THE CAVERN
Nova explained as much as she could on the way, telling Mal how she had asked Lio to connect her with Spaulding while she was hiding on the Palatine. Spaulding hadn’t wanted to listen at first, but they had plenty of proof of Bennett’s guilt. Once the connection was made, and Spaulding had grudgingly agreed to do what he could, they worked out the details and timing of his attack, and Lio gave him the data he would need to lock on to Gehenna Station.
It was like making a deal with the devil, Nova thought, and she still didn’t trust him, but she had to admit that he had followed through. The distraction had worked, at just the right time, and it had helped them get through the first line of defenses. Now they had to get to the Palatine as quickly as possible.
They ran through the lower corridors of the station, not far from where she had fought with Kath Toom. Bennett’s marines had proven to be little more than a nuisance so far, even with their heavy firepower, and she hadn’t seen or sensed another spectre since the two in the corridor outside Mal’s cell. Gabriel Tosh had disappeared. Although the Palatine would surely be more heavily guarded than anything they’d encountered yet, it was only a few more minutes away, and she started to believe they just might make it.
As they rounded a corner and entered a darker, less traveled passage that would lead them beneath the landing bay where the ship was docked, she sensed something waiting for them.
She stopped dead, Mal at her side, searching for answers. This area was more remote, and there was little sound other than the occasional distant rumble of weapons detonating out in space. Spaulding was still at it, then. That was good. But something had gotten her wind up, although she couldn’t put her finger on what; she didn’t sense any terran presence, rather an absence of anything at all, like a vacuum that deadened any thoughts.
She glanced at Mal through a thick fog that had descended over her mind. He was talking to her, but she could not make out the words. A wave of dizziness washed over her, and she put out her hand to steady herself against the rock wall.
Colonel Jackson Hauler stepped out from an intersecting corridor. He was smiling at them, his hands at his sides, seemingly unarmed. His broad, shiny face was beaming with light, and Nova felt herself relaxing at the sight of it. Something warned her that this wasn’t right, that she should be pushing back against his consciousness probing inside her mind, but it was too difficult to listen to that voice when she felt so calm, so at ease.
She tried to remember what had been bothering her about Hauler. He was a firm leader, but fair; she’d never had any real trouble with him, even though he was difficult to read. His men seemed to like him, which was always a good sign, and his record was immaculate. Probably something Spaulding had said, but she should know better than to listen to that traitor. Good men like Hauler were always targets.
It was a stroke of luck that they had run into him down here. The important thing now was to get everyone to safety before the Annihilators could do any further damage. Nova nodded, as if someone had spoken out loud, and it seemed to her Hauler had suggested that himself. He had always been the kind of man others could rely on to keep cool under pressure. She and Mal walked toward him together, and Hauler’s smile widened as they approached. He lifted his hands to them, as if welcoming them home.
But something was wrong. Colonel Hauler wore general’s bars on his shoulder.
She stopped, fixated on those bars. An echo started in her mind and grew louder, vibrating back and forth and bouncing around until she could no longer ignore it. Something she should remember …
Jackson Hauler. Cole Bennett. Project: Shadowblade.
The fog that had settled over her mind lifted, and the smile on Bennett’s face faltered. His hold over her had been broken, and he knew it. He took a step toward them, his arms still up in a welcoming gesture, a seemingly genial father figure who had suddenly had his mask torn away to reveal his true face.
Nova glanced at Mal, who remained transfixed by Bennett’s mind control. She had to get him away from this place.
When she looked back, Bennett had vanished. A chill ran through her. There was a door to her right. “Come on,” she said, grabbing Mal’s arm, but he shook her off, looking annoyed. She grabbed him again and yanked him through the door and into a larger hallway, ignoring his protests.
The lights were spread farther apart here, and the walls were carved more roughly. Nova stumbled ahead, dragging Mal along with her. He seemed drugged, but he went without further complaints. She was still disoriented and her mind felt sluggish. Whatever Bennett had done to her, it was wearing off slowly.
The lights flickered and went out, and they were plunged into blackness.
Nova pushed Mal against the wall and held him there, her hand over his mouth, and he didn’t resist. His own mind was a blank slate, almost as if he’d been resocialized. She searched for any signs of another terran nearby, but felt nothing specific. She switched to night vision through her HUD, and the walls glowed bright green.
A flash of red darted across the tunnel ahead.
It was too small to be Bennett, but the infrared signature appeared to be terran: slender, fast, running upright. It looked something like a little girl.
My God. Bennett had brought Lila here. He must have taken her hostage from Altara, but she’d escaped inside Gehenna, and now she was lost and alone and scared to death. If he found her, he’d surely kill her.
Nova raced forward, forgetting Mal and her need to get to the Palatine and escape, forgetting everything except her memory of that little girl running away from her in the slums of Oasis. She hadn’t helped the girl then, but she could do something now. She would not fail again.
Lila was fast. She remained ahead, no matter how quickly Nova ran, darting through the dark and hiding in small alcoves or doorways before slipping away, apparently able to see clearly enough. They passed deeper into Gehenna Station until Lila reached a set of double doors, pausing for a moment to look back before sliding one open and disappearing inside.
Light spilled out before the door slid shut again. Nova pulled her rifle from her shoulder and checked each of her blind spots before switching off her night vision, opening the door, and stepping into a space large enough to drive a siege tank through. The tunnel ran straight as an arrow through the center of Gehenna Station, a massive, curved ceiling of rock reinforced with plascrete and neosteel beams, crossed by yet another huge tunnel. At the end was an additional set of blast doors, much larger than the first.
Lila had ducked around the right-hand corner of the tunnel that bisected this one. Nova ran to the spot where she had disappeared, her heart pounding in her throat. She didn’t know why she was so frightened for this child, but she felt that something was very wrong; there was a presence of some kind down here, something difficult to describe, but dangerous.
When she came around the corner, she found Lila crouched on the floor, clutching her knees and rocking back and forth. Her head was down, her hair hanging over her face. She looked very small, and very alone. “It’s all right,” Nova said softly. “You don’t have to run anymore. I’m going to help you.”
The girl was shaking. Nova crouched beside her and reached out a hand, surprised to find it trembling too. She felt as if her whole life had come down to this moment, as if the years were peeling back on themselves and she was a little girl herself again, lost in the slums of Tarsonis, frightened and abandoned after the death of her parents. Everything she had fought so hard to forget, all the terrible things she had done, crowded in on her like a thousand clamoring voices demanding to be heard.
Her hand touched the girl’s shoulder, and she looked up.
She wore Nova’s face.
Nova stood up and stumbled backward, clamping down on the scream that tried to fight its way out. The tunnel seemed to tilt under her, and she whirled around, feeling someone watching her. When she turned back, the girl had vanished, and laughter filled her head until it threatened to split open and spill all her newfound memories of death and blood and destruction out onto the dusty floor.
I’m just getting started, Terra.
Bennett’s voice. She whirled again, searching for him in the depths of the tunnel that seemed to run on forever. A slow heat began to build inside her body as she realized what he had done: he had tricked her again, making her chase after this ghost of herself while separating her from Mal and the Palatine.
His ability to deceive was impressive. But she had skills of her own too.
Come out and fight like a man, Bennett. She activated the cloaking mechanism on her suit, and laughter filled her head.
You think that suit is going to save you? A few missiles from the Annihilators aren’t going to stop me, and neither are you. If you won’t join us, you’re going to pay the price.
The heat was now a full-blown fire raging through her as she lashed out, shaking the walls with her psionic tempest. “Where are you, Bennett?” She screamed it out loud, the sound of her voice echoing down the huge, empty space and making her feel even more unhinged. Small chips from the rock ceiling fell around her. She knew she was giving him exactly what he wanted, but she didn’t care. She’d been pushed around long enough.
As if in answer, a terrible, knee-buckling pain gripped her suddenly, and she was awash in the agony of every single neuron firing at once inside her skull, and a feeling like a thousand wasps swarming over her skin. She dropped her rifle, clutched her head, and tried to force back the presence that had clamped down on her, but it was relentless, worming its way deeper inside. She slumped to the floor.
Nova was dimly aware that she was kneeling as if in prayer, and that someone had stopped in front of her, but she couldn’t move.
I’ve developed a new technique that allows me to use my teek abilities like a microwave, heating up the cells of your skin until you boil alive. Do you like it?
Somehow she forced her head up, looking into Bennett’s eyes. They were empty, she thought, no soul behind them. For a moment his features flickered and changed, and she was staring into the hooded eyes of Julius “Fagin” Dale. She recalled the terrible pain he used to inflict on her with the torture setting on his psi-screen, years ago. But she shook that false image away. The past would haunt her no more.
“One thing you should know about me,” she said, managing to wrest the words from her clenched throat. “I’ve felt this kind of pain before. You’re going to have to do a lot worse”—she compelled herself to straighten up and stand one centimeter at a time, every muscle in agony, pushing against Bennett’s mind with her own with every ounce of her strength—“if you want to take me down.”
Bennett’s face had lost its glow, and his skin had turned an ash-gray color. He was fighting hard, the tendons in his neck standing out with the strain. Two invisible forces battled for control between them, and slowly, one cell at a time, the pain began to fade away as Nova gained the upper hand.
Bennett let out a cry, sweat beading on his brow. But he was not done yet. Nova had been concentrating so hard on their psionic wrestling match that she hadn’t seen his hand snake down into his uniform. Now he withdrew a small blade, flicked it open, and slashed at her face.
It was a simple but effective attack. The blade nicked a tube on her mask, creating a small hissing sound, and the sudden move snapped their psionic hold on each other. Her cloaking device stopped working. Nova chopped down on Bennett’s wrist, and he dropped the knife. She went for the gun, which was on the floor nearby, but Bennett was faster. He brought the barrel up before she could get to him, and she had to teek herself violently to the right to avoid being shot point-blank in the chest. He turned to follow her, but she went low and swept his feet out from under him, then ran as he struggled back up, dodging and teeking more rifle rounds aside before she turned the corner and rushed into the other tunnel.
The huge blast doors were not far away, and the threatening presence she’d felt earlier was stronger now. She realized that it was coming from behind the doors, but she still couldn’t get a good handle on it. She ran down to them and turned to face Bennett, who had come around the corner after her and leveled the rifle at her face.
“Don’t go in there,” he warned. “You won’t like what you see.”
He was smiling at her, but she sensed something else from him. Was it fear? “What are you hiding, Bennett?”
Instead of answering her, he opened fire. She teeked the initial rounds away, tore the huge blast doors from their anchors with her mind, the sound of tearing metal behind her like a monstrous scream of pain, and threw them at Bennett.
The two blast doors went tumbling end over end down the tunnel, taking chunks of rock and plascrete from the walls and floor. Bennett disappeared under a cloud of dust and debris.
She turned to see what had been revealed to her. Behind where the doors had been was a vast, natural cavern. But it had been heavily modified; huge arc lights lit the cavern from above, illuminating stalactites that hung like giant stone teeth at least fifteen meters above the floor.
The cavern must have been sixty meters across. But it wasn’t the scope that astonished her. It was what had been built there.
The entire space was some kind of cutting-edge laboratory. To her right was a self-contained structure that looked like offices and medical facilities, and to her left, all along the wall, was a bewildering array of weaponry: combat suits and goliaths and siege tanks and viking fighters and racks of guns. But directly in front of her stretched row after row of diabolical machines, upright glass chambers filled with seething liquid and greenish gases, with wires and tubes protruding from the top of them, and horizontal stasis chambers lined up like dominoes. They went on and on. Many appeared to have humans inside.
A chill ran through her as she walked down one aisle. She felt sick. This was what she had felt earlier: hundreds of terran minds in suspended animation, their conscious thoughts erased, but the throb of life still present.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
Bennett’s voice echoed through the cavern. She whirled to face him. He stood just inside the chamber, rock dust in his hair. He had lost his general’s uniform and now wore only the spectres’ black combat suit, augmented with an armored chest plate that glowed an eerie green.
“Psionic waveform indoctrinators,” he said, walking toward her with his hands up, as if to show her he was harmless. “I invented them myself. Becoming a spectre isn’t just about taking a few hits of terrazine, you know—that’s only the beginning. These machines”—he caressed one with his fingers like a doting father over a child—“they alter the brain’s structure to fully realize the terrazine and jorium’s potential. And they allow anyone with even the slightest psionic talent to become a very dangerous weapon.” He smiled again. “With these, I can grow my army of psionic warriors with resoced marines, just like those you see here. They aren’t quite at the level of a ghost, but it’s enough for some teep abilities. More important, I can control them myself, from anywhere.”
“You’re insane,” Nova said. “An army of living, breathing human puppets? Tosh will never go for that. It’s the opposite of what he wants—freedom for all of us.”
“On the contrary,” Bennett said. “He recognizes that the ends justify the means.” He stepped closer. “If only you saw it too, Nova. I’m going to give you one more chance. Let’s put aside our differences. The rest of the spectres are right over there inside those offices, in stasis chambers, ready to be activated. You could lead them all and become the most powerful spectre who ever lived. Think of the zerg, an army made for one purpose, and ruled by one mind. We could do the same with our Marine Corps, led by a few talented psionic warriors!”
Bennett’s face had grown red, and his voice had risen in volume until he was shouting. He must have meant to sound triumphant, and Nova could feel him inside her mind, trying to alter her perceptions again. But this time she sensed the desperation in it. He sounded like a leader clinging to one last hope, facing a rebellion that he knew he could not win.
She knew the truth, whether he liked it or not. She could sense the deceit pouring off him in invisible waves. His promises of freedom and democracy were all lies. He was a sociopath. Once she had done what he wanted, Bennett would try to kill her without a second thought.
The cavern shook slightly, fluid sloshing in the vats. Something rumbled in the distance. The Annihilators were stepping up their attack outside, she thought. She had to keep Bennett talking.
“Or,” she said calmly, walking around the nearest liquid-filled tube, “I could just destroy your creations, one at a time, while you watch.” She stepped back and sent a concentrated teek wave rippling through the air, vibrating the glass until it cracked and then burst, washing its contents onto the floor at her feet. This one had been empty; but the next had a naked man inside it, one she could only assume was a former marine, taken against his will and imprisoned here. She could set him free—
“Stop!” Bennett had raised a hand. “You don’t know what you’re doing. These men are under my command. They will rise up and fight.”
“And if they do, it’s going to get messy, I promise you. I’ll tear down the roof before I let them take me. They’ll all be destroyed, and your precious equipment along with it.”
Bennett glanced between the tanks and her face, and then back again. She had called his bluff, and he knew it. She doubted the men inside these tanks could even walk, never mind fight. His mouth opened and closed like that of a fish gasping for air.
Finally his lips set in a thin, hard line. He closed his eyes and sent a teek wave rushing toward her, imploding the three tubes between them and sending two naked, slippery bodies sliding loosely across the floor. A piece of the nearest tube caught Nova in the leg and she stumbled backward and went down, feeling the wetness seeping through her suit.
Next to her, one of the naked bodies twitched in a pool of greenish goo, made a sound like a sigh, and was still.
Disgusted and horrified, she regained her feet and realized that Bennett had used the attack as a distraction. She scanned the room, but he had disappeared from sight. There were too many places to hide.
She sensed Mal coming moments before he stepped into view at the entrance to the cavern, peering inside. “Nova! You okay? The hallway’s a disaster area out there. Looks like a bunch of zerg came through.”
A fresh wave of fear washed over her as she realized what Bennett had done. He must have felt him coming too. Get away, she projected at him, it’s too dangerous—
Bennett appeared out of nowhere, grabbing Mal from behind and putting the knife to his throat. Mal went rigid in his arms, and Nova could sense his urge to fight.
Stay calm. Don’t move.
He gave a nearly imperceptible nod, and Bennett laughed. “You think I can’t hear your thoughts?” he said. “I know everything. Everything. Staying calm isn’t going to help you now, wrangler.” He half turned Mal’s body to point toward one of the empty and still intact tanks. “Get in, Nova.”
“No way.” She shook her head.
“Push the button and get into that tank, or I’ll do to him what I did to Kath Toom.”
She gauged the distance between them. Teeking him now was too dangerous, with Mal so close, and anyway, Bennett was strong enough to fight her off and slit Mal’s throat. And he was too far away for her to reach him physically.
“Don’t do it,” Mal said. “He’ll kill me anyway.”
She ignored him and pressed a large button on the side. The tank fluid drained down through a tube at the bottom, and the door hissed open. Moist, heated air wafted out, prickling her skin. It smelled like bleach.
Mal began to struggle, and Bennett tightened his grip. A thin trickle of blood ran down Mal’s neck, and he winced.
The cavern shook again, more violently this time.
“You should have come willingly,” Bennett said. “You can’t stop this from happening, Nova. It’s too big for you, all of it. Mengsk is a tumor that needs to be cut out. Look what he’s done to you, in the name of the Dominion. Tortured and abused you. Made you do terrible things. He’s taken you from one kind of killing and trained you for another. He’s taken your life away. But you can take it back. When you come out of there, you’ll be a different person.”
“How do I know you’ll let Mal live?”
“You’ll have to trust me.” Bennett smiled. “After all, do you really have a choice?”
Buy some time. Nova stepped into the chamber and the glass door slid shut, locking her inside. She was bathed in a greenish light, and a drain at the bottom of the chamber gurgled. Thick fluid began to flow back up through the drain, covering the tips of her boots. She glanced out through the smeared glass and saw Bennett and Mal, still locked together like partners in a macabre dance.
Someone was always trying to control her, she thought, one way or another.
The fluid had covered the tops of her boots and was rising fast. It was brutally cold. She was going to have to move quickly, and the timing was crucial.
She had sensed another presence lurking nearby. Apparently, Bennett had not; otherwise, she had to assume, he would have acted differently. Maybe she was more familiar with this particular terran mind, or maybe he’d just let her sense him. The reason didn’t really matter. She had to use it to her advantage and trust him to act.
“Lio,” she said into her comm unit. “You there?” The thick glass had deadened all sounds from the outside, and she masked her thoughts as well as she could. She had to hope Bennett couldn’t hear them.
The reply came to her HUD: They tried to erase me with an EMP. How … human.
“Just listen,” she said. “Are there any cameras in the corridor where Kath Toom was killed?”
No response. “Lio?”
There is a single camera in that corridor.
“Gabriel is nearby. I need you to feed the footage to his HUD. Do it, Lio, please. Hurry.” The fluid was up to her knees, and her skin had gone numb with the cold. She was growing short of breath. She remembered the naked body that had flopped on the floor, twitching, and she shuddered. Bennett was insane. Whatever this thing might do to her, it couldn’t be good. She’d gotten inside it only because she knew Tosh was nearby, and to buy them some time. She just had to hope it was enough.
As the liquid touched her waist, the cavern shook yet again, sloshing the fluid and causing the metal joints of the tank to groan under the pressure. Nova felt someone in mortal agony, and the voiceless cry that ensued nearly overwhelmed her senses, filling her head until she wanted to scream along with it. Something exploded nearby with a muffled thud, and the glass tank cracked before her eyes. She used the distraction to teek the door open, and fluid poured onto the floor.
She stepped out into madness.
It seemed as if the entire space station was being torn apart. More tanks exploded in bursts of green liquid as waves of teek energy washed over the cavern, and the walls and floor continued to shake like an earthquake.
Bennett had let go of Mal, his attention now focused on a point just outside the offices.
Gabriel Tosh stood in a doorway. He looked like some sort of demon, his thick hair gone wild around his head, his massive shoulders twitching. A storm of debris swirled around him as he whipped the air into a frenzy. His normally handsome face was twisted into a rictus of pain and anger. For a moment, Nova thought she saw an old woman standing behind him in traditional Hajian garb, but couldn’t be sure; and then Bennett met Tosh’s storm with his own, and a concussion rippled through the cavern, flipping the goliath walkers and siege tanks end over end and destroying most of the remaining stasis chambers within range.
Nova teeked the debris left and right as it came flying her way, avoiding being crushed. Bennett was distracted; now was her chance. She looked up. A huge stalactite hung far above his head, like a dagger poised to strike. She concentrated every ounce of energy she had left, feeling it coil and build within her, holding on until it was a screaming fire raging out of control. Then she let the energy loose toward the ceiling.
The massive pointed stone quivered and cracked, and then broke free, gathering speed quickly as it plunged down.
Bennett looked up a split second before impact, and she felt him try to shift his own energy wave upward, but it was too late.
The tip of the stalactite crushed his skull like a grape, driving him down to the floor in a burst of bones and blood. He disappeared under thousands of pounds of rock as chips and larger boulders crashed and bounced through the cavern, whining like shrapnel off metal and glass. A cloud of dust rose up from the impact, washing over everything and turning the room a ghostly white.
Colonel Jackson Hauler, a.k.a., General Cole Bennett, was gone.