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

Your headache was back.

You laid on your back in your sparse cabin, your legs crooked up, a pad on your lap. The doctor's report on her survey of the Terrans you'd pulled off Bel'shiar or Bel'Shian or whatever the fuck the planet had been called was as fascinating as it was disquieting. Your thumb slid along the interior, frowning as you read the terse notes.

Long term cryogenic suspension has had unexpected impacts on the genetic structures of the inhabitants of the Koprulu Sector - effects that are seen even in their descendants. While not distinct enough for speciation, there are certain genelines that would have been cleared out back in the UEF due to their long term potential for deleterious health effects that have, instead, been inculcated and enhanced (see Report: S. Duran.)

You tapped the hyperlink and the pad chirred quietly as it brought up the new data. You closed your eyes, rubbing some grit from your eyes. The migraine threatening started to ease backwards and you muttered. "Audio, confirm." Your head laid back and the pad started to speak in a reasonable facsimile of Dr. Hanson's soothing voice.

"Subject: Samir Duran. The initial nanoscale examination found him to be riddled with genomic changes that are supposedly the result of the Ghost Program run by the Confederacy of Planets and continued by the Terrain Dominion. The Ghosts are augmented with drugs, psychoconditioning, and genetic treatments to enhance reflexes, cognition, and improve abilities that he describes as psionic. While the claims are remarkable, he had demonstrated an unerring ability to pass several debunked and discredited esper tests from the 20th and 25th centuries. It seems that the random luck of the draw has given the Koprulu offshoot of humanity access to the dreams of countless hack sci-fi authors...psychic powers. Studying these abilities, I've yet to determine the exact nature of their transmission vector. Possibly quantum in nature?"

You tapped pause.

You had brought Duran aboard as a civilian - his gear had been taken for examination. He had been mildly huffy at best - but utterly outraged when you had recycled his atomics into the raw mass they had been made out of. He had only calmed down when Horner had mentioned that you could fabricate them again just as rapidly as you had taken them apart. He had submitted to the examinations by Dr. Hanson with little more than a tired smile and 'ah, this again.'

You hit the resume button.

"The curious things, though, is the clearly alien genetics mixed with the sample. Questioned on it, he admitted that it was based on preliminary studies on the alien species known as the Zerg. The Confederacy had been studying the species for some years before the full bore invasion and occupation of several worlds - it failed as a bioweapon, but he was part of an offshoot project that wanted to further enhance their Ghost program. If...half of what he says is true about the Confederate Ghost program, then annihilating the Confederacy is enough to get this so called Emperor Mengsk a Solar Star..."

You hit pause again.

Frowned at the ceiling.

You had a hold of civilians and a first run in with the Protoss - Protoss, species. Tal'darim...faction. The civilians had made that pretty clear. It seemed learning a species name had been pretty damn important after the Protoss incinerated a few planets due to Zerg infestation. You shook your head slightly.

"I'm not sure which is worse...the Zerg being that bad, or everyone else losing to them anyway." Your palms rubbed against your face.

Your migraine didn't come back.

"General, get a load of this," Matt Horner said as you came into the central operations chamber of E1, holding your coffee. Warfare had been utterly revolutionized by the creation of nanofabrication, but you'd honestly still consider the entire branch of technology worth it for making coffee as easy as a button push away, no matter how many light years you were from home.

"Hmm?" you asked, arching an eyebrow, then saw that you were picking up another one of the Terran Dominion's newsfeeds.

"This is Donny Vermilion reporting in from the frontier world of Mar Sara, recently recolonized by the Terran Dominion. There has been a minor battle between Dominion security forces and a band of unscrupulous and vile rebels who have decided to take a stand against order, justice, decency and good government. I'm speaking here with Mayor Vance Lanso and his adjutant. Tell me..."

"Would you look at that," Matt said.

"That's a fucking Cybran," you said, frowning as you set your cup down.

The screen showed the mayor - a big bellied man with impressive mustaches and a weather beaten dark face - standing beside the unmissable form of a human rigged out with the cybernetic implants of a Cybran. She was shorter than him, and her implants...they were bigger, chunkier and significantly more weather beaten than any Cybran you'd seen in your life. But there were the neural-uplink lines that threaded from her temples, along her jaw, an there was the faint glow in the back of her eyes. She was dressed in a set of coveralls and a white shirt. You gestured to one of the techs, and the feed paused. You turned to Matt.

"If they've been cut off," he says, hesitantly. "They might be uninfected from the Brackman virus."

You nodded back. Dr. Gustaf Brackman had built the earliest Cybrans - and he had taken their process further and stranger than anyone else had. He had gone so far as to upload his mind into a computer. A fuzzy, half mad copy according to the propaganda department. What you did know was he had then spread a virus through loyalist Cybrans that served the Earth Empire and the United Earth Federation, turning them against their masters.

"Get Duran up here," you said.

Tosh and Duran arrived a few minuets later, after the puff piece was done - most of it was the Mayor blustering about how 'some fella's in blue just up and stole half a dozen SCVs from the command center like they owned the place', with Donnie Vermilian spinning alarming noises about it being resurgent Confederates or lawless raiders or something. You had kind of tuned it out, beyond noting that the Dominion had boarder problems.

"How common are these?" you asked, pointing at the Adjutant in the freeze frame.

"Adjutants?" he asked, shrugging a bit. "Common enough. Colonial administrators, magistrates...any general, they all use them. They're how battlefields are coordinated, how colonial construction is organized. That kind of thing."

"So, they do exactly what they did in the Earth Empire," Matt muttered.

"Indeed," Tosh said. "Are they networked?"

Duran, glancing between you three curiously, arched an eyebrow. "When required. I didn't really interact with them much, General. Above, as you say, my pay grade." His little smile quirked up. "Less likely still, now that I have grown so...accustomed to how very comfortable your ship is."

You grunted, then nodded to him. "If we have more questions, we'll send them to you."

He inclined his head.

You turned back to Matt and Tosh. "Thoughts?"

"We have to find out more about these adjutants - it's...not...impossible the Cybrans got here before we did. Their territory and ours meet right around the insertion point. And they have those damn stealth drops," Matt said, frowning. "There are some worlds that have been completely devastated by their recent wars. One of them stood out: Tarsonis. It used to be the Confederate capital world, population of about half a billion people. Seventy percent of them didn't get off world before the Zerg finished conquering it. The Dominion has worked to retake it, but huge swaths of the planet are still roaming with the critters. But since it was a major Confederate technical base, there's gotta be an adjutant down there that we can study. Plus...it'll give us some idea of what fighting the Zerg's like."

Tosh nodded. "Big risk for a small gain, I say. We've gotten a lot of intelligence outta this Duran...and after seeing him float a wrench around a room by waving his hand, I say, we have to check up on it. He says there's an old Ghost training facility on a planet called Redstone. Active volcanism makes it risky, but it's metal rich and defense poor. There's rumors the Dominion are starting it up again, meaning if we get there, we can knock out the bad guys from using that program, secure intelligence on how they make Ghosts...maybe how to make our own without needing to kidnap and torture children, yeah?" He grinned, warmly. "Plus, either we see how we do against the Dominion in a stand up fight, or we get some Confederate tech to look over."

You frowned, arms crossed over your chest. "There's also the refugees. Dr. Hanson has floated a potential world for them - Haven."

"Oh hey!" Matt said, smiling slightly. "I found that one."

You chuckled. The colonists on Agria had not required a lot of complicated help - Matt had been able to do some gladhanding and get the word out about what the UEF was offering people. He had also come back with some additional astrographic data. Haven was an unsettled world near the edge of the Terran Dominion. Far enough off the beaten path that the colonists shouldn't be bothered by anyone. Easy mission too.

The decision, as always, laid on your head.

---
Ooh, we're getting more complex now! Also, I will need to go in and rejigger the NPCs since I've also had a rework on how gear works, and minions are gear. Don't worry about it!

[ ] Head to Tarsonis (Begin Operation: The Great Grave Robbery)
[ ] Head to Redstone (Begin Operation: Ruins of the Confederacy)
[ ] Head to Haven (Begin Operation: Safe Haven)