Ethan could see the prone form of Jake Ramsey, lying very still on a small raised table carved from black stone. The old protoss and two assistants stood over the terran. Their hands were extended; one hand almost touching Jake's body, the other palm out toward a crystal that hovered in the air. Glowing blue lines went from their palms to the crystal. The ritual was still going on—which meant that Ethan needed to slow Ulrezaj down long enough for them to finish.
Ethan sent his zerg of course, and they obeyed like a pack of hounds on the hunt, scurrying, slithering, and flying toward the creature. The mutalisks attacked from above, spitting out their insatiable, horrific symbiotes. Ulrezaj's form pulsed, and with seeming casualness a wave of shadow spread off of him, like a pool of oil but one that moved unnaturally fast. The mutalisks were struck dead instantly, their corpses and those of the voracious symbiotes falling heavily atop their comrades, crushing several of them. Ethan caught glimpses of zergling legs wriggling frantically from beneath
the mutalisk bodies. Others dropped on Ulrezaj and were turned to ash on contact.
The hydralisks hunched forward and fired wave after wave of spines at the creature. The spines, deadly when striking flesh, seemed somehow to be absorbed by the monstrous creature. Bolts of blue-white energy exploded from the dark archon, as if it was parodying the attack it had just received. The hydralisks were impaled with glowing energy, shrieked, and died, their scythe-arms —so like Ethan's own—clawing one final time in their dying paroxysms.
The zerglings descended en masse. They never even reached the foe. A single pulse and they swirled about futilely like leaves blown by a strong wind.
Ethan swallowed hard as the zerglings fell like so many dominos. Surely the attack had done something—weakened the bastard somewhat. But no. Nothing about Ulrezaj showed any kind of weakness—any kind of way an antagonist using physical means such as acid, spines, or pincers could bring him down.
Cold sweat broke out on Ethan's smooth, gray-green skin. He had failed his queen once before. He could not fail her a second time. He had hoped to save this final attack for later, but he realized he had to call out the guardians now. Crablike creatures that were even more powerful than the mutalisks they had once been, the guardians began bombarding Ulrezaj with globules of acid. Accompanying the huge creatures were dozens of tiny scourge. They dove suicidally toward Ulrezaj, their sole purpose to explode like small, living plasma bombs. This, finally, seemed to rattle the dark archon. He stopped and roared with pain, and his glowing dark aura seemed dimmer and more erratic. He turned his terrible attention to the guardians and the scourge. Some of them perished instantly, but others darted away from Ulrezaj, coming back in for another attack.
He was stopped, for the moment, and he would be slowed.
It was the best Ethan could hope for.
Which meant that he had to have another plan. A thought sent a pack of several dozen zerglings racing toward the protoss temple. The least useful of his army against Ulrezaj, they would have no trouble ripping apart a few protoss monks. Whether or not the ritual was completed, if Ulrezaj moved too close for Ethan's comfort, Professor Jacob Jefferson Ramsey and the crystal that hovered over him would belong to the zerg before the dark archon could bring the temple crashing down upon him.
The protoss were mobilizing, as best as a group of scholars could. Orders flew, whizzing past and through Rosemary's head at dizzying speed. She got a vague gist of the plan: Those who could stand against the onslaught would do so. A second time, they were in a peculiar alliance with Ethan and his zerg; neither zerg nor protoss wished to see Ulrezaj triumph.
"The protection of this place and its knowledge is vital," Selendis's thoughts, clear and hard and pure as a khaydarin crystal, rose above the jumble. "We must permit Krythkal to finish the ritual to preserve Zamara's knowledge. While it continues, as many crystals as possible will be placed in the vessel Rosemary Dahl has restored to us. We cannot possibly mount an assault with so few numbers and no weaponry. Ethan and the zerg are currently engaged in combat; we will let them weaken our enemy for us. They seem to be slowing his advance. Nonetheless, I do not believe they will be able to halt Ulrezaj, and therefore we must prepare for defense of the Alys'aril. But we will wait until the last possible moment; it will not serve us to reveal our plan too swiftly."
Rosemary remembered that someone had said something about erecting a psionic shield over the temple. It would buy them some time, but Selendis was right to save that defense, and even the knowledge that the protoss had such a defense, as the ace in the hole. Again, she approved of how Selendis's mind worked.
"But once we have begun to walk that path, we will protect the Alys'aril until our defenses are breached, and then, we will do our
best to provide sufficient distraction so that the single vessel can escape to safety."
More thoughts, input from the scholars, comments from Ataldis, things that Rosemary didn't understand and wouldn't, even if she lived among them for the rest of her life. How they would defend this place, make their last stand, wasn't her concern. Getting out of it with her hide, Jake's, and whatever information they could was.
She tried to hurry through the last few checks of the vessel, wishing she could skip them entirely, too professional a mechanic to do so. When a group of several very earnest-feeling alysaar approached carrying boxes of glittering, gleaming crystals, Rosemary, glittering and gleaming herself from the crystal dust on her leather outfit, rose and examined the cargo.
"This it?" She was surprised that they had selected the most important memory crystals already.
"Oh no," one of them replied. "This is just the first sorting. There will be many more."
Her blue eyes widened slightly as she asked, "Just how many?"
"A few dozen more at least. The vessel is large enough, is it not?"
"They're all in individual boxes," she said, frowning.
"Of course," one of them said, his confusion clear. "We analyze and label every single memory crystal. How else can we catalogue the data?"
"Great for librarians, not so great for smugglers," Rosemary said. "You'll be able to take more crystals if you just pile them in. Put them in every damned nook and cranny that isn't being taken up with a living, breathing—" She paused, realizing that the protoss didn't technically breathe and amended, ".. .uh.. .existing protoss. That's how you're going to get the largest number of crystals into the smallest amount of space."
The alysaar looked as though she'd suggested cutting protoss themselves into bits in order to make them fit. "But.. .centuries of sorting, of organization—you wish to discard that labor?"
"You want to take as many crystals as possible or not?"
The protoss still looked dazed. "I—"
"Look," Rosemary said, taking pity on him, "leave them here for now, we're still running some last-minute checks. Talk to one of your superiors and tell him what I said. These are your crystals— your people's history, not mine. I don't give a damn if we take three, three thousand, or three million." Just as long as Jake and I get out of here safely. "I'll take them in boxes if that's what you guys really want. But I'd think that you'd want to save as many as possible, and sort them out later on some peaceful, out-of-the-way place once we're all off this moon and we don't have zerg and a dark archon demigod on our asses."