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

You could tell she wasn't telling the whole truth. Well. There was more than one way to get an answer out of someone. You sighed, then slid out of the bed. Your eyes fell on the sliver of a doorway that led into the bathroom - and you could see yourself in the mirror: Blond hair tumbling down around your sharp cheeks, broad muscular shoulders, the fine patchwork of crosshatched scars along your left shoulderblade. The furrow that Sarah had put into you. You winced. She really needed to trim her fingernails. You stood, sighed, and then walked to the wall mounted fabber, saying: "It's okay."

Sarah, her knees drawn up to her chest, watched you intently. "Well, good." She paused. "Why do I feel like there's a but in there. With one T."

You grinned and shook your hips slightly - the little physical bit drawing a snort from her. You turned from the fabber with a drink bulb and a molecule perfect recreation of your favorite bourbon. You held the bulb up. "I drank this, first time, back in...oh..." You made a face. "3862, I think. Right out of the Academy, me and some cadets quantum gated from Earth to Tau Ceti in a walkable portal. Stepped from Cape Canaveral to the Promenade of Eternity like that." You snapped your fingers. "Eleven light years and something like thirty steps."

Despite herself, Sarah looked impressed.

"And i declared this bourbon so fine, so absolutely perfect, I took a bottle back, had it taken apart by a nanofabber, then saved the file on a person disk. Every time I drink it, it's the same," you said, then knocked back the brew. It was just as smooth as you remembered. You hissed, through your teeth, then crumpled the bulb between your fingers - relishing the faint crunch of plastic.

Sarah ducked her head forward, to peer at you between your bangs. She let you talk. That's part of what you liked about her - she always seemed interested in your stories. You hoped to hell you could bring it to the point you wanted to make. "That's the thing about the fabber. It always makes it, uh, exactly the same. It's why my left leg is my left leg, and not missing. It's why, when I hit my eightieth year or my hundredth, there going to make a new heart, a new liver, a new spleen, a new set of joints, new bones. Whatever I need, when I need it, I get it." You paused. "The only thing we don't get a second shot at is people."

Sarah nodded, slowly.

"Three of those people I went drinking with died before I was thirty," you said, grimly, holding up your hand, pinkie, ring, middle. "Yancy bought it on Rubicon II, when an Aeon task force saturation bombed his position with atomics before he could eject. Damion got it when his colony was overrun by Cybran terrorists and he was put up against a wall and shot, alongside the rest of the admin staff. And...Riley...changed."

"Riley...the President?" Sarah asked, sitting up. "The President of the UEF graduated from the academy at the same time you did?"

You grinned. "There's a reason he had all those embarrassing stories."

"I just assumed it was from dossiers," Sarah admitted, blowing with her lips to flip her bangs away from her eyes. "Now, I have a pretty low opinion of most politicians - consider..." She gestured with one long, elegant arm at the window. She had timed it well. E1's orbit had brought it into view of the Dominion battlefleet that was hanging at the L2 point over Aiur. From this distance, the battlecruisers were nothing but brilliant sparks of actinic fusion fire from their aft engines. But you could imagine them and the eagle insignia of the Terran Dominion and the might it represented - Emperor Arcturus Mengsk and his own would-be line of rulers to follow. A whole fucking dynasty. Your nose wrinkled at the thought of it.

"Riley ran on winning the Infinite War," you said. "A thousand year conflict and he thought he could wrap it up in two elections. Didn't quite work out. But it got the votes, and his orders have gotten a lot of my fellow Commanders killed. Those two others I mentioned? They were killed over a ten year period. In the past three, we've lost six Commanders." You frowned. "I can't get them back, Sarah, not with a fabber."

She inclined her head.

"So..." you walked, slowly, to the bed. You knelt beside it, looking into her eyes. "Riley was my closest friend. And he didn't fucking consult with me before he went on his collection of boondoggles. I'm a soldier. I have to follow his orders. but...if I could have talked to him as Sam, not as General Clarke, and just said...something..." you trailed off. "I don't know, anything...maybe those commanders would be alive, maybe..."

"Maybe you wouldn't even be here?" Sarah asked. That wrongfooted you slightly. "Didn't this whole expedition get started to give him a win? Some easy habitable planets to add to the Federation?"

"I..." you sighed. "Maybe."

She shook her head. "You can't always make people do the right thing, General." She leaned forward, then kisses your forehead. Then, quietly. "But you're right. I was...I'm..." She paused. "I've been lying to you. I've been...keeping secrets." You felt a cold flip in your belly, but before you could say anything, Sarah continued. "I...said I was a civilian on Tarsonis. I wasn't." Her eyes looked down. "I was in the Confederate military. Special operations."

You sighed, softly.

"I've done bad things, Sam," Sarah whispered. "Some really, really bad things."

You drew yourself onto the bed next to her, sliding your arm around her shoulder gently. You probed at your own heart, the same way you'd touch a broken tooth with your tongue. Your eyes half closed and you leaned your head down, pressing your cheek to her brilliant red hair. The smell of her sweat, of your sex mingling together, of the flavor of Sarah's self, all of it swirled together in your nostrils like a heady drug.

"What kind of bad things?" you asked.

"F-Fuck, General," Sarah hissed. "You've seen the fucking specs on the Confed marines!"

You had. Their power armor was built to inject them with combat stimulants that would dull empathy and enhance reaction speed and aggression. Their brains were riddled with low-key modifications of Adjutant cybernetics, focusing on aggression control and berserker triggers. The worst of them weren't even able to take the suits off - they were sealed into them until they died or earned their 'retirement.' The only thing grimmer than their atrocity rate was their casualty percentages.

But still...Sarah wasn't telling you everything. You could tell.

But did you really need to hear-

She shoved away from you, her hands going to her face. "I never had a choice. And I still don't, do I? You can't change the fucking past, can you?" She spun around, glaring at you as she stood before the door. Her eyes were furious and gleamed with tears. "No matter what you feel, no matter what you think, you just can't change what has happened."

"If you were...conscripted," you started.

"You wouldn't be fucking equivocating about that if you knew the gory fucking details, Sam," Sarah said, her voice almost breaking. She grabbed her tank top, yanking it on. "Fuck. I...I need to go or else...I..." She put her head against the door, screwing her eyes shut. She whispered something, very soft. "...it's almost time. Isn't it." She bumped her head against the door again, gently.

"Sarah-"

She put her hand on the open button.

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HEAT: 0/6

[ ] Stop her (Ends ACT ONE)
[ ] Let her go, give her time (Begins Smash and Grab the Uraj)