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

I got them right where I want them, you said, smirking slightly.

The first ultralisk came charging - smashing past an easily repaired metal extractor. His weight crashed down onto the surface of the trap you had fabricated just for this eventuality. You had guessed it'd either be ultralisks or a swarm of zerglings or a nydus worm, so you'd planned for several eventualities and set up the extractors to do the work for you: It was relatively easy for a metal extractor to also dig out a side tunnel using their nanobore systems.

The ground gave way beneath the bullish Zerg and the massive creature dropped, straight down into the pit. He crashed down and you had enough time to turn and face the other, which crashed directly into your ACU's chest. For a moment you missed the greater level of control that the Cybran ACU had provided you - your feet skidding back on the ground. You could have grabbed and thrown the Ultralisk then, even without hands. But honestly, you didn't need the ACU to do much more than weight the creature down. You adjusted the balance of the ACU, legs crunching into obsidian black ground. Powdered stone flew up in a spray behind your ankles as you glared through the cameras at the massive Zerg - but unlike last time, you could hear its song, the low and deep rumble of its thoughts, the confusing pulse of the psi-disrutor, the overwhelming thunder that was Daggoth's control.

You will die here, on Char, Daggoth's voice hissed into your mind.

You smirked as the ultralisk clasped its bladed arms around the midsection of the ACU. Metal squealed and groaned.

"Gotcha," you whispered.

You felt a moment of shock from Daggoth as you focused - and did exactly as Zeratul had taught you.

Smoke swept around you. Darkness pressed around you. You moved above that strange, glittering network of light, that blazing infinity that stretched beneath this world like a cathedral's ceiling, inverted and impossible.

Then you landed on the head of the ultralisk. Your feet skidded against smooth chitin and you slammed the blade of your psi-sword into the top of its head. The contact wasn't to really hurt it - you'd hit the thickest armor, with the most space between the blade and its brain. No, the main goal was to get you close enough. Your eyes closed and you reached out with your mind, trying to repeat the same weave that you had seen Sarah use before, again and again. It was clumsy and awkward, but you had one big advantage.

Hey. This guy sucks, man.

You weren't sure how the context provided by the Overlords of Sarah's swarm translated that into the ultralisk's brain, but you felt the reverberations bouncing back to you as the massive beast slowly released the ACU, his mandibles swinging wide with a creak and groan of tension released from metal. You jerked your psi-blade free, shutting it down and pressing your palm to the smoking hole you had put in his skull. It was already starting to heal.

Now, feel this song... you thought of Sarah - of every emotion she brought to you, and sang it back, halting and husky. The good and the bad. The truth, naked and bare. You felt the Ultralisk and your songs coming into tune - and they were all the more beautiful for it, reaching higher and higher, and then...distantly, you could feel the almost godlike power of Sarah's focus snatch the thread, then tie it into her own swarm. The ultralisk shook himself and Sarah, her voice shockingly shy, spoke in your mind.

Thank you.

You smirked. Your Hand lives to serve, oh Queen of mine.

Shut up.

She was blushing.

You were suddenly deeply happy that this little psychic communication wasn't being broadcasted on the general frequency - which was burbling with status reports being tossed back and forth between the Terran and Protoss communication networks.

Friend Samantha Clarke, mayhap spend less time flirting and more time slaying Zerg! A boisterous voice boomed into your head, so shockingly loud that you jerked your head up and the ultralisk you stood on actually bucked you off.

"Fenix!?" You yelped, flipping and landing on your feet like a cat, the thick dust of Char strong in your nose. The searing heat of the place scorched your throat and burned your lungs. It felt distressingly right - like your body had been made for this place and you had never known it until now.

I am once more among the warriors of my people, Samantha. Mayhap I shall see you in person later in battle. But know this: We of the Khala will sing songs of the love and valor of your-

Please stop! You thought, furiously, sprinting towards the big hole that the second ultralisk had been dropped into. He had managed to, just barely, crawl out of the pit before you reached him. You slapped your palm onto his head and brute force, grabbed his entire brain and just lobbed the thoughts at Sarah's psychic presence. It was jarring enough that the ultralisk collapsed back into the pit, falling onto his back with a low, mournful roar.

Got him, Sarah said, primly.

Excellent work, Fenix added.

"Shut up, Fenix!" you said.

"General?" Matt asked, his voice crackling and hissing over the radio.

"Nothing!" you said.

"...my scans say you're out of your AC-" he started as you shadowstepped back into your cockpit, steaming slightly. You flicked some of Char off your shoulder. "-U, oh, I...huh. They must have been on the fritz. Are you doing okay out there? My base is coming online. Beginning to put my economic grid towards Dostya's production efforts."

"Received," Dostya said, primly. "Thank you Major. The first Monkeylord will be coming online shortly."

"Excellent work," you said as the ultralisk crawled out of the hole. "My base is..."

You paused, looking at your three metal extractors, one vespine refinery, and big hole.

"...coming along."

"Losing your touch?" Matt asked, his voice amused as you started to que up a build order - slapping down concrete to prevent tunneling, turrets to protect against probing attacks, factories to start pump out units. As the nanolathe worked, you pulled out a coffee pouch out of pure muscle memory - you didn't need the caffine.

"Shut up, Matt," you said.

"Yes sir, General Clarke," he said, but you could tell he was smiling.

You were in hell, surrounded by monsters...and you were smiling too.

Now, to see if it would last.

The battlespace was shaping up with a whole lot of red - the chosen color for Daggoth's forces. But they were getting hemmed in fiercely by Matt's expanding forces, Dostya's defenses, and the air attacks from Artanis. Your own splotch on the field started to grow as you considered your next step. Whatever it was going to be, it was going to be a hell of a lot harder than the beachhead.

You saw three possibilities: The plateau sat on a lot of tunnels. Those were big enough to take your troops in, and you could produce faster than the Zerg could breed, and with better tools for the job. Even if you didn't breach the tunnels, just forcing Daggoth to feed biomass down, rather than out, was worthwhile. The plateau also currently had a very limited air cover - it was really only protected by the rather tepid bubble of static defense that Daggoth had thrown up. Yes, it was a lot of spore colonies, but they had the problem that all static defense had: They didn't move, and they couldn't sally. That was an opening for a mother of all air campaigns.

Finally, you could take a page from the old textbook on offensive defense: make it so that they'd have to come to your position with long ranged artillery. Could build up a defensive wall to make them wish they were running into siege tanks and bunkers, and then start lobbing nukes at them until they came out to fight.

Choices choices...

---
So, the battle for Char is in three steps: A 10 XP landing, 20 XP middle, then 30 XP finale. Because of the way XP works in HEAT, this means you get 30 XP total, since the highest value XP is the XP you get for that session. That way, you get the vibes of a big fight without me leveling you up too fast. Neat!

[ ] Tunnel Fighting (20 XP)
[ ] Air Campaign (20 XP)
[ ] Offensive Defense (20 XP)
[ ] Write In (it will also be 20 XP)

Your plan took only seconds to form. Your fingers began to play along the console and you chinned the coms to Dostya's line. "Dostya, when is your attack ETA?'

She didn't respond immediately with words - instead, attack lines bloomed to existence on your view screen. Your grin was feral. "Damn, girl, you work fast."

"Monkeylords are...my specialty," she said, sounding amused. "Now, what are you going to do in support?"

"Matt, I need you to begin softening them up," you said. "I want to sweep that plateau at least twice with atomics. After that, the experimentals will be ontop of them."

"Are you sure, General?" Matt asked, but you could already see the tiny black and yellow trefoil indicators of atomic missiles incoming. He had, of course, peppered them with nearly fifty of the damn things. You knew why, but it still reminded you of stories of certain nuke happy commanders who had needed to be slapped back into line by central command.

We don't want to colonize radioactive cinders! had been one report's final line, and you had to admit...

No one would mind if Char got a bit more than the necessary amount of gamma and fissile than was normally appropriate.

"Good," you said, aiming your nanolathe.

The first factory was already spitting out mecha marines and the second factory was starting to upgun when the first barrage of missiles streaked through the upper atmosphere. The air above the plateau started to bloom with green flares. Several missiles exploded with flares of pale white light - their fuel detonating. The plateau started to get peppered with chunks of nuclear material - but if it didn't go boom in the big way, then it was really not all that bad. You were pretty sure you could eat enriched fissiles by the spoonful and not even get a tummy ache. The Zerg on that plateau were barely noticing the fire. This was, of course, why Matt had gone for overkill. Missiles came in and came in and came in - and then, finally...one of them hit.

And it took just one.

The blaze of nuclear fire rose up and above plataue, a streaming wave of hot wind blasting past your ACU. Dust rippled through the air and you grinned - and then blinked.

It had taken out five, six spore colonies.

A tiny patch of the plataue had been cleared, not the base shattering swamp you had expected. "What the hell?" you mutered.

Nuclears are always less effective on Zerg than you'd expect. The blast wave, the heat, a lot of the killers that wipe out human buildings just roll off a ton of their biofroms. Sarah said, grimly. Also, they can burrow really fast.

You grumbled.

Three more nukes hit the plataeu. What would have been a glassing barrage worthy of the pre-quantum World War 3 - oft feared and never seen - was instead more of a mild annoyance. It did clear out a lot of their stationary defense, but the plateau still crawled. It crawled and it writhed and it screamed with Zerg...and the Monkeylords were on the march.

The first of the huge machines started to slowly stomp out of Dostya's base as your own factories came online - replicating and expanding along an automated growth curve that took advantage of Char's rich geothermal power and mineral fields. You basically just had to circle, copy, and then slap down new factory arrays every few seconds, and within minutes, the engineering grid you had put together, the mobile units and the factories would spread out like a plague of metal. You were getting ready to out Zerg the Zerg...again. On their home turf. And felt great.

The only problem was it was fucking boring. You had forgotten how long and slow and tedious this kind of building up had been. You'd been running around getting your hands dirty for too long. So, you at least took some time to enjoy the show.

A Monkeylord is a taller than most buildings, wider than an army on the march, and is absolutely covered in guns. It looks a bit like a gigantic, pregnant spider, its exoskeletal frame built around holding aloft a titanic microwave laser, with dual mounted nanolathe equipped missile launchers, a pair of underslung neutron torpedo tubes (those were going to be less useful on Char, considering the lack of water for the experimental spiderbot to slouch into) and two heavy electron-bolter direct firing energy weapons. Those guns were capable of blowing through even heavy armor with just a few hits, ablating off metal with discharges that could have lit up a small sized UEF city for an hour.

The second Monkeylord emerged a few seconds after the first, and the third a bit after that. The three continued to thump forward - and you could see a swarming mass of Zerg bioforms approaching the flanks. Dozens of hydralisks writhed up onto the ridgelines that they Monkeylords were advancing towards and opened fire. Hails of acid spines rattled against hull armor, piercing and melting a bit here, a bit there. In aggregate, they could probably have just melted the huge bots down to bubbling slag, purely through weight of fire.

The Monkeylords didn't give them time.

You could see, both overhead and through your own cameras, the bright red beams of energy carving through the Zerg forces. They didn't even try and pull back. They just kept firing until the beam swept over them, cooking them into slag. And still, the hyrdalisks came. Daggoth, it seemed, wasn't going to bother with Zerglings and you could see why: It took hundreds of hydralisks to even do minor damage, and that was with their ranged attacks.

Then one of the Monkeylords stopped dead.

"My omnisensors are picking up tunneling. If we continue to advance-" The others stopped. Their lasers swept back and forth. Their bolter fired into clumps of Zerg. Missiles rained down destruction and fire. "-we'll be ambushed by the burrowers. We can park here for a few hours without the microwave lasers running too hot, but..."

"Don't worry, Dostya," you said, grinning fiercely. "I'm on this."

Your units had started to arrive at the tunnel systems - mech marines were going to force the initial entryway. But behind them, you had finally brought the big guns out: Titans. They were heavy combat bots, shielded with the same kind of technology the Protoss might have used - though, the Titans were significantly larger, almost as big as their Dragoons, and a good chunk of that was their shield array, so, the Protoss still had the edge there. With the mech marines hitting first, and the Titans to start punching in afterwards, you had quite a few tools to work with. You cracked your knuckles.

And, shit.

If you really wanted to let your inner Zerg out, you were fairly sure your psi-blades could do some good in there.

The first set of tunnels were lightly guarded - mostly by a thronging mass of Zerglings. They had the defensive advantage, but you had the edge...


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HEAT: 0/6
SPARKS: Titans, Mech Marines, Factories, Oh My! (9) These sparks provide a base +1 to any skill check when expended, representing your economic engine - created by tapping the nuclear arsenal and your strategic genius trait. I will be shortening it to Econ in all future updates.

[ ] Operation: Titanomachy - you send in the mechs, then send in the Titans and clear them out tunnel by fucking tunnel. It'll put some strain on the economy, but you can handle it.
[ ] Operation: Ultrakiss - You have an ultralisk friend and he can burrow. Use him to burrow a nice big tunnel, then flood the place with Titans.
[ ] Operation: Getting Your Hands Dirty - ...fuck it! Shadowstep from Zergling to Zergling until the tunnels are clear and your bots can fill in after you.
[ ] Write In