south towards me?"
Caston narrowed his eyes, peering through the burnt and rusted
metal. The sergeant was a
canny son of a bitch. Any tip about where he was had to be a
trap...
He groaned. "You've moved behind us, haven't you?"
"Damnation," said Sergeant Bayton, rising above the edge of a roof with his rifle aimed.
"The private has seen through my clever ruse. I shall retire in disgrace. Where would you like
your kill shots?"
"Incoming zerg," said Dax from the base, as if commenting on the weather.
Static hissed in the squad channel's silence.
"Is this part of the exercise, Sarge?" Berry said.
"Nope," Sergeant Bayton said calmly. "Fall back to the academy on the double, marines.
Where, Private Damen?"
"The sensors report a big zerg to the south. I'm trying to..."
The marines helped each other up and hustled. Dax exhaled
directly into his helmet mike,
and the marines winced in unison.
"Found it. Sorry, Sarge. No threat. It's just an overlord."
* * *10
I found a worker and called to it. It did not listen. Madness infects the We. Madness infects me.
With individuality comes insanity.
I gathered my wil . It struggled. It obeyed. It became a nest for the We.
My We.
I am not the Overmind. I am not the Kerrigan. I am not a
gathered-mind. My wil is limited.
To hold one is pain. To hold more is agony. To hold many is
impossible.
To punish the not-We, Imust be careful.
From the larvae, I called volatile ones. I told them to sleep, and
they slept.
I gathered their bodies into myself.
From the larvae, I called the winged ones. I hold them with my
will. Agony.
They will wait.
They must wait.
I will gather the attention of the not-We. I will not listen to the madness, to the—
you are alone you are weak your world is dead you are dead all is
dead
I will not listen to the madness!
...
The winged ones will wait.
They must wait.
* * *
"Damnedest thing," Sergeant Bayton said, resting his armor's gauntlets on the railing with a
faint clink. "Try again."
Caston did. Aiming the rifle was harder with everyone watching,
but the overlord was big
enough to eclipse the skyscrapers behind it. He'd once shot a
decipede off a fence during a
sandstorm.
He fired at the overlord. And missed.
"Leaping hell," said Kell. "I saw it that time. It dodged the damn bullet. How did it do that?"
"It must know when we're about to fire, and then it—"
"Bullshit," said Hanna. "Overlords aren't that smart."
The spacious observation deck was getting crowded, especially
since all of the marines were
stil in their suits. Corporal Sawn, their medic and pilot, had come up as well. Almost painfully
thin, she stood in a distant corner, watching the overlord with grim gray eyes.
"Are they always that big, Sarge?" said Kell.
"Almost. This one's seen a few fights, too. Look at that scarring."
Everyone leaned forward. Night was falling over Tarsonis. Jagged
fingers of light slipped out
of the city square, filling the observation deck with long shadows.
"None of the studies I've ever read talked about them dodging
bullets," Berry said, and the
usual cheer was gone from his voice. Caston was the only one
who noticed. Berry sounding
worried was like Dax sounding anything. It was unnatural.
"This," said Hanna, lighting up another one of Vallen's favorite cigars, "is some top-secret
shit. I guarantee it. Some escapee from a Confederate holding
cell."11
"Yes," Vallen said, casually reaching over, pinched the cigar out of her mouth with
mechanical fingers and flicked it out the window. "An ingenious war machine. It approaches the
enemy and floats around them."
"Yeah, that is weird," Kell said. "Of all the interesting things to circle on this rock, why us?"
Caston involuntarily glanced at Marc. The marine was already
looking at him, asking a silent
question. Caston turned away, his jaw aching from the pressure of
his gritted teeth. No, he
wasn't going to tell the squad. There was nothing to tell. To say
that the green-eyed overlord
had come here because he had killed the purple-eyed one was to
admit that the overlord
remembered him. That the mindless beast had a mind.
The overlord descended into relative safety behind the wall of
burnt-out hulks. Caston laid
the FN92 against a wall and drew his C-14.
Corporal Sawn seemed to reach a decision, and strode up to
Bayton's side, speaking in
whispered bursts that Caston could barely hear.
"... get out... be more... right now."
Bayton looked down, thinking, then responded, nearly as quietly:
"Either the thing isn't a
threat, or it's too late to run. We're safer here."
Sawn didn't argue. She shrugged and returned to her corner.
Gripping the C-14 so hard that his fingers ached inside the suit's
gauntlets, Caston came to a
decision.
"We should go out there. Hunt it down and kil it."
Everyone looked at him like he'd suggested they go outside
naked.
"It's dark out there," Kell said, as if he couldn't see.
"It doesn't matter. Overlords can carry drones. Drones can start hives. We need to kil it
before it attacks."
The tension stretched across the wide room like a web, tight and
quivering.
"You're right," Kell said gravely. "Let's do a practice run."
He hunched over, dangling his suited arms beneath his body, and
made weak pinching
motions. Step by lumbering step, he approached Caston.
"Oooooh. Float float. Shoot me before I land on you. Pinch pinch."
Hanna's snicker was louder in Caston's ears than it actually was.
He shoved Kell to the floor
with a rattling crash and pointed out the window.
"Idiot! Do you see it? That's not a joke! That's the zerg out there!"
"I can't really see anything from the ground."
The rest of the marines laughed, except for Bayton, whose face
resembled a thundercloud
above a dark mountain, and Corporal Sawn, who didn't appear to
have smiled in her entire life.
"The zerg aren't individuals, Caston," Berry said, smiling.
"Overlords relay orders; they don't
give them. Without a leader, they go crazy. It probably wandered
from one of the lesser hives in
Ewen Park."
"That's not madness," Caston insisted. "That thing is stalking us!"
Smiles faltered around the room as they realized that Caston
might not be joking. Sergeant
Bayton dropped his hand on Caston's shoulder.
"Calm down, Private," he muttered. "You're making a damn scene."12
Berry didn't notice. He probably thought he was helping.
"Overlords don't hunt, actually.
Not even their predecessors did. The gargantis proximae were
semi-intelligent herbivores
before their race was infested by the zerg. Communal, with a
language based on psionics,
tentacle manipulation,
