had no idea how she would respond to that.
Toom reached the end of a hallway with double doors that slid open into a much larger, more rough-hewn passageway than she’d been in before. This was a section of Gehenna that she had never seen, located deep in the bowels of the strange ship. The ship (if you could call it that) was even larger and more complex than she could have imagined, and she had yet to understand its layout. The passage here was large and straight, as if made to move vehicles or crowds of people, and it was bisected with another huge passage that seemed to run nearly the entire length of the ship. She was far enough away from the main rooms that the hum of other minds had dimmed, but now she felt something else that was subtler and yet unsettling, an undercurrent of something dangerous and huge, as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff in the dark, one step away from the drop.
At one end of the passage was a giant set of neosteel doors. It looked like the entrance to a dropship bay.
She walked to the end and put her hands on the steel, feeling the thrumming of the engines and listening for anything that would give her a clue to what else might lie beyond. She sensed cavernous space, but it was not empty.
“Kath.”
She whirled, her heart leaping to her throat. Gabriel Tosh stood directly behind her, arms crossed over his broad chest. She hadn’t heard him approach, hadn’t sensed him at all.
“Ever since I got caught in Nova’s mind blast on Shi,” he said, scanning her thoughts, “I can close myself off to teeps. Can’t read me at all if I don’t want ’em to.” He looked long and hard at her with those strange, hypnotic eyes. “What are you doing down here?”
“I—I was exploring the ship.”
“You shouldn’t be here.” He took a step closer, dropping his hands to his sides. Instead of feeling more relaxed, she felt even more on edge. He was probing at her, gently for now, but she didn’t like it.
“Stop scanning me,” she said. Her back was against one of the huge metal doors. “It’s … an invasion of privacy. And it’s dangerous.”
He smiled, showing straight, white teeth. “You never minded before.”
“We were lovers then.” She tried her own smile, but it was shaky and uncertain. She took a deep breath. “Where did you go, Gabriel?”
“We had a mission.”
“A dangerous one. You lost three of your team.”
“And brought two new recruits back with us. They’ve seen the light, Kath, and they’ve chosen to free themselves and join the fight. I hope you’re ready too, because there’s a great battle coming. We could use you. I could use you.”
“I … I don’t know.” Toom crossed her arms, rubbing at the gooseflesh that had popped up. She’d almost gotten used to the civilian clothes she’d been wearing, but now she wished for her old ghost suit.
“You’re worried about the terrazine,” Tosh said. “Don’t be. I’ve been using it for a long time now. Nothing wrong with me.” He cocked his head, as if listening, and she got the strangest feeling there was someone else with them, someone she could not see. Then he gave a slight nod. “A protoss sect called the Tal’darim uses it—they call it the Breath of Creation. They don’t follow the Khala, the protoss group mind, and they’re not part of the main protoss body; but the Tal’darim believe terrazine brings them closer to the xel’naga. Fekk, they even named themselves after some mythological xel’nagan servants. That’s gotta mean something.” He took another step, and now he was close enough that she could feel his breath on her face.
“My … father, Gabriel.” Her entire body was trembling. “I need to know the truth.”
“You sure you’re ready for that?”
She nodded. “Please.”
“All right. The truth, exactly as it happened. Your father was a scapegoat to a much larger conspiracy, baby. He never did anything wrong. Sector 9, it was a Kal-Bryant operation, sure, but he knew nothing about it until he was set up to take the fall. And Mengsk and the Dominion let it happen. They might as well have pushed him into those warp engines, understand? They killed him.”
It was all as Lio had told her. She couldn’t move. He touched both of her arms where the gooseflesh had sprung up, and she shivered uncontrollably, feeling an ache in her loins even as she tried to shy away, turning her head. He reached up and turned it gently back to him. “Without our neural implants, and with the use of terrazine, we can reach protoss levels, Kath. We have a duty to meet. We must free our people, our fellow ghosts, and shut down the ghost program forever. End Mengsk’s corrupt rule. If the general is with us, fine. If not … we will do what’s necessary. Nothing will stop us. Nothing.”
The general? His passion for the cause was like a fire in him. Abruptly he leaned in and brushed her lips with his own. She felt his dreadlocks fall around her face like slithering snakes, and her heart quickened again until she felt her blood thumping in her throat. Then he was easing himself into her mind, soothing her, bringing a warm, calming heat, and this time she let it happen, let herself relax and feel her thoughts mingling with his until they were one and the same.
Will you come with me? Please say yes.
She nodded, closing her eyes as his lips found hers again. She could not deny him, not anymore. She was not strong enough.
As he pulled her down to the cold, hard floor of the passage, she tried to remember what had worried her so much, but the threads slipped through her grasp and disappeared. Perhaps it didn’t matter anyway.
She was lost.