THE INFINITE BROOD (Starcraft/Supreme Commander Crossover Quest!)

Major Horner rubbed his palm against his jaw, wincing as he did so. "Is it just me or was that one of the less pleasant jumps I've ever had?" he asked, standning and stretching as the ship thrummed under your feet.

"It's in acceptable parameters," Dr. Hanson said, standing from her restrain harness, groaning as she rubbed her hands through her hair. Then, smiling, she reached into her pocket and tossed something underhanded to the Major. He caught it, remarkably well for someone who had just been punched through the quantum foam and into a distant part of the universe. He turned it around, and you saw it was a package of painkillers. Just seeing them made your own head throb. You pushed the headache down out of sheer force of will.

"Dr. Hanson," you said. "I know we're still in the gray zone, but if you can get to the science lab and start seeing what you can see through the scopes and the long ranged scanners?"

"Yes, General," she said, giving a curt nod.

Your political officer sighed as he heaved himself to his full height. Gabriel Tosh was a bulky man - he clearly didn't just work in an office, and he seemed to have taken the jump better than everyone else. His smile was thin and enigmatic as he watched you. You ignored him. You didn't like political officers. Instead, you turned to Major Horner. "Major, lets do a quick equipment check. It'd be a shame to take this much expensive military hardware so far and not have anything to show for it."

"Yes sir," he said, nodding.

The E1 was long and large, but that size was deceptive. Most of it contained the quantum drive that would, hopefully, provide FTL travel once you were within the Koprulu Sector proper. The cargo hold was devoted to the three ACUs that were the centerpiece of your expeditionary force, and as you and Major Horner walked along the gantry bay around the first of them, you shook your head in slow appreciation. It had been too long since you'd been in the cockpit of one of the beasts: A heavy armored walker that stood almost forty meters tall - a staggering, inhuman size when you weren't looking down at it from an ObSat. It was easy to think of them as relatively tiny compared to the planet consuming battles that raged around them...but standing on the catwalk, you could see just how big they were.

Each ACU had a portable fusion reactor, an arm mounted nanolathe that could print buildings out of local matter and raw energy, and a series of intricate systems on the back for drone delivery of new matter and materials, not to mention a gossamer web of glittering patterns built into the shoulders that were the antenna systems for beamed energy to arrive from a wireless power grid. Their right arms had a DC9 Zephier cannon, using the fusion reactor to build a reserve of antimatter shells to lob downrange. It wasn't a lot of antimatter, just enough to ruin someone's day in a serious way.

Not enough to flatten cities.

At least...not when you kept them within firing parameters.

Horner nodded as he looked over the charts on the display. "Well, General, it seems all the ACUs managed the jump just fine. No sign of any wear, tear, or anything the techs need to look at. No field repairs."

"Good," you said, dryly. "I've had a few jumps where I needed to rebuild half a leg. While under fire."

"Those are the tough ones," he said, chuckling. "But if it was easy, everyone would do it, right?"

"Heh," you said, gripping the bars of the catwalk. A tingling pain shot through your temple, then faded back to the normal background throb.

"Are you all right, General?" he asked.

"Fine," you say, nodding to him.

Your communicator chirruped and you tapped the collar tab to activate it. "General Clarke," you said.

"General, this is Dr. Hanson," the doctor's voice sounded excited. "We've cleared whatever disturbance creates the edge of the Koprulu sector. Our quantum drive is capable of point to point travel and we're getting back information on the long range scans."

You nodded, then glanced at Major Horner. "Lets see what we're working with here."

The operations center of E1 had a large holographic display unit that projected every planet and star that had been detected with human colonial settlement on it - and to your surprise, it looked like nearly every other star in the damn sector was inhabited. Dr. Hanson moved from console to console, while her staff worked with eager murmuring and soft whispers. "Did we just hit the jackpot here?" General-Coordinator Tosh rumbled from the corner, where he was leaning against the wall, watching everything intently.

"No, this is like hitting the jackpot ninety times in a row," Dr. Hanson said, turning back to face you, her eyes alight with excitement. "General, there's more habitable planets in this one sector of space than in most of the rest of the galaxy. It's...impossible!"

"Unless someone made them," you said.

"Terraforming planets takes such time and energy that...well, we could maybe do it, if we didn't have the war to fight," Dr. Hanson said, her eyes darkening as she put her hands together before her chin, tapping her pointer fingers together. "It'd take a civilization at least as advanced as ours, but ten thousand times more long lasting and without any distractions. Or...or a civilization even more advanced than that and less time."

"Aliens, then," Horner said. "Maybe the Zerg? If their weapons are biological, maybe their terraforming is off the charts as well?"

"Lets not leap to any conclusions," you say. "Are we getting any signals from the humans? Military traffic? News media?"

"I got something, sir!" one of the techs said. "It's a news media channel. They're running it in English."

"Interesting," you say, frowning. "No linguistic drift. Is that...normal?"

"Well, if their technology never crashed, then it's not impossible. We still speak English," Dr. Hanson said. "There may be some dialect changes, but, we should be able to understand them. We understood the first distress transmission."

"Put it on then. I want to see what we're working with here," you say.

The holoprojector shifted and came to life, showing a human woman in a rather nice looking suit, with the letters UNN floating below her and a scrolling ticker running along the bottom - so like Earth broadcasts that it makes you blink. She was midsentence: "-th his vessel last sighted heading deep into Protoss territory against orders, it is entirely possible that Jim Raynor, hero of the revolution, must be presumed dead." She looked solemn as an image of a man with a scruffy goatee and warm eyes appeared in the upper right. "Our beloved Emperor recorded these words."

The image flicked to a genteel looking man with a well trimmed beard, dressed in finery that would make an Aeon princess blush. "My fellow Terrans," he said, his voice an aristocratic drawl that made your hackles rise. "Today, we are in mourning. The Zerg have been driven back in disarray by our brave forces, and the Protoss have retreated to their enigmatic homeworld - but in this victory, we have also lost so many brave heroes. Jim Raynor...was my friend. He fought tireless to destroy the Confederacy. And now that he is dead, we must honor his memory." He closed his eyes solemnly.

The news feed cut back to the human woman, who looked solemn as well. Then she brightened. "Now, turning to other news, we have Danny Vermillion on site for a breaking story: Subversive Attitudes, how to spot them and where to report them."

The feed continued as you waved your hand to mute it. You turned to Horner, who snorted quietly. "Well, that's propaganda," he says.

"You think?" you ask. "An Emperor. Do we have any indication of how much of this Sector this Dominion controls?"

"Based on our initial readings and IFF bouys...a significant portion of the sector," Dr. Hanson said. "But not all of it. We're detecting signals with a distinct enough encryption system and IFF patterns that they indicate other political bodies."

You frowned. "It sounds like there's been a major change in their politics. A recent one too."

"Something we can use, then." Horner said, nodding.

---
CURRENT HEAT: 0/6

Okay! You're actually IN the Koprulu sector and now, you get to make some decisions

[ ] Lurk and Peek - use Tosh's expertise in covert ops to send in some spies to learn more information about this Terrain Dominion and their current status. (Covert Ops Diff 5, base skill 0, +2 from Tosh: 3 Heat)
[ ] Go Loud and get a base - pick a weakly defended fringe world, drop on the planet and secure a ground based infastructure. This spaceship is not to your tastes. (Strategic Thinking Diff 2, Base Skill 2: 0 Heat)
[ ] Hearts and Minds - there's two dangerous alien species here. You can wait, watch, and swoop in during a Zerg or Protoss attack. It'll be risky, since you have no idea how you'll fare against their technology. (Awareness Diff 3, base skill 2: 1 Heat)
[ ] Write In