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

You considered your options - but then...a realization hit you. That was a monomolecular knife - nothing special, just a sharp edge and your throat. And...fuck it. You had to hurry. So, you just let your weight drop. Crone actually let out a cry of shock as the knife opened your arteries, slid through your vocal chords, grated against your spine, severed through several nerves - but then your dead weight was tugging to the side and the knife popped free from your body. A truly shocking amount of blood spurted onto the ground as Sarah and Tora stood perfect still, Crone's arms spreading above you as she gaped down at your half severed head.

"...what the fuck!?" Crone exclaimed.

"That's a new one," Tora said.

You reached up.

Crone actually squeaked. She let out a short, sharp little burst of noise - something so high pitched and quick you'd almost not have heard of it. It was the kind of noise you were pretty sure Ghosts weren't meant to make, not after all their training. But it seemed even a Ghost can be shocked when a corpse grabs onto its own head. You pushed the slit of your neck back together, felt the flesh reknitting, reattaching, forging together, then sat up with a lurch. You got your knee under you, then your foot. Your boot squelched against the blood as you rose, using your bulk to catch Crone in the belly. Your free arm swept around and brought her up and around your shoulder.

"Now we go," you said, flashing a grin at Sarah, your neck having a thin white line that closed up and vanished.

"You're Zerg, aren't you," Tora said.

Crone started to stab you repeatedly in the back - her knife plunging into you again and again and again and again. Lung. Heart. Spine. Spine. Heart. Lung. Lung. Lung. Lung. Geeze, Crone, mix it up a bit. You ignored her as each wound snapped shut again almost as fast as her knife withdrew from your flesh. As she stabbed, Sarah sighed and said: "Yeah. But we're working with the Raiders."

Tora hesitated for a few moments, then nodded. "Then what's your plan?"

You chuckled. "We're going to sabotage the psi emitter, then as Duke and Daggoth fight, we drop onto Char and we clear Daggoth out. THe Zerg won't be a threat once the new Overmind is dead."

"...once Kerrigan is in charge..." Tora said, slowly, frowning. Her eyes flicked to Sarah. Her eyes widened fractionally.

You and Sarah tensed. Would Tora change her mind?

Crone did pause in her stabbing, lifting her head up, her voice soft. "Fuck."

Tora shrugged. "Fuck it," she said. "Everything's gone nuts now, might as well go with my gut."

"Your gut is an idiot!" Crone snapped - then stabbed you again.

Sarah turned to the psi-emitter. "Okay..." she said. "I think-"

The door to the room burst open and a squad of men in heavy duty combat armor came thumping in. But rather than carrying rifles, they were entirely unarmed...or, at least, that was what you thought at first. Then you saw the heavy nozzles on their arms, wired to huge tanks of what had to be...to be...your eyes narrowed. "Are those volitaile hydrocarbons!?" you asked.

"Firebats. Great," Crone muttered.

"Smoke em!"

Flames exploded from the six men like a wave of crackling death. The fires swept towards you and Crone. You leaped out of the way, soaring about ten meters into the air before you landed, skidding and swinging a leg wide as the flames roared and flickered, catching even on the durasteel floor. Sarah had rolled behind some cover, then ducked up against the Psi-Emitter. She started to fiddle with it, humming quietly as she worked.

You got this? She asked.

"I thought you could regenerate," Crone muttered, stabbing you - more out of resignation at this point than anything else.

You swung her off your shoulder and skidded her along the floor like she was a xan-she ball. "Yeah, but you're not."

Okay, one thing. I can set this sucker to general disruption - to cause specific chaos in Daggoth's brood, Sarah thought as the Firebats started to stomp towards you - and seriously, who the fuck strapped that much explosive propellant to human beings, then asked them to use those things on...other human beings? Like, did they just build them specifically for the Zerg or something? You fucking hoped so. Or I can do something more...evil.

Evil? you asked.

I can invert the disruptor into a beacon and aim it at the Norad III. Remember Tarsonis?

Ah.

That mental image was...arresting.

---
HEAT: 0/6

Since, well, you can take the Firebats down in one turn, so the chapter ends here with you having successfully 'opened the way' so to speak. What really matters is what Sarah does - on your consul.

[ ] Generalized Disruption - Mission 7 will be "The Culling"
[ ] Focused Beacon - Mission 7 will be "Drawing of the Web"

Either way, next mission is the last Zerg mission so smoke em if you gottem!

Mechanically speaking, you heavily overheated, which added +15 danger to the situation, which I used to spawn people 2, durability 2, damage 3, diff 8 Elite firebats, but you have enough miracles and high level skills to take them down for 4 heat. Easy peasy. Since, you know. You're an extremely high level character.

You turned to Sarah. Despite the firebats, despite the insanity, there was a moment for you to meet eyes.

Don't, you thought.

But...

The word died in your mind - and all that it promised, and all that it meant, flickered and flashed in a spindly network of possible outcomes and routes. Like a org chart, but more organic and chaotic. But as it faded away, all you felt was the tired resignation inside of Sarah. That you were right. She grumbled, turned, and started to tap away at the console.

It would have been what he deserved.

I know.

She hit enter.

And you turned to the Firebats, smirking slightly.

"Lets turn up the heat," you said.

President Riley sat at a desk in a secured chamber, and watched the monitors. The engineering drones at work blazed and flickered their construction beams in an almost hypnotic pattern - flash there, flash here, flickering and whipping back and forth. He rolled a small box between his fingers, frowning intently as he watched. The hazy blue outline of the Black Sun device - the full scale one located on the Sandwich Islands - was almost completed and what he had worked for for years was nearly come. The culmination of dozens of administrations, centuries of effort, countless lives lost in the Infinite War.

His fingers paused in their fidgeting and he looked at the box he held.

It was a small felt box, which he had fabricated weeks before - months, actually. He opened it. It had the small Expeditionary medal that he had planned to give Samantha Clarke.

He flipped the box closed again.

A secretary entered into the secure chamber, carrying his breakfast.

The ETA ticked down in the screen.

Twelve hours.

The joint chiefs would be here soon for the final deliberations and the planning for operations against the Cybran Nation and the Aeon Illuminate - and with them secured, the Koprulu Sector with them. There were Commanders in their ACUs, doing their last checks and preps. Intelligence was being updated from every source they had.

Then the door opened and a harried looking intelligence officer ducked in.

"Mr. President," he said. "Signals just sent this, omega level."

He held out the file - it had the green line indicating an Aeon report.

Riley took it, opened it, and started to read the sparse, clipped sentences. The photographs of grainy Aeon Illuminate supercapital aircraft carriers - the flying disks known as the CZARS. The orbital quantum gate. Two sentences leaped out to him, immediately.

Princess Burke confirmed aboard.

Evacuation.

Riley scowled, then slammed down his report.

"Get me more engineers."

The lightshow was quite remarkable.

"I almost feel bad for the good old boy," Jim said, smirking as he stood beside you - toweringly tall in his power armor, a massive combat rifle slung against one shoulder as, behind you, the entirety of Raynor's Raiders were prepping for the biggest drop in Terran history. You were fairly sure it'd be the biggest in UEF history too - at least, if you counted Kerrigan's brood, Artanis' templars and Raynor's Raiders as a single ACU in their entirety. That seemed about fair to you. That'd make four ACUs total dropping on the same planet, at the same time.

Your grin was merciless. "Almost," you said.

The distant space battle that was going on between the Terran Dominion's vaunted Alpha Squadron and the many, many, many broods of Char was a sight to see: Wraith fighters screamed past their battlecruisers, their laser blasts swatting swarms of Scourges from the sky, while Banshee attack bombers peppered overlord transport creatures with missile barrages that blew them into expanding clouds of boiling, hissing blood. Overlords swept over cruisers to drop zerglings down onto their point defense guns, which shredded the biological attackers. The pinprick actinic flashes of Yamato cannons strobed repeatedly.

The only reason why Duke and his boys were still intact at all was because the disruption that Kerrigan's little stint of sabotage had put out wasn't just making it a Zerg versus Terran. It was a Zerg on Zerg on Zerg on Terran on Zerg on Zerg fight - you could see just as many scourge being ripped apart by mutas as you saw getting pegged by Wraiths and Valkyrie.

"Ahem!"

You turned and saw that Commander Dostya was standing behind you and Raynor. The beautiful, raven haired Cybran looked faintly amused - as she had ever since she had clawed out of her cocoon - and her smirk grew more pronounced. "I see you're enjoying the show, General Clarke," she said. "The scans of the planet are complete. We need you in the war room."

"All right, lets saddle up," Raynor said, setting his rifle aside and turning to thump past Dostya.

"...saddle?" Dostya asked.

"It's an Earth thing," you said, turning and walking with her.

"But Raynor is from Mar Sara," Dostya muttered.

"What can I say?" you shrugged. "The Koprulu Sector has managed to keep some traditions alive."

"Hurm," Dostya said, then frowned as you both came to the elevator. "What are your plans after Char, General?"

You sighed. That had been weighing on you for some time. "After Char, there's the Dominion. Their two big diplomatic gambles have failed - they're out of allies. I think we can maybe get Mengsk out at the conference room...maybe..." You said, frowning slightly. Dostya snorted, loudly. You glanced at her, arching an eyebrow.

"The quote that comes to mind is 'i will see this sector burned to ashes around me before I give it up'," she said, her voice dry.

"Right," you said, pinching the bridge of your nose. Then, pausing. "How the hell did you hear that?"

"The Adjutants and I are able to synch our implants up now," Dostya said, grinning slightly. "Now that I'm no longer your girlfriend's pet."

"...right..." you fidgeted. "Sorry about that."

"It's not you that needs to apologize," Dostya said. The elevator opened up into the bustling conference room where the planning for the invasion of Char thrummed. She put her hand out, stopping you from entering. Her eyes fixed yours. "...but after the small despot, what do you plan to do?" She looked right into your eyes. You looked right back, and gave her a thin little smile.

"Earth," you said.

She regarded you. Then she nodded.

The holographic map of Char and the orbital battlespace around it flickered in the center of the room while Artanis, Kerrigan, Jim Raynor, Major Horner and Mira Han stood around it. Mira was trying to sneak her arm around behind Matt's back, but he kept fidgeting slightly away from him. You stepped up beside Kerrigan, and slid your arm around her back and she leaned her head on your shoulder.

"All right," Matt said. "This is what we're working with."

The map showed that Char was a volcanic hellscape - the kind of planet where metal extractors barely needed to work. It was like Redstone...but a bit less volatile. Large plateaus rose above seething, molten rockflows, while vast obsidian plains were home to Zerg in the billions. Creep suffused the planet, and tunnel systems were detectable down to the upper limit of the sensors. When you saw the population figure, your eyebrows went right up. "Why is the estimated number of Zerg a system error, Matt?"

"Well, General, it's because the sensors can't get enough confirmed readings to give an estimate considering on the rate that new forms are being detected and old forms are being killed off," Matt said, frowning. "Still, the disruption means most of the planet is going to be relatively easy to secure-"

"Of course it will," Sarah said, smirking. "Once I get down there, I can begin to take control of each hive cluster that isn't directly controlled by Daggoth."

A faint sense of unease came from half the table at that. You shifted slightly in your stance, and your grip tightened on Sarah's hip.

"...to use against him!" Sarah said, hurriedly. "I'm not going to stab anyone in the back."

"Again," Swann muttered from the background - he was not at the table, but instead working at a nearby console.

"Swann," Jim said. "Let it go." He held up his hand.

The issue I have is that the main defense around the so called New Overmind remain as intact and ferocious as ever, Artanis said, gesturing to the central plateau where the Overmind was congealing. It looked like a writhing mass of flesh surrounding a vast, hardened structure of bone and Zerg regenerative tissue. You couldn't even count the number of spore and sunken colonies, let along the thronging waves of fliers that swept around it, a maelstrom of chiten and muscle. You frowned.

"Why don't we just nuke it from orbit and save the trouble?" Mira asked.

"That plateau is on top of the most stable part of Char," Matt said, his voice grim. "There are kilometers of tunnels under it, probably two entire secondary hive clusters of equal size direclty underneath it."

"Then nuke it more!" Mira exclaimed.

Your atomics will do no good here, Mira Han.
The new voice caused everyone to turn. From the darkness of the bridge emerged Zeratul, his movements guarded.

The Overmind can only be slain, truly slain, by the energies of a Nerazim and Khalai combined into one - this false pretender to the throne of evil is weak enough that I believe you need only my talents. Or...that of my student.
"Whose that?" Matt asked.

You know her well, Major Horner, Zeratul said, then slapped his palm down onto your shoulder.

You blinked as everyone looked at you. Shockingly, you started to blush. "I-I...really?" you asked.

You learned fast, Zeratul said. For a Zerg.
Sarah scowled slightly.

You breathed out a slow sigh. You were used to being the most important person on the battlefield - but only because you were one of two people on the battlefield. Now you'd be the most important person in a multipronged army.

"All right," you said. "Here's the play."

---
Time to go ALL IN haha see what I did there?

ORDERS FOR RAYNOR AND MIRA'S FORCES
[ ] Orbital Support (negates any Duke attacks)
[ ] Siege tanks! (negates land flanks)
[ ] Tunnel Clearing! (negates nidus worms)
[ ] Nuclear support (reduces plateau strength)
[ ] Write in

ORDERS FOR ARTANIS' TEMPLARS
[ ] Orbital Support (negates any Duke attacks)
[ ] Cannon Rush! (Provides a safe place to rest for 1 hour to recover heat)
[ ] Dark Templar Forces! (one time "surprise rescue" force)
[ ] Carriers (negates air attacks)
[ ] Write in

ORDERS FOR DOSTYA
[ ] Experimental Mobile Rapid-Fire Artillery (...I mean it's kinda self explanatory)
[ ] Experimental Spiderbot (produces gigantic mechanical spiders)
[ ] Experimental Gunship (produces gigantic gunship platforms)
[ ] Base Building (produces streams of standard units)
[ ] Write in

POLITE REQUESTS TO YOUR GIRLFRIEND
[ ] Gather the Swarm - takes control of the outlying sectors
[ ] Reap the Whirlwind - she accompanies you to fight Daggoth
[ ] Write in

The mechancial impact of these is less on stat buffs and more "how does Dragon Cobolt spend Danger to represent the threats you face." Like, if you negate Duke, then I won't spend danger to spawn sudden battlecruisers, see? Man, my system rules. It's just so good. Every time I make a mechanical decision in this quest, I go, "Wow, HEAT works really well, holy shit!"