After Imogen disappears into her room, Lilly sees Malorn’s sleek fighter blast its way through a layer of zerg. Her comm buzzes, and she smiles when she hears him on the other end of the line. “These zerg aren’t even fighting back! What nonsense is this?” he demands. Lilly explains that they are after Neiman. “That threat’s already dealt with,” Malorn scoffs.
“Maybe you can wait until they’re done and clean up any stragglers. Or you can come with us and have a beer. I’m buying.”
“I will take you up on the beer after I reach my quota on zerg hunting today,” he replies.
“All right,” Lilly says with a shrug. The fewer zerg that remain, the better for the terrans who remain on Stryko II. Given how much Malorn helped them with the resettlement, too, she would not be surprised if he lives on as a folk hero in their communal stories. “Have fun!”
Imogen emerges and steps up next to Lilly. She takes in the current scene below. Malorn is conducting strafing runs, but they seem designed more to antagonize than to kill. “They’re not going to rise to the bait,” she tells him, taking Lilly’s comm. “You’re just going to be frustrated. It won’t be fun.”
“Ah, insufferable terran, I suspected I might hear from you. I disagree. Slaughtering zerg is always fun. But I suppose they’re not worthy opponents. But that ghost was, I will grant you that. Uncanny abilities, but certainly not up for a match with me. But worth challenging.” Imogen snorts in amusement, listening to Malorn ping-pong between inflating his opponent to compliment himself and then just as quickly demeaning him. “Were he a protoss, he could have challenged me in Rakshir and died honorably along the way.”
“Sounds like Malorn had a good time,” Lilly observes happily. He really needed something like this to get him out of his funk.
“Call me when you have another worthy opponent,” Malorn says, veering his ship off from the masses of zerg and heading around to the other side of the planet. “I’m going to go buzz that terran settlement, just so they know who’s better,” he mutters.
“Our next job should involve no killing whatsoever,” Imogen tells him, “just sneaking. There’s no enemy.”
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” Malorn says glumly.
“I will need to operate a Xel’naga power source, and while I would appreciate having someone more experienced along with me, I don’t think it would be interesting for you.”
“You’re not planning to attempt to augment your powers, are you? Those devices are notoriously unreliable.”
“No, no. I just need to prime the conduit.”
“Do you have any idea what kind of unreliable, absurd technology you’re going to be toying with?” Malorn gives her no time to answer. “No. Of course not. It was a rhetorical question.”
“I’ve done some research,” Imogen protests.
“Done some research?” he scoffs.
“And what credentials do you have?”
“I’m not claiming to have credentials. And that should inform you about how much you know about what you’re toying with.”
Lilly does not pay much attention to the content of the bickering, but she is happy to hear the spirit behind Malorn’s words. Oh yeah, he’s back!
“Just because you don’t know about something, doesn’t mean I can’t know about it,” Imogen argues.
“On the contrary, I think that’s exactly the case. If I don’t understand it, there’s no chance a terran would understand it.”
“I don’t think you’ve ever even tried,” Imogen says in a huff.
“Correct. Ancient prophecies and absurd, inexplicable mechanics are not worth my time.”
“Those are two totally unrelated things!”
“They are not,” Malorn declares flatly.
“It’s a technological device. It doesn’t matter what mystics rambled about it in the past.”
“It is not just a technological device,” Malorn counters. “The Xel’naga technology and religion were intertwined. Similar to my foolish protoss brethren. I suppose most terrans don’t have that kind of foolhardiness, but I’m sure some such exist.”
“Are you claiming the device is mystical rather than scientific?”
“I’m claiming that the Xel’naga made no such distinction. And you should not think to apply whatever logic you might possess to it.”
“Do you actually know any of these prophecies?” Imogen asks, trying to elicit what information from him she can.
“An unfortunate amount of that propaganda is forced on us within tal’darim society, it is true,” Malorn replies, but he does not volunteer anything further.
Imogen’s head is ringing, and it has been a long day, so she lets this go for now. “Perhaps we can talk about this later, when you’re down off your battle high.”
“Oh, hey, we’re meeting up for a beer later,” Lilly volunteers.
“All right, then, we’ll see you on Dead Man’s Rock,” Imogen tells Malorn.
“Very well.”
Malorn hangs up on the shipborne terrans and turns his attention to intimidating the ones on the ground below with some impressive maneuvers. He plays through in his mind what he will tell Lilly Washington and that insufferable psion later about his adventures on Stryko II.
The stone guardian provided no interesting challenge. Its lasers were a minor nuisance, but my speed was enough to carry me through there without issue. No need to mention how those burned right through his shielding. And while you gave me the solution to the puzzle, that was also not necessary. Any capable psion could determine the correct door and the correct key. It was a ridiculously simple ruse. One simply sees into the future what correct door one went in through! It’s not hard. Oh! A whole minute into the future! Can you not do this? No, of course not. Terrans have no foresight whatsoever. Malorn derails himself with his own disdain for terrans but then gets back on track.
That fool who I was supposed to lay an ambush on couldn’t even figure it out. It took forever. Whatever backup he had with him apparently fell down a trap! Pathetic. That ghost thought he had the jump on me, hiding—cowering! What a coward! I didn’t even cut him with a blade until we were outside. I merely made him feel his own patheticness. And he retreated at the very first feeling of pain. He will not bother the terrans with details of the knife wound he suffered or that the ghost did actually fire at him.
And then you called for additional assistance, as you will recall. And, yes, I again tracked him down. Cut off his arm, weak though it was. Took away his pathetic excuse for a weapon. This was barely worth my time. Next time, please find a more worthy adversary. Oh, but the number of zerg I was able to take down, almost compensated for it. I indulged myself, I admit. They were not worthy, but I needed to blow off some steam after that inferior challenger.
Malorn smizes. That tale ought to be worth several beers.
Fin