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

The mutas wheeled through the vacuum around the asteroid in that queer, microgravity shuffling they used. You didn't have time to work out exactly how they did it with wings - you just had a few seconds to work out a plan. You focused and sang something quick, fast, and authoritative to the zergling swarms. It was unsettling - and thrilling - to feel your hand reach into them. Through them. To feel their movement like one vast carpet of living flesh but also to feel their individual thrumming strands, their chorial song, intermixing and humming through your mind. It was intoxicating and swift and fleshy. Like sinking your fingers into clay and shaping the battlefield.

Through the camera lenses on your infested ACU, you could see the zerglings seem to panic, writhing about as the mutalisks wheeled around - then dove. And at once, the panicking masses stopped writhing and dug, burrowing into the asteroid. Chunks of fine grained silicates started to spurt into vacuum, blooming up and outwards with the strange grace of minimal gravity impacts. It was finer than you expected too - but you could also feel the buzzing vibrations of the zerglings as they vibrated into the ground like they were drill bits.

They were under the ground and the mutalisks were pulling up.

Just in time.

You thrust the nanolathe out and that motion was enough to send the net whistling out. The weights snapped it wide and the first few mutas flew right into it. The net had been a fairly simple geometric pattern, but you hadn't needed to program it into the nanolathe. It had just been as easy as thinking, nerves and neurons between your distributed form, sliding into the lathe and clicking. You lashed out again, then again, and more mutas started to wheel away, trying to get away from the sudden and unexpected snatching. As they tumbled, you frowned, then focused. A biological arm extruded itself from one of the messy clumps of tumorous flesh that swaddled the Cybran ACU - it was an ugly, malformed looking thing, all soft white muscle and glistening sinew.

It worked, though. The hand snatched the dangling guidelines and yanked and the mutas you had snatched were brought down to the ground, where they squalled and wailed in confusion. The few that had gotten away started to wing off towards the depths of space, leaving the asteroid behind as the zerglings emerged from the ground. They gathered around the trapped mutas - who lashed and thrashed so badly that the nets started to cut into their tough, leathery hides.

The humming excitement of the zerglings buoyed you and you...opened your mouth...

Closed it.

Closed your eyes.

You jerked your head.

"The base," you said, through clenched teeth, speaking aloud in some dark recess of the Cybran, using vocal chords and radio waves. Just...trying to drag yourself back into yourself after that delirious moment of organic cooperation. The zerglings chittered, then turned and swarmed off. They'd deal with the rest of the asteroid in due time. You stomped your ACU towards the mutalisks, peering down at them. They looked quite pathetic, trapped and writhing, their wings beating. Their song was distant, muffled. It was like they had shrouded themselves from your mind - or were being shrouded.

You didn't hear Daggoth's sneering tone. You didn't hear his contempt. But you felt his attention.

Then you felt it snap off. Through the signing of the Swarm, you knew that his hatchery and the slow, sessile minds within had been ripped to shreds. Their personalities had been drawn back into Daggoth, and through him, into the endless, churning mass that was the Swarm. And now, the muted, muffled noises of the mutalisks hammered into your mind.

"You're ours now," you said, quietly. The sound of your human voice cut through the song, a discordant note. Sour and ugly. When had your voice started to sound so alien to you? It had only been a few days. Could you really lose yourself that fast? You pushed those thoughts aside and continued to speak. "You will stay here and guard this place. It will be...it will keep you safe."

The mutalisks writhed. They squalled. You could hear their fear.

A warm hand squeezed your shoulder. A fleeting contact. Then Sarah's voice, soft and soothing and tinged with the Zerg's resonance, murmured in your mind. Excellent work, my Hilt. I'll handle their integration. Now, what's with all this?

Her attention, like a great big glowing spotlight, shone over your hardware. You chuckled. "That's the fun part, my Queen," you murmured.

The engineers worked as the mutalisks were brought into Kerrigan's swarm - they flattened the terrain with buzzing, hissing beams of nanorobots. Then they layered down the black and red geometric patterns that the Cybran Nation used as their foundation for the transmission of energy and matter. By the time the T3 engineers were rolled out, the asteroid had been turned into a rounded shell, with gridlines of anti-aircraft weaponry, interlocking T2 shield emitters creating a hazy, reddish atmosphere around the bubble itself. In the equatorial band of the asteroid was a studded line of nuclear missile silos, each one getting stocked with their own fabricated cache of nuclear weapons. You threw in a few additional redundant engineering holdouts, set up the patrol routes, and then breathed a sigh of relief.

It had all taken a little less than six, seven hours - most of it mind numbingly tedious.

That's...what we were hoping for... Sarah's voice was gloating. Pleased. Think that Daggoth can knock it down before we come back to Char?

You considered. The engineers had enough still extant programming, and the mutalisks and drones could infest the place and add that damn Zerg adaptability to the situation. Having sentient, even if they were a bit untrained and unexperienced when it came to the art of nuclear weaponry, critters around would also mean that Daggoth coming up with something clever that beats the stupid programming less likely. But at the end of the day, a sufficiently speedy rock could still obliterate anything. That was always the problem. Hell, even if your shield emitters held up - and you had interlocked enough of them - the kinetic impact could still change the orbit enough to effectively 'kill' the platform while keeping it fully intact.

Maybe, you temporized.

Good enough. Come on. We're heading out.

The Leviathan loomed overhead, blotting out the stars.

You slithered from the ACU. Your body connected together, piece by piece, slower than you were used too. You weren't sure if it was exhaustion or distaste at the snapping apart and coming back together again. When you opened your eyes, you were in the cavernous storage sack that held the ACU, and Dostya was long gone - sucked back into the wall to be placed somewhere else. You pondered the spot where she had been, and felt the slow lurch of...what was almost a quantum jump, but...not. The sensation left you feeling sick to your stomach - but it faded.

You pursed your lips. You were on your way to wherever Sarah was planning next. Your Queen. You had stolen Daggoth's prize underling, and...possibly his main hope for reaching out to Mengsk. If he was that scared...hurm. You frowned. The whole Sector seemed to be in an uproar thanks to yourself - Mengsk had reached out to the Protoss, the Zerg reached out to Mengsk, Raynor's Raiders were running around...

Oh, and your girlfriend stabbed you in the back.

You scowled. That thought pissed you off. It hurt too much for a word as fleeting as girlfriend - but you hadn't known her for long enough...or nearly well enough, apparently...for anything but girlfriend to fit. Your claws snicked out and you leaned your forehead against the cool metal of the Cybran ACU.

Fuck it.

You were...

---
HEAT 0/6

[ ] Going to find Sarah
[ ] Going to find Zagara
[ ] Going to find Dostya
[ ] Going to find Izsha
[ ] Going to brood
[ ] Write In (you only have time during this warp jump for one person)