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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/l0Jud36.jpg)
Chapter 1: Wasteland
They say when the Nagglfar first set down on Tarsonis that its passengers wept tears of joy. Banished from their homeworld, they had awoken from cryogenesis to find a planet much like their own. They took this as a sign from providence. Vowed to never again allow for the kind of oppression and greed which had poisoned Earth. The passengers of their sister ship, the Sargengo, we’re not so lucky. That vessel crashed upon landing, thirteen thousand souls perishing in an instant. It would be over a century before a young prospector, himself lost, would discover the wreckage. He named the desert planet Mar Sara. It means “Wasteland.”
The mood in Joey Ray’s that morning had been unpleasantly sober. I'd been up all night before, tracking down wayward cattle from Ms. Welke’s ranch before the lyote could get at ‘em. Which explained why I felt all sorts of beat up and wrung out. Joey was in his usually spot, behind the bar, wiping mugs and nozzles with a rag that was dirtier than sin and certainly the glassware. The jukebox was caterwauling, those oldies which Joe seemed to favor. Sweet Home Alabama. And I was staring down the barrel of a shot glass, at the whiskey-brown reflection of someone I used to know.
“...and in other news,” the TV buzzed, “a global manhunt continues after the bombing of a local hospital yesterday. The Sons of Korhal have claimed responsibility for the attack. The current death toll, five hundred and seventy…”
The doors wheezed open, letting in a hot rush of air. I turned around to see a man in the doorway. Cleanly shaven. Three button suit. Jodhpur breeches. The 'not from around here' type. I turned back to my drink.
“I’m looking for Raynor,” the man announced. He had the voice of someone from Tarsonis. Proper and educated, the kind of voice that could still look down on you from the bottom of a gravity well.
“Looking for Marshal Raynor,” he said again as if we hadn't heard this fellow the first time. I glanced at Joey.
“Who's asking,” said Joey, eyeing the man. Trying to decide if this meant business or trouble. I knew the answer to that. Someone came calling for the marshal, it was always trouble.
“Matthew Horner. Emissary of the Grand Magistrate to Mar Sara.”
The man, Horner, took a seat beside me at the bar. He looked over, nodded my way, asking Joey. “This him?”
“Yeah,” I said, swiveling on the stool so that I could look him in the eye. “What can I do you for you, Mr. Horner?” The man had enough polish on his jack boots for a gymnasium floor.
“Marshal Raynor. By order of the colonial magistrate your services are hereby requested and required. There is a squad of Confederate marines in the canyons up near Perdition’s Crossing. We need your help to find them.”
“Perdition’s Crossing? Lemme guess, y’all lost radio contact soon as they entered the canyons.”
Horner’s face tightened.
I reached for my gun, a .45 D Smoke and Winston. Then slid Joey some extra credits. "It’s all the lodestone." I explained. "Always messing with the electronics. Happens at least twice a year, some ambitious ranch hand or rookie trucker gets himself lost in those trenches. You know who always has to fish them out?” I got up. “Welst, I reckon you do, else you wouldn’t have come to the right place.”
“Wait,” the emissary called out, practically bleating. I stopped at the door.
“What?”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Like hell you are kid…”
“By order of…”
“Heard about a damn ‘nough of this….” I pushed my way through the door. The sun had risen to high noon. Was it noon already? I tugged the brim of my hat just a bit lower. Waiting outside by the entrance to the bar was a line of hover bikes. My 2479 Vulture was idling at the end. Next to this was a Zephyr with a wizard blue paint job that just so happened to match Horner’s suit. You could smell the ozone coming off its repulsor plates, refreshing as a mint julep in the Sahara. I turned.
“That your ride?” I asked, curiously pointing to the Zephyr.
Horner nodded.
“Not a bad rig…” I said to myself. “You wanna tag along, that’s fine.” I settled into my Vulture. Ignited the engine. “Just don’t slow me down.”
I'd always found it a little funny. How a man like me could have become the law. I'd been born on Shiloh but my family had moved out to Mar Sara when I was very young. Fleeing religious persecution, Tarsonis was cracking down pretty hard on that back in those days. My father said that this was our chance at a new life. A chance to be free. Make our own choices. And he was right. Just a year later, when my dad got shot up on King’s crossing and bled to death in a solar field, I became the man of the house. Free to make my own choices.
We rode out into the Akilon Flats. The flats were an endless wash of salt and sediments, all melting together under the August sun. Could have heard the roar of our engines for miles, least you could if there had been anyone out here to begin with. Which there never was. This place was emptier than deep space and about half as interesting. I kept my Vulture at full throttle, just to see what the emissary’s Zephyr could do. And I'll be damned if his bike didn't keep good pace. Here I was, sitting on a custom hog, 318 Scotia ionic engines, nitro-injectors and he was matching me for speed. I’d been right. It was a damn fine machine.
“So explain something to me,” I said after a while. “What’s a group of Confederate marines doing out in the Mar Saran desert anyway?” You guy’s ain’t taken an interest in these parts since all the vespene dried up fifty years ago.”
“Mar Sara is a member of the Confederacy,” Horner yelled over the rushing wind.
“A ‘member’ of the Confederacy.” I laughed. “Well that makes it sound like we all on equal footing, now doesn’t it. When we both know that out here, we exist only to serve at the pleasure of Tarsonis.” I tipped my hat sarcastically.
“Careful marshal, that sounds an awful lot like treason to me. Everyone knows that Mar Sara has become a breeding ground for insurrection. Sons of Korhal practically call this dustbowl home.”
“True, course that never would have happened if you Confederate types hadn’t blown up their homeworld in the first place. You didn’t answer my question either. What’s Confederacy doing here anyway? All day I see the drop ships, flying in and out of Mar City.”
He looked uncomfortable. Like the man had demons eatin’ him up. “There’s something happening on Chau Sara.” He said finally, slowing his bike down enough that I could better hear him through the wind. “Even the Magistrate can’t figure it out. Complete radio silence. Like the whole planet just disappeared...”
“What do you mean?” I asked but Horner had stopped talking. He had skidded his bike to a halt, looking at something. I circled around and dismounted. There was a dark spot in the ground, like the kind leaking engine oil leaves on concrete. I knelt down next to it. It smelt like iron.
“What is it Marshal?”
“It's blood,” I said, rising up. “Something died here. Something big.”
“Local wildlife?”
I scanned the horizon. Nothing moved.
“I’m not sure. Let’s keep moving.”
The hours passed but the salt stayed the same. Here and there were cracks from where ancient springs had bubbled up to the surface long ago. The only green we saw, actually the only color to speak of, was this tumbleweed bush. We veered around it, Horner giving the only sign of life in this place a very wide berth, as one would a holy shrine. The sun chased after, then caught up and overtook us. It was late afternoon when, all of the sudden, one of the mud cracks split apart like hell’s mouth, widening until it had become a deep ravine. This was it. Perdition's Crossing. It wasn’t very long indeed until we found our first clue.
“Marshal! Over here!” His voice had lost some of its pedantic edge. He sounded almost nervous. He was holding something in his hand for me to see. A metal cylinder.
“Yeah,” I said, confirming his suspicion. “Those are C-14 rounds. Spent ones.” I spun around, scanning the canyon walls for any bullet holes. Which was how I saw it. A gap in the stone, maybe three meters wide and twice as tall. It would be snug but I supposed that a marine in powered armor could fit through a crack like that. With the proper motivation, of course.
“You think?”
“Stay here,” I undid my holster. “I’m going to go check it out.”
I crawled up to the cave’s entrance. From what I could see it was a grotto, at least twenty feet. I crawled in. The air was cooler here and smelled like guano. It was dark. I took a flashlight, my gun in the other hand. The rocks were slippery from runoff and once or twice I almost took a rough spill. But soon the cave opened up again. My light played across the limestone until I saw a figure slumped over on a boulder at the far end of the cave. It was a marine. I could see his CMC powered armor, like a gorilla encased in neosteel.
CMC. That means Confederate Marine Corp. Militaries run on acronyms and the confederacy was certainly no exception. CMC armor was standard for all Confederate marines. Three hundred pounds of chrome-plated exoskeleton. Normally, fog would be spilling from the exhaust fans on the back. Fact that that wasn’t happening meant that the suit was probably dead. Cautiously, I walked closer. It was indeed damaged, I could see that now. Like someone had opened her up with a butcher's knife ‘cept there wasn’t a knife ever made as could cut through that much neosteel. Reaching over, I hit the release on the helmet and the amber visor flipped open. It was empty.
I heard a click behind me. Then a voice, raw boned with just a hint of southern drawl.
“That’s far enough, chief. Drop the gun and turn around slowly.”
I did as he said. Raising my hands and turning around to face him.
The man was huge. The kinda guy that gets picked first in yard ball even if he’d never played a day in his life. All muscle and grit. He was wearing mojave fatigues and a wife beater. These were covered in blood from a large gash in his chest. His oversized hands were cradling a rifle. C-14 Impaler, also standard issue. It whined at the barely perceptible edge of hearing.
“Kick that iron over here." He growled. "Communications too.”
“Easy,” I said, still doing as he said. “Names Jim Raynor. The marshal of these parts. “I’m here to rescue you.”
“Just you? I heard voices.”
“Just me,” I lied.
At the same time Horner called up into the caves. “Raynor! Have you found anything.”
I winced. The marine smiled, “Oh, you found me alright.”
“What happened here?” I asked, glancing over at the armor. “There were twelve men in your squad. Where are the others?”
The marine unhooked a pouch on his fatigues, pulled out a cigar and stuck this in his mouth. Then he raised the gun. I dove for the ground as he fired. Would have taken my head clean off if he hadn’t been aiming too high. He casually dipped, lighting his cigar off the white hot barrel of the gun. “They didn’t make it,” he said at last.
Horner, ‘Emissary to the Grand Magistrate of Mar Sara’, didn’t put up much of a fight either. The big guy marched out of the cave, with me at gunpoint, and Horner gave up immediately. I can’t blame him, he was unarmed. But still.
“What do you mean they didn’t make it?” I asked as the marine patted Horner down.
“Monsters,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“Monsters,” I repeated. “Monsters, ain't that something....Hey Horner, I figured out what happened to your missing squad," I pointed at our captor. "This jarhead went postal. Shot ‘em all up. And is now holed up in a cave because he knows the only thing waiting for him back in town is a lovely date with the hangman. Don't touch that!" I yelled as the marine ran a hand along my Vulture.
"This yours?" He kicked the repulsor plates. "Now, now don't get your hackles up..."
“Is it true?” Horner asked the marine, “Did you kill those men? What’s your ID marine?”
“NSC92572,” the marine answered. “But you girls can call me Tychus.”
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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/sy2nw3S.jpg)
Backwater Station
We drove out into the desert again. Myself and Horner on the Zerphy. Tychus, having stolen my Vulture for himself, rode behind. Close enough that he could shoot us if we decided to make a break for it, but not so close that he could hear us whispering.
"What's the plan, marshal?" Horner asked.
I kept my eyes on the sand ahead. "The plan is that I am going to arrest him, and then haul his into Mar City where he is going to face justice for what he did."
"And just how are you gonna do that?" The emissary held up his shackled wrists. There was an identical pair chained around my hands, making it that much harder to steer.
"You let me worry about that."
"Where do you think he's taking us?" Horner said, changing the subject.
“My guess. Backwater. It’s the nearest town with a functional starport. He’s going to have to get off this world, and quick, before more of your people come looking for him.” I looked at him. Horner was avoiding my gaze. "You do have other people who know where you are, right?”
Horner swallowed.
“Unbelievable,” was all I could say.
My hunch turned out to be correct. We soon reached Route 10, then after that it was not much longer till we hit Erye highway. From there it was a straight away shot into Backwater proper. These service roads were not trafficked much, especially in the dry season when the heat was high enough to melt the rubber off your more pedestrian vehicles. But there would usually be at least some hover-trucks making their way up. Yet today, the roads were empty. Even the vespene refineries that we passed looked abandoned, their cooling towers suddenly dormant. After another hour or so, Tychus motioned toward a gas station on the side of the road. He probably needed to refuel.
Backwater was about as out of the way as things got around here. After the discovery of the Sarengo, it hadn’t been long before the Kel-Morians had arrived. The mining corporation had swept over Mar Sara like flood waters, checking under every rock for anything worth anything. They’d found a fair bit of iridium and, ke by one, excavation towns had sprung up out of the ground. But when the iridum dried up so too did the townships. The Kel-Morians packed up and left, leaving behind ghost towns like Backwater in their wake.
“Tychus,” Horner said as we pulled into the station, “why don’t you tell us about these monsters of yours? The ones that attack the squad. What happened? What did they look like?”
The marine chuckled. “What do monsters always look like? Like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Truth is it don’t much matter what I say they looked like, does it? You folk ain’t gonna believe me until you see ‘em with your own eyes.”
“I know what monsters look like,” I stared at Tychus, “They always look the same.”
Tychus smirked.
Like I said, my ol’ man had been murdered on the local highway not far from our place. Three shots and he still managed to crawl fifty yards, to a runoff ditch where they eventually found him. His car had been torched. No other evidence. The sheriff had a droopy dog look, wrung his hat between his hands as he told me and my mother and my brother that he was sorry but there was nothing we could do. There was no evidence and therefore there were no suspects.
Which was bullshit. We knew who it was soon we heard the news. Everyone knew that if someone turned in our town, dollars to dirt it was Tom Omer.
The gas station, like the highway, was empty. There was a convenience store attached to the pumps and that's where we headed first. A tiny bell over the door jingled as we came in. There was a ripping sound too, like velcro or torn up carpeting. I lifted up my boot. Stuck to the bottom of it was a moldy substance, like black jam. The stuff was all over the place, in puddles and veiny strips. The store itself looked like a herd of bulls had been run through it. Shampoo products, cleaning supplies, snack food just littered everywhere. There was no one behind the counter.
“What the hell is that?” Tychus said, coming up behind us. He kept his gun on us but was looking at the floor.
“Heck if I know,” I said, rubbing the stuff off my boots. Tychus, meanwhile, had made his way down one of the aisles. He was grabbing first aid supplies and shoving it in his cargo pants. Over the counter pain medicine. Bandages. A bottle of vodka for disinfection. His shirt was a blood soaked mess by now and the man was beginning to look a little pale as well. Horner and I helped ourselves to some beverages in the back.
“You’re gonna need more than that.” I said once we were back out at the bikes. Myself? I was enjoying an ice cold libation. Tychus, however, looked worse for wear. He stumbled.
“Tychus listen," I took another swig. "Them wounds are gonna fester something nasty in this heat. Frankly, I'd be surprised if you make it to sundown.”
Tychus ignored me. He had poured half the vodka on his wound already and was drinking the rest. He grit his teeth, obviously in pain. Then, shirking this off, he wrapped the dressing around his torso and popped a good number of the pills for good measure. He had the look of a man lost in the desert, refusing to accept that he was dying of thirst.
“Look, you need a hospital,” I continued. “You don’t get one, you’ll die. Let me take you in. We’ll patch you up good as new and, and then I’ll hand you over to Horner’s men. They’ll give you a fair shake.”
Tychus laughed. “Much obliged marshall but I think I’ll decline.” Then he pointed the gauss riffle at us. “Break times over, ladies. Let's go.”
We arrived at Backwater just as the sun was beginning to dip under the horizon. The entire town was shades of orange and grey. I could feel the desert waking up all around us. The omnipresent buzz of insects that only came out at dusk. The drop in barometric pressure that occurs just before nightfall. Creating an almost cooling breeze.
Blackwater however, was as still as the grave. We passed by a local bank, “Prosperity and Price,” a rundown casino, a couple grocery stores, pawn shop and an improv theater. All empty. We came to the middle of town where there was a Command Center.
The outpost had been there since forever. Since the KM days. It was called a Command Center because 'mobile smelting plant' just didn't have the same ring to it. It had a hemispheric shell, like some kind of giant shy tortoise. This was covered in ablative ceramic plates, capable of withstanding everything from hostile wildlife of Brontes to the firestorms of Char. Outposts such as these were the cornerstone of Terran expansion. Whether civilian or military, these babies were always the first thing to touchdown when humanity claimed a new world. And anyone who'd ever seen the Atlas boosters riding down the atmosphere could vouch that it's a good damn sight to behold.
We parked our bikes outside and went in. It was dark inside. The smell of ore hung thick in the air. I could hear rusty chains swinging in the rafters. We walked through into processing. There was a blast furnace here, as well as a network of pumplines and flux tubing. Horner climbed up one of the gantry stairs, peeking into the observation dome. Then he came back down again.
"There's no one home," he said, reaching the bottom of the walkway. "It's completely deserted."
"Weird," was all Tychus said before a sudden pain caught him in the ribs. It was his wound, acting up again. He was bent over. Gasping for air.
I knew that this might be the only opportunity I was going to get. I threw my handcuffs up over his neck. Then yanked back, hard. His neck was as thick as a tree trunk but I had taken him by surprise. Tychus toppled over with me underneath. It was like wrestling a Ursadon. Horner was yelling.
"Get…his gun," I yelled back as I wrestled with the man. He was oxen strong. Horner did as he was told. The emissary was still trying to figure out how to turn the safety off when I made a pretty critical error. I had thought to get Tychus in a crucifix hold, where I could use his own weight against him. But the marine had been too quick. He grabbed me by my leg. Tore me off of him. Scrambled away. And then was up, running for the bikes. I took off after him.
I chased after the marine as he fled from the outpost. Tackling him in the parking lot. He caught me across the jaw with what felt like a bacon-wrapped brick. I recovered then counterpunched into his ribs, where I knew he was wounded. The marine just ignored this. I dodged his left hook. Got a knee up under his belly and pushed off, grabbing my revolver from his belt as I did.
I tried to scramble away but Tychus grabbed me with both hands. Threw me, almost casually, like a barrel of hay, into the side of the building. My gun flew from my hands and before I could get up again Tychus was on me. Pummeling. I was seeing stars. I flung a fistful of dirt Tychus’s eyes but he only roared and punched harder. Then, suddenly he stopped. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed on top of me. I pushed the brute off of me and looked up. Horner, being unable to work the Gauss rifle had swung it like a golf club. He helped me up.
"Thanks," I said, retrieving my gun. But Horner didn't reply. He was staring at something down the road.
The sun had set. It was dark all around us, save for streetlights. I followed Horner's gaze. And that's when I saw them. People, maybe a hundred of them, shuffling down the road. Towards us.
They moved like zombies. Slow, erratic twitching movements. They looked like zombies. Their flesh covered in fungal spores and weeping pustules. One woman's tongue had swollen up so big it looked like a tentacle sticking out from her lips. Another, had black ichor dripping from his chin. They smelled like zombies. Even from here, I could smell them. Rotting flesh.
"What the heck?" Was all Horner could say.
"Here," I grabbed Tychus's feet. "Help me get him back in the outpost. We can't leave him here." Together we dragged the marine back up the ramp. Tychus was somehow even heavier than he looked. As soon as we got him into the center I took out my revolver, then marched back down the ramp. The zombies had reached the edge of the parking lot now.
"Stop or I'll shoot," I shouted to the undead mob. They kept shambling forward. None of them acted as if they had actually heard me. "Last chance," I said even louder. Gritting my teeth, I raised my gun, aimed for the tallest...zombie. It was this fat man with a cauliflower growing where his eyes used to be his eyes used to be. I squeezed the trigger. The man's skull exploded. But he kept walking.
"Well shit," Horner said under his breath. I backed up the ramp. There was a chain to my left that held the blast doors up. I pulled this down while Horner secured the padlock. We stepped back, looking at the blast doors and then each other. A few seconds passed before they reached the door. Then we could hear them. Cat-like scratching and unworldly moans coming from just on the other side of those doors.
"What were those things," Horner asked.
"Hell if I know." I checked my gun. Five bullets. Not nearly enough for what was out there. "Those used to be people. But something's changed 'em."
"You put a bullet through that man's head. It didn't even flinch. How do you explain that?"
I didn't have an answer. "We have to get out of here," I said instead.
"We could…"
"What?"
"Nothing."
"What? If you've got an idea I'm all ears."
"We could use the boosters."
"Would that work?"
Horner shrugged, "It's worth a shot. Ain't never flown anything, much less a building, before. But...we can't..."
"...because it'll incinerate the town," I said, finishing his line of thought.
"Look around you boys," Tychus said, woozy but beginning to come too. "Ain't no town here anymore." We could hear feral things banging on the blast doors.
I frowned. He was right. Whatever those things out there were, they weren't people. At least not anymore.
It didn't take long to convince Horner that if we didn't lift off then we were all going to be zombie chow. Figuring out where the controls were, up in the observation dome, and how to work them, took a bit longer. Luckily, the emissary's credentials were enough to grant us access. This thing might have been built by Kel-Morians but it belonged to the magistrate now. Horner fired up the boosters and the command center lifted off. It rose on a plume of destruction away from the town. Carrying us away to safety.
"Adios muchachos," Tychus yelled from the window. All I could think about was my bike, melting into a molten pile of slag somewhere down there. I was going to miss her.
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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/iuRdRO1.jpg)
Desperate Alliance
We had made it maybe twenty minutes, before the authorities caught up with us. Two wraith starfighters descended, screaming out from the upper atmosphere and ordering us to set down at the nearest plateau and prepare to be boarded. We complied of course. Us being in a flying building we'd have had more luck outrunning them in a half-filled bathtub.
“Those people,” Horner said as we landed. “the infected…”
"Zombies," I corrected.
“You watch too many movies," Horner replied. "We don’t know what was wrong with them.”
“I don’t know what those things were,” I admitted. “But they weren't human. Not any more. One thing's for sure, if we wait for the Confederate's help this planet is doomed. We need to get the word out. Have your magistrate send in the militia and save what folks we can."
We opened the blast doors and a team of Confederate marines marched up the ramp to meet us. They each had red pauldrons with eagle iconography. Their leader was an older man, maybe in his late sixties. Japanese with a shogun knot at the top of his head. And a frown that seemed to fit him even better than his armor. He spoke to Horner first.
“Greetings, I'm General Edmund Duke of the Confederate Security Forces, Alpha Squadron. The Confederacy has quarantined this entire planet and we'll proceed with the lockdown within 48 hours. You're to relocate your core colonists to the outlying wastelands. Now I know there won't be any problems with these new arrangements…”
“Now hold up.” I exclaimed. “What in the hells going on here?”
Duke ignored me. Horner stepped forward. “General Duke, please listen. Whatever js going on here, is serious. Some sort of infection is spreading among the civilians. I recruited this marshal to help me locate survivors from the Perdition attack.” He tilted his head towards Tychus, who was still sitting and holding his wound. “And found one. But the situation is much worse then we could have anticipated. By my guess this is something extraterrestrial...”
Duke raised a hand, cutting Horner off. “I appreciate your concern but well take it from here.”
I stepped in between them. “Damn. Listen Horner, if we wait for these Confederate’s help, this whole planet is dust. We have to get to your Magistrate. I'll head out to Mar city, do what I can. You rally the militia, and we'll save those folks. Trust me.”
The general seemed to suddenly notice. His lip curled back in an almost predatory smile.
“Marshal Raynor, by destroying a vital Confederate installation you and the marines have violated standing colonial law. As of right now you're both under arrest. I suggest you throw down your weapons and come peaceably.”
“Are you out of your mind? If we hadn't burned that damn town this whole colony would have been overrun. Maybe if you hadn't taken your sweet time in getting here…”
The squad of marines behind Duke were charging up their rifles. Duke looked exceedingly unimpressed. He walked right up to me. “Now I asked you nice the first time, boy I didn't come here to talk with you. Throw down them weapons!”
Horner had taken off his satin riding gloves and was twisting these around in between his hands. “I’m sorry Raynor.” He said at last. “We have to do this by the book.”
“Yeah,” I snarled. “I’m sorry too.”
Duke’s men took me and Tychus away. As I passed by Duke I spat. “Guess you wouldn't be a Confederate if you weren't a complete pain in the butt.”
The general laughed, “You damn fringe world locals are all alike. Don't know where your loyalties lie. Y'all have a real good day now you hear.”
Tychus and I were brought up to low orbit. To an old Confederate prison barge called the Merrimack. I knew three things about the Merrimack. First, that it didn't usually orbit planets. Rumor had it moored out in deep space, making jumps to random coordinates so as to thwart anyone foolish enough to attempt a prison break. Why would she be hanging out above Mar Sara now? I had no idea. The second thing I knew about Merrimack was that anyone sent there wasn't getting a fair trial. You were kept there until you were no longer needed. Worst job in the world was being an airlock technician for the Merrimack since every week there was another story about a prisoner being accidentally spaced due to a cycling malfunction. The third thing I knew about Merrimack was that no man had ever escaped from her adamantium cage. Except one.
The first thing the Confederates did to Tychus and me was shave off all our hair which was a damn shame because I'd been growing it since Lydia died. Then they inserted a tracking chip in the back of my neck. Tychus of course already had one. He was what they called resocialized. Implanted with cybernetics capable of overriding his own nervous system. Make them dance to whatever tune the Confederates were whistling. They threw us in the same cell. Just lucky I guess.
The prison cell was five by eight with a slab of concrete that they generously called a bed. The walls, floor and ceiling were solid neosteel. There was a toilet in the middle of the room as well as a sink which only ran water the color of mud. There was nothing else. Don't know what I was expecting. Maybe a blanket.
My cellmate wasn't looking too hot. He sat at the end of the cot in the biggest orange jumpsuit that the commissary had had. He had beads of sweat dripping from his forehead and was swaying back and forth as if there were a breeze in the room. The medical officer who had done our intake had taken one look at his chest wound, slapped a fresh bandage over the maggots then yelled, "Next!"
"Those things," I asked Tychus, "the people we saw in Backwater. Was that the monsters what attacked your squad?"
"No," he said weakly. "Worse."
The hours slipped by. I paced my cell, back and forth, for about an hour when I heard a thunk. I looked over towards the bed to find that Tychus had passed out on the concrete. I shook my head, taking a small measure of pity on the man. There was nothing else I could do. Poor bastard.
Tom Omer. That had been the man who killed my father. Him or own of his boys. Tom ran the local gangs around Backwater. They spent their days smuggling Terrazine smuggling when they weren't extorting small businesses. They'd come by our farm a couple times making their Charlatan offers of 'protection. My dad had turned em away each time. Told them that the next time they came back they'd be discussing the matter with the blunt end of his shotgun. My dad was like that. Always looking to protect us. And Tom Omer, he was black as sin. If he ever did the world a favor then it was being enough of a bastard that I decided to become a cop. For no other reason then put him behind bars. Or die trying. After the sheriff told me there was nothing he could do, when everyone knew that Omer’s boyz were to blame, I resolved to take matters into my own hands. My mother, she begged me not to go. She said vengeance wasn’t the answer and I was only going to get myself killed. She was sick at the time but I couldn't see that. I was only seeing red. The next day I applied to the academy. Now I’d never been that sharp in school but I do know this. When the interviewer saw my marksmanship score, her eyebrows jumped to the ceiling and back. Needless to say, I got in.
Eventually, I got tired of pacing my little prison, and started doing an improvised workout. See working out is just about the only thing you can do in the joint. So I did some push ups and some crunches and some pull ups. Waiting for fatigue to set in, but I was wired like a nine-volt. Too much had happened and my mind was racing. Zombies? Vast government conspiracies? The Chau Sara blackout. I was just the local marshall in way over his head. Then, sometime after midnight, I heard gunfire. I bolted up, heck I guess I must have dozed off at that point. I could see guards running past my cell. I yelled to ask what was happening but apparently it was need to know, and I didn't. And then, after a while, the gunfire stopped. I sat in my cell, not that I could do much else. Then, several minutes later, I heard footsteps approaching.
A group of men appeared, waltzing into the cell block as if they opened the place. There were construction workers in hard hats carrying power tools, and farmers armed with slugthrowers and machetes. A few had older wargear, veterans from the Guild Wars, while others had bandanas and hockey pads. Some of them looked pretty young, this one kid with a molotov cocktail in one hand, and a skateboard that was doubling as a riot shield in the other. All of them had the symbol of Korhal, the fist and whip, tattooed on the right deltoid.
The man who was leading them needed no introduction of course. His reputation preceded him by about a lightyear. Arcturus Mengsk. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, scion of an Old Family and son to the once respectable senator from Korhal, Angus Megnsk. A skilled orator, Arcturus had grown up in a life of privilege, private tutors, vacations on Vardona, the works. But that all changed when his father began speaking out against the corruption on Tarsonis. Many of the bourgeoisie, particularly among the Old Families themselves, were less than pleased with this. What had started as fiery and baritone speeches on the senate floor quickly escalated to threats of secession. The Confederacy sent assassins, those clandestine operatives known as ghosts, to silence him. But rather than quelch the rebellion of Korhal this only made things worse. Angus lead his home world in open revolt. In response Tarsonis deployed their final solution. Apocalypse-class thermonuclear warheads. Within minutes of the attack all of Korhal, four billion innocent people, died. Megnsk, who had been away at one of the family's off-world villas, had escaped the destruction. He took up his father's mantle, vowing revenge. Together with other survivors he founded the Sons of Korhal and had been terrorizing Confederacy worlds ever since.
“Good morning, marshal,” the man said. His voice was erudite and charming. “My name is Acturus Megnsk, and I represent The Sons of Korhal. You're familiar with the Confederate propaganda surrounding my group, but your reputation suggests you'll see past it. It's never been our practice to operate in any one place for long, but these Zerg don't look like they're going to wait. I'm going to make you an offer. Your freedom for your service.”
"What do you mean?”
Some of the terrorists were already working on my cell with acetylene torches and diesel-fueled rescue tools. “You've been trapped in here a while.” Megnsk continued, “Almost twenty four hours. A lot can happen in that time. Sixteen outlying colonies have already reported sightings of those alien invaders you saw at Backwater. What we are now calling the 'Zerg'. Three towns have already fallen. The Confederates have arrested all standing militia forces and continue to avoid taking any action against the invasion.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I have my ways,” he smiled, the silver edges of his otherwise black beard rising but not quite touching his eyes. He stepped forward. “It is clear now that Mar Sara will fall by nightfall. But before she does there is a chance to save lives. I'd like to help you out by sending down a number of transports to the city and evacuating any survivors. You know, of course, that my organization operates outside the bounds of Confederate law. That's how they spread their lies and misinformation. If you decide to accept our help, you'll be branded an outlaw too. But it's a chance to save those people.”
The prison bars fell to the ground. Clattering loudly.
"What's in it for you?"
"Your word that once your people are safe you will assist me in getting to the bottom of this mess. There is an installation not far from the city which I believe holds information vital to understanding this new threat and ultimately defeating it."
“And if I refuse?”
Mengsk smiled again.
“You’re free to go. If you're lucky, there might still be some escape pods left. But from what I know of James Raynor, he’s never been the kind of man to run from a fight. Now what’s it going to be marshal? Do we have a deal?”
"Ya," I said, reluctantly. “Ya, we have a deal.
"Good," he nodded. One of his men came up behind me, deactivating the tracking chip in my neck with a taser. I fell to the ground.
"There's something else." I said, trying to stand back up. "My cellmate. He needs medical attention." I glanced back at Tychus who was moaning. He looked septic.
"We'll see what we can do," Mengsk snapped his fingers and three of his men grabbed ahold of the marine, and hauled him out from the cell. Then, Mengsk fished in his overcoat, pulling out a clear plastic evidence bag. He tossed over to me. Inside was my six-shooter, which the guards had taken from me during processing.
"Don’t lose it again.”
Did I know at that time that I was making a deal with the devil? Probably. But if you know anything about Mengsk it's that the man never walks in a room or opens his mouth without knowing exactly how things were going to turn out. He’d done his homework. He knew exactly where I was and how to get me out. And he knew I wasn’t going to leave others behind.
The ride back down to the planet was rough as a rodeo. If you’ve ever been in dropship you know that they are appropriately named. Thing was bouncing so much I thought I was going to chip a tooth or knock a screw loose from the bulkhead. Speaking of bulkheads I thought a bit about Tychus. The man had tried to kill me, but still, I was hoping the lughead would pull through. Wouldn’t be a tragedy if he didn’t though, I reckoned. Either way whatever these aliens were, these Zerg, that had done that to him, I suspected we were about to meet them. A close encounter of the violent kind.
We hit the ground running, the cargo doors popping open and all hell breakin loose. I piled out of the shuttle, alongside twenty other men, into downtown Mar City. This was the commercial district, normally a quaint lil stretch of road filled with neo-victorian shops and merchants hawking their wares. Now however, it was a far different scene. Instead of bartering crowds the streets were filled with refugees, screaming and jostling to be let on the shuttles. I had to push my way through them just get out. The crowd rushing forward like an amorphous liquid to fill our vacated seats. I had to hope there would be enough room for all of them. A roadblock had been set up at the other end of the street, constructed from deserted cars, mattress pads and torn down chain fences. I followed the other Sons as they ran down the street. We ducked into a hardware store just before the makeshift barricades. Then took a stairwell which let out onto the roof.
From the rooftop one would normally have a sweeping visage of the surrounding desert. However, this being the dead of night, all we could see were small pools of light cast by the surrounding street lamps. We could hear things though. Many things, moving out there in the sand. Suddenly, someone got the floodlights working. And the desert lit up.
They looked like nothing I had ever seen before. Stony, dinosaur hide. Sickle limbs, like the blades of a praying mantis. They moved like birds and had these gossamer wings which rubbed together like screeching tires. Each of the Zerglings was about the size of a rottweiler. And there were thousands of them.
As one, they charged toward us.
I fired. My gunshot lost in a chitinous sea. There was no way to know if my bullets were having any effect. There was no use in aiming since the buggers were everywhere. Just pulled the trigger and repeat. Six times. Then I ducked behind the parapet to reload. All around me, the Sons were doing the same. Shooting into the night. I could hear the Zerglings reach the barricades, their claws scraping at the brick walls of our tower blind. I took a quick look over the edge. Saw a pair of black eyes, staring back at me. They were climbing up the walls. Some had already reached the roof. I aimed and those black eyes right below me blew apart, only to be replaced a second later by an identical pair. We fell back
The aliens were everywhere now. Scrambling onto the rooftop. In my ears I could hear frantic calls for retreat, but even this was drowning in a sea of ripping and tearing sounds.I kept shooting, covering the others retreat down the stairwell. But there were too many. I needed to buy them time. I back peddled away from the exit. My revolver spitting lead. I was cornered now, at the ledge of the roof. The beasts were all around me, circling like hyenas. Knew that this was it. The end of the line. Then I heard a familiar voice.
"Raynor!"
I turned around. There was a dropship rising up towards me, VTOL engines kicking dust in its wake. It was the last shuttle, chock full of survivors but with one man still standing on the edge.
"Jump!"
I jumped. I could hear the Zergling, snapping at my heels. It was six feet to the Horner. A five story drop to the asphalt below. I just focused on his hand. And caught it. Nearly yanked my arm out from the socket. But I caught it. He pulled me up.
"Nice timing," I said, out of breath and crawling to my knees. "Was that by the book as well?"
"Always," he said with a grin.
|
Should have Robert Clotworthy narrate this. Awesome
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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/lIgt5yP.jpg)
The Jacobs Installation
“So, it took me a while but I finally figured it out,” I stood up and brushed myself off, looking Horner over. “You're not the emissary to the Grand Magistrate. Are you? You’re the Magistrate himself.”
Horner blushed. “I’m sorry for the deception, marshal. It was...necessary. A magistrate is not supposed to be exposed in the field, but I needed to get to the bottom of all this. An alias was the only way how." He paused, thinking, then deciding to tell me more. "I'd heard about the attack. Something that had taken out an entire squad of marines near Perdition. But no matter who I asked no one would give me information. I was stonewalled at every turn by Confederate bureaucrats. This is my planet. My responsibility to protect. So I went to see for myself.”
I nodded but I was still wrapping my head around the idea that the man whom I’d been trapped in the desert with since yesterday was also in charge of just about everything on Mar Sara. He was so young. Not even a damn wrinkle on his forehead, which was surprising given how often he furrowed his brow. Horner did seem capable though, even if he was in way over his head.
“Last, I saw you Duke was reading you your rights. What happened?"
Horner grimaced. “He left me there. Said that he would 'send somebody'. I reckon I would still be there if I hadn't flagged down a crop duster. The pilot was nice enough to give me a lift back into the city. Once I had reconnected with my people the next step was obvious. Evacuate Mar Sara. But with the Confederates having grounding all outgoing flights and, even setting up an orbital blockade, that was going to be easier said than done. That’s when I was contacted by Mengsk. He made me an offer.”
“I suspect it was the same one he made for me.”
Horner nodded. “Save the planet in exchange for discovering more about the Zerg. He thinks this installation out in the dunes has the answers. Wants us to grab any data files we can from it.”
“And let me guess,” I glanced out the window at the swirling desert. “That’s where we are headed now?”
He nodded again. “It’s called the Jacob’s Installation. Wasn’t on cartography. Means it must be a blacksite.”
I looked at him, confused.
“Secret base.” Horner explained. “The Confederacy is known to have a few. Even I don’t know much about them...”
The dropship flew low, hugging the sand so as to avoid any enemy radar. We followed the coordinates Mengsk had given us. We were flying at close to the speed of sound, so it didn't take very long to reach our destination. There was a warehouse out here, half-buried underneath a charcoal mesa. It had camo netting over the front to hide it from prying eyes. Easy to miss if you didn't know what you were looking for.
“Any idea why Mengsk wanted me for the job? Seems like a lot of trouble breaking into a Confederate prison ship just to spring the local law man.”
“I may have had something to do with that,” Horner said, sheepishly “I asked him to do it. Just part of the deal.”
I had to laugh. I had done the same for Tychus. This magistrate was on the level.
“One other thing…” I said to him.
“What's that?”
“Call me Jim.”
Horner extended his hand. I shook it. “Matt," he said.
Truth was, Matt reminded me of a younger version of myself. I’d done well at the academy. At graduation they had said I could choose any precinct I wanted. Which was why they were so surprised when I chose Backwater. Backwater was the place you wound up if you crossed the line one too many times or pissed off the division chief. It was a dead end, and a dangerous one at that. The cops knew not to tangle with Tom Omer. He had them outmanned, outgunned and outwitted. So his cartel was free to pump the town’s with as much drugs as would fit in junkie’s veins and then some. Then I showed up.
The pilot, a spunky lady who was chewing bubblegum of all things, set us down on the other side of the ridge. It was pitch black and the suns wouldn't be up for an hour or so. We made our way around to the warehouse.
“What do we do now?” I asked but Horner only nodded to one of our new rebel friends. It was the kid that I had seen back at the Merrimack. He ran forward as I scanned the perimeter, there were a couple of well hidden security cameras but if they saw us, no one came out to say hi. The rebel kid was planting deuterium charges around the loading dock. He sprinted back to join us, sliding into the sand between Horner and me.
“Knock, knock,” the kid said as he set off the bombs. The explosion was big. It shook the desert and made my ears ring like a church bell even though I’d had the good sense to cover them beforehand. If the Confederates didn’t know we were coming before, they did now.
“Not bad kid, what’s your name?”
“Miles Lewis. He said to me. “But my friends call me ‘Blaze’. He was wearing a bandolier with spray canisters and what looked like a container of lighter fluid.
“You’ve got fire kid,” I joked. “I’ll give you that.”
The corridor inside was a mess. There were tiles hanging from the ceiling, like baby teeth about to fall out. And wires, lots and lots of wires, all of them sparking. But no people. We advanced together, moving up in teams of two. Horner held a luger. I was certain it was ceremonial, the kind of thing you'd keep above your fireplace but at least the emissary looked like he knew how to hold this one. The hallway was also empty, albeit less damaged by Blaze’s handywork.
“Where is everyone?” Horner asked.
“I don’t know,” my only reply.
What had looked like a warehouse from the outside was actually a much larger building hollowed out of the rock. We took the stairs. The lower level consisted of room after room of cold storage like a meat locker. Inside were body bags lying on silver gurneys. There were kugs of formaldehyde and all sorts of dissection equipment. Blaze unzippered one of the body bags. Inside was a zombie, like the kind we had seen before. This one had a large cleft jaw, as if someone had buried a hatchet in its face, and what looked like a pincer claw where there should have been an arm.
"They were studying these things," Horner, stating the obvious. "Who would do that?"
"Someone who stands to profit," I answered.
The next room was an office of sorts, but it looked like everything of note had already been removed. We found shredded paper in the trash and electrical cords that were yanked out from the walls. If there had been any computers here, they were gone now.
The third passage had activity. Two of our rebel compadres had gone ahead, advancing for a T-beam that was halfway up the corridor, when the building defenses kicked in. The turret had been set in the walls, concealed behind what looked like a bulletin board full of flyers. A six-barrel autocannons popped out, then chewed them boys up like something stuck in your teeth. Soon as they were dead it retreated back into the walls as if nothing had happened. Leaving behind two dead rebels that had barely started to bleed.
“Well that’s a pickle,” I said, hanging back behind the corner, “any way around this?”
“Not that I see,” Horner admitted. "This is the only way into the middle of the complex."
I turned to Blaze but he just shrugged. Everything big and explosive he had already used on the outer doors. I scratched at my five o'clock shadow. Thinking.
"Anything you know about these turrets," I asked Horner.
"We got a pair like that guarding the capital building. Tough as nails. And accurate. They have high-security automatic tracking."
"What's that?"
"Threat detection. They got an algorithm that can identify humanoid objects. Matches this with a thermal signature and prioritizes whatever's hottest…what?"
"You said it prioritizes?"
"Yeah, so?"
This time it was Horner's turn to look confused. I clapped him on the back. "C'mon, I said, let's go grab one of those corpses."
It took us all of ten minutes to get the cadaver rigged up and ready. We had propped it up on it’s gurney like a scarecrow. Blaze had doused the whole thing with what was left of his lighter fluid. Then lit it up. On fire the zombie would glow like a Christmas Tree for any infrared sensors. Which was what we were counting on.
"Run," I yelled as I wheeled the gurney out into the hallway. I gave the cart a final push and dove to the ground before the turret could start firing. As expected the turret immediately immediately targeted the burning corpse. Bbbbbbbrrrrrrrr…
My crew and I stuck to the opposite side of the hallway and raced toward the far end. Made to the next junction before our decoy was completely destroyed. I didn't know how we were gonna get back out, but we were gonna cross that bridge if we got there.
We had entered a larger area. A laboratory. There were workbenches and fancy looking equipment everywhere. The room was cluttered beyond all imagination. Not an inch of workbench space that wasn't already occupied by test tubes, bunsen burners, erlenmeyers, etcetera. There was a low hum as a pipetting robot went about it's business unaware that the rest of the facility had evacuated. Analysis monitors hung from the workstations but they were all missing servers. Whoever had taken the computers from upstairs had been here as well. In the center of the lab was a large cryo-tank. It reached all the way from the floor to the ceiling and was filled with what looked like green jello. There was something inside.
"Jim," Horner said, gazing up at the thing. "Come here, you need to see this…"
I walked up to the tank, putting a hand on the glass. It was cold.
The thing inside of the tank was a Zerg. I was sure of it even though it didn't look anything like the aliens we had seen before. For one this creature was almost twice my height. It's forearms were like the grim reaper and the skull reminded me of a triceratops. It had no legs, just a long, sluggish tail like a scantipede. If I had to guess it probably couldn't move very fast. Which was fortunate because you wouldn't have wanted to be cornered by this thing.
"What is it?" Horner asked.
There was a display next to the tablet. I activated it and a voice recording began.
"Subject Twenty Six. Identification: Hydralisk. Core Genus: Slothien. Acquisition Date: September 27th, 2498..."
"2498…" Horner said, looking at me. "That was over a year ago."
The recording continued.
"Considered to be extremely aggressive. It's carapace houses osseous spines which can be expelled at hypersonic velocities and are tipped with a neuro-toxin capable of disabling an adult human within seconds..."
"Charming," I said, turning off the recording. "Are we done here?"
Horner looked around. "All of the computers were taken. Whatever was going on here, the Confederacy didn't want to leave us any clues. What do we do with this?" He was studing the display. "I think it's still alive."
"Y'all might wanna stand back." I raised my gun, putting the sights up against the glass. I cocked back the hammer, ready to shoot. But then I spied something on the other side of the glass. I walked around. There, resting on a cleared off area of the workbench, was a soda can. I leaned closer. It was still fizzling.
"Whoever was drinking this," I said, readying my gun. "is still here…"
I stood up, taking a look around the laboratory. There was a janitor's closet not far from where we were standing. I put a finger to my lips. The others hushed up. We crept towards the door. Then I yanked open the door. Out tumbled a mop, several cleaning detergents, an achtung floor sign, and one very frightened scientist. He had hair that looked like it had been squeezed out of a tube of toothpaste and these neon yellow goggles. His lab coat was as dirty as Joey Ray's washrag.
"Don't hurt me!"
"Well, well, well," I said, pulling the scientist to his feet. "What do we have here? What's your name son?"
"Egon Stetman. PhD. Xenobiologist."
"And what are you doing here, Egon?"
"Hiding," he was stammering.
"No kidding. Before that."
"My specimen. They were going to destroy it. I couldn't just leave it behind. I had to save it. So I hid."
Matt and I exchanged looks. Then we glanced back at the cryo-tank.
"That?" Horner asked, incredulous.
The scientist nodded.
"Well that's nice,” I said, holstering my gun. “Einstein’s gotta pet. Listen, if we're done here I suggest we leave. Doc, tell me there is another way out of this place.”
Stetmann shook his hair, "'fraid not."
"Great." Horner turned around, back towards the way we had come from. "Then how are we going to get past the turret?
"Don't worry," I said, still eyeing the grotesque. "I've got an idea for that too."
It was a tight squeeze but we were able to fit everyone in the closet. The science boy had explained the procedure three times to make sure I understood. I entered the instructions just how he said.
"Cryogenics thaw," the display said in an inappropriately cheerful tone. "...commencing."
The green fluid began slowly draining from the tank. The Zerg twitched.
I stepped back. Suddenly, it's jawbone split apart. It roared. And I ran.
I'd been wrong. The hydralisk wasn't slow at all. It was fast. Rattlesnake fast. The thing burst through the glass. I had made it halfway across the lab. Could hear shelves and data machines tippling over as the beast came after me. I slid out into the hallway, coming to a stop near the charred and bullet ridden remains of our decoy. Seconds later the alien came around the bend, rushing for me. It hissed, unveiling row after row of venomous spines as it did. But fortunately for me, this was exactly the moment when the turret opened fire.
A stream of 30 millimeters drilled into the alien’s flesh. It shrieked, then rounded on the turret, returning fire with its own volley of spikes. The system paused for a moment, recalibrating then kept firing…
By the time it was all over the corridor was riddled with ballistic holes and bony fragments. These spines were wicked looking, six-inches, and sharp as volcanic arrowheads. The turret spun gently on its ball bearings but had long since run out of ammo. The alien lay against the far wall. It was struggling to breath. It's abdomen had been torn open, weird organs spilling out all across the tiled floor. I walked up to the 'specimen'. It blinked. I put a bullet through its eye. Then I got the others and we got the hell out of there.
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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/jNfXpXj.jpg)
Revolution
In the wake of the chaos from the Zerg invasion we escaped with the Confederate scientist. The plan, as Horner had explained it, was to regroup on Antiga Prime. It was a fringe world, known for its mudflats and mountainous terrain. It always rained on Antiga. Like Mar Sara most people here had made a living pumping vespene outta the peaks but were then forced to eek out an existence in the mud after that dried up. Most of the planet was actually military bases, Antiga's orbit being a convenient staging point for stomping out rebellion. What better place to start one then?
It had been a twelve hour jump to the Antigan system. I sat with Matt in the back of the dropship, huddled elbow to elbow with a score of refugees. We talked about where we'd come from, where we were going. He'd grown up in Mar city. Went to law school then landed a pretty ordinary job as the county clerk. Then, the lucky break, he ran for office and, to the surprise of everyone, himself most of all, he won. First as mayor and the next year regional governor and after that magistrate. Social media was good to him and try as they might no opponents had been able to scrounge up any skeletons in his proverbial closet.
Neither of us had been particular fans of the Confederacy. But that was a far cry from being ready to sign up for the cause. Everyone knew what the Sons of Korhal were really about. Their modus operandi. Whether it was blown up school buses or sabotaged air filters on deep-space mining rigs, the SOK could offer ordinary folk only one thing. Suffering. This Mengsk, in particular, seemed about as greasy as a KY-jellied eel.
"What choice do we have, Jim?" Matt said. " Our people will never be free so long as the Confederacy exists. You know that. We were able to save a lot of people today but we must have left scores more behind. Soon as we land I’m going to speak with Mengsk, see if we can’t organize another rescue party. Go back for any other survivors." We both agreed this was the most reasonable next step.
We came out of warp on the 'dark' side of Antiga Prime. Whether the Confederates made anything of an unregistered vessel on descent towards a rather nondescript area of the northwestern hemisphere...I didn't know. But no one intercepted us. It was another twenty minutes down to the surface where we settled down in an out of the way industrial park. While we had been busy investigating the laboratory, Arcturus and the rest of his men had been busy. They had taken it upon themselves to raid a Confederate barrack and plunder this for themselves. We walked into the base to find them parading around in this stolen armor, stomping up and down the hallways as if it were some kind of heavy metal fashion show.
Confederate barracks such as this one weren't so much about housing the troops as they were about containment. Think of Alcatraz but on hydraulic stilts. Like the command center we had used to escape Backwater, this barracks had Atlas boosters for...you guessed it, rapid redeployment. The building itself was subdivided into three parts. The bunks, which were not so different from the cell block me and Tychus had been stuffed into earlier. A field hospital, which was mostly used for ‘resocializing’ purposes, i.e. the implantation of neural circuitry into the cerebellums of recruits. And a very confined, very automated wardrobe room, where a marine could be hermetically sealed inside of his battlesuit.
"Raynor! Check this out!" Blaze shouted. He had found a firebat gauntlet among the supply cache. The kid, he maybe weighed a stone soaking wet, needed to use both hands just to lift the weapon up. He opened his palm wide and a torrent of flaming gas shot from the glove. The kid was beaming at me. "Need a light?" he joked, closing his fist.
"That's not a toy, kid!" A gruff voice yelled from behind. It was a short, rotund man dressed in leather overalls and wearing soddering goggles. He had mutton chops that would have made a walrus proud. And a prosthetic arm which had been fitted with a wrench attachment. This gizmo snapped and whirled every couple of seconds, as if it had a mind of its own.
"What the hell is wrong with you? You wanna do the Confederates a solid and kill us all? Eh, genius?" He snatched the weapon out from Blaze's hands. His nose was scrunched up like he could smell something rotten. "And you? Who the hell are you?"
I held up my hands, we come in peace. "I'm Marshall Jim Raynor." I pointed to the others, "...Egon Stetmann, he is a defecting Confederate scientist come to help us out, and Matthew Horner, the former Magistrate of Mar Sara."
The dwarf scowled something fierce, his frown deep enough that you could use it to curdle milk. "We got too many new faces as it is. It's the problem with rebellion, you never know who you're in bed with..." He beetled away. No doubt to hurangue some other group of soldiers.
"Magistrate!" Mengsk, having just concluded another conversation, had just noticed us. "You and marshal Raynor have done well! Now where is this scientist?"
Matt and I stepped aside, revealing Stetmann.
Mengsk grinned, showing what I thought was way too much teeth. "We'll if I'd have known we would be hosting one of the leading minds on xenobiology, I would have prepared a soiree." Mengk’s tone had all the savoir faire of a snake oil salesman.
The scientist reached out a hand which Mengsk eagerly shook. I felt a little bad for the little nerd, turning him over to Mengsk like that, it didn’t quite sit right, ya know? But Stetmann knew what those monsters were and could maybe help us make things right.
"Sir," Egon said, running a hand through his overly-gelled hair. "I have to get back to Mar Sara. There is still so much left to be discovered about these organisms. Their metabolism, reproduction and…"
"Why certainly," Mengsk threw his arm around the scientist. "But you must understand the entire planet is under Confederate blockade by now."
"We need to go back. There are still more of my people there."
Mengsk bit his lip, "I wish we could magistrate. But right now we don't have the forces to break through that kind of fleet." He leaned on his cane, simultaneously looking Horner and the scientist in his gaze. "We will return to Mar Sara just as soon as it is safe to do. In the meantime, myself and the other commanding officers have some questions about these 'organisms'. Questions that Dr. Stetmann can help us answer."
Egon swallowed as Mengsk led him away.
"We just going to hand him over?" I asked Matt.
Matt shrugged. "As far as I am concerned that man's responsible for what's happening to my planet. He owes us some answers."
Yeah," I kicked my boots. "And I got a feeling Mengsk is a man that knows how to get them."
No sooner had they left, then heard a ruckus. We walked outside into the courtyard to see what the hell was going on. People were rushing over to a lean-to where someone had hooked up a TV set to get UNN feeds. United News Network. The volume was dialed up but with so much of a crowd you couldn’t really hear a thing. Matt and I pushed our way to the front. The nightly anchor was trying to make sense of what was on the screen.
"If you're just joining us we are coming to you live from our Mar Sara affiliate station. Several objects, at least 80 kilometers in length have been spotted in low-orbit above the planet. I repeat...unidentified flying objects have been spotted over Mar Sara."
They looked ethereal, wisp-like, like something too fragile for the cold vacuum of space. I couldn't really say what kinda shape they were because nothing made by nature or man was ever that shape. Maybe a banana, I guess, or a zeppelin. They were golden and gossamer. Just floating there, like daggers.
"What in the…"
Without warning there came a terrible noise, like the sound of icebergs cracking. One of the objects began opening up as if it were a flower in terrible bloom. Huge ribbons untangle themselves. And in the very center of all this, there was a blue light. The light shown down to the planet. Where it touched the continents glowed, white hot as a cattle brand. Even the atmosphere ignited. One by one the rest of the Damocles objects followed suit.
For thirteen hours we watched as they glassed the planet. What else could we do? We were too far away. And even if we had been there, what could we have done against...against that kind of firepower? The Confederacy, likewise, made no move to intervene. The new station called them Protoss. Humanity had encountered not one, but two alien species in as many days. The answer to the questions, are we alone in the universe? A terrifying and undeniable ‘no’. The news station kept the cameras rolling until the very bitter end. But eventually, it cut to static. Mar Sara was no more.
Matt blew all the air out from inside of his cheeks. For all I knew he might have been holding in his breath the entire time. Myself, I just collapsed on a drum barrel, knocking it over and spilling blue engine coolant across the floor. I felt sick.
"Jim…" was all Horner could say.
"I know…I know..."
"We have to do something."
"What?"
Matt looked different. His lips were creased. His face ashen. And when he stood up, his posture was somehow straighter than it normally was. The man had, before my very eyes, grown a pair. He was mad.
"We start a revolution."
"Now hold on, Matt…"
"Whatever is going on here the Confederacy is at the heart of it. You saw that installation. They were experimenting on the zerg. For all we know they could be a weapon." He made a fist. "When I was in boarding school I used to read a lot about our history. About how our ancestors crash landed in this system almost two hundred years ago. You know what we were? Criminals. Pariah. Genetic degenerates. The waste products of Old Earth."
He slammed both fist's on a supply crate. We had moved away from the crowd that was still watching the news feeds out of Sara.
"In two hundred years you know the only thing we've proven?" Horner said. "That they were right. Because, if we can't stand up for ourselves…if we let cruel men rule, then we deserve what we get. It's time we tossed off these yolk. Make something for ourselves. It's the only way we're gonna be ready for that." Matt pointed at the sky.
Despite myself, I had to laugh.
"What's so funny?"
"Well...it wasn't so long ago that you were calling me a traitor."
"Things have changed. So what's it going to be Jim? Are you in or are you out?"
What was I supposed to say to him? No?
She’d left a note for me on her deathbed. My mother had. It seems in my absence the pneumonia had crept up on her. “I love you, Jim. You’re my son, and I always will love you. But I cannot say that I am proud of you. Do you remember what I used to tell you? That a man is only as good as the choices he makes. What he chooses to be. It’s not how he’s born, or how he’s raised, that makes the man. It’s his choices. And you can always choose to be something new.” That was the note she’d left for me. I hadn't been there, of course, when she died. I’d been away at the academy. I crumpled the note and tossed it in the fire. Tom Omer, the man who killed my father, now had two deaths to answer for.
It didn't take long for Horner to convince Mengsk of our good intentions. The ex-magistrate had connections, respect and a fair bit of intel about the inner workings of Tarsonis. Plus, having the leader-in-exile of a colony which had just been exterminated by hostile aliens, well that would only further lend sympathy to Mengsk's rebellion.
I, however, was just along for the ride. I spent my days shooting the breeze with any grunts or foot soldiers that came my way. We played poker with what little credits we could scrape together and I usually won. We ate canned soybeans and tofu around a communal firepit. Blaze liked to cook but burnt almost everything he touched. Mengsk and Horner met often, strategizing in a post office which Mengsk had repurposed to a war room. The rebels were busy. Distributing propaganda, hacking networks, gathering supplies, you name it. They went out on sortie raids and blitzkrieg attacks, doggin' the Confederate heels at every turn, but never quite leaving a mark. To hear Mengsk tell it, Antiga was always on the verge of rebellion. But for some reason never quite made it past that tipping point which it took to domino everything down. I stayed inside the camp, taught combat basics, what I could remember from the academy, during the day and drank moonshine, which tasted mostly like motor oil, at night.
After Mar Sara the word got out pretty fast. We were not alone in the universe. Nor welcome. No communication could be made with the extraterrestrials and their fleet had up and vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. There was more. Remember Chau Sara? The communications blackout? Turns out Mar Sara wasn't even the first contact. The aliens had visited her sister world three days before. Sterilized the whole planet. Three days. Enough time to evacuate everyone on Mar Sara. But the Confederates had just covered it up...waited to see if it would happen again. My whole planet, a petri dish experiment.
It went on like this for about a week or so. Myself the guilty, if somewhat indolent, accessory to terror. Then, one day, as I was perched on a retainer wall watching the Blaze stumble around in his combat armor...she walked into my life.
"No, no, no..." I yelled, my patience rapidly wearing thin. We'd been practicing out here, in the field for several hours. There was a heavy rain coming down which was turning the reddish clay into something more closely resembling soup. I was cold. My boots, soggier than leftover noodles. I wanted to get in the tents, dry off, maybe have a bit of that fiery whiskey the boys had picked up in the last supply run. But the kid insisted on learning the ins and outs of his new combat armor. So there I was.
"Let the actuators do their job. " I said, walking over. With all the mud my boots felt heavier than the mechanical ones that Blaze was wearing.
"I am Jim," the kid always called me Jim. "But just when I think I've got it..." He bent over, reaching for his C-14. The hip servos of his armor groaned as the boy stooped over. But he leaned too far and landed in the mud. Somewhere in the distance there was a crack of thunder. As if the whole planet was announcing, "times up."
"You have to know when to pull back. The kinetic suspension is registering whenever you initiate a movement. Maps it out." I pantomimed taking a big step. "But if you keep pressing then that signal never knows when to quit. Just keeps firing." I grabbed his armor by the collar, helping to roll the two ton suit over so Blaze could get up.
"Like everything in life, there's a balance." I wiped some mud from his visor, enough that he could see. "You have to find yours." I turned and looked up at the sky. The rain was coming down now even harder. A deluge.
"....and speaking of knowing when to quit I think it's high time we called this a day. C'mon let's go find the others."
I turned but stopped in my tracks. There was a shadow in the rain. The downpour was falling everywhere but this one spot in the grass. The raindrops splattering and bounced off, like an invisible duck's back. The phantom was walking towards our camp. I could see narrow footsteps in the mud as it passed by. Then, suddenly the air around it shimmered and a young woman appeared.
Her hair was soaking wet from the rain and ran down her shoulders like scarlet hellfire. Her eyes were chromatic green. She had lips made for catching men and a smile that was just a bit too wide for her porcelain chin. She didn't even look at me as she walked by. In her hands was an object wrapped in a burlap sack.
Although I'd never met her I knew almost immediately what she was. A ghost. The poorest kept secret in the Confederacy. The boogiemen, er, and women...of Tarsonis. That Mengsk had one of these assassin's in his employ was nothing short of remarkable. They were clandestine operatives, trained from infancy to be ruthless and undetectable killers. Each agent was outfitted with the pinnacle of Confederate nanotechnology. A liquid crystal bodysuit capable of absorbing and redirecting electromagnetic frequencies like some kind of digital chameleon.
"Who is she?" I asked.
"Sarah Kerrigan," Blaze said. "Mengsk's right hand girl if you know what I mean. It's rare to even see her in the camp. Usually she's out on some kinda reconnaissance mission or whatnot.
She stopped in front of Mengsk's office. Tossed the bag onto the steps then walked away. The object rolled out from the cloth as we got closer. It landed unceremoniously in the mud. It was a head. Decapitated at the neck.
"And that?"
Blaze squinted. "That would be Lieutenant Nadaner. Leader of the Confederate occupation on Antiga."
"Oh," I turned, looking for the ghost again. But she was gone.
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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/nwy8BVP.jpg)
Norad II
It didn’t take long. The Zerg swarmed over the system like roaches on bread. Devouring planets. The next to fall was Brontes, then Dylan IV. It was only a matter of time before they reached Antiga. We all knew that we were living on borrowed time. A burnin' fuse. We just never thought we'd be the ones to pour kerosene on the fire.
We were assembled, Horner, Kerrigan and I, in Mengsk's war room. Mengsk sat behind a giant mahogany desk. It was barren except for a cigar box and a letter opener that had been jammed in the wood. Behind the desk was an adjuvant, the android that had been generously donated by some Antigan politician who wished to curry favor with the Sons. Mengsk pressed a button on his desk and the robot sprang to life. There was an LED flashing on its temple, as if it were still waking up.
"It appears that the Confederates are in a state of panic about the Antigan Revolt," the adjuvant said, in an autotuned voice. "I'm picking up a high number of Confederate transmissions going back and forth between these outposts and their headquarters on Tarsonis. Most of the transmissions are heavily encoded, except for the one we received this morning."
The android was state of the art. It had carbon-fiber curves, suggestive enough to sell models, yet its facial features with plastic, placing the model far enough in the uncanny valley that it might never crawl out. It was suspended from the ceiling by an articulated crane, a medusa made from cables and load-bearing rods. It spoke again but this time with a voice that I knew. A voice I'd heard only weeks before and didn't particularly want to hear ever again.
"This is General Duke," the robot mimed, "calling from Alpha Squadron Flagship Norad II! We've crash landed and are being hit hard by the Zerg! Request immediate backup from anyone receiving this signal! Repeat, this is a priority one distress call-
"Zerg?" I leaned back in my chair, my gun resting on my lap. "Here? Serves 'em right. 'Bout time they got a taste of what it's like to be in there mixin' it up."
Mengsk leaned forward, his own chair creaking as he did. "Jim, I want you to move in and save that base."
"I'm positive I didn't hear that right."
"Arcturus," Kerrigan interjected, "have you lost your mind?"
Mengsk's eyes darted to her, then back to me. "Listen, I know Duke's a cold hearted bastard but an entire colony shouldn't have to suffer for that. Besides, a Confederate general could prove to be a powerful ally. This is an opportunity we cannot miss."
"I don't like this at all," Kerrigan grumbled.
"I'm not asking you to like it," Mengsk said, this time with more force. "I'm asking you to do it."
"Yes, sir."
Great," I said, standing, "let's get this over with."
The adjuvant switched, now projecting a hologram of the relayed coordinates. I could see multiple red icons indicating Zerg. They were clustering around the Norad II. I pointed at the map. "If we're doing this we better hurry, that ship won't last long against them critters."
I was to lead the strike team with Kerrigan ‘just tagging along’. After the secret laboratory Mengsk had promoted me to 'Captain' of his ragtag brigade. Like I needed an official title to tell me where to shoot. Nevertheless, I was to lead eleven no other rebel soldiers, all clad in armor with Gauss rifles at the ready. Blaze wasn't in the squad, a fact which I was simultaneously happy and bit disappointed by. The kid reminded me of myself at his age. Hate to see him get hurt. Horner was also sitting this out. He claimed, and Mengsk was inclined to agree, that his talents were of more use off the battlefield then on. Arcturus had put him in charge of establishing an interim government so that 'chaos would not spring up in our wake.'
We donned our combat suits in silence, then climbed into our trans-atmospheric chariot. It was the dead of night when we took off, heading west. I watched the mountain range through the fog. Just before Andasar City we banked north, flying over Stickler Woods. Suddenly I heard the crack of thunder followed by sizzling. As if someone were cooking fajita.
“Do you hear that?” I said, turning to Kerrigan. The ghost was standing out the back of the dropship. Listening and confused. Her eyes suddenly went wide. Without a word she raced back towards the front of the plane and threw open the door to the cockpit. I followed behind her. From the cockpit we could see the entire forest spread out before us. The forest was glowing. Plutonium green. Balls of incandescent plasma were hurtling skyward, towards us.
“Dive!” Kerrigan screamed.
The pilot was one step ahead of her. I was thrown back, as we rocketed down towards the ground. The projectiles arced towards us. The pilot dodged. A spittle of the bile hit us, corroding through the glass like butter. The pilot let go of the controls just as the acid ate through them. Within seconds it was gone, burrowing into the ship with sticky pseudopods. My mind was still processing everything when we hit the treetops.
I woke several minutes later. I had been thrown a yard or so from the crash site. All around me was broken glass and then meaty remains of our pilot. Kerrigan was nowhere to be seen. The dropship was on fire. One of its engines was still running, turning over on itself, again and again like a dog on a leash. I raced towards the back but one look inside told me that everyone who was in the passenger section was already dead. It smelled like burning garbage and charred barbecue but I forced myself to count. I had to make sure no one else had made it out alive. There were eleven. Which meant I was on my own.
I made my way through the forest. Following a GPS signal that pointed towards the final resting place of the Norad II. The terrain was steep and treacherous but in a titanium exoskeleton I might as well have been skiing downhill. The night was silent except for the crunch of dry pine needles and the hooting of what I could only guess was an owl. Hours went by. Then I heard something else. Something heavy, moving through the trees. I crouched low. Snuck closer.
It was massive. Like an elephant, if elephants had gelatinous skin, six arachnid legs and a trunk like a sea cucumber. It was stomping into a grass clearing now, the ground shaking with every step the hexapod took. Suddenly, the creature froze. The trunk swelling up like a water balloon ready to burst until, without any other warning, it belched plasma into the sky. Following this, the zerg monstrosity lumbered on.
“Well, at least I know what took out our ships,” I whispered to myself. “Well done detective Raynor...”
It was not long after this that I found the Norad II. Whereas our dropship had splintered apart on the gargantuan trees, the battleship had left a kilometer long hole in the earth. I was standing on the lip of this crater. Looking down. I heard the ghost before I saw her, which, all things considered, wasn't that surprising. She was working her way through the debris. I took a step and then the dirt gave out beneath me. Fell down the embankment. Maybe fifty feet but luckily some hard rocks broke my fall.
"What are you doing here?" Kerrigan said, she’d spun around with her gun, ready to fire.
I propped myself up on a mechanized elbow. "Ugh,” I winced. “Just dropping in.”
She rolled her eyes. "Come along then."
"You know...some people, when they survive a crash landing,” I took a deep breath. Had I broken a rib? “...might think to check on the other passengers...might even have the common courtesy to pull the ones who were still alive clear of the burning wreckage." I got up. "...before they peaced out."
She kept walking.
“Did you hear me?” I yelled.
“Yeah.”
“You just don’t care?”
Kerrigan turned around. “I care about the mission.”
"Right," I said sarcastically.
Kerrigan hoisted herself up into what had once been an elevator shaft. I crawled up after her. All around us was twisted neosteel and ceramic dust. We ducked under a fallen I-beam. Then down another open space until we found a doorway labelled 'Hallway E'. The ghost ducked into here.
This was my problem. I'd become a cop to save people. And here I was, forty thousand light years from a planet that I couldn't save. Instead stuck saving people who didn't deserve to be saved. People like Duke. A man who didn't deserve nothing but was going to get it anyway. Because the people who dug us into this hole were so often the ones needed to get out. At least that's what Mengsk seemed to believe. Myself? I say you take away their shovel before they can dig any deeper.
We entered into the bowels of the ship but Kerrigan seemed to know where she was going. I kept having to check the map on my HUD. Eventually, I gave up and just followed her. As we traversed the length of the Norad II we saw further signs of recent damage. There were holes in the corridor walls at a caliber which matched the C-14 rifle that I was holding. There were burn marks and streaks of black ichorous blood. And, occasionally, a dead marine. No Zerg though.
We had entered this galley near the bow. Maybe twenty by twenty five feet with the exit by the kitchen in the rear. It was filled with tables that were contiguous with the floor, in case of high-G maneuvers. These tables were littered with half eaten meals. The air smelled like the back of a fast food restaurant. And something else
Before we were five steps in the room, three hydralisks slithered into view. Mean looking things with jack-o'-lantern grins. I ducked, taking cover behind a nearby table as the air whistled around me with their projectiles. Kerrigan vanished and for a second I wondered if she was going to leave me again. There was a heavy thunk as one of the barbs pierced through the table, not three inches from my head. I was trapped.
There was a blur, accompanied by the pitter patter of light boots. I looked up just in time to see Kerrigan appearing again on the other side of the mess hall. She was sprinting towards the first xenomorph which had reared up, ready to strike. Kerrigan jumped. She planted three footsteps on the bulkhead before catapulting over her foe. Its claws raked the space, but missed. She landed, her rifle firing as she did. The creature roared in pain, then went down. Kerrigan, however, was already rolling away. Not a second too soon as the remaining hydralisks were targeting her location. She slid underneath a bench and came out of the other side shooting. I popped out from cover myself, putting the last remaining beast between my sights. But before I could even squeeze the trigger the creeper’s jaw exploded and the battle was over. The galley was a mess, splintered plastic and alien goo was everywhere. I caught my breath. Waited for the ringing in my ears to die down. Then ran after the ghost.
We found Duke and several of his men holed up in the back of the kitchen. They had barricaded themselves inside of a refrigerated meat locker. There had been a fight here. Boiler pots and pans were strewn everywhere. An oven with a large indent, black slime on the griddle plates. The polished locker doors were scored with claw marks and acid burns. We had to knock twice just to get the survivors to open up. There, hiding amidst freeze dried chicken, flour rations and an industrial sized cans of beans, was General Duke of the Confederate Security Forces.
"You're about the last folks I expected to show up." He said, stepping clear of the locker. "What's your angle here?"
Kerrigan raised a projector which broadcast the flickering image of Mengsk into the middle of the room.
"Our angle?" I spat. "I'll give you an angle you Confederate piece of…"
"Jim, enough! I'll handle this." The dollar bill holographic seemed to get suddenly brighter but the man inside of it had a dead serious look on his face.
"The Confederacy is falling apart, Duke. It's colonies are in open revolt. The Zerg are rampaging unchecked. What would have happened here today if we hadn't shown up?"
"Your point?" Duke said.
"I'm giving you a choice. You can return to the Confederacy and lose, or you can join us and save our entire race from being overrun by the Zerg. I don't think it's a difficult decision."
"Join forces? With you? I'm a general, for God's sake!"
"A general without an army." Mengsk growled. "I'm offering you a position in my cabinet, not just some backwater post. Don't test my patience, Edmund."
"Alright Mengsk. You've got a deal."
"You've made the right choice, General Duke."
I stepped in between them. Looking the illusion square in the eye. "I can't believe you're really going to trust this snake."
Mengsk stared back at me.
"Don't worry, Jim. He's our snake now."
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This is really good. Please keep it up
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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/DzzBSXL.jpg)
The Trump Card
After Duke, everything changed. Word spread like fire in the brush. The Bulldog of Tyrador had joined the rebellion. Recruitment tripled and it wasn't long before we had Confederate defectors coming out of the woodwork. Although the Norad II was a complete loss, the general was still in command of certain assets that had been left in high orbit which we were then able to recover. This included a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility. They had parked the factory smack dab in the middle of our base, on the basketball court that me and the boys liked to play pickup games during the few hours that we weren't on a mission, preparing for a mission or just getting back from a mission. The latter of which was were I was now.
“Captain Raynor,” a voice said loudly. I rolled over in my sleeping bag, swatting for my phone. My hand passed through the ethereal image that was projecting about an inch above the screen.
“Our position has been discovered,” the adjuvant warned. “As of two hours ago, a large Confederate strike force arrived on Antiga Prime and established a base camp within our defensive perimeter. Arcturus Mengsk is calling a meeting.”
“Great,” I said, silencing my phone. I was exhausted. We’d been running nonstop the past few weeks. To the point where all the coffee in the world couldn’t keep me awake for another one. But still, old habits die hard, and so I soon found myself in the mess hall reaching for one more cup of joe before I headed over to Mengsk’s office. I wasn't at his beckon call. No matter who was at our door.
“Greetings,” Mengsk said, eyeing the steaming hot beverage in my hands with obvious disdain. He was sitting behind his executive desk, letter opener balanced precariously between his fingertips. Arcturus’s gaze was shifting from me to the rest of the group. As usual Kerrigan and Horner were here as well as that scientist that we had rescued earlier.
“I know you’re all concerned about the Confederate strike force,” Mengsk began, “but first we have grave matters to discuss. It seems that the laboratory we raided didn't hold weapons designs after all. Dr. Stetman will explain."
The scientist walked to the front of the rooms and as he did the hologram switched to a schematic. I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Stetmay was clicking a ballpoint nervously in his hand.
"You all know that the Confederates run a program for psychically gifted humans," he explained, being careful not to glance at Kerrigan, "...training them to be Ghosts. Those running the program found that the Zerg are attuned to the psychic emanations of Ghosts.”
“So the Zerg are here for you darling?" I twisted around in my seat to get a better look at Kerrigan. "This just keeps getting better and better."
"Shut up."
Dr. Stetmann coughed. Awkwardly. Then continued on as if nothing had happened. "There’s been a lot of secret Confederate research surrounding Ghosts and the Zerg. My research was a small but critical piece of the puzzle: designs for a Transplanar Psionic Waveform Emitter." Stetmann poked at the schematics with his pen, zooming in. "The emitters broadcast the neural imprint of a Ghost but at a much greater magnitude. These things have a broadcast reach of over three lightyears..."
Mengsk raised a finger, cutting him off. When he spoke it was slow and measured but also simmering with anger. I had the fleeting impression that Mengsk might actually care about something other than himself. That he wasn't just pure politician.
“The Confederacy used these Psi Emitters to lure the Zerg into isolated containment areas. You colony, Mar Sara, Magistrate, was one such location."
Horner raised an eyebrow. "What are you saying?"
"I’m saying the Zerg are a secret weapon developed by the Confederacy." Mengsk tone rose a decibel. "I’m sayin you were all subjects of a Confederate weapons test. Just as they destroyed Korhal with nuclear weapons to establish dominance a generation ago, they would use the Zerg to put an end to their other rivals." He sunk the letter opener into the desk. "Only this time there’d be no outrage; who could suspect the aliens were their creation? No, they’d be lauded as heroes coming in and destroying the Zerg. It’s time the Confederacy paid for its crimes." He rose, then turned to the monitors behind his desk. One of them was now showing grainy footage of a military site. "And I know just the way. Lieutenant Kerrigan is going to plant an emitter at the Confederate base camp." He turned to me. "Captain, you will provide her with an escort. When the Zerg arrive, they’ll break the blockade for us and we’ll make our escape. Now get moving."
The others left, but I stayed in my seat. Sipping my coffee and watching the hologram. Contemplating what all of this meant. We were going to lure the Zerg here? That didn't sit right with me but good luck trying to convince Mengsk of anything he didn't think of himself. Perhaps I could break through to Kerrigan. Together, we might be able to make him see reason. I finished my coffee, then walked across the base to the new factory building so that I could check out this psi-emitter for myself. Rory Swann, that mechanic who had been yelling at Blaze, was waiting for me inside. I asked to see this deus ex machina.
The machine shop was filled with row after row of 3-D fabricators. These ramshackle devices were capable of manufacturing any components that a fledgling colony might need. As I watched an extruder rocked back and forth over the table, doling out molten alloy in microscopic amounts. There was a ding and Rory reached into the fabricator, pulling out the product. He carried this across the room, then attached this to the machine in the center of the room. The machine he was working on looked like the lovechild of a run-of-the-mill washing machine and a run down windmill. I could see duct tape.
“Behold,” Rory said, putting the final touches on his creation, “A Transplanar Psionic Waveform Emitter. Reverse engineered from what that egghead could remember plus a little elbow grease on my part. The doctor couldn’t remember everything so we had to make some, lets just call them ‘educated guesses’. But it should do its job."
"You're not sure it works?"
"Well, she needs a field test," he slammed the metal sidings with his wrench. I half-imagined hearing a lug nut come loose.
"And word is that that field test is today."
“How’s it work?” I asked, circling the device.
Rory explained. Something about alpha wave signatures and Lorentz transformation. There was this interferometer at the top that interacted with the ‘pupil beam combiner’. I didn’t really understand half the words he was saying but it sounded pretty fancy. So there was that.
“Rory, just tell me, what do I need to do?”
Swann waddled to the back of the shop. Towards a large pile of what looked like space parts. He grabbed hold of a blue tarp thrown over this, yanking it off to reveal a space construction vehicle. An SCV. Basically, an astromech designed for deep space mining and repair. It had a pneumatic rock crusher, and a tricone drill-hammer. Smack-dab in the middle, nestled between some yellow roll over bars, was a bucket-seat with barely enough room for one.
“You're gonna have to use this.” He pointed at the SCV. “To pick up that.” He pointed to the emitter. “And bring it to the enemy.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, this day was getting worse by the minute. “Will do," I said.
At 0500 local time Mengsk staged a preemptively assault on the Confederate forces. Kerrigan and I were part of the rearguard, which was not a position I was accustomed to but you couldn't exactly charge into battle in a service vehicle now could you? The SCV was about as quick as your inbred cousin after that mule kick to the head. And about as pretty too. It was bumble bee yellow which is exactly the camouflage you wanted when transporting apocalyptic super-weapons. I drove the clunker up the freeway at full throttle. It topped out at just over 40 mph. The rest of the caravan, slowed so that I could keep up. We were creeping ever so slightly toward Andasar City where the bulk of the Confederate fleet had just made landfall. Sarah followed behind me on a Nuura Shadowblade. It was a model I'd never seen before 'cept in advertisements. Crazy expensive. The gravity fins only must have cost a grand, uber sleek with high-frequency data links and a hypergolic injector, like the kind they put on starships.
"Your bike," I asked over the radio, "what is it? 348?"
"Huh?"
"The bike. How did you get it?"
"It was a gift."
"From who?
"Lieutenant Nadaner."
"Oh," I said, then changed the subject. "So listen once we set this thing off it's going to call the Zerg here, right? A whole heaping swarm of them."
"That's the idea."
“That sit entirely right with you, darling? I mean there are civilians here, not just military. Eight million in fact. Now that's even more than Mar Sara and Chau Sara combined. You really prepared to condemn all dem people to die?”
"We all have personal feelings about this," her voice wavered, "but we can't let our past cloud our judgement."
"Why does that sound like something Mengsk would say?"
"Because he did."
"So you raised these concerns with him? Before we left?"
She didn't answer.
I leaned back. Maybe I'd been mistaken about the girl. Had pegged her for a cold blooded killer but if she had really confronted Mengsk about
this...maybe she had a conscience after all.
The cabin jittered like a paint mixer in an earthquake. I tried to shift into a lower gear but this only made the shaking worse. The seat which I was sitting in was missing most of it's styrofoam. I distracted myself by focusing on our payload. The psi-emitter. It was sandwiched delicately between the fingers of my vehicle's utility clamp. It seemed so tiny, too fragile for a world ending machine.
There was something else. I squinted, looking closer. Further up the road, about a mile or so, there was a bridge. And on the other side of this was what looked like a landslide. A massive pile of rocks lay across the highway, blocking off our path. We came to a halt on the bridge. On either side of us was a hundred foot drop into the Andasar river. The water looked fast, deep and brackish. No way a marine in combat armor was gonna make it through that, they'd sink like a stone. Which meant if we were going to get anywhere we needed to clear these rocks.
"I'll handle this," I said over the comms, noting that the squawk box somehow made my voice sound even more redneck than it normally did.
I cleared off cigarette butts and old girlie magazines from the dashboard, searching for the controls that worked the drill-hammer. I tried one of these at random, please to hear the cutter blade rev awake. I smiled to myself, maybe I was beginning to get the hang of this. But before I could start even clearing the rocks I heard a noise. A whizzing. Then an explosion which rocked the entire bridge. At the same moment the radio sprang to life.
"We’re under attack!"
I quickly checked in the rearview mirror. One of the armored trucks in the back of the convoy had just been destroyed, all that remained was melting neosteel and mylar. At the same time the Sons were pouring out from the remaining vehicles, sprinting towards the right side of the bridge. There they huddled down behind the concrete balustrades, returning fire.
"C'mon," Kerrigan said, pulling up beside me. "We have to get you out of here."
"No," I said, "we have to clear this rubble. Otherwise, the whole caravan is going to be sitting ducks."
"This is bigger than that Jim, that psi-emitter is the key to everything. If we don't complete our mission this revolution is over. These men are ready to die for that cause."
“And how exactly are we going to do that?" I waved my drill towards the rocks.
"You're in an SCV. The extraterrestrial thrusters should be able to get over these…"
Just then there was another explosion, this one louder and much, much closer than the last. The bridge buckled, then began to lean to the right. All around me I could hear tensile cables snapping. Men and vehicles were beginning to tumble from the bridge, like plastic toys that were quickly lost in the churn below.
“We don’t really have time to debate this,” Kerrigan exclaimed. She had already dismounted from her hoverbike and begun climbing up the slope. I pressed the large, red button on my joystick and this mining rig rocketed up into the air. An indicator on the windshield counted down the number of seconds that I had remaining until the thrusters overheated. The vehicle made it twenty feet, vertically, before these gave out. I landed halfway up the avalanche.
"Cooling protocol initiated," a prerecorded voice announced.
Just then the rest of the bridge collapsed. A few of our comrades had been rushing over to join us on the rocks when the structure disappeared beneath their feet. I reached out a robotic claw as if to catch them, almost dropping the psi-emitter in the process. But I was a hundred yards away. The bridge, and our men, disappeared into the river. Kerrigan had already vanished over the other side of the ridge. I stared at the angry rapids for a long minute, then followed after her.
Ahead of us was a vast and treacherous terrain. Mountains, valleys and every variant in between. A seemingly impenetrable maze of granite and quartz. We picked our way through these crags, me swingin the hammer at any minerals which blocked our path, Kerrigan sticking to the higher ground where she could better see if we were being pursued. After the bridge gave out we hadn’t heard any more rocket fire. We presumed this meant we were in the clear.
"We should have stayed," I said as we hiked up another incline. "There might have been survivors."
Kerrigan, who was already prancing around up at the top like damn billy goat, merely grunted. She was gazing at something in the distance. Had on these telescopic goggles that made her look like a cross between an owl and the phantom of the opera. She flipped the goggles up and looked down at me.
"What is it?" I asked.
"We're not far. And no we couldn't have saved them. You know that don't you? You can't save everyone. But you can save many, if we complete the mission."
"The mission," I said, frowning. "Yeah, about that. I'm not sure I shouldn't just crush this thing right now." I gripped the controls, and the mechanical vice closed on Mengsk's device. A flash of worry played across Kerrigan's face. As if she were debating whether or not she could kill me before I destroyed the psi-emitter. I wasn't sure. Then, a moment later, the look was gone.
"Don't do anything harsh," she said, calm and cold as a comet.
"Harsh?" I repeated. "Tell me, what could be harsher than luring every a million buggers to this world? That's not harsh? Just so Mengsk can win a war?" I squeezed the trigger a bit more and the metal groaned.
"So we can win a war." She placed the emphasis on 'we'. "All of us. Not just Mengsk. This isn't about Mengsk. Nor you, Jim. This is about freedom. The greater good."
"Then why does this greater good seem like the exact thing we're supposed to be fighting against?" But I let go of the controls. She was right. We needed to win or everyone in the secorr might die.
We had crested another hill only to find ourselves standing at the edge of some cliffs. It was nightfall. In the distance we could see the dark silhouette of tall buildings. That would be Andasar City, where we were heading.
"Is this close enough?"
Kerrigan shook her head. "No Mengsk said we should leave it at the starport." She pointed to a complex near the city limits.
"Why?"
"He doesn't want to leave anything to chance. If the Zerg attack that first then the Confederates won't get a chance to escape."
I stared at the city. The whole metropolis looked pretty worse for wear. There were no lights and greyish smoke rose from numerous locations. But I had to wonder just how many people were still alive, hiding in there, hoping to tough out the worst of the fighting and emerge from the rubble to rebuild their lives. 'Too many' was my guess.
"Let's get this over with." I grumbled, and kicked my SCV back into gear.
We were able to use the thrusters to get safely down the cliffside. To do this, Kerrigan had to climb inside the cabin, buddy buddy with me. Not going to lie, she smelled like lavender and lemon. Don't ask me how, with all the time she spent out in the field, murdering people, she managed to bathe but she did. I can only imagine what I smelled like to her. Probably BO and engine grease.
Once down in the foothills it took us another three hours to wind our way up the back roads until we got near Andasar Starport. It was well past midnight. There was a fence around the perimeter but this was trivial given that my mech had spent most of the day smashing through granite rock. The guards were a bit more challenging. An orange searchlight was playing across the courtyard, panning out to the runways then back again towards us. Kerrigan crept through the knee-high grass. Waited for the beam to pass over. When it had she unslung her sniper rifle and carefully aimed down the sights. I couldn't even hear it go off. Just one moment there was a guard patrolling on a walkway. Then the next moment there wasn't. Kerrigan readjusted her targeting laser. Another guard dropped. And so forth.
We reached the starport. It reminded me of something out of Norse mythology, a blacksmith's anvil worthy of Thor's hammer. We huddled behind a maintenance shack. Kerrigan set about assembling the emitter. It took about five minutes. I could hear starfighters landing on the airstrips behind us but we were sufficiently hidden in the shadow of the building that we wouldn't be seen from that far away. However, I could hear mechanical sounds somewhere nearby.
"Hurry up," I whispered.
"Almost done." Kerrigan took out a helmet that was fashioned with all sorts of electrodes and a rainbow of wires. She sat down, crossing her legs in a lotus. Then put the helmet on.
"What's that?" I asked but Kerrigan didn't seem to hear me. Her eyes fluttered up as if she were in a deep sleep. I could hear the trash compactor sounds of a mech getting closer. It sounded just around the corner.
"Kerrigan," I whispered into the radio. Louder this time. "I think we've got trouble…"
Kerrigan was silent, lost inside her trance.
"Halt," an authoritative voice said behind me. I bit my teeth. Then turned my walker around.
Standing in front of me was a mechanized assault strider. Goliath-class. Twelve feet tall with twin 30mm autocannons and shoulder-mounted Hellfire missiles. If memory served me correctly these warmachines clocked out at over 100 miles per hour. The Goliath had its belly cannon zeroed on me.
"Identify yourself, civilian," the loudspeaker declared.
"Jim," I said, trying to think.
"What is your identification number, Jim?"
I glanced behind me. Sarah was still doing...whatever it was she was doing. She needed more time. I needed to stall.
"Identification...man, I'm just a contractor. We're out here trying to fix your...flux capacitors..."
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. I doubled down.
"And, frankly, I don't appreciate being called out of bed like this. In the freaking middle of the night. Acting like it's a big emergency that your commander can't relay the fleet. Ship's are up there somewhere," I waved my drill to the sky, "and they'll be there in the morning when I usually get up."
The cannon began spinning and I knew that my bluff had been called. Reflexively, I hit the thrusters, juking to the side just as the Goliath fired. I could see beams of light coming from the wall behind me, where the bullets had chewed through like swiss cheese. Reflexively, I swiveled the thrusters, redirecting my momentum back towards the walker. I slammed into the Goliath. My hammer came down on one of the autocannons, its teeth digging into the neosteel. In response the Goliath attempted to backpedal, it's reverse-jointed legs squealing something awful, like stuck pigs or a garbage disposal, but try as he might the Goliath couldn't get free. The drill had become embedded in it's chassis. Unable to do anything else, the mech turned its cannon on me. Fired, point blank. On my HUD I could see multiple systems registering as critical. I swung the clamp, smashing through the acrylic glass and ripping the pilot straight out from his restraints. Then crushed him like a peach. A second later the power died. I tried turning the cold fusion over but it was no use. This rig was totaled. It was only then that I became aware that an alarm klaxon had been blaring across the complex.
"What in the hell?" Kerrigan said finally coming to. She had taken off the helmet and was retrieving her gear.
I transferred over to the Goliath. There was glass and coagulated blood everywhere. Ignoring this I lowered the warmachine enough so that Kerrigan could get in.
"We gotta go," I said. "Now."
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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/mVNS6e6.jpg)
The Big Push
The Zerg, lured by the psi emitter's signal, descended upon the unsuspecting Confederate forces and annihilated them. Once again the Protoss fleet arrived and incinerated the planet. Kerrigan and I had escaped in that Goliath, it's suspension joints and topographics easily navigating the more rocky terrain. We reached the rendezvous point just as the first Zerg pods fell from the sky.
"We're going to have to live with this," I said, gazing from the window, "for as long as we're alive."
Across the seat from me, Kerrigan was curled up in a fetal position. She was clutching her skull like an egg that was about to crack. Her perfectly drawn mascara, now dripping down her cheeks. She'd been crying.
"What is it?"
"I can hear them."
I looked out the window again. There were thousands of the pods. Like jellyfish from hell. Of course, she could hear them. She was a psychic, right? She'd just called them all here.
"Them?"
"Yes."
"What are they saying?"
"It's not pretty."
"Don't care."
"It's not so much words as emotions. Pain, fury, hunger...they live in constant hunger and the only thing that can satiate this," she lifted her head, the tears were gone "...is consuming us."
I sighed. "Once we beat the Confederates we will find a way to beat the Zerg."
She shook her head, the voodoo beads in her hair jangling as she did. "There isn't time. They are multiplying fast. Much faster than we originally anticipated." She looked at me. "We have to end this war. Now. Unite all of humanity. And pay these bug-eyed monsters back for every inch of dirt they stole from us."
I nodded. “That’s the plan darling.”
We escaped aboard the Hyperion. It was an antique, Behemoth-class capital ship. Four hundred and seventy three meters prow to stern, with enough cargo space and life support to house three battalions on year-long tours of duty. During the Guild Wars she had fought in the Battle of Paladino where the mid-deck had taken friendly fire from the Herakles due to enemy jamming. Later she had provided medical and logistic relief to civilians throughout the tectonic collapse of Redstone III as well as counter-piracy efforts out in the Alterian Rift. Her superstructure was armed with one hundred and twelve point defence cannons, eighteen Javelin missile batteries and eight crew-serviced laser turrets. She was not a girl you wanted to mess with. How a ragtag group of rebels had captured her, Mengsk wouldn’t say.
We found Mengsk and Duke on the bridge, surrounded by a handful of technical crew. They were standing over a holographic pedestal with ornate decoration and the platinum sigil of the Old Families, an eagle in flight. They were preparing the Hyperion for her maiden voyage as part of the resistance. That adjuvant Mengsk had in his office was being installed in the back corner and Horner stood near the front, supervising two helmsmen down in the crow's nest. They were pouring over a bank of monitors and tachyon readouts. Matt was barking orders at them as if he were a rear admiral.
"Psi-Emitter in place." Kerrigan reported as soon we walked onto the flight deck. "Just promise me we’ll never do anything like this again."
Mengsk turned around. There was a fire in his eyes. He looked us each up and down before speaking, his voice consummate and stern.
"We will do whatever it takes to save humanity. Our responsibility is too great to do any less."
"Where are we going?" I asked.
Mengsk straightened. "The time of our final strike against the Confederacy is at hand. Before we can strike at Tarsonis itself, however, we must break through the Confederacy's most potent defenses. General Duke?
I've defended Tarsonis in over thirty major engagements, so I know it's defenses in and out. There are three primary orbital platforms that serve as staging areas for the Confederate fleet. If we assault the central platform, we should cause enough of a ruckus to allow a small force to break through the planetary defenses.
"Funny," I crossed my arms. "Never figured you for the frontal assault type..."
Duke didn't catch the slight. "Well, the Confederates have Omega and Delta Squadron troops defending the platform. But there nothing compared to my Alpha Squadron boys."
"Ready on the bridge," Horner yelled. His eyes were locked on his watch, attempting to synchronize the hyperdrive with quantum resonances.
"Three…"
"You might wanna hold on to something," Kerrigan warned. I grabbed a hold of a nearby banister. Duke locked his magnetic boots to the deck whilst Mengsk just widened his stance, as at home now as any vetran sea captain in a stormy wake.
"...two...one…"
We jumped. If you've never made a warp jump it's a nauseating feeling. People ain't supposed to be in two places at the same time. The bridge stretched. I could feel my breathing slow even as my mind seemed to race from one thought to the next. The stars grew longer, like tracer fire until the entire view was blinding white. On the starmap a blue line tip-toed from the Antiga system towards Tarsonis.
Mengsk caught me in the corner of his eye. "Captain Raynor," he said, "we will be emerging from hyperspace soon. I suggest you get down to the hangar bay and prepare your men." He winked.
"For a dogfight?" I sputtered. "I've never flown anything 'cept video games and flight simulators when I was a kid."
"Perfect," Mengsk said calmly, "then you already have more experience than half our crew..."
Behind him, Duke muttered under his breath.
A short time later, I found myself in the aft hangars, staring at the spacecraft I was soon gonna ride into battle. It looked like a metal bat, pitch black and angulated at every turn. Rory was explaining, a sense of pride in his words.
"This here is your Wraith-class starfighter. It's got an aluminum chassis and carbon-fiber exterior. Can do mach 7 in thirteen seconds flat. And it's a good thing they come with an inertial neutralizer, else you'd be a pancake soon as you hit the gas."
He ran his wrench along the landing gear. "Each of these babies has Gemini missiles, so called because they have thrust nozzles on both ends and can change direction on a dime. Target assist via a level III onboard artificial intelligence."
"Can it fly?"
Rory sneered. "Not a chance, cowboy. Needs a monkey for that." He banged on the side and the canopy retracted. “Now get in.”
The bay doors opened and my Wraith shot out the Hyperion like a bullet in the night. Behind me, four identical fighters followed by three more wings. Most of the pilots were Alpha Squadron but some, like me, were picking this up on the fly. Telemetry was showing multiple Confederate bogey and a larger capital ship. I highlighted the capital ship. This was the CMS Antietam. A crucifix of buttressed neosteel and long-distance artillery. We dove towards it.
"Echo, on my six," one of the flight leaders broadcast to the rest. Echo wing broke off from our position. Flanking along the Z axis to where they could better intercept. My wing, Lima Wing had been charged with taking out the Antietam, whilst the more experienced flyboys kept them off our backs. They had joked during the briefing that the Sons and I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. That perhaps a kilometer-long starcruiser was fairer game. One by one the other wings peeled off until it was just my group, Lima Wing, staring down the Confederate armada.
"Lock V-rings and prepare to engage on my mark," I said into my mic. But before I could say anything else the auto-targeter chirped on and fired a missile. This was followed by a salvo from the other ships. A proximity alarm sounded with neon arrows demanding I pitch toward the planet if I didn't want to be space debris in three seconds. I gladly took the advice, the acceleration shoving me backwards even as the inertia neutralizer fought to correct. A projectile tore past my cockpit, the collision mark disappearing just as soon as it was no longer a threat, only to be replaced by another, more imminent one. I barrel rolled towards it.
The space around me was a kaleidoscope, ruby red laser beams criss-crossing PDC spray. Audio cue from my ship turning what would have otherwise been a silent light show into a cacophony of life-threatening alarms. I dodged another rocket, trying to thread my way back towards the Antietam. A wraith exploded to my right, not one of my I hoped but in all this chaos, how was I supposed to tell? A wireframe turned amber then red on my display and I knew that it was.
"Raynor," Horner's voice said on the intercom. "Raynor are you there?"
I flipped a switch. "Reading yeah, what's up?"
"We just picked up a massive energy spoke from the Antietam. General Duke says it's their Yamato Cannon. If he's right we've got about three minutes before they blow the Hyperion to dust."
I swerved, narrowly avoiding a flurry of lasers and almost crashing into what remained from another one of our fighters. I checked the display again. More red wraiths. We were losing.
"We need you to target that Yamato. Now."
"Kinda busy here, Matt." I snapped left, my targeting reticle turned green. It beeped ecstatically as it locked on to the target and tried to fire another missile. But the missile jammed.
Far above me I could see the Antietam, looming like a giant bird of prey. The bow had the distinctive shape of a hammerhead shark with a cyclopean eye. Eldritch lightening was gathering at this eye, contained by solenoid rings that had enough magnetic strength to rip the iron from your blood.
The Yamato cannon. The most formidable weapon in all the Confederate fleet. After the rebellion of Korhal the powers that be had realized the need for something with the destructive capability of a nuke and the precision of a sniper's bullet. The result was the Yamato cannon, a thermonuclear explosion funneled via zeta pinch magnetic fields into a beam of armageddon plasma. One shot would punch a hole through the Hyperion with the heat of a thousand suns. Matt was right. If Antietam fired, this war was over.
"Lima Wing, focus all firepower on that Yamato. We've got minutes to take it down." I said, leveling out. I strafed the cannon from below, each of my missiles intercepted by the point defense systems. Banked right. Preparing for another run. Only to discover, when I checked my ordinance indicators, that I was dry. No payload left, except that one missile that had jammed.
"I'm empty," I called, just as enemy fire raked the space where I had been seconds before. I rolled left, my throttle fighting me at every high-G turn.
"Cover me, Jim," It was Blaze. One look at my HUD told me he was all that was left of my squad. I yawed, taking up a position behind him and scanning the battlefield for anyone in his path. We executed another flip off the starboard bow, twisting under laser flak as Blaze released his ordinance. Each of these missiles blossomed in a compact ball of fire just before they could hit the ship.
"Blaze, pull up. There's a defensive matrix. We have to break off. Come in at a slower angle."
"No," he said zealously. "I'm going in. We don't have time." The titanium vertebrae on the sides of the warship's were retracting now, bellowing out molten plasma into the vacuum of space. I gulped, we did not have much time.
"We need to decelerate," I yelled. "You'll never make it through the matrix going that fast." I slammed on the brakes, my thrusters squealing. I yoked. Then swung my fighter back like a lasso around the Antietam, trying to get under the defenses.
The kid ignored me. His wraith shooting head on towards the Yamato.
"For Kor…" Blaze yelled.
Then he was gone. His starfighter imploding as soon as it entered the matrix. Crumpling like beer can at the bottom of the sea. I braced myself as my own ship slipped into the zone. Hoping that my inertia had slowed below the activation threshold of the Antietam's defenses.
I had.
Opening my eyes I was surprised to find myself still alive. My wraith was drifting to a stop. Directly in front of the Antietam. Everything was white, drowned out by the Yamato which was about to fire. Without thinking I secured my helmet and popped the release on my cockpit. My thumb hovered over the ejection button. It was a stupid plan but what else was I to do. Within seconds I would be subatomic particles. Then an even crazier idea occurred to me. If I was to go out in a blaze of glory what better way then…
I unbuckled from my seat, grabbing a handhold and using it to swing out from the cockpit. There was no down, but I pointed my feet towards the jammed missile. Using one hand, I held onto the ship, trying to steady myself in the microgravity. With the other, I raised my gun. Closed one eye. Then aimed for the locking mechanism just above the rocket itself. I fired.
The lock broke apart. The missile dropped free and ignited almost instantaneously before zooming forth. There is no noise in space. You can't hear a thing. But I could imagine a deafening whoosh as the missile disappeared into the solenoids and detonated. The explosion was silent. But spectacular. In all my years I never seen anything like it. And if I had gone blind from it, I don't think that I would have minded much.
I was climbing back into my wraith when the radio came on.
“This is Duke. The emitters are secured and online.”
Kerrigan spoke up. “Who authorized the use of psi-emitters?”
“I did, lieutenant.” Mengsk said, his usual southern drawl now spiked with venom.
“What? The Confederates on Antiga were bad enough, but now you're going to use the Zerg against a civilian planet? This is insane.”
“She's right man." I pleaded, still only half inside my ship. "Think this through.”
“I have thought it through. Believe me. You all have your orders. Carry them out.”
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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/9XYvdQH.jpg)
New Gettysburg
Like a beacon, the combined power of the Psi emitters reached out to the far corners of the Terran sector, luring billions of Zerg to the capital world of Tarsonis. The Zerg, overrunning the Confederacy’s best defences, proceeded to lay waste to Tarsonis’ major cities and industrial centers. Tarsonis, refuge of the Nagglfar, and seed of a new humanity was living on borrowed time.
By the time I flew back to the Hyperion, everyone and their mother had heard about how Captain Raynor had single handedly destroyed the battlecruiser. Hangar Bay 12 was the size of a D-ball stadium but I still had to wait ten minutes for Rory to clear people away from the landing zone before touching down. Hillbillies from Mar Sara who had been turned into foot soldiers by the gears of Mengsk's rebellion. Alpha Squadron pilots who had renounced their allegiances to join our cause. They were all chanting my name, the sound getting louder and louder with each incantation. I climbed down the service ladder, disembodied hands reaching out to touch the hero of the day. I pushed my way through the crowd, weaving in between ammo crates and forklifts until finally, I reached the exit. Luckily, the officer's deck had more restricted access. So that was where I went first. Kerrigan found me at the cantina.
"Hey," she said, taking the seat next to me. "What are they serving?"
I looked up. There was no one else here. Just empty tables where there should have been rebel officers celebrating the Confederacy’s demise. Victory was at hand and all that remained for us to do was turn tail and flee before the Zerg got here. Leave Tarsonis to its fate. I slid the bottle towards the assassin. She caught it.
"Scotch, apparently, it's the only thing these commissioned types drink." I downed my glass then looked at it. "I guess they are too good for whiskey."
"Long as it gets the job done."
I glanced down at the counter. It was a fancy looking bar, had the Confederate eagles carved right into the wood. I brushed my fingers over the symbol. It was polished smooth and good quality. Reminded me of Horner. I thought back to when I met the man. It was what, two...three months ago? There was an uncomfortable silence, broken only by the sounds of Kerrigan pouring a shot for herself, gulping this down, then pouring another. I raised an eyebrow as she slammed this second one back like it was nothing.
"Back on Mar Sara," I grabbed the bottle from her, " we had this bartender...Joey Ray. Man would consider it a personal failure if you could see the bottom of your glasses. He never did my liver any favors."
She took the bottle back. "That so..." she was wiping her cherry red lips. She had beautiful lips and that wasn't just the booze talking.
"Yeah," I blinked. Remembering. "It's funny...I don't know if he made it out. There are so many people...acquaintances, colleagues. I don't know if they are alive or dead."
"Everyone's got a time, Jim."
I covered my eyes as the image came back. Blaze rushing toward the battlecruiser. Ready to give it all. To be a hero.
"The kid…" I said at last. "He was so young. So damn young…" I took a swig straight from the bottle. Kerrigan did the same.
"Who?"
"One of the pilots. His name was...Christ I can't even remember the boy's name. We all just called him Blaze. He was only sixteen. When I was his age, I was chasing girls and getting drunk." I held up the bottle. It was almost empty. "I guess not much has changed.”
“I know how you feel.” There was an ever so slight slur in her words.
“Of course you do. You’re a telepath.”
“No, I mean…” she bit her lip, looking past me, towards a coin-slot arcade machine and a propaganda poster which one of our men had taken the liberty of relieving themselves on. I waited. She was about to tell me something.
"When I was his age I'd already made my first kill…”
“What do you mean?”
“They take you when you're young. The psionic inhibitors, they can only integrate with your nervous system if you're very young. I was eight.” She touched the back of her neck, then recoiled. “They strap you down and do things. Horrible things...experiments...testing...then surgical augmentation.” She leaned in towards me, as if for a kiss. I leaned away but she just pulled down an eyelid.
“You see this eye?” she asked. This close, her breath smelled like scotch and freshly squeezed lemonade.
“Yeah?”
“See how it's a slightly different shade?”
I compared. The green was ever so slightly brighter in her right eye. Like jade. I nodded seeing what she meant.
“Ocular implant. Wide-band frequency.The entire spectrum. Like being blind and seeing everything for the first time. I was ten when they did that to me.” She fell quieter. “After that it was the torture...they call it training but its really torture. Meant to break us. Push the limits of what each of us could do. Most children don’t survive. The ones that do…”
She looked at me. There weren’t tears in her eyes, but there was sadness. Buried deep under an ocean of regret.
“The last test, “ she hesitated. “They put you in a room with a guard. He has a knife. You’re tied to a chair. And only one of you can leave.” She sniffed, then looked away. “You know what a person thinks, just before they die? Absolutely nothing.”
Just then my phone rang.
“Raynor!” It was Horner. “Is Kerrigan with you?”
I glanced over. She was shaking. I reached out a hand to comfort her, then stopped, thinking better.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Well get to the bridge ASAP. Both of you. There’s been a new development.”
It was all hands on deck. XOs and navigation experts hurried from one station to the next, trying to get a read on the situation. On the central monitors, a convocation of green circles had just appeared on the display, making a beeline for the planet. Amid all this chaos we found Mengks, huddled with Horner and Duke next to the newly-installed adjuvant. The android woke up as we approached, the optic fibers dreadlocks on its scalp flickering as new data came in.
“I’ve picked up several dozen Protoss warships descending upon Tarsonis.” It said as nonchalantly as if you were describing the weather. “They seem to be heading on a direct course to the maturing Zerg cluster.”
Mengsk took a step back, stroking his beard. I could feel the gears turning inside, just as cold and calculating as those in the adjuvant.
“If they engage the Zerg, the Confederates may escape.” Mengks proclaimed. He was addressing Horner. “Commander, send Lieutenant Kerrigan with a strike force to engage the Protoss. General Duke, your platoon will stay behind with the command ship. We need to be prepared if they engage us.”
Duke acknowledged and went to gather his men. I, however, had had enough of this bull. I stepped forward, towards Mengsk.
“First you sell out every person on this world,” I said furious, “then you ask us to go up against the Protoss? And you’re goin’ to send Kerrigan down there with no backup?" I pointed to the monitors where you could still see the derelict skeleton of the Antietam. "Do I need to remind you who just pulled your asses out of the fire?"
Mengsk smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I have absolute confidence in Kerrigan’s ability to hold off the Protoss.”
“This is bs. Kerrigan, are you not reading this?”
Kerrigan had a look on her face. Determination. Debt. I couldn’t tell. But she was staring at Mengsk with such intensity that I was sure she was probing his mind. Boring inside that weasel nest for some kernel of truth. Then she nodded.
“I’m going down there. Arcturus knows what he’s doing.” She glanced at me and then back at Arcturus. “...I can’t back out on him now.”
“Funny. I never thought of you as anyone’s martyr. I’m going with you.”
“Negative,” Mengsk said. “I have a separate mission for your squad, captain. “ An old friend of mine, Michael Liberty, now works for UNN. He has information that is vital to our cause. If we are to understand the depth of corruption, all the maleficent tendrils the Old Families have planted, then we need his help. Only then can we rid this sector of their tainted legacy. You know I’m right.”
Like hell he was. You see. Mengsk has a way of making you feel important, like you matter if by no other measure then your proximity to him. And this illusion lasts right up till the point when he cuts you loose. Because we were all of us pawns. Expendable. I could see that now. Blaze’s death had lifted the fog from my eyes to that. And I would be damned before I lost another friend that day.
I made my way down the main corridor, past the Colossus reactor, a giant polyhedron made of pure vanadium. I caught the tram just as it was departing. Watched out the ventral windows as it ferried me towards the bow. I could see Tarsonis below. It was like the reactor, a vessel for power and barely contained destruction ready to explode. I reached hangar bay 12 just as Kerrigan was suiting up for her mission. She sat on a cargo box, her rifle balanced perfectly on her knees. She was making last minute adjustments to the laser sights. I sat down beside her and waited for a gap in the roar of starships taking off in order to speak.
“Why are you doing this, Kerrigan? Look. I know your past. I mean, I’ve heard the rumors. I know you were a part of those experiments with the Zerg. That Mengsk came and saved you. But you don’t owe him this! Hell, I’ve saved your butt plenty of times.
“Jimmy, drop the knight-in-shining-armor routine. It suits you sometimes. Just not...not now. I don't need to be rescued. I know what I’m doing. The Protoss are coming to destroy the entire planet, not just the Zerg. I know this because...well I just know it. I am a Ghost, remember? Once we’ve dealt with the Protoss, we can do something about the Zerg. Arcturus will come around. I know he will.”
She looked at me and whatever had happened before in the catina, whoever that had been, was gone now. Replaced by vendetta. And no force in heaven or hell was going to stop this phantom until she saw, whatever it was, through to the end.
“I hope you're right, darlin’. Good huntin’!”
Which was how I found myself, once again, down in the scorched ruins of a dying city. Hunkered behind the bullet-riddled statue of some vaulted Confederate war hero as enemy artillery rained down over our heads. The pavilion we were hiding in had once been beautiful. I suppose. Ivy league brickwork, broad oak trees that were spaced at carefully measured three meter intervals, a marble fountain that, in the not so distant past, had sung with icy springwater. Now, however, it was all just rubble, burning timber and mud, fuel for the engine of war. Because I had stopped seeing all of this as collateral damage. It was clear to me this was the point.
I peaked over the rubble. I could see the Arclite tank. Most of the vehicle was obscured by the collapsed remains of an apartment building but I could still make out one of its caterpillar treads and a hydraulic pontoon splayed out in siege formation. There was a loud braam as the Mjolnir cannon fired again, a 120mm sailing through the broken skyline and cratering not far from our location. A shower of dust and gravel fell over me and my men.
"What's the situation , captain." A marine asked. I didn't know his name. Just another faceless soul, hidden behind a gold-plated visor. Did he have a family? Did it even matter?
There was a rattling as the squad of marines in the office building above us opened fire. Most of the shots were blocked by the statue, a large bronze eagle about to take flight. Some of the bullets made it past though, kicking up bits of concrete at our feet. We were pinned down. The marine popped up, returning fire, then ducked again as the Confederates answered.
"We've got an Arclite maybe six hundred yards down the way." I waved my hand in the general direction. "What do we have as far as answers to that?"
He looked at me. It was a rhetorical question, I already knew the answer. We were out of frag grenades, had used the last of them clearing entrenched marines in the courtyard that led here. Our heavy weapons specialist, christ I didn't know his name either, had stumbled over an IED almost as soon as we'd made planetfall. The rocket launcher which he'd been carrying was nothing but scrap metal by the time it landed. We had breaching charges but with no way to get to the tank those were just about useless.
There was a gap in shooting. The marine and I firing back, simultaneously as if we too had a psychic bond. It's what happens when you fight with someone, they become a brother, whether you like it or not. After all, aren't all brotherhoods based on being in the right place and right time?
There was a flash of muzzle fire coming from the northeast side. I glasses over the area, searching for another telltale sign. There! A glint of metal in one of the windows. I pumped a round of depleted uranium into the glass and the reflection stopped. No way of knowing if I'd hit them. No way of knowing who I might have just killed. Just another faceless marine. Wrong place. Wrong time.
Suddenly, the air was whistling again and we had to duck. A second later and the earth shook, the Arclite tank blasting a twenty foot wide crater on the other side of the street. We had to get out of here. If we stayed, me and my squad were roadkill. But the mission. I could see the UNN building, the only thing in our way was the tank. If it weren't for that artillery than we'd have a straight shot at our objective.
"Give me the charges," I yelled over the gunfire.
"What?'"
"The breaching charges...give them to me."
He did.
"Listen, I want you to take the squad and pull them back the way we came. Back towards the business district." I pointed.
He nodded.
I grabbed his armor. "Wait, what's your name, marine?"
"Koiter, sir. Michel Koiter."
"Godspeed Koiter."
My men disengaged, retreating back up the road from the way we had come an hour before. Stray gauss fire dogging them as they withdrrew.
"Koiter," I said to myself as another Moljnir shell exploded, toppling a boutique store to my right. I was lucky. When the eagle had collapsed it's wingspan covered the entire street. There would be no way for the Confederates forces to chase my squad without hiking over it. I crawled under the statue. And waited. It wasn't long before I heard boots and the whine of heavy-lifting servos. A squad of marines dropping down from the statue to advance cautiously up the street. But none of them thought to look behind them. If they had they would have seen me, tucked into an alcove between a patina-coated breastbone and one outstretched bronze wing. I didn't make a sound. Didn't move. Just waited patiently.
Eventually the earth began to shake again. My teeth were chattering and the gravel around me vibrated like jumping beans. The tank was advancing. That meant my squad had gotten out of its range. There was a moan as the vehicle mounted and then rolled over the eagle. The statue's wing buckled and for a moment I was sure that I would be crushed under the megaton treads. But it didn't. Then, I could see the tank, or rather it's undercarriage as it crashed back down onto the pavement. I only had seconds so I pushed myself up, planting the breaching charge on the drive shaft then retreating back under the eagle before I could be seen. The tank drove back onto the street and made it another twelve feet before beginning to spark. Orange flames erupted from inside and a second later it came to a halt, reduced to nothing more than a pyrotechnic oven. I could smell burning flesh, just like when our dropship had crashed on Antiga. Just another aspect of our shared humanity, we all burned the same.
With the siege tank neutralized the path to UNN was laid bare. Only thing that was left to do was take a nice, easy stroll down Calabas Lane. Calabas was one of the Old Families, this close to the downtown everything had their names. I came to a garden plaza that had been relatively spared from the worst of the fighting. There were several capsule hotels, park space and little cafes. In the center of this plaza was a huge skyscraper, like an art deco pen quill sticking up from the ground. Something, perhaps an Arclite tank, had taken a huge bite out of the foundation. The tower looked like it could collapse at any moment but hadn't yet. So I went in. Michael Liberty, if Mengsk's information was correct, would be holed up in his office on the 32nd floor. He had refused evacuation, choosing to 'stay being and document the war crimes' instead. That at least I could respect. If it was true. I didn't know this man from a bar of soap. And I'd have been hella surprised if I found an honest man in this place.
For those who don't know, the UNN has been synonymous with Confederate propaganda for as long as there have been words and fools to believe them. The media conglomerate, lead by editor-in-chief Handy Anderson, was the mouthpiece of Tarsonis. Together they owned news sites, broadcast rights and entertainment studies on a hundred worlds. You would have an easier time threading a black hole then getting something critical of the Old Families past their censors.
You see media types long ago figured out that, in general, people would rather belong then be right. If you fed them a reality, even one that was obviously false, they'd gobble it up so long as everyone else did. I guess that was just another quirk of our species, as much as we prize ourselves as independent thinkers, we are so rarely willing to go against the collective. No surprise really, bad things always happened to those who did.
That was the source of Mengsk's power. His charm. His honeycombed lies. Same as the UNN, with these he could make you believe that water wasn't wet. Made you want to believe. Because it was easy. Because it made you one of them. Because if you didn't, you were all alone.
The elevator in the tower lobby had been broken so I was now marching up the stairwell. It wasn't made for armored troops so the going was slow. I had just reached the 27th floor when I heard it. A hissing, like a snake in the grass would make. Years of bushwhacking had taught me to freeze when I heard that sound and it's a good thing too...if I hadn't I would have been dead.
I paused just as a light dropped from the stairs overhead. A blade swinging right for my neck. I took a step back and it narrowly missed. I tripped, falling back down the stairwell and tumbling into the fire exit. I had landed in an office suite, a maze of glass partitions and unpowered workstations. I came to my feet just as my attacker entered the room.
The thing standing in front was an alien, of that I was sure. It didn’t look like no Zerg I’d seen before so that left only one possibility. I was standing face to face with one of the Protoss. It was easily nine feet tall, standing on digitigrade legs and covered in reptilian scales. It had no mouth or nose to speak off, but its eyes burned like the stars. It had bracers of crystal and gold.
And I took a step back.
“Whoa, there” I held up a hand, then thinking better raised my gun instead. “We come in peace.”
The alien made a fist and a beam of light shot from each gauntlet. The light twisted into the form of a blade. Drops of incandescent plasma fell from this blade, eating through the corporate grey carpeting. I kept retreating, past cubicles and break rooms, until finally my back was up against the wall. The office windows had been blown out and I could see all of Tarsonis sprawled out behind me.The wind howled. But my focus was on the warrior. It stalked closer.
“One more step and I’ll...aw screw it!”
I opened fire, emptying my clip but my bullets only bounced off its metallic armor like confetti. It grabbed my rifle, ripping this away and then lifting my combat suit with one of its taloned hands. It held me, dangling, out of the window. The city streets six hundred feet below. I locked eyes with the alien and understood almost instantly. As clearly as if we had spoken. We were only ants. And our lives didn’t matter. That was when I reached for my other gun. I swung the revolver, bringing this right up to kiss the alien, just underneath the crest where black sinewy cords emerged from the bone. I pulled the trigger and the light went out from its eyes. We fell together but I managed to grab hold of the ledge. My buddy fell towards the plaza but then disappeared in a flash seconds before he would have hit the ground.
I found the reporter in his office. He was watching the Zerg invasion. The spores fell heavy now, like marine snow. Millions of organisms designed to assimilate every life inside of itself.
Michael Liberty looked like something plucked out from a film noir. He had a dusty overcoat with tattered edges, the look of a man that had trapsed from one end of the sector to the other. He had wireframe spectacles which hid a piercing gaze. He took a long drag from his coffin nail. Then exhaled.
"You're late."
"Do you have the data?" I asked.
He patted his coat pocket. "Encrypted and secure. I hand it over when I see Mengsk."
"Works for me. C'mon let's get out of…"
Just then my radio awoke.
"This is Kerrigan. We’ve neutralized the Protoss, but there’s a wave of Zerg advancing on this position. We need immediate evac."
"Belay that order," Mengsk said. "We’re moving out.
I toggled my mic, in complete disbelief and at the same time unsurprised. "What? You’re not just gonna leave them?"
"All ships prepare to move away from Tarsonis on my mark."
The reporters eyes widened. I grabbed him by the collar, pushing him towards the stairs.
"Uh, boys? How about that evac?" And for the first time I thought I heard fear in her voice. Not fear of dying. Fear of being alone.
"Damn you, Arcturus!" I said. "Don’t do this." There were several feet of concrete blocking my transmission. I had no way of knowing if they'd heard me. Then Mengsk's voice, breaking through the static.
"It’s done. Helmsman, signal the fleet, and take us out of orbit. Now!"
"Commander? Jim? What the hell’s going on up there?"
|
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/bInuDne.jpg)
The Hammer Falls
I found the spot where she had died. It was in the meatpacking district. More specifically, the ruins of what used to be a warehouse. There was blood everywhere but not from her. One of the petri vats had been ruptured, spilling three thousand tons of lab-grown beef as far as the eye could see. There was that creep here as well. It was growing like pond scum, feeding off the meaty broth and metastasizing everywhere else. No seriously. If you stood in the ichor for a few minutes too long it would start to climb up your boots. My gut told me this creep was only the beginning. The first step in the biodegradation of Tarsonis. This xenomorphic mold was going to terraform the cradle of Koprulu civilization into the stuff of nightmares. And, at the rate this was spreading, it wouldn’t be long.
I stooped over, picking up a piece of plastic that had been half-buried in the creep. I whipped off streaks of the blackish goo. Then sighed. It was her infrared goggles. They were cracked in the middle but still functioning. An icon was blinking in the corner. Still recording. Careful not to let any of the alien muck get too close to my eyes, I hit the playback button.
“What is it?” Liberty asked. He was standing upon a pile of debris, with what remained of my squad. One of them was spray painting another marine’s pauldron with a rattlesnake design. They had taken to calling themselves ‘Raynor’s Raiders’ and no amount of protesting on my part could get them to stop. After I had stuck a cherrybomb in that tank the rest of the boys had circled around, catching the Confederates with their pants down. By the time me and the reporter had gotten back down to the lobby they were waiting for us. And together we had gone searching for Sarah.
I paused the feed. Then dropped the goggles. We were too late.
“Suit up,” I yelled to the men. “This whole planet’s going to hell and if we don’t wanna go with it we need to find a ride. Pronto.” I checked my radio again. Nothing but static.
“And just how are we going to do that?” Liberty had come down to join me. He dropped his cigarette into the creep where it fizzled then went out.
“I can’t make contact with the rest of the fleet,” I admitted. “We’ll have to bum a ride from whoever we can. If there is anyone left.”
The reporter looked around, getting hold of his bearings. “There’s a radio tower not far from here. We get there, I can boost your signal. If there’s anyone still on this rock they’ll be able to hear it. But it’ll be up to you and your southern charm to convince them we’re worth picking up.”
I shrugged. “Seems as good a plan as any.”
The plan, as it turned out, was not as good as we might have hoped. We marched west, trekking across a barren wasteland that would’ve given Mar Sara a run for her money. Half of the streets were blocked by smoldering craters or abandoned vehicles and we had to backtrack multiple times. Eventually, we topped a hillside overlooking the downtown. There was an android repair shop here, and a cryosleep facility. Both had been firebombed back into the proverbial stone age. The radio tower was here. Liberty climbed up the scaffolding, towards the satellite dish and, a few minutes later, called down for me to try again.
I tried. Static.
“Not yet,” I yelled back.
There were structures in the distance. At first I had taken them for skyscrapers which had somehow survived the worst of the bombing run now that we were higher up I could see they weren’t buildings at all. They were alive. Giant mounds of that looked to be stitched together from corpses, like ghoulish volcanoes. In between these but much closer to our location was a pit. It was filled with what could only be radioactive waste. As I watched tiny creatures began to crawl out from the depths, shaking off this green slime like farm dogs coming in from the rain.
“Heads up,” I raised my scope. “I think we’ve got company.”
I glassed over them. They were zerglings, those smaller types of Zerg that we had seen on Mar Sara. They were racing up the hill now, directly towards us. At least twenty of the buggers with more pouring out from that pit every second. They were halfway up.
“Contact!” I started firing and my Raiders did the same. But just then my radio came alive again.
“...fleet has lost contact with the ground forces at New Gettysburg. General Mengsk has ordered the immediate disengagement of the Korhal fleet from the Tarsonian system. Protoss and Zerg forces continue to battle across the continent. We are offering amnesty to any and all survivors…”
“Matt!” I yelled, leaning against the antennae for a better signal. “Damn you ain’t a sound for sore ears. Are you reading me?”
There was a pause. Then response.
“Raynor! You’re alive. We had assumed the worst…”
I can’t believe he actually left her down here! I’m gone, and you’d better come with me. There’s no tellin’ who Arcturus’ll screw over next. Wait were are you? I thought Mengsk fled the system?”
“He did. Mengsk and Duke have commandeered the Bucephalus. The flagship of the Confederate fleet. They are heading to Korhal where Mengsk plans to declare victory and crown himself Emperor of the Terran domain.”
“Why am I not surprised? What are you still doing here?”
“We were covering his retreat but the crew and I had a last minute change of heart. You made a hell of an impression when you blew up the Antietam.”
“Wait? You mutinied?”
“Let’s just say I improvised.”
I smiled then ducked as a zergling broke through my squad and lept towards me. I gunned it down.
“Any chance I could bother you for one last rescue?”
“You still owe me for the last one?”
My soldiers were falling back towards the tower. One of them lost his footing in the mud and tumbled down the hill. The zergling were on top of him almost instantly. Jaws and talons devouring him alive. I aimed for his head, trying to put him out of his misery but it was too late. I could hear his screams as one of the xenomorphs dragged him patiently down the hill, back towards that infernal pit. I could only pray it wouldn’t be long.
“I get back up there, I’ll buy you a cold one. But you’d better hurry...” I fired into the swarm. “The natives are getting restless, if you catch my drift...”
Horner’s voice was more sober this time. “I would love to, Jim. But we can’t break atmo over the city. It’s the orbital defenses. There is a group of Confederates, Omega Squadron, holed up in an ion cannon north of your position. I’ve been trying to reach them for hours, make them see reason, but they aren't responding.”
“Send me the coordinates. I’ll get that cannon down for...”
Suddenly, there was a deafening boom, the kind you can feel in your eye balls. A streak of blue shot up into the sky, like reverse lightening. I followed it back down to the city. It wasn’t far. I could hear Horner on the other end, yelling for evasive maneuvers.
“Never mind,” I said, turning off my radio. “I think I’ve got it.”
Our gauss fire had driven the first wave of zerglings back. They were prowling at the bottom of the hill like prehistoric wolves around a campfire. That at least gave us some breathing room. I checked my holo-map. The ion cannon was maybe two klicks away from our location, on the other side of Port Osborne. The waterfront was a gridlocked maze of hexagonal shipping containers, chain-linked fences and various types of loading cranes. The sun was beginning to set, casting long shadows across the wharfs.
“What are we looking at?” Liberty asked, dropping from a girder.
“Trouble. You have a gun?”
The reporter shook his head. I handed him my revolver and he tucked it into his coat. “Guard this with your life,” I told him.
We made our way down the hill, moving in teams of two to cover the other’s retreat. The zerglings followed us, but always at a distance. I could see their eyes, flickering in the gathering dark. There were at least a hundred of them now. Once or twice I fired into the herd, causing them all to scatter but they quickly regrouped. As night fell, they grew bolder. One of our raiders, a recruit from Antiga named Gary disappeared as we were approaching pier six. Reikson was the last to see him, saying he needed to take a leak and ducked behind a pallet of medical supplies. A minute later, when Reikson went to investigate, Gary was gone. Had left his codpiece on a box of ventilators. That and a small puddle of urine nearby was the only sign he had even been here. After that mistake, I forbid any of the men from wandering past line of sight.
There was another problem too. Koiter had scouted ahead and reported back that the way was blocked. There was a row of supply depots at the far end of the dock. Worse, the roads leading into Port Osbourne were swarming with zerglings and worse. We had no choice but to go over the depots.
Now powered armor is good for a number of things. Trekkin across difficult terrain? Yep, piezoelectric fibers will get the job done. Boarding action in the vacuum of space? Your magnetic boots and CO2 scrubbers will come in handy. But scaling up a four story depot? You’d rather be wearing a brick suit and flip flops. I stared up at the wall, chewing over our predicament.
“Alright Raiders, strip ‘em.”
My men looked at me confused.
“Strip what?”
I reached up to the back of my suit. To the spot at the nape of my neck, where the blast shield met the fusion cooling units. I fumbled around for the T-handle that Rory had installed. Found this and pulled. There was a hissing from my breastplate down to my greaves as piece by piece my suit disassembled itself. My men were gawking at me. I picked up my revolver, tucked this in my jimmies and started climbing the wall.
“Less, one of you has a better idea,” I shouted. “I’d hurry up. Them alien dogs are starting to look hungry.”
We were about halfway up the depot when the last rays of sunlight died away. I was hanging like a kitten in a tree from some aluminum ductwork that I had thought would be more sturdy than it apparently was. Koiter was above me, perched at the edge of a ventilation fan. Liberty had already made it to the top of the building. Don’t ask me what made a reporter so good a climbing, especially in that trench coat of his. It was beginning to get cold but, seeing as we were all in our birthday suits with nothing but our guns to keep us warm, this was the least of our problems.
The sun dropped below the horizon. At that exact moment several things happened all at one. The Zerglings began to howl. They burst from the cover of the shipping containers, covering the distance to the supply depot in the blink of an eye and then began scaling the vertical surfaces just as fast. An automatic broadcast system kicked announcing that Port Osbourne was not closed to all except security and 3rd shift personnel. The depot began to shake. Then sink into the ground. And I slipped just as Koiter caught my wrist. I swung in the air. Glanced down at the ravenous blades and gnashing teeth that waited below. One of the zerglings jumped sideways, landing on Reikson’s back just as he was getting to our level. He screamed but the scream was cut short as a bone scythe punctured his lung. He was dragged backwards and fell. Koiter helped me up and together we scrambled up a fire escape that led to the roof. Liberty was waiting for us.
“What’s going on?” I yelled as the reporter rushed to join us. “The building collapsing?”
“It’s the evening storage protocol. All these depots have false basements which they retract into at night. Allows them to load the trucks more efficiently.”
“Can we discuss interplanetary logistics later?” Koiter was pumping rounds into the zerglings.
“Where’s Higgins?” I looked around.
“He didn’t make it!”
The depot was lowering itself into the ground. The three of us jumped onto the retracting blast doors then sprinted towards the other side of the docks. We could hear zerglings being swallowed by the mechanical jaws behind us. The crunch of their exoskeletons was extremely satisfying but we didn’t have any time to indulge. The iron dome of the orbital cannon was ahead of us. The air buzzed as it prepared to fire again. At the base of the cannon was a Confederate bunker. There was a short access ramp and several gunports on the exterior. I glanced down at my chest. There was a laser sight, like a glowing red pimple, hovering around my heart.
“Ditch the weapons!” I yelled.
“What?”
I threw away my gauss rifle. Koiter did the same. Liberty still had my revolver and those data files tucked into his overcoat. We must have looked silly as hell. Three men, racing across the port, one dressed like an old school detective, the other two in their boxer briefs. And pursued by a ravenous horde of alien bugs. My only hope was that Omega squad would be too busy laughing at us to shoot us dead.
Koiter slipped. Without thinking, I pivoted around, sprinting back for the marine. He had a chitinous quill jutting out from his thigh. Another spine flew past me as I bent down to help him up. That could only mean there were hydralisks nearby. I got an arm under Koiter and together we limped the rest of the way up the bunker steps. Liberty was banging on the hatch.
“Let us in!”
There was a speaker mounted above the hatch. I could hear raunchous laughter on the other end. Then a voice, what must have been a Confederate officer because it had the same high-fluted accent as Horner did.
“Hello, can we help you?”
“Let us in!” Liberty screamed again.
The officer laughed. I pushed the reporter aside. The Zerg were almost on us.
“Listen buddy, you’ve got about three seconds to let us in.”
“Or what?”
“Or you die on this planet.”
“How do you figure?” he asked, his interest peaked. I could hear gauss rifles charging. The bunkers occupants preparing for the encroaching swarm of zerglings.
“See that battlecruiser up there? The one you’ve been taking pot shots at all afternoon? That’s our ticket off this rock. I suggest you let us in and turn off your guns so that they can swoop in and save our asses. You don’t. These Zerg will kill us. And you shortly after.”
There was no reply. I thumbed the intercom again.
“The war is over. You lost. The only thing left to decide is if you wanna save yourself. I can get you and your men safe passage.”
“What guarantees do we have that you won’t just leave us here?”
“I never leave a man behind.”
There was silence on the other end. I turned around. The zergling were less than twenty yards from us. Suddenly, the hatch swung open and big neosteel fingers pulled me, Koiter and the reporter inside. Then slammed shut again.
Horner rode down on a chariot of fire. 125 terawatt lasers blanketed the Port. Frying everything that wasn’t one hundred percent human DNA. I watched them burn. Liberty was nice enough to bum me one of his cigarettes. It was a mighty fine smoke. Like barbeque and cloves.
Back on the Hyperion things had changed. Horner had been unanimously voted the commander of our little insurrection. He met us in the hangar, this big goofy grin as I trotted down the ramp to meet him. I had a weather-proof tarp wrapped like a towel around my waist.
“There have been far too many casualties in this war. But the loss of your battle armor is perhaps the strangest.”
“We had to improvise,” was all I said. Horner led me back up to the bridge, with a quick stop in the crew quarters so that I could borrow some poor fellas breeches. The adjuvant, which I was pleased to see Mengsk had not taken with him when he departed for Korhal, acknowledged our presence as soon as we stepped on the deck.
“Receiving incoming transmission…”
The adjuvant’s eye glowed and beams of light folded around the middle of the room, illuminating the harsh jawline of Arcturus Mengsk. I could feel my teeth grinding at the sound of his vaudevillian voice.
“Gentlemen,” Mengsk crowed, “you’ve done very well, but remember that we’ve still got a job to do. The seeds of a new Empire have been sewn, and if we hope to reap-”
I gave Mengsk the finger. “Aw, to hell with you!
Mengsk’s smile vanished. “You’re making a terrible mistake, boy. Don’t even think to cross me. I’ve sacrificed too much to let this fall apart.”
“You mean like you sacrificed Kerrigan?”
“You’ll regret that. You don’t seem to realize my situation here. I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Confederates, or the Protoss or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me. If you try to get in my-” I shot the adjuvant, the bang ringing the bridge like a bell. One of the helmswomen gasped, turned around looking at my gun, but then quickly recovered.
“Gentlemen,” she said, “The fleet is prepped and ready. Awaiting orders.”
Horner nodded. “To hell with him. We're gone.”
We fled to the Jaandara system in order to lick our wounds and figure out what came next. Confederate presence here was light and with the Korhal wolves in the henhouse our presence was damn near invisible. We didn’t make planetfall. Just sent down courier ships to test political waters and gather supplies. Horner was laying the groundwork for a new revolution. We were to be kingslayers once more. But before that could happen we needed a king to slay.
“My fellow Terrans,” Mengsk said, his voice losing non-off its serpent charm though he was even lightyears away, “I come to you in the wake of recent events to issue a call to reason. Let no human deny the perils of our times. While we battle one another divided by the petty strife of our common history the tide of a greater conflict is turning against us. Threatening to destroy all that we have accomplished. It is time for us as nations and as individuals to set aside our long-standing feuds and unite. The tides of an unwinnable war are upon us. And we must seek refuge upon higher ground lest we be swept away by the flood...
As promised I had owed Horner a beer for pulling my ass outta the flames. One beer had led to another and both of us had now moved onto the whisky. The cantina was empty but this time it was by design. Horner had the troops running what he called “emergency drills,” although he suspected most of them were watching Mengsk’s coronation speech the same as we were.
I took another sip of the whisky. It was good. Smokey. Toasted. With just the right amount of oak on the aftertaste. Burned going down but what good thing doesn’t. I asked Horner where he had gotten it and he informed me that he had ‘confiscated’ it from the grunts. I smiled. We fell silent for a bit. Mengsk prattled on.
“...seen first-hand our friends and loved ones consumed by the nightmarish Zerg. Unprecedented and unimaginable though they may be these are the signs of our time. The time has come, my fellow Terrans to rally to a new banner…”
“It’s funny…” I said, glancing up. “It seems like yesterday Arcturus was the idealistic rebel crusader. Now he’s the law, and we’re the criminals. It kills me to know that we helped him achieve his goals of conquest.”
“Damnit! I shouldn’t have let her go alone.”
Horner leaned over, staring at me. “It’s not your fault, Jim…”
“...doesn’t matter. What use are we if we can’t protect the things we love?”
“We can remember what they stood for.” Horner lifted his glass. “To Kerrigan.”
“To Blaze.”
“To Mengsk.”
I looked at the Horner. Confused.
“To what he stood for,” Horner clarified. “The very first casualty of war. Our own humanity.”
I shrugged. “I’d drink to that.” Adding, ‘I guess,’ as we clinked our glasses together.
“...out of the many we shall forge and indivisible whole capitulating only to a single throne and from that throne I shall watch over you. From this day forward let no human make war upon any other human. Let no Terran agency conspire against this new beginning and let no man consort with alien powers. And to all the enemies of Humanity seek not to bar our way. For we shall win through…”
I raised my gun. Cocked back the hammer. Aimed for the tyrant’s widows peak. But Horner grabbed my hand before I could shoot.
“Here,” he said, handing me the remote.
“You know, it’s not smart to fire off a gun in space.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “You could depressurize the ship...”
I smiled again.
See that’s the problem with violence. It never stops when you want it to. Just keeps on going. Consuming. Incinerating. Till it’s destroyed everything you’ve ever known and everyone you cared about. Horner was right. When the chips are down like that there was only one thing you could do. Remember what people once stood for. Before things changed. And try to make things right again. Horner and I, we we’re going to do that. Put the universe back together. But before that could happen we needed just a little more violence.
Before that happened we were going to make Mengsk pay.
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Had a ton of fun writing these. Let me know if people are interested in reading Kerrigan's story next.
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On August 06 2020 08:00 Archerofaiur wrote:
Had a ton of fun writing these. Let me know if people are interested in reading Kerrigan's story next.
Hell yes. These are great. I refresh this thread every few hours in hopes of seeing new post :D
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On August 06 2020 08:00 Archerofaiur wrote:
Had a ton of fun writing these. Let me know if people are interested in reading Kerrigan's story next.
Do it now.
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On August 06 2020 08:00 Archerofaiur wrote:
Had a ton of fun writing these. Let me know if people are interested in reading Kerrigan's story next.
We are waiting for this !!!
Good work !
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Patch 1.1
Wasteland
Improved Action
Backwater Station
Added Flashback: Tom Omer
Desperate Alliance
Added Flashback: The Academy
Improved Transitions
The Jacobs Installation
Added Flashback: Coming Home
Improved Reflections
Improved Transitions
Improved Descriptions
Revolution
Improved Dialogue
Improved Transitions
Improved Fast Forwards
StoryCraft Outline
+ Show Spoiler +Wasteland (Savior)
Exposition: Wasteland
Scene: The Saloon
Dialogue: The Sons
Description: The Emissary
Dialogue: I'm looking for Marshall Raynor
Action: Tag Along
Flashback: Just a Small Town Boy
Description: Akilon Flats
Dialogue: Somethings going on on Chau Sara
Fast Forward: Chasing the Sun
Dialogue: A Clue
Transition: Entering the Cave
Exposition: Power Armor
Dialogue: Hands Up, Partner
Description: Tychus
Dialogue: NSC92572
Backwater Station (Save the Individual)
Dialogue: What's the Plan, Marshall?
Transition: Erye Highway
Exposition: Backwater
Dialogue: What do Monsters look like?
Flashback: Tom Omer
Description: Gasstation Creep
Description: Tychus Injured.
Dialogue: Let Me Take You In
Description: The Command Center
Dialogue: No One’s Home.
Action: The Upper Hand
Description: Zombies
Action: Grab Tychus
Dialogue: We Could Use the Boosters
Transition: On a Steel Horse
Desperate Alliance (Save the People)
Transition: The Getaway
Dialogue: You Watch Too Many Movies
Description: General Duke
Exposition: The Merrimack
Transition: Processing
Scene: Prison Cell
Fast Forward: Prison Life
Flashback: The Academy
Description: The Sons
Exposition: Mengsk's Reputation
Dialogue: I'd Like To Help You Out
Reflection: Making Deals with the Devil
Transition: The Rodeo
Scene: Mar City
Description: Zerg!
Action: The Rescue
Jacobs Installation (Save the Criminals?)
Dialogue: Reunion
Reflection: You’re the Magistrate?
Transition: Arabian Nights
Dialogue: Call me Jim
Flashback: Coming Home
Transition: Knock, Knock
Dialogue: Miles Lewis
Scene: The Lab Corridor
Description: Infested
Action: Turret Wars
Dialogue: Hi-Sec Auto Tracking
Action: The Decoy
Scene: The Laboratory
Description: Hydralisk
Dialogue: Slothien
Action: A Clue
Description: The Scientist
Dialogue: Egon Stetman, PhD
Action: Rattlesnake Fast
Scene: Aftermath
Revolution (Save the Rebellion)
Exposition: System Update
Fast Forward: In the wake of the chaos
Reflection: Not my Revolution
Scene: The Rebel Camp
Description: Barracks
Action: Fire It Up
Description: Rory Swann
Dialogue: Introductions
Reflection: Just Gonna Hand Him Over
Transition: UNN Feed
Dialogue: UFO
Description: Carrier has Arrived.
Reflection: Aliens
Dialogue: Start a Fire
Flashback: Mom’s Note
Fast Forward: Training
Exposition: Chau Sara Is Gone
Scene: The Mud
Action: Help Him Up
Dialogue: There Is A Balance
Scene: Something In The Rain
Description: The Ghost
Exposition: Assassin
Dialogue: Who Is She?
Norad II (Who are we Saving?)
Reflection: The Zerg Came
Scene: Mengsk's Office
Dialogue: I'm Positive I Didn't Hear That Right…
Description: iRobot
Exposition: Party Roles
Transition: Going in Hot
Scene: Stickler Forest.
Action: Crash Landing
Fast Forward: Star Trek
Description: Spore Colony
Action: Mosh Pit
Dialogue: I Was Trying To Save You?
Reflection: People Who Don't Need Saving
Transition: Starship Troopers
Action: Spybreak
Scene: The Bridge
Dialogue: He's Our Snake Now
Trump Card (Save the Human Race)
Fast Forward: After Duke
Dialogue: So the Zerg are here for you, darling?
Scene: The Machine Shop
Exposition: The Psi Emitter
Description: The SCV
Dialogue: Can't let the past cloud our judgement.
Transition: Up the Highway
Action: Ambush
Dialogue: This Isn't About My Life
Scene: Emyn Muil
Dialogue: For the Greater Good
Transition: Breaking in
Dialogue: Halt who goes there?
Description: Goliath Online
Action: Rock em Bop em Robots
The Big Push (Save Your Soul)
Fast Forward: After Prime.
Description: Kerrigan
Dialogue: What are they saying?
Exposition: Hyperion
Scene: The Bridge
Dialogue: I've Defended Tarsonis In Over…
Transition: The Jump
Description: Wraith
Action: Star Citizen
Scene: Battle of Coruscant
Dialogue: Destroy the Yamato
Action: Target Locked
Description: Independence Day
Exposition: Yamato
Action: Bombing Run
Transition: Defensive Matrix
Action: Pull Up Goose
Action: Kong Rides the Bomb
Reflection: Heroes Never Look at Explosions
Dialogue: The emitters are secured.
New Gettysburg (You Can't Save Everyone)
Fast Forward: The Culling of Tarsonis
Scene: Hangar Bay Party
Dialogue: His name was....
Scene: Cantina
Dialogue: When I was your age
Scene: The Bridge
Dialogue: Funny, I never thought of you as anyone's martyr.
Reflection: I wasn’t going to lose another
Transition: Catching Kerrigan
Dialogue: Drop the knight in shining armor
Scene: Capital Square
Action: Street Fighter
Description: Arcalite Tank
Transition: Retreat
Action: Tank Busting
Scene: UNN Tower
Exposition: UNN
Reflection: Propaganda
Transition: Stairwell Ambush
Description: Zealot
Action: Battle in the Belfry
Description: Michael Liberty
Dialogue: It's Done
The Hammer Falls (Save Yourself)
Description: Final Resting Place
Fast Forward: Rescue Mission
Dialogue: Boost the Signal
Transition: Towards the Radio Tower
Scene: Zerg Architecture
Action: Zergling Rush
Dialogue: Horner Answers
Scene: Port Osbourne
Transition: Gary Missing
Description: Supply Wall
Action: Strip ‘Em
Reflection: You’ll carry your prison with you
Transition: Climb
Exposition: Lower Depot
Description: Bunker
Acton: Bunker Rush
Reflection: Leave No Man Behind
Dialogue: Open Up
Transition: Horner Arrives
Dialogue: Gentleman, You’ve done very well
Fast Forward: Kingslayers
Dialogue: Coronation Speech I
Scene: Cantina
Dialogue: Coronation Speech II
Description: Whisky
Dialogue: Coronation Speech III
Action: Shoot the Messenger
Dialogue: I shouldn’t have let her go alone.
Reflection: Remember
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EPT
