92 – Old Times And New
92 – Old Times And New
The return to Joey Ray's Bar was triumphant, even if it was only three people. With the rest of the Raiders heading off to Backwater Station to regroup and fort up, it was – as Tychus had put it – time to put their feet up and let their hair down. Not that the convict had much of the latter to speak of these days. Yuriko seemed pleased as punch, near as Jimmy could tell, though it was hard to be certain considering she hadn't taken off her armor or helmet yet. She'd killed a heck of a lot of Dominion without pause, though. The ruin left behind her souped up vulture was more than enough evidence for that, let alone the stories from the rebels. The burn of the bourbon as it went down was even better than usual, the taste of victory adding a welcome note to it all. Yuriko seemed happy enough to sit in the corner, fiddling with her gear with her helmet off and nursing a drink, while Jimmy watched the news a bit – Vermillion was a pile of shit as usual – and fielded questions from Tychus.
"So, lemme ask you this, Jimmy. How are we gettin' off of this rock, especially now that we've…acquired one of Mengsk's artifacts and killed summa his boys?"
Jimmy sighed and leaned back slightly in his chair.
"It's just a matter of waiting Tychus. I've got transport coming, all we've got to do is sit tight."
Tychus chuffed as he grabbed another drink.
"Fair enough, old buddy. After that fight we had, I'd say we'd earned some R&R."
Of course, it was right then that two different communicators went off. The Adjutant appeared, while Yuriko stood up and grabbed her gun, one hand going to her ear, eyes widening before she practically leapt out the door.
"Commander, I am detecting a massive concentration of zerg bio-signatures landing at the abandoned dig site."
Jimmy felt his stomach drop out as he rounded on Tychus.
"Damn it, Tychus, I should have known."
Oversized metallic fingers rose up, the palms of the hands facing Jimmy.
"I swear I didn't know no nothing about no zerg, Jimmy!"
Outside of the bar, both of them clearly heard the muted roar of Yuriko's super-vulture turning over. The Adjutant continued dispassionately.
"Given their current course, the zerg will likely overrun this location within the hour."
Only then did Yuriko come back inside, her helmet once more concealing her face.
"Gentlemen, we need to move. I don't fancy fighting zerg with just the three of us."
Jimmy just stared at her for a moment before grimacing and grabbing the terminal off of the bar and closing it. A scowl was directed at Tychus next before he began moving again, the door sliding open to reveal their rides waiting. Or, rather, his and Tychus' as the super vulture that Yuriko rode was clearly already invisible.
"Damn it. I knew things were going too smooth," he muttered under his breath.
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The next hour was frantic in every sense of the word. What had begun as a rebellion against the Dominion had become a race against time and the zerg. While Jimmy tried to build up a base at Backwater Station in a twisted mirror of the past, he coordinated with Yuriko as she blitzed around the immediate area to both rescue isolated rebel groups and slow the oncoming horde. By now he was fully suited up in his armor, because like hell was he going to sit around in the command center while his boys and girls fought and possibly died. And he wasn't going to let Tychus sit there either. So now the two of them were sitting in a bunker next to some other Raiders, firing out with as many impaler rounds as they could put down range as possible.
Only a minute after the first few flesh-meteors had made impact onto Mar Saran soil once more, a thousand zerglings had come howling out of the hills, joined by slithering hydralisks and screeching mutalisks flying through the air. There was already a lot of dead zerg, but the aliens had never been bothered by casualty numbers in their entire lives. The hastily constructed bunkers were the only possible protection against the charge, with plenty more Raiders and rebels joined together firing at the hordes themselves. Two bridges were the only two main access points, and it was there that the bunkers had been placed one after another before being stuffed full of folks in CMC armor. Missile turrets had been hastily thrown up throughout the station, firing out at the mutalisks as they spat acidic death down at the Raiders and those with them.
"They're still coming, they're still coming!"
"Holy shit, holy fucking shit!"
"AHHHHHHHHH!!"
"Goddamn it to hell, Jimmy, I shoulda stayed on ice rather than deal with this shit!" Tychus punctuated his words by slamming some fresh ammo into his rifle before proceeding to empty it again in the direction of the enemy.
Jimmy, for all of the direness of the situation, couldn't help but laugh as he kept firing over the barricades. Tychus had acted with complete confidence and control up until he'd first stared at the oncoming zerg, something that the hardened and hopefully former criminal had never seen in his life before going away. It was one thing to see some news clips, another entirely to fight the zerg face to face. Tychus wasn't a coward, of course, but it was a hell of a jump to go from train robberies to a damn near existential fight against a devouring alien race that only wanted you as biomass or soldiers. Thankfully, Jimmy hadn't seen any infested marines walking around. That, among many things, was one of the most nightmarish parts of the zerg, to see good folks become so horribly transformed.
"God Almighty, Jimmy, these things just keep coming!" Tychus hollered over the sound of his gun. "I musta killed a hundred by now!"
"Well yeah, Tychus, they're the damn Zerg, and focus down the hydralisks, damn it, don't just shoot the zerglings!"
"Well which one are-,"
"THE BIG SNAKES!"
Jimmy ducked slightly as hydralisk spines came raining down towards the bunker, specifically because too many of them had been allowed to get close. Tychus had barely even flinched as some impacted into his shoulder armor without actually touching the flesh within, and instead focused his fire properly for the first time since they came running into the bunker. It was that quality of fighter – the absolute lack of hesitation – that had made Tychus one of the most dangerous men in the Sector, even before he got put on ice. And despite everything, Jimmy couldn't help but be glad to be shoulder to shoulder with him once again. In unison, both men rose and fired as one at the hydralisks as the oversized snake mutants hissed and slithered their way through the zergling hordes.
Then one of the zerglings somehow managed to get right up into the bunker, squeezing its body through the opening slit to the screams of terror by all present inside. Though each individual zergling was often little more than a large dog in size, it was a large dog with razor sharp teeth and spines capable of tearing into CMC armor that bounced and bent itself unnaturally to get where it needed to go. Tychus bellowed as it leapt upon him, causing him to stumble back as another few zerglings got into the bunker, each leaping upon their own targets. Raynor didn't stop firing once, though he had to do so one-handed while using the prodigious strength provided by the armor to punch, kick, and stomp the other zerglings down as quickly as possible. Tychus got a deep scratch along his faceplate before he was able to throw the zergling attacking him backwards against the wall, yelling as he rammed his gun into the creature's stomach and fired at point blank range, killing it instantly. There wasn't any time to pause, either, as the fight outside hadn't stopped while they'd been fighting for their lives. The veteran Raiders had immediately stepped back up to the slits, firing once more at the enemy, while the greener rebels seemed frozen or were hyperventilating at their near deaths by alien hands. Tychus was shaken enough that Raynor could see it even within the armor. Still, if he knew his old friend, he knew just how to get him out of that funk.
"You need to take a seat, Mr. Findlay?" Raynor asked sardonically. "I get it, zerg scared the hell out of me too when I first fought 'em."
Tychus just looked up at him, then out at the zerg outside the bunker, and then snarled.
"I ain't scared o' nuthin," he growled as he purposefully started putting more implaler rounds downrange. "You hear me, you alien freaks, I'm Tychus fuckin' Findlay, and I ain't scared of you!"
Seconds later, series of repeated explosions sounded in the distance, getting closer and closer as they fought. Eventually the flashes became visible too, and the zerg began turning around to face the new threat. Jimmy strained his ears and heard the noise of rapidly firing gatling cannons and a laser as well. In seconds, Yuriko's super vulture screamed past, completely destroying the momentum of the aliens as she came and killing them by the dozens per second. A series of cheers went up from the other Raiders in the other bunkers, and as one whether Mar Saran or otherwise they reloaded and began firing as one. The super vulture swerved about so that it could fully face the zerg before firing every weapon it had. The sheer amount of grenades it apparently stored was incredible. Within a minute, the latest zerg push was nothing more than a field of dead and burning meat filled with bullet wounds.
"Shiiiit, Jimmy, that ride of hers is one hell of a death machine. Could use one myself," Tychus whistled as he gazed upon the field of sizzling meat.
Jimmy just snorted and turned about to clap a hand onto a fellow Raider in camaraderie before heading past them out of the bunker.
"Hold it down, Willis, we'll be back."
"Sure thing, Raynor!"
"Hold up, Jimmy, wait for me!" Tychus called before rushing after him.
Outside of the bunker, there was a faint shimmering pop before the stealth field of the super vulture was turned off. Yuriko waved at the two of them approached, steam clearly coming off of the guns at the front of her ride, subtle shuffling and clunking coming from the ball turret grenade launchers as they reloaded. A number of marines emerged from their bunkers and began running off to get more ammo crates, while others remained behind just in case.
"Hello boys," Yuriko called out to them, "You all right? That was a lot of zerg."
"To be honest with you, ma'am," Jimmy shook his head. "That wasn't anything compared to how things were during the Brood War. The zerg can be way worse than this."
He entirely missed the wholly appalled look on Tychus' face behind him. Yuriko, on the other hand, merely tilted her head from side to side again. It was the most amount of expression she could manage with her face completely concealed by her helmet. Its featureless surface didn't even have a scratch remaining on it.
"Fair enough. Do you have an ETA on your ship's arrival?" She asked as the three of them began walking back up the hill to where the rest of the station's facilities remained. "I came by commercial shuttle, not a battlecruiser."
"Soon, hopefully," Jimmy sighed, "It's not like we were expecting any of this. Oh, and hey, thanks for helping the rebels out earlier."
Yuriko shrugged.
"It was no trouble. Didn't want them to get gobbled up out there. Didn't hurt that they had some guns and armor on them too."
"There is that," Jimmy nodded before slowing in his steps. "How did you find them again? We didn't even know they were out there, comms being what they are."
In response, Yuriko just tapped her head.
"Zerg 'minds' are quite different from human ones."
"…fair enough."
All three of them had to step out of the way of a pair of rushing SCVs carrying building materials as they rushed down to perform patch repairs on the bunkers damaged in the last rush.
"Hey, uh," Tychus said, faceplate sliding up so he could release a puff of smoke from his cigar into the open air. "What about you?"
Yuriko turned back to him, almost seeming to float for an instant as she spun to face him, frictionless on the ground.
"What do you mean, Mr. Findlay?"
"You said you were with MannCo. Are they gonna be sending any ships or something?"
It was a good question, Jimmy had to admit. MannCo had only shown up quite recently, but everyone knew of just how deep their pockets seemed to run. Enough to be able to go to war with themselves, with everything from tanks and nuclear missiles to battlecruisers and wraith squadrons.
"They don't have any clients here," Yuriko answered plainly, her hip cocking to the side. "Even if someone were to contact them right now? One, I doubt either of you two have the money to purchase a Planetary Defense Package, and two, they'd likely not get here in time."
Jimmy glanced at the newly released former convict, who looked right back at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Hypothetically-,"
Yuriko rattled off a number that made Tychus sputter and Jimmy wince.
"So that's not happening," she looked between the two of them. "Look, we got the residents of Backwater Station safe, we pulled in all the rebels we could, and based on the last scans, yeah the Zerg are surrounding us, but they don't seem to be spreading out across the entire planet at the moment. Which, in turn," she sidestepped as the SCVs rushed past her back towards the mineral field and vespene refinery, their repair jobs done, "Means that everyone else has time to evacuate. So take solace in that."
"I do not think that I will," Tychus sniffed, dropping his finally burnt out cigar to the earth, stomping it lightly with his boot and withdrawing a fresh one. "Because at the moment, I'm still on Mar Sara with the damn zerg."
"Fair enough."
A few minutes later, the alarms sounded again, and less than a minute after that the fighting began once more. Though there weren't any of the larger zerg, which Jimmy was thankful for as he doubted their ability to repulse ultralisks or anything like that. That still didn't mean that zergling swarms and hydralisks weren't a threat, they were in fact more than enough to take down most anyone and anything. The slow, the stupid, and the unlucky still got hit, and more than a few went down, were it not for the medics, both those who had appropriated the suits from the Dominion and those who were members of the Raiders. But that didn't mean that there weren't losses. Worse, for Jimmy at least, none of them were Raiders. Instead, it was the rebels that suffered the most, people who'd been willing to fight and die against the oppression of the Dominion were people who were wholly unprepared for the alien menace of the zerg actually right up in their faces.
"Raynor," Yuriko's voice came clear across the radio despite the firing of dozens of rifles and missile turrets all at once. "You're being overrun. I'm going to take out the hives."
The sheer casualness of her voice made him miss his next few shots on a hissing hydralisk, though thankfully Tychus quickly put it down. Or maybe it was the high pitched whine of an increasingly familiar super vulture rushing past the bunker line, trailed by a series of explosions launched by the grenade turrets.
"You're…wait, what? By yourself!?" He sputtered and then shouted back. "You might have a fancy vulture, lady, but you've never gone into a zerg hive before!"
He had individual, specific nightmares about each time he'd been forced to do just that, each experience its own horrific entity in his dreams.
"Relax, Raynor," Yuriko replied with a chuckle with just a hint of maliciousness behind it. "I was the one doing recon earlier, remember? The same recon that found those lost rebels?"
"Damn it, Yuriko!"
"It'll be fine. These ones are smaller than battlecruisers, and I'm pretty sure they can still implode."
"What the hell are you even talking about?!"
But she didn't respond, no matter how many times he tried to hail her. Not that Jimmy could spend too much time on it, forced to focus on the rather more immediate and pressing horde of zerg rushing down at them. Except, he couldn't help but notice, that the pressure began to lessen rather quickly. Even towards the very back, he could see how the zerg were actually beginning to peel off, to return to back whence they'd come. To where Yuriko had gone. Slowly, the whole horde actually began to slow in reinforcement, until more and more of its strength was heading right back towards the hives. Raiders and rebels alike slowly began to peter out their fire, save for a few, until most of them were just standing in their bunkers looking at one another in confusion.
"Uh…," Tychus' faceplate lifted as he glanced at Jimmy. "Is this…normal? For zerg?"
"No, Tychus," Jimmy shook his head as he headed outside of the bunker to get a better field of vision, "No it is not."
It was then that an earthquake rippled outwards from the hills, shaking the ground and nearly causing Jimmy to stumble over in his armor.
"What in the sam hell was that?!" Tychus cried aloud.
"I've got no idea," Jimmy stared at the hills, eyes wide.
Only then did the radio crackle to life.
"There, one hive down," Yuriko said blandly.
Jimmy just stared towards the hills, over the already overrun and ruined terran buildings outside of the station, his rifle going slack in his grip.
"Admittedly, a bit harder than I thought it would be, their structures have impressive structural strength for being purely organic," she continued, only a faint thrum in the background coming from her screaming engines. "Actually had to strain myself after I shot it."
The alarms began to sound again, snapping Jimmy out of it, and he turned to see another zerg rush attacking the western bridge.
"Of course, now that I have their measure, it should be a bit easier."
He didn't even bother her words with a response, his mind simply shutting down as he tried to comprehend if she was even telling the truth, and if so, how. Either she was, or she wasn't. Fifteen minutes and two more low-level earthquakes later, he got his answer, the zerg having all run back to where they'd come from and not come back. Instead, whirring along the road, super vulture only a bit scuffed, its stealth shield down, came Yuriko. With a jaunty wave directed somehow specifically at him, she scooted her ride up and over the bunker and slowed it to a stop just behind them. Jimmy and Tychus were far slower in their approach this time.
It was one thing to know that she was a ghost. Jimmy knew even better than Tychus about how dangerous ghosts could be, their technology and abilities having increased significantly since the latter had been put on ice.
But it was another entirely to see her completely unharmed, apparently after having taken down three zerg hives one after another.
The only psychic that Jimmy knew who could possibly have been that powerful was Sarah.
"So, that's the nearest hives put down, but the zerg landed quite a lot of forces onto the planet," she said as they came close enough, as if what she'd done was either an impossible lie or a terrifying truth.
"How'd you pull that off then, huh? You got some nuclear warheads hidden in that ride of yours?" Tychus asked, one eyebrow raised as he looked it up and down.
"Only one," she replied calmly, tilting her head as both men quickly stepped back. "Calm down you big babies. I don't need nukes to take down hives."
To punctuate her words, she summoned forth a purple and white sphere of pure psychic energies in the palm of one hand, while the other hefted her enormous gun that she rather meaningfully looked at.
"I've met a couple of ghosts in my time," Jimmy shook his head. "Ain't none of 'em could do something like what you're trying to say you just did. Never seen a gun like that either."
"Ah," Yuriko shrugged, "I took recordings. We can look at 'em later."
Another series of booms made everyone, not just the three of them, glance back to the ruined buildings just across the bridges. Exploding out of the ground sprouted three enormous zerg creatures, worm-like things writ larger than should have been physically possible. Then they flopped down to the ground with titanic booms, maws and smaller orifices along their bodies opening wide and spewing out thousands more zerg.
"Oh shit!" Tychus cried aloud, a sentiment clearly shared by all present.
"Oh, great, Nydus worms," Yuriko drawled.
"Everyone get up top!" Jimmy yelled on the radio, "Now! Secondary bunker line! Go! Go! Go!"
It was a mad sprinting retreat up the hill and ramp, Raiders and rebels firing behind them as they went. Some, the bravest or most suicidal, stood their ground entirely, trying to stop the tide just long enough for others to get away. A few seconds of firing and drawing attention, a few seconds for others to get away. Yet as Jimmy and Tychus reached the top of the ramp, turning about to begin firing back down at the zerg who had already overrun the first bunker line, mutalisks coming in clumps to attack all that they could, Jimmy realized that Yuriko hadn't come with them. Instead, the ghost seemed insanely calm, standing atop her super vulture that had activated a hitherto unseen level of vertical thrust, letting her fly over ten feet above the ocean of zerg beneath.
"Yuriko!"
She didn't seem to hear Jimmy, instead just maneuvering her vulture near the center of the lower level, the super vulture firing its weapons seemingly on automatic. She also let loose with that giant oversized rifle she'd been carrying around, each round that impacted the earth shaking the ground. The explosions of light and sound that accompanied each deafening shot were ridiculously magnified beyond what any handheld weaponry should possibly have been capable of making. Hydralisks and zerglings alike were vaporized within over a dozen feet of fatal distance from the epicenter of each shot. The explosions reminded him almost of certain sorts of protoss energy weapons. Then she slotted the rifle over her head and mag-locked it to her back.
"Damn it, what is she doing!?"
"Whatever it is, old buddy, I don't think the bugs like it!" Tychus shouted over the sounds of so many guns firing amongst the screams of thousands of zerg.
He was right. The zerglings were beginning to form piles beneath her, piles that were slowly growing in size enough that some of the zerglings were capable of leaping upwards only to bounce off of the bubble shield around the super vulture. The same was true of the attacks of the many hydralisks that were now pointing at Yuriko. But Jimmy couldn't spare the time to stare, instead he focused on firing down at the masses of zerg still trying to get up the ramp. Or, at least he did, before a light started to burn brighter and brighter out of the corner of his eye. Some of the others near him stopped firing as well, the zerg starting to focus upon the source as well. Standing atop her super vulture, Yuriko Thirteen held a pants-wetting amount of psionic power in a sphere around herself, so bright as to almost completely obscure her from view.
Jimmy almost missed the radio call that came next.
"Commander, this is Matt Horner, cavalry is on the way! We're getting some crazy readings down there, but we're almost there!"
"Well don't wait up, Matt!" Jimmy yelped.
Then Yuriko…released the energies she'd gathered.
Marines cried aloud, polarized faceplates sliding down and locking. Others put their arms in front of their faces. Jimmy was no different, ducking slightly to keep his center of weight from the muted shockwave that erupted outwards. Tychus was less prepared, and yelled in pain just before the faceplate slid down automatically to try and protect his eyes just a second too late. What was more deafening than the wave of erupting energy however was the sound of bodily eruptions. Jimmy had heard zerg explode before, he'd been the cause of such plenty of times himself. But he'd never heard so many bodies rip themselves apart in the same exact instant. It felt like a light rain was falling on him as he'd straightened, his arm lowering, only to find that his armor was currently being splattered a dull rusty red and a multitude of other colors.
"Sweet mother of mercy," Tychus whispered as he, along with everyone else, stared at the devastation left behind.
Yuriko Thirteen and her super vulture were completely untouched, but the lower half of the bubble shield was caked in red before it flickered slightly and caused the excess moisture and offal to slop off to the ground. Ground zero was the only appropriate phrase for where Yuriko floated just off the ground. The thousands of zerg that had been swarming this way and that were gone. Their bodies had been so tightly pressed together, unnatural alien physiology letting them crush together like insects, that when the whatever it was had struck them, it had struck them all. It looked as if the aliens, zerglings and hydralisks alike, had…popped.
Like balloons.
Balloons of meat.
Jimmy felt a bit of ice trickle its way down his back.
The 'nydus worms', as Yuriko had identified them, had already slid back into the earth before it had happened, but that didn't make him feel much better. His heart was a bit lifted, however, as the screeching sonic boom of orbital entry announced the arrival of the Hyperion.
"ETA one minute, Commander!" Matt's voice came in.
"Take your uh, time there, Matt," Jimmy muttered.
Tychus gagged as he opened his faceplate and took in the unique bouquet of over a thousand dead zerg seemingly blown up from the inside, frantically closing it as quickly as he could. Yuriko, for her part, surfed her super vulture back down to a more appropriate distance to the ground and lazily drove it up next to Jimmy, ignoring the stares of the Raiders and rebels.
"Ugh," she rolled her shoulders, drooping slightly on her ride. "Haven't had to do one that big in a while."
"What…the hell…was that," Jimmy said slowly, making sure to keep her fully in his field of vision.
Just about every instinct he had was screaming about the sheer danger this woman represented.
"Psychokinetic blast," she huffed. "Back in…training…it was called a 'Psychokinetic burst', but I'm a lot stronger than back then. Bigger radius, bigger boom."
Jimmy just stared at the corpses.
It was a quiet minute before the Hyperion got there, and a shockingly uneventful evacuation onto the shuttles to take them up onto the ship. It was only towards the end of that process that more nydus worms began bursting out of the ground, but by that point, they were already all aboard. Of course, then a metric ton of mutalisks dropped down onto their heads, though thankfully the Hyperion was already heading towards space once more.
"Sorry we couldn't get there any sooner, Commander, but it looked like you had it handled," Matt greeted as Jimmy entered the bridge.
"Oh no, that wasn't me," Jimmy shook his head before stepping aside for Tychus and Yuriko to enter the bridge.
"Damn, Jimmy, this are some digs," Tychus whistled, "You been holding out on my, old buddy."
"Richly furnished, as befitting the former flagship of the Sons of Korhal," Yuriko sniffed as she glanced about.
"It was her," Jimmy pointed at the psychic before the ship rocked under some impact or another. "But I think we can get to introductions later, just get us out of here!"
"Yes sir!" Horner saluted, drawing a confused look from Tychus as he turned towards the helm. "All batteries, concentrate forward firepower. Spin up drives two and six! All hands brace for warp jump on my mark!"
It was a tense moment as some members of the bridge grabbed onto their consoles, Tychus grabbing a nearby section of wall, and Yuriko's boots making an odd clamping sound as they magnetically locked themselves to the floor. The ship shuddered more and more as the mutalisks pounded on it.
"Mark!"
Just like that, the Hyperion tore its way through space and time away from Mar Sara and into deep space.
They never saw the MannCo battlecruisers and drop ships appear in orbit only a half hour later, deploying themselves against the zerg that had begun to spread out across the planet.
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