EPT---
Twenty-four thousand feet.
He was falling, burned and blinded out of an ice-choked sky. His hands groped for the cord on his back and held. Ten thousand foot limit.
He waited.
Even though the burning vespene stung what remained of his second set of ocular implants, his mind's eye, the one that told him in dogfights when to dive, when to lock, when to unleash a hail of missiles on his unsuspecting prey--it saw.
Katherine.
They'd fallen in love over a cup of coffee, simple drink, while through their dropship window, the Third Battle of Braxis ended, venomous creatures swarming over what remained of the Psi Emitter. Damned thing had always given him headaches anyhow.
He'd given her a family heirloom, a dull knife that glowed blue at times of danger. His brother had died for it, died at the hands of alien creatures classified under Black Security Seal, some police action near a jungle planet far outside the reaches of Terran space.
Twenty thousand feet.
She'd warned him not to go on this mission. And who the hell knew? Ever since turning in his UED badge for a Dominion uniform, he'd never once encountered those who could see like he did.
They didn't show up on normal radar. He and the rest knew from the mission briefing. So they'd brought along a friend, old Confederate Explorer Squadron, giant ball of electromagnetic death. Its detectors would find them, and he, the best pilot in their wing, would kill them.
Fourteen thousand.
There were a few terran spaceships tucked in the rear. An old Behemoth-class cruiser, a few support ships, some CF-17/As, nothing really threatening versus their squadron. But ahead of those, like the Sioux spread out before Custer on the banks of the Platte River, a golden fleet, an armada, ships they'd never seen before and likely would never see again.
Ten thousand feet.
Time to engage. He pulled--and, nothing. No parachute to retard his fall. He yanked on the reserve cord. It came out in his hand. It'd been cut. And suddenly, his mind's eye saw, saw how she'd done them, one at a time, knife glowing blue, going down the list of names he'd said. In his arrogance, he'd only identified six members of a hundred as anywhere close to himself. His gaze shifted, knew that they were groping around, just like him, feeling for the cords, just like him, saying their last words, just like him.
"Why, baby, why?"
Five thousand feet.
Then he felt it, an alien presence in his head, creating cold, raw fear, starting from his scalp, stinging his nostrils, coursing down his spine, leaving nervous sweat in his wake. It seemed to be probing, past the cold wall of cryosleep, into repressed childhood memories, his life on an overcrowded Earth before the journey, the long night, the loneliness and misanthropy he'd held, that she'd broken.
Two thousand.
He could feel the ground now. The air smelled of something like pine and birch, although he knew nothing like that grew in the Koprulu Sector. Below him lay the landed ships, the great, heavy-bellied carriers, insides filled with the interceptors that had torn his squadron to shreds. He sincerely hoped that his plummeting body would make a nice, big dent. It would probably be the only damage the Protoss craft would get.
He doubled back. Protoss?
Yes. We are the Protoss, young one, and your human friend told us all about you.
One hundred feet.
The bright blue glow of a stasis field enveloped him. Below, three probes laid out a net. Had his face not been frozen, he would have smiled.
Katherine, you bitch. You didn't have to do this.
I would have gone with you anyhow.
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EDIT: What should I title this?
EDIT2: Can someone help me upload this to SCLegacy? The site is down or something and I've got work in an hour. Thanks!
