It was the same nightmare again. The same one for about six months now.
Kerrigan, prowling through the imperial palace like she damn near owned the place, the same woman he had abandoned on Tarsonis save for the monstrous claws extending from her arms. Mengsk, throwing up his inner circle to save his own sorry hide one after another like shields, quavering like a leaf in a Vardona monsoon. She killed Starke first, quick and professional, the two Ghosts looking at each other without hatred or complaint. Warfield always came next, the old soldier going to a death he had probably not deserved with the same stubborn look he seemed to always have.
Duke would scream, beg, plead, deny, the old Confederate through and through a yellow bellied coward in the end. He had the most blood on his hands of anyone, Mengsk included, and she always savored drawing out his end. He didn't doubt that the Confederacy would've sent someone else to man the psi emitters in the Sara system if he had refused, but Horner had to admit, he didn't entirely hate seeing the turncoat get gutted like a fish.
Then it was his turn, Arcturus blubbering for him to do something, to save him, to have his back like in the good old days. Sometimes he stood firm, sometimes he stepped aside, but it didn't make a difference in the end. Oh, sure, she might run him through immediately or tell him she forgave him first, but he was still dead in the end. Still left with a hole through his heart the size of his fist, the sounds of Mengsk's screams filling his head as sweet blackness took him.
Except that's not what happened this time.
Sarah strode towards him, in that confident way she always had, the same stance she'd use before delivering a report or executing an officer who had made the mistake of trusting her. The same that she'd boarded the dropship to Tarso-
"Oh, Chuck. You're married, what would Carla do if she knew you were thinking those things?" she murmured, a voice that was and was not the Lieutenant's. "Maybe I should go pay her a visit, it's been so long since one of our chats. Just girl talk, Commander."
A spike of fear suddenly pierced Horner's heart, eyes bulging at the implicit threat. She had never threatened Carla before. He could die for all he cared, he was part and parcel of every single horror that Mengsk had unleashed. But Carla? She'd done nothing, deserved nothing.
"Don't," he breathed out, unaware of how tight his throat had gotten until he had tried to speak.
"Men," Kerrigan half chided, half laughed. "Always thinking you have to be the knight in shining armor, rushing in to save your gal. How'd that work out for you and Jimmy when it came time to get me, huh? But don't worry, Chuck, I'm not a princess who needs rescuing. I know what I'm doing."
Chuck's words died in his mouth as he stood, frozen stock still. His body refused to obey him as Kerrigan crept closer and closer, green and purple scales emerging over her form.
"I'm coming home, Chuck. Leave the lights on for me, 'kay?"
He had gotten good at being quiet when he had his nightmares, the Guild Wars and then the Sons had seen to that. Men who screamed got themselves, and their buds, killed if they did at the wrong time. It was a skill, and one he had mastered over long years of sleeping rough and fighting dirty. So Chuck didn't scream, but he had his way of fidgeting and shifting, and Carla, bless her for being a better woman than he deserved, knew every one of his tells.
She was awake before he was, already turning the lights on in their bedroom.
"The usual?" she asked, about both the nightmare and the nightcap.
"Yeah," Chuck murmured, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he sat up in bed. "Or near enough. She started talking more this time," he added, evasively. No reason to worry Carla with everything right out the gate.
"Mmm." Carla, having always been the brains of the duo, saw through that immediately, but didn't bother prying. There was no point to it, he'd come around eventually. Chuck always did. She wrapped her nightgown tight around herself as she walked over to the in suite bar, pouring out a finger of whisky for him, and a double for herself. She always did have trouble getting back to sleep after he woke her.
"Thanks," he whispered as he took the glass in hand, not realizing just how dry his lips had become until he started sipping on the liquor. It was a good, fine drink, from a planet that no one lived on anymore, but it tasted like nothing in his current state.
"Do you want to read again?" she continued, sitting down in bed next to him and fishing out his tablet. Not one of the Treasury issue ones, but a rugged and battered piece of crap that had been out in the Fringe for years before it had arrived in the dead drop he had set up with Jimmy.
"Yeah," he repeated, this time with more strength than before. "Yeah let's… Let's try to make sense of this mess," he finished with a nod. It was the only thing that ever calmed him down after one of these, trying to make as much sense as he could out of the jumbled story he had gotten from the Raiders. He probably shouldn't let Carla see it, but Mengsk would shoot him for it anyway so what was one more crime. Besides, she helped him with the bigger words Matt liked to toss around so casual like.
"Zerg mostly all went off to Aiur, even Mengsk suspects that. Char's still pretty quiet," Chuck murmured, reviewing the files he had read countless times over by now. "And Aiur is…" he squinted at the map Matt had uploaded, the Protoss homeworld glowing faintly at the very edge of the galaxy.
"A long ways off," Carla said, patting her husband on the arm before taking a sip of her own whisky.
"A long ways off," Chuck agreed. "And then most of Protoss vanished out back of the beyond to someplace called Shakuras, and not even Matt knows where that is. Through some sort of warp gate," he said, shaking his head at how incredibly screwed they all were. The Protoss were older than old, and had the ability to fold space to travel across the galaxy instantly, and the Zerg had won against them.
Oh, sure, Tassadar killed their big brain in the end, but he mostly cheated anyway. Tassadar was a sore subject for Chuck though, the Executor had been the one to kill Mar Sara, and had only found a conscience by the time he had hit Tarsonis, which triggered all of this anywa-
"Hell," Horner whispered, sitting down the glass as he started scrolling through the records of the Koprulu Expeditionary Force the Raiders had managed to cobble together.
"You've found something," Carla said, peering over his shoulder as he furiously read - a feat that he was currently too concerned to take any pride in.
"Sarah was wrong," he murmured, an undercurrent of nervous excitement in his voice. "In the recordings we got, there was something about how she convinced Jimmy to let her go because she said the Protoss were going to kill the whole planet," he continued, the memory of that fateful day seared into his mind for the rest of his life. "She said that she just knew, that it was a Ghost thing. But that's wrong, that's completely wrong."
There. There it was, glowing text staring back at him from the screen, a note hastily written by Matt to translate a Protoss record.
Executor Tassadar of the Koprulu Expeditionary Force recalled by the Conclave to face trial for refusal to enact purification protocols on Tarsonis.
"How the hell did she get that wrong?"
