Book One: The Key of Osiris -By Jonathan Bernhardt and Timothy Rowe
StarCraft: The Anubis Clock
Book One: The Key of Osiris
By Jonathan Bernhardt and Timothy Rowe
Note: The authors of this novel have interpreted the commander of the Terran forces in the first StarCraft campaign, Rebel Yell, to be a male. This decision was made after some thinking and deciding that since it has been noted that most of the players of StarCraft computer game are male, and the commander obviously needed a gender, it would be the most reasonable choice to make the commander a man. We apologize to the female audience of StarCraft, but do not see how the character could be portrayed without a gender.
Chapter One - Dreamscape
The smoke rose in black columns from the defiled Terran base, the scorched space platform underneath cooling off as the fires dimmed. The hollowed-out shells of the buildings of the base were brooding hulks against the artificial skyline of the space station. Behind him was the ruined former Confederate capitol of Tarsonis, and in front of him Tarsonis Prime, the sun of the system. The torn and faded sign above him gave a name to the scene of destruction.
New Gettysburg...
The bodies of the Terran soldiers were strewn about haphazardly every which way as if they were naught but rag dolls. The shredded armor of the Marines and the scorched metal from Goliath Walkers and Wraith Space Superiority Fighters mingled on the deck plates. Those who were killed swiftly were lucky; some of the Terrans had been torn limb from limb. As he sifted through the debris, he called her name. But he couldn't find her. Couldn't find her...
"I don't need a knight in shining armor, Jimmy." Her words seemed to reverberate through his skull, teasing and tormenting him. Then: "Good hunting." The last words he had ever said to her, the woman who he loved, the woman named Sarah Kerrigan. He had the perverted wish to find her body among the debris, so that he could be done with it all. But, deep down inside, he knew her's was not among the bodies...she was gone...
The scene blurred, and shifted to a very different locale. Now he was surrounded by volcanoes and lava floes, burned earth and scarred stone. The horizon burned with fire, the heavens lit with an unearthly crimson hue. He knew this place. The Zerg Swarm's home away from home, the nest of all evil in the universe: Char.
"What? Surprised to see me, Jimmy?" He spun around, and there she was. The Zerg Queen stood on a rocky outcropping, above him by about forty feet. She was hideously beautiful, an impossible incongruity, but one that existed nonetheless. Her black lips were offset by lime green skin, her thin, lithe body supported by eight scythe-like appendages planted firmly in the burnt soil, and the razor-thin blades coming out of her arms, even when almost fully retracted, looked extremely dangerous. And then she changed...to him
.
The man wore a long black robe that came from his shoulders to his feet, and emblazoned on the front was the logo of a black arm wielding a whip on a red, circular background. The man had sideburns coming down and connecting in a beard and moustache, and his jet black hair was rivaled in darkness only by his cold, hard eyes. "I have sacrificed too much to let you take it from me!"
The voice that came out of his mouth was his own, but it sounded somewhat foreign. "Just like you sacrificed Kerrigan?"
She appeared again, behind him now. The black-cloaked man's eyes narrowed to slits. "You'll regret that." Suddenly, the man cast off the robe. Watching in horror, he recoiled as he viewed what was under those coverings. The man's arms were covered in green veins and yellow skin, and the man slowly smiled as giant blades not unlike those located in the same place as on the woman behind him's forearms slid out. The two dropped from the ledge as he started to run, but they were faster. The blades descended on him, and he spiraled down into shadow...
James Raynor bolted upwards in his bed, sweating profusely. Shaken, he cast off his covers and swung his legs over the side of his bed aboard his command ship, the Behemoth-Class Battlecruiser Hyperion. The ship had been stolen when he had fled from the planet Tarsonis after the infamous Battle of New Gettysburg. The place where Sarah had died...Jim shook his head to try and dispel such thoughts. But he could not; it was simply impossible for him to forget the best person he had ever met, a young woman so loyal to freedom that it blinded her, and so loyal to Mengsk, that it destroyed her.
It would be tolerable if she had truly died. But she hadn't. The evil Overmind, the living oneness of the Zerg Swarm, had seen something in her. Raynor shuddered at the thought. The giant blob had reborn the young Terran into the Swarm, and stolen her from both Jim and the side of good forever.
Now known only as Kerrigan, the mindless murderess acted as the elite assassin for the Overmind, eliminating enemies with brutal efficiency. And then the Overmind died, and things, which were supposed to have been effectively resolved, in all actuality got much, much worse. Kerrigan became a loose cannon, killing indiscriminately for about half a year until she seemed to learn control. And she became worse.
When the UED had arrived in the Korprulu Sector, they had expected weak Terran and Zerg resistance and heavy Protoss insurgency. It was the opposite: No Protoss presence at all, a demonically centralized human government led by a shrewd despot, Emporer Arcturus I, and a gifted military thinker, General Edmund Duke, and a new Overmind. Oh, and they didn't even know about Kerrigan. Oops.
None of the UED vessels ever returned home. All the Terrans on Earth received back was notice of Alexi Stukov's death and Gerard DuGalle's suicide note, addressed to his wife, both sent via TeleNet. Helena, his wife, turned the letter over to UED authorities, who were shocked and saddened. The UED ruling council determined not to attempt to bring the wayward colonies back under Earth control until they were more powerful.
Jim knew none of this, however. All he knew was that the Queen of Blades, after pillaging the Korprulu Sector and ravaging the adjacent Aiur Sector, had vanished, leaving only the ruins of the places she had destroyed as testament to her power. The Dominion had been left to rebuild under the Emporer.
Mengsk had once been a great man. Likeable, free-thinking, strong in will and in body, Raynor could admit that it would be easy for Sarah to have loved him as a father, and possibly even more. Raynor had no idea what went on between the two of them before he arrived on the scene. However, he had to concede that Arcturus would be the most obvious choice out of the two of them; what chance did a backwater hick with a troubled childhood and a number of federal convictions stand against that?
Of course, Jim was not a backwater hick anymore. He now led the second most powerful insurgent group in the history of the Terran occupation of the Korprulu Sector, Raynor's Raiders, second only to the former Sons of Korhal. Nor was Mengsk a starry-eyed idealist, either. He was the law and they were the criminals, as Jim had once put it.
Besides the Hyperion, the Raiders possessed three other Battlecruisers, five Reaper-Class Dreadnoughts, large, bulky ships bristling with dual laser turrets and missile launchers, and fifteen Pheonix-Class Corvettes, relatively small, light capital ships that specialized in speed and manuverability. The Pheonixes had decided many a battle in the Raiders' favor, including one where the prize was great and the stakes high: a strategic thermonuclear weapon. Jim still had it in lockdown in the hold of one of the Battlecruisers.
Besides the armed capital ships, there were other large spacecraft with the Raiders' fleet, most notably the Caravan-Class Transports used to move about the large mineral and Vespene gas resources of Raynor's group. The cargo ships carried all of the heavy machinery used to erect on-the-spot bases, extra food, and some auxiliary ground mechs.
Raynor sighed and rose, rubbing his tired eyes. After a shower and some breakfast in his quarters, Jim dressed and headed down to the mess hall for a cup of coffee and a talk with his men.
Jim shared a camaraderie with his men that few leaders ever attempted. This was partly because he still thought of himself as "one of the boys", partly because he enjoyed their company. He was greeted with a chorus of "Morning, sir"s from his men, and engaged a few in petty conversations before moving over to the all-powerful coffee machine. After grabbing some moccachino-impersonation, he sauntered over to Drew Hunter, his best friend and only equal in the fleet.
Drew had been assigned as the Colonial Magistrate to the world of Mar Sara, where Jim had been serving as the Marshal of the North Province, where the Magistrate's office was. After Drew ingeniously defeated the Zerg, then still an unknown threat, outside the primary colony of Mar City, where Arcturus had picked them up, Jim regarded him with a personal and professional respect he gave few.
It became very evident very fast that Drew was no political appointee, or, if he was, he was a damn good one. The man had graduated from the Confederate Academy only a quarter of a year before the coming of the Zerg and Protoss, and was governing an entire colony by the time half a year had passed, if that was any indication.
Another proof of his worth was the Antigan Rebellion. He had carefully orchestrated an internal rebellion combined with an external raid, and then turned around and erased a Confederate base of the bad boy Alpha Squadron. After that mission, Sarah, who had declared in a rather loud voice how she had no use for ex-Confeds, warmed up to the both of them, Drew for his competence and ideals, and Jim because he had saved her from three Confederate Marines who had tried to take advantage of her when she ran out of ammo and cloaking energy due to poor planning. Jim had killed all three men, two with grenades, and one with a gauss rifle.
Now, Drew, once the poster boy of the Confederate Academy, was as much a rebel as the backwater ranger. It was true that the nice guys never won.
Drew nodded to him as he approached and downed half a cup in one swig. "Hard night, eh?" said Raynor, noting the bags under his friend's eyes.
"Bad night yourself. I'll bet it’s the dreams again."
Raynor bit his lower lip and nodded. "She was there." Drew looked at him for a few seconds, then shook his head.
"You can't mourn forever, man," he said, putting his hand on Jim's shoulder. "She's gone; you can't bring her back."
Jim sighed. "What's up with the Umojans?" The Raiders were trying desperately to secure a treaty with the Umojan Republic to bolster their strength and give them a place to fall back on in case they needed one.
"They want to talk three days from now."
"Umm...where?"
"Umoja III."
“How in the stars are we supposed to get to Umoja III in three days?!?"
"Easily. The Umojans have sent us plans for an updated jump system. We'll make it in time."
"What'd they get in return?"
"A promise that we'd be there in three days. The engineers have already converted most of the fleet over to the new system. By 0900 hours, we should be outta here." Raynor checked his watch. It was 0630 S(tandard)C(olony)T(ime).
"Finally," he muttered. The Raiders were in hiding in the Confederate Graveyard, a mixture of debris and asteroids all revolving around the core of a dead planet, Taltris IV. The place had first been an asteroid field, but after a fleet of Confederate warships retreated into the field to escape a legion of Sons of Korhal supporters and were destroyed by the rocks because of idiot flying, the place was known as the Confederate Graveyard now.
The Raiders had played it safe and attached themselves to the core itself, using magnetic clamps. However, the locale was getting sort of dull now that they had been there for two months, carefully planning their next moves. Raynor was itching for a change.
Suddenly, Drew frowned and put his hand to his ear. His expression froze in place, then he said something into a comm unit that had materialized in his left hand. The klaxons began to sound, and the soldiers jumped to their feet and hurried to their battle stations. Raynor followed Drew over to the officer's elevator out of the mess hall and asked when they were moving up to the bridge, "What's up?"
Drew turned to look at him, his face grim. "Alpha Squadron's in system and heading this way." Raynor cursed. It was going to be a long day.
