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

"Shit!" you brought your left arm up - bringing a laser cutter into the side of the immense creature. One of it's curved blades smashed into the side of your ACU, sending the entire massive vehicle slewing hard to the side. For the first time in almost two years of battles, you felt your whole body lurching as the ACU staggered and tried to keep its arms up. The massive beast shook itself, smoke hissing from the laser cut you had slashed into it. Dr. Hanson's voice crackled over the line.

"General, it's regenerating!"

"I noticed!" You said as the beast opened its bladed arms wide - ready to snap them around your midsection. You stepped backwards, the armored shoes of your ACU smashing apart the Creep underneath you. The purple material came apart in vast, bloody chunks as you skidded slightly, just barely avoiding the sweep of blades. Your fingers played along the console. It usually took years of engineering to design a vehicle or building to be constructed by a nanolathe.

You didn't have years.

But, also?

You didn't need to make anything nearly so sophisticated.

Your nanolathe flashed and a glittering box of blue energy flared around the immense Zerg bioform - and then, with a flash, it snapped into a solid chunk of steel about fifty meters wide. The tips of both blades jutted from the edges and the creature remained perfectly still. Your fingers slid along your console - finding the energy requirements. You checked the clock, and lifted your free hand off the arm and leg controls to start programming in more orders.

"Two minuets, General," Stukov said.

"I'm aware of that, Lieutenant," you said.

The parashields - their dumb little AI routines barely seemed to know that they were under threat - started to trundle around the creature. Their treads crushed tiny tracks into the Creep, but you could see the material was actually beginning to die before your eyes. Shriveling up and drawing away, as if blowing apart the sunken colonies and the spore colonies had been enough to kill it. You filed that away for later.

"General, the bioform!" Matt said.

Your eyes snapped up to the forward view.

The cube that you had created was...quivering. Shaking.

"That's impossible," you whispered.

The cube trembled. Then, with a squealing crash of rending metal, the huge bladed arms shoved to the side and the entire upper half of the ultralisk kicked itself free, the bottom half following as it roared its fury to the air. You started to pilot the ACU forward, breaking into a run as it smashed and shook itself free. The parashields were following your orders - threading along the only navigable path between the Confederate base and their crude firetrap. The shields intersected, creating glitzy, shimmering interference patterns where they met. Those patterns were what would keep the building safe when...

You could see it.

The orbital platform was beginning to burn in the atmosphere, hitting its final, cataclysmic decent. The rumbling boom of it breaking apart in the upper atmosphere rattled your ACU. But it didn't cover the thundering of the Zerg bioform charging after you - a creature the side of your ACU, and filled with enough hate and rage that it could bust out of solid synth-steel. You turned around, standing just before the shields as the rumbling sonic booms of the orbital platform's final disintegration hit the air around you. Flaming streaks that were going faster - imparted extra energy by frenetic spinning - started to thud into the landscape, kicking up plumes of dirt, dust and debris.

The Zerg creature loomed before you and roared a challenge.

"Yeah, fuck you too," you said.

Your ACU sparked and hissed as you finished the flash-charging of the Zephier cannon.

The zerg bioform thundered forward.

You lifted the right arm of your ACU - aimed and fired. The bead of glittering ruby red light that was the concentrated antimatter chuck flew straight towards it. The creature ducked its head and armadillo back forward, like a gridiron player getting ready to recieve an intense tackle. An instinctive response to incoming artillery.

Utterly irrelevent.

The flare of nuclear white fire blotted out your cameras and the gore explosion flashed out - red splattering cameras and hull. Your entire ACU rocked and you hissed. "Ugh!"

"General! The impact!" Stukov said.

You stepped back-

The orbital platform, roaring like a furious god, came smashing down outside the edge of the ruined city. The ground leaped up and the shockwave swept out. The shields glowed brighter.

And brighter.

And brighter still...


---
Okay! You make Mass 6 (Mass 6 (Big Cuuuube 4) to try and slow the ultra down, then make 13 charge sparks! Then you vent and the Ultra acts - creating 10 sparks - since it's diff 10 - augmented by its damage. 4 damage and 4 durability (remember, your ACU is durability 4) negate one another out, leaving just 10 sparks versus 6/6/4 - so, the sparks are obliterated down to 2/4!

Oh, then I realized that the Ultralisk's area characteristic 100% applies to this, so, that knocks out the last of it, down to no sparks!

Since you've set yourself towards this goal and there's no additional danger to spend to change the situations, we'll roll right into your next round: First, you take a diff 1 action to slap more mass sparks onto the stack - making it into 6/6/2, then throw down 1 Planning and 6 heat and your skill to add +7 to your spark pile, making 20 charging sparks.

Vent down to 0 heat and make 1 planning spark!

The Ultra acts again, smashing with their damage and their area and 10 sparks, which lets 2 hit sparks get through! But then it's your turn again - you're at 1/6 heat and decide to shoot the bastard! Planning Spark 1 and Vehicle Weapons 2 vs Diff 10 means you need to take 7 heat to hit, then 4 to get the 24 Charging sparks required to get past durability 4, putting you at 11/6 heat!

You did it - you blasted the ultralisk and only take a Wounding Option! Which is a nice dramatic end to The Great Grave Robbery! (You get 11 XP for this final battle!)

[ ] Item Destroyed: You don't get the ACU under shielding in time. While you survive, the shockwave destroys it. You lose one ACU. Permanently.
[ ] Scarred: What you saw on Tarsonis effected you more than you thought... you gain Shaken (∞) until you can shake it off (this adds +1 to your heat minimum, meaning you effectively only have 5 heat instead of 6 until its narratively fixed.)
[ ] Real Bad News: When the smoke clears, you find yourself surrounded by the Terran Dominion - Edmund Duke has pulled off a pitch perfect orbital insertion and cordoned off your airspace in record time. You won't be building a Quantum Gate easily out of this situation.

Either way, you get the following sticky sparks!

Confederate Scientists (5)
Zerg Bioforms (10)
Confederate Tech (4)

Quite the haul!

DISCLAIMER: Choosing Real Bad News means that while you have those stickies, you may not be keeping them for long.

The white heat grew brighter, brighter, brighter, and the ACU smashed into the ground. You skidded, grunted, thrown hard against the restraints. Your head cracked hard against the forward console as the entire head of the ACU crumpled in around you. Metal bent inwards and you hissed, your hands going to the jagged surface pressing to your left side. Your palm slashed open and you jerked your hand away. Then the screen crunched inwards - a thin blade piercing through, gleaming bone. Acid dripped along it and the blade jerked back, then slammed back in. You couldn't scream. You couldn't move. The blade slammed in again - then ripped hard to the side.

The screen came apart into a hissing spray of sparks and the whole ACU lurched up and around - you were now hanging from your restraints. The buckles strained, twisted by the impact. The yawning hole before you stretched out into blackness and still, you couldn't scream. Now, it was because your chest was being gripped by the binding belts, tight and fierce. Your nose flared and you tried to move - tried to wriggle, tried to squirm, but nothing responded. You hissed through your teeth and felt a strap give with a snap - gunshot loud. Snap. Snap.

Snap.

You plunged forward through the hole, into the blackness, and crashed into something soft and yielding and terribly warm and alive. You struggled to your feet. Each time you got your feet up and out of the purple mass, they'd just sink down again with the next step - your lungs burned as you struggled and struggled and struggled. Veins writhed as you yanked your feet free, ripping into the biomass. Warm blood spurted your ankles. You were sinking. And behind you, they were getting closer. Slithering. Clicking. Chittering. You struggled, harder, faster.

"Shh. Shhh..."

You whimpered. It was a noise you hadn't made in a decade.

Not since...

Cool fingers touched your cheek. A soft pair of lips whispered in your ear. "Don't struggle."

The breath on your neck came from something horrible. Multiple limbs, writhing. Chittering. The feathery touch of a moth's wing, of a spider's fur, of the antennas of something slithering and terrible. You opened your mouth and-

-and jerked up, gasping, soaked in sweat. You were in your bed, and the scream in your throat remained buried. Fierce. Deep. Your hand went to your chest, clenching on your tanktop, feeling the thunder of your heart against your knuckles. You looked around the room, half expecting to see a Zerg in there. The room was spare and empty, and the automatic lights had come on, winking to life and showing the sterile, hard metal. You remained sitting in bed, trembling, your eyes half closed. You slowly laid back into the bed, panting softly. Calming down.

You hadn't been this fucking rattled since Proxima.

That had been before the Cybrans had really gotten their ACU tech down - when the fights had been all hit and run. They had pulled back through one of the dome cities that they hadn't had a chance to evacuate. You had just been a Colonel, operating under General Smithers - your testimony had been what had gotten him tried and executed. It had taken you six more years to make General, despite your track record. But you...

Psyche said you couldn't have smelled the bodies through a hermetically sealed ACU.

But you had smelled them. How could you not smell them? Fast burning incendiaries were damn good at cooking robotic attack units - there was a reason that attack bombers and artillery were loaded with them. Even if the initial kinetic blast was fine, a lot of delicate components couldn't survive being cooked. Computers ran best when cold, eh?

Psyche said the memories were safely compartmentalized and could be taken out and examined without trauma. Yeah. Well. Psyche could...go...

Your shoulders bunched.

You were terrified. The terror was intense and fierce and irrational - a fierce coldness locking you in place. It had nothing to do with Proxima, and everything to do with Tarsonis - everything to do with your hold. You forced yourself to move. You got to your feet, walked to the wall console, and growled - voice husky. "Show me security camera, Hold B."

The camera blipped on and you saw crystal clear images of the stacked cryo-containers, the autoturrets aimed at them, the mech marines in their positions, ready and watchful with the dutiful, sleepless attentiveness only a simple AI could give to something. You could see through the nearest of the cryo-container: the tightly coiled tail, the curved bone crest, the sharp razor blade arms of the bioform known as Hydralisk. Dr. Hanson was working with the civilians and new names were burned into your mind. Zergling. Hydralisk. Mutalisk.

Ultralisk.

None of those in Hold B.

Still, you watched in silence, the sweat cooling on your skin.

None of the creatures moved.

None even twitched.

You rubbed your palm over your face, then tapped off the screen. It was four in the morning. You walked to the bed, then thumped down into it, eyes closed, your arms stretched above your head.

You couldn't sleep. It wasn't that you were afraid of sleeping. You just couldn't. Too keyed up.

You considered the possibility of going to the tacroom and seeing how things were going there. New intelligence had to be coming in - Dr. Hanson was busy examining the Confederate adjutant that you'd grabbed to see how likely Cybrans in the area were. Tosh had been interviewing the Confederate scientists for more data. And Matt and the communications department were busy keeping tabs on the Dominion and how they were spinning this - thus far, they hadn't reported that the UEF was operating in their area of space. Not too shocking. But...there had been something interesting that he had mentioned.

You opened your eyes, frowning.

Oh there's just been a weird shift in Dominion news traffic - they like bigging up their local heroes. Well, one of their heroes stopped getting any play. James Ranyor. Not sure if it means anything, but the speed of the dropoff seems important.

Do we know anything about him?

Former Confederate Marshal, turned on them and helped the Sons of Korhal take the Confederacy down. Seemed like Duke before Duke.

The Confederate scientists had been...somewhat taken aback to learn General Edmund Duke was working for the Terran Dominion. They had also been shocked and furious to learn about "Emperor" Mengsk. Dr. Philips had described him as a bomb throwing anarchist, a terrorist, a mass murderer, someone who wrapped himself in a flag of dead millions to justify tearing down a perfectly legitimate democratically elected government. The Guild War was still somewhat enigmatic to you, but you got the basic gist of it: The Confederates had put an end to it by nuking Korhal until it glowed in the dark.

You frowned.

Not sleeping in bed wasn't good for you.

You got up and squared your shoulders.

You were going to...

---
HEAT: 1/6

SPARKS
Shaken (∞)

[ ] Go find and talk to Matt - see what he's managed
[ ] Check on the Zerg in person. You just...want to make extra sure.
[ ] Talk to Dr. Hanson about her studies
[ ] Quiz that Samir Duran for more info about the Zerg, Protoss and Terrans.
[ ] Go to the Gym and beat a punching bag black and blue until you feel better
[ ] Write In