104 – Overcast
"It's about time, Tychus, I thought Mobius was supposed to be the experts on this thing," Jimmy grunted as he posted up by the star map.
It had been a number of days since the last job. While the Hyperion was sitting around, the rest of the Sector hadn't been so lucky. The zerg were being sighted all over the Dominion now, as well as in the Combine, all while going after the edges of the Umojan Protectorate. The actual governments were busy trying to regroup and prepare their militaries, and were using the substantial quantity of mercenaries that existed to help them do it. MannCo, along with just about every other merc group in the entire Korprulu Sector were being hired to run around everywhere, according to Yuriko. They'd bleed and die in the place of nations all for the promise of money many of them might not see. Hell, he'd even heard – thanks to his spectres at Deadman's Port, that even Orlan had willingly sent off a good chunk of his forces because the money being offered by the Combine was just too good.
"Jimmy, you cannot rush the delicate art of research and investigation," Tychus said airily, waving his cigar about in one hand. "It is a complex and time-consuming process, partner. Course, I wouldn't expect you to know much about it."
"Oh, unlike you?" Jimmy raised an eyebrow at his old friend.
Tychus just chuckled and popped the cigar back in his mouth.
"Anyway," he said without responding to Jimmy's statement, "The world is called Xil. It's a dead world, Jimmy, and the here's the fun part – they already sent a team down there."
"Let me guess," Jimmy lit his cigarette and took a drag off of it, "Something went wrong, else they wouldn't be coming to us with it."
"Exactly," Tychus stabbed his cigar at him, "They sent a big ol' specialist crew down there, got worried that
someone," he looked meaningfully at Yuriko, "Might get there first, so they went loaded for bear."
And still had failed. Huh. Well, Jimmy supposed that was probably to be expected. Mobius might have been some big fancy company, but unlike MannCo they were far more obviously focused on science and research rather than being mercenaries like MannCo.
"So anyway, they got down there, found where they thought the artifact might be, but then they dropped out of contact," Tychus paused to puff on his cigar, "Last reports were of seein' Protoss show up nearby, and then…," he wiggled his fingers through the air and whistled sharply. "Gone."
"Shit, let me guess…Tal'darim?" Jimmy clapped a hand to his forehead. "Probably should have expected that, damn it all."
"The artifacts are holy to them," Yuriko pointed out, "Why wouldn't they want to keep them out of grubby terran hands?"
Matt, who'd been scrutinizing the planet as it floated on the star map, frowned and shook his head.
"That might mean protoss aircraft, certainly some ships to get them onto the planet unless they were already there and the Moebius forces simply didn't notice them until it was too late," he said, hand still on his chin as he contemplated. "I would suggest having the Hyperion in close proximity, just in case."
"Agreed, Matt. Might be able to put the old girl through her new paces, if that turns out to be the case," Raynor nodded. "Besides which, even if the Tal'darim get a bit angry about it, we know that Kerrigan might come for it later. Can't let her have it either."
"Agreed, Commander."
Yuriko just watched them as they planned the deployment quietly for a while before Jimmy noticed.
"You got any input on this, Yuriko?"
The psychic just shrugged at him.
"Nah."
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They knew the Tal'darim were down there. In fact, after Yuriko did some stealth scouting of her own, they knew where the Moebius base was too. As well as what had happened to the Mobius team. Multiple bunkers had been blasted open by protoss energy weaponry or straight carved to pieces by their zealots. There were wrecks from over two dozen siege tanks, diamondbacks, shattered missile turrets, and plenty of bodies. Wrecks of ravens, wraiths, banshees, and vikings lay where they'd been shot down. The Tal'darim had shown zero respect for the terran dead, and had mostly just let them rot where they lay. There was even an inactive and badly damaged nuclear silo on at the Moebius base, still loaded. Tychus hadn't been kidding, the Moebius team had brought an army loaded for bear.
The problem was, the Tal'darim had seemingly done the same.
Floating ominously within the atmosphere of the planet were numerous carriers, phoenixes, void rays, and that was just what was in the air. There were tall spindly walkers with intensely powerful beams, which were apparently known either as colossi or wrathwalkers depending on which protoss were using them according to Yuriko. They had things that looked like High Templars, but were the Tal'darim equivalent instead – Ascendants. And Archons, though they didn't look quite like the kinds Jimmy had seen before. A veritable wall of proton cannons and pylons guarded the temple, with troops interspersed amongst them. But, for all of that, to Jimmy's surprise, they hadn't actually done more than completely wreck the Moebius base. Most of the structures there were nothing more than burnt wrecks, true, but he'd expected that the Tal'darim might have fortified the plateau, seeing as they'd done so with the other two in the area. There was also a massive drill, apparently it was what they'd intended to use to break through the doors of the temple. Only, the protoss had not let such a large piece of terran equipment remain untouched, and it lay in pieces.
Given their airpower, and the scouts they no doubt had in place, there was no way the Tal'darim wouldn't see them coming. And while dropships were built tough, and they'd have their own escorts with the Hyperion's own burgeoning mini-fleet, the protoss had quite a bit of firepower. Losses would be inevitable.
Thankfully, Matt had a plan for that, on that Jimmy had approved after an hour of trying to figure something else out and failing.
"Okay, everyone ready?" Jimmy called out as he stepped up into the dropship, meeting the eyes of all the Raiders present within.
"Hell yeah, Commander!" One extremely exuberant man yelled, only to blush as everyone looked at him. "Uh…,"
"Now that's the enthusiasm that I like to see," Jimmy chuckled as he stepped more fully into the dropship.
Normally, it had seats built even for CMC armor to sit in, but this was going to be a hard and fast drop. It would strain the carrying capacity and engines of the dropships, certainly, but the benefit of being able to carry an entire hold completely full of marines and marauders would be worth it. Every single dropship that they had would be doing so, in fact, though it still wouldn't be the entirety of all of the Raiders. Some had stayed behind in case the ship somehow got boarded, others were still in medical, and some simply would have to wait and see if the dropships could come back and get them or not.
"Tychus," Jimmy toggled on the radio in his armor, "You ready for this?"
"Aw, hell, Jimmy, you
know I am," Tychus responded back with a dark chuckle. "Last time around fuckin' no faces scarred Sweet Thang," he growled, "I aim to air some complaints in their general direction. Big ones."
"Heh, fair enough. See you on the ground, buddy."
"You too, partner."
Then the red light buzzed on in the dropship as it lifted off and shot out of the cargo bay at high speed. Jimmy had chosen this ride in particular, for one reason, and one reason only. It was piloted by Emilia Rodriguez, who had once been a Confederate wraith pilot, before the Fall of Tarsonis and the Confederacy after it, at least. She'd gotten shot down in her old wraith by mutalisks, and had to crawl her way to safety with only a service pistol and a broken leg. Ever since she'd been too traumatized to get back behind the stick of another wraith, but her flight skills and speed tendencies remained exactly the same. Scuttlebutt even said that she'd had Swann soup up her engines with her own pay, just to get it that much faster.
"Hang on, everybody," Rodriguez called through the intercom, "Commander said we're gonna make this a fast one! And if any of you vomits, you keep in your damn suit! Elsewise I'm liable to make you scrub up what you leave with your own goddamned toothbrush!"
Then they shot out of the Hyperion so fast that Jimmy clanged against the dropship doors despite having set his feet and weight. The g-forces immediately began dragging on everyone inside, to the grunts and groans of all within, save perhaps the pilot. Jimmy almost swore he could hear the sounds of other engines igniting as the rest of the Raider dropships and fleet began to rush down towards the planet. He could absolutely hear Rodriguez whoop on the intercom, at least, as well as her crowing cries and mocking derision towards her fellow pilots on general broadcast for getting left behind.
"All right, Commander, Hyperion is making her approach now," Matt said tersely. "It's time to put all those upgrades Swann has been talking about through their paces."
"Keep me looped in Matt, I wanna know what's going on," Jimmy said through grit teeth as he was tugged.
"Yes sir," Matt said, though he was clearly focusing on the Hyperion at the moment. "Yuriko's already down below, and she's painted a few good targets for us to hit. Micro warp-jump, now!"
Jimmy didn't respond, not wanting to interrupt Matt as he commanded the Hyperion. Instead he just listened, bracing himself against the dropship's doors. Through his connection, he could hear the immediate sounds of laser battery fire and returned shots by protoss ships onto the Hyperion. The welcome and familiar sound of the deadly Yamato cannon spinning up joined in with the rest of it, faint rumbling and shuddering as their flagship was hit by the protoss making Jimmy wince.
"Enemy carrier shields are down!"
"Redirect the Yamato target to that one, then!"
"We've got protoss fighters coming in behind, spinning up new guns and anti-air turrets!"
Jimmy heard the entire Hyperion rumble through the radio followed by a loud 'thoom'.
"Carrier destroyed, wreckage raining down on main protoss base!"
"Damage to engine two, but the turrets Swann installed took out the fighter!"
A sudden shockwave ran across the dropship as the gravity of Xil finally came into effect.
"That's atmo breached, folks!" Rodriguez's voice cut in. "On our way down to the pile of scrap that Moebius left behind, and – shit God Almighty, the Hyperion looks like it's covered in metal bees!"
Another tense moment passed as the ship practically fell through the air towards the drop zone.
"All right," Jimmy heard Matt call out, voice still remarkably controlled, "We've done a good amount of damage, and they're definitely swarming us. Activate the defense matrix and missile pods!"
"Affirmative, Captain!"
"And Cade, hit that carrier…right there, now, get it with the Yamato cannon!"
Jimmy glanced around the dropship, noting how everyone had lowered their faceplates but had still begun gripping onto one another or whatever else they could quite tightly indeed.
"TERRANS!"
"Thank god," Jimmy muttered as the Tal'darim Executor bellowed onto the open channel.
"You thought us fools, thought us blind? We prepared for your coming, blasphemous thieves! We know your vessel, James Raynor," the alien commander growled. "This time, you shall not escape!"
"Commander," Matt said, voice suddenly far more panicked than he had before, "It's too much! We need to get out of here!"
"No!" The Executor howled. "Do not let them escape, my warriors! Pursue them, destroy that ship!"
Jimmy breathed in deeply and checked over the HEV rifle one more time, an action similarly mirrored across the dropship.
"Okay…looks like the protoss are taking the bait," Rodriguez spoke up again. "They're going after the Hyperion hard, real hard – hah! Suck it, you alien bastards, that's another carrier gone! Damn it, I'm going to owe Cade another drink for hitting that one."
Only then did Jimmy release his breath, head tilting back to lean against the insides of his own helmet.
"Good luck, Commander, we'll do what we can," Matt called to say on his private channel.
"Stay safe out there Matt."
"We'll do our best," Matt chuckled before the link cut off as the Hyperion moved out of range.
The red lights of the dropship buzzed again, a loud ringing blaring throughout the dropship, and Jimmy's stomach plummeted. That was not the pre-drop buzzer, it was the warning that the ship was about to take fire or perform evasive maneuvers. Or both.
"We're coming in hot!" Rodriguez yelled. "Didn't take all their phoenixes with them, shit, shit! Okay, okay, come on motherfuckers," the ex-Confederate hissed to herself, so concentrated now on her piloting that she hadn't turned off the intercom.
The dropship suddenly began to twist and rock wildly back and forth enough that its occupants began smacking against one another with cries of alarm.
"What is…no!" The Executor roared. "Trickery! The terran insects are still here! Damnation! Call our ships back they…rrrrggh! You think this will be enough, James Raynor? You will burn in these skies as well as on the ground, as fitting trophies for the Tal'darim!"
Jimmy opened his mouth to respond, even toggled onto the general broadcast channel that protoss seemed able to pick up despite their different technologies, before Rodriguez threw the dropship through a corkscrewing loop. Despite the maneuver, Raynor still was thrown forwards slightly as he felt impacts strike the dropship's rear and sides, and in fact saw some of the metal above him heating up slightly under repeated energy weapon's fire.
"ETA TEN SECONDS!" Rodriguez shouted wildly as the ship barely began to level out. "HOT DROP, HOT DROP! ENEMY AT THE DROPZONE! ENGINE HIT, BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!"
"You heard her Raiders!" Jimmy called out, voice transmitted directly to the suits of the Raiders in front of him rather than trying to yell. "Get ready for combat the second these-,"
Then the dropship struck earth, and very briefly everyone was on the ceiling rather than on the ground. By now, he could hear the engines screaming as the entire ship then spun out like a groundcar, as well as several heavy impacts that crashed and slammed against the leading side of the dropship. The landing gear finally had enough and snapped, dropping the ship further as they continued to skid. It was only the armor everyone inside was wearing that let them not become smears on the wall from the sheer velocity. Thankfully, however, the dropship doors still functioned. Enough, at least, to collapse down at full force and audibly crush armor and flesh alike. Jimmy didn't even bother with more than a glance at the twitching zealot's arm as he sprinted out of the ship, took aim, and fired at the first enemy he saw.
It was pandemonium.
A screaming pass by Yuriko on the super vulture cleared the skies, for the most part, but on the ground the Tal'darim still teemed. He saw Tychus firing Sweet Thang, marauders grouping up and blasting entire groups of zealots apart, while medics saw to who they could. The siege tanks had landed as well, many of them pushing to the edges of the plateau over the bodies of the protoss so they could set up into siege mode. A good thing too, considering the protoss visibly heading their way. Jimmy barely had time to think beyond finding targets and shooting at them, the rest of the Raiders spreading out as they did so. More than one Raider went down screaming, yet before the protoss could deal a final blow one of the spectres appeared, blowing away the alien with their mind and weaponry before calling for a medic. Raynor could also see that his suspicions were correct, and that Rodriguez had managed to make her crash landing take out more than a few protoss at the same time, going by the wreckage and corpses.
Shit, speaking of, now that there was a small cleared zone around them…
"Rodriguez!" He shouted before shooting another zealot's shields down and heading back into the ship.
The trio of marines that the alien had been charging at saw to the rest.
"Rodriguez!" He shouted again, walking through the bay before reaching the cockpit. "Damn, doors are fused. Come on," he grunted as he strained against the door. "Come on!"
With a shriek of tearing metal, he tore the door open.
"Shit."
The pilot was slumped over her console, her helmet and armor cracked where she'd clearly slammed against it from the impact of the crash. Her hands hung limply at her sides, blood pooling out of somewhere to form a small puddle on her legs and the floor. Raynor dropped the HEV rifle to free up his hands and gingerly pull her up and away. As he did so, however, she let loose a quiet gurgled cough, more blood splattering past her lips and onto her chest plate. Medivac pilot armor was based off of the medic suits with additional padding and protections, but far less mobility. It was that alone that had saved her from death. Still, Jimmy was as careful as possible as he tugged out of the cockpit before carrying her out onto the plateau and out of the dropship entirely.
"Medic!"
By then, the sounds of fighting had mostly dissipated, now relegated to the outer edges and below as the protoss kept attacking. The continuing crack-boom of shock cannons firing had been joined by plenty of rifles, grenade gauntlets, and more, but none of that quite mattered to him at the moment.
"I need a medic!"
This time, he got some attention, and more than a few Raiders turned around at his voice. Immediately, a number of medics began running over in their white armors, Big Ben at their head.
"Put her down, Commander, and we'll do our best to see to her," she said calmly as she knelt down.
Jimmy followed her instructions before stepping back to let more medics crowd in. Within seconds he heard the telltale activation of the medical nanobot injectors.
"Shit, damn fool cracked her sternum wide open," Big Ben reported, "Looks like her rib cage is powder."
"Armor took most of the hit, but the g-forces and impact makes even a little a whole lot," another medic cut in, shaking his head.
"Is she gonna be okay? She saved our asses getting us down here, and took out a lot of protoss on the way," Jimmy said, blinking as a small sea of medics glanced up at him at the same time.
Big Ben sucked some air through her teeth, the former leader of the Mar Sara rebels bobbling her head back and forth.
"She's gonna need some replacements in there," she poked down at Rodriguez's torso, "And some recovery time after that, but she'll live."
Jimmy exhaled his held breath.
"You know, the only reason she's like this is because she's a speed demon, right?" Big Ben said with a wry expression on her face. "None of the other pilots went down like that," she gestured out to the field where, indeed, Jimmy could see the other dropships clustered tightly down on the ground. "She pulled ahead of the escorts and the rest of the pack, took a lot of hits that coulda been spread out amongst everybody. Damn fool ass adrenaline junkie," she sighed.
He had not, in fact, known that. He might have to get someone to talk to Rodriguez when she woke up, or maybe he'd just do it himself. That was something for later, though.
"Good to know," he nodded. "Good to know. I gotta get going. You gonna be all right?"
Big Ben snorted at him and unclipped the C-14 rifle she'd had mag-locked to her leg and waved it at him. The Raiders didn't believe in not arming their medics, most of the time. In the distant past, killing medics was generally frowned upon, but in the Korprulu Sector they got shot at just as much as anyone else. Plus, the protoss and zerg just plain didn't care. It didn't stop certain governments from acting like they didn't arm their medics, for the most part, holding to that veneer of politeness towards one another. Big Ben, Jimmy knew, didn't give a shit after Mar Sara.
"We'll be right, Commander."
Jimmy nodded at her.
"Great. Now then, there's got a battle to win."
It wasn't easy, either. The Moebius base was a wreck, including their giant laser, and it would take time to repair it. Which, obviously, couldn't be done while the protoss were attacking. Instead, the Raiders had to hold their ground on the plateau, and slowly build up their defenses. Siege tanks, bunkers made of materials carried down to the planet, marauders, and marines. Tychus joined up with Jimmy, at some point, and the two of them took to the fight as best they could. Whenever someone got too badly hit, they got pulled back into the center of the plateau where the SCVs had helped set up a temporary field hospital for all the medics to get to work. But the Tal'darim kept coming, and kept coming, and kept coming. Their gateways meant they could be pulling in troops from who knew where else. All the while Jimmy wondered how Matt and the Hyperion were doing, dancing with the protoss ships sent after it. The Raiders were holding their ground well enough, but Raynor dreaded what might happen when they had to finally make a push.
"So…this is going rough," Yuriko piped up after a bit. "Will you freak out if I do another Bel'shir?"
Jimmy just looked at her flatly as a protoss wrathwalker crashed to the ground in a fiery explosion of plasma and alien chemicals.
"I know you can read my mind," he said tersely. "I don't aim to get any of my boys and girls killed, Yuriko, and if you can help make sure we only take a lot of casualties today instead of fatalities…,"
"Got it, just asking for permission," she said simply before hopping onto her super vulture. "Make sure to keep your faceplate down, maybe turn up the polarization. I swapped out last time Nova visited."
"Wait, swapped out with what?"
But she was gone, and her super vulture with her.
A few minutes later, the first EMP bombardment followed by nuclear explosions rippled across the plateaus in the distance. Immediately, Jimmy knew what Yuriko had meant. The sheer size of the mushroom clouds far exceeded normal tactical nuke yields, at least for most arsenals. It wasn't Apocalypse-class, at least, and for that Jimmy was certainly grateful. A thousand of those had wiped out Korhal, after all. But it was certainly a lot more than was normally used by most Terran militaries for battlefield usage. Usually because terraforming was actually sort of expensive, and fixing up places struck like Korhal was insanely expensive. Not that Mengsk had cared, with it being his home. That, just ever so barely, Jimmy could sort of understand.
But on Xil? A dead world where the only thing living was protoss and the Raiders which would hopefully be leaving after this was over?
"Hell yeah," he said with satisfaction as he watched the clouds rise up.
"Sweet mother of mercy," Tychus drawled from next to him, shaking his head. "Why she'd even let us come down here if she coulda done that the whole time?"
Jimmy sighed and lit a cigarette to match Tychus' cigar.
"We've talked about that sort of thing before. Says she doesn't want us relying on her or MannCo to just bail them out no matter what," he revealed as another series of bombardments rocked the protoss bases and forces.
"Shit…yeah, maybe," Tychus grunted uncomfortably as he hefted his MannCo-built gun. "Still, your boys took a beatin' getting us all set up proper like, you know."
Jimmy took a long drag off his cigarette.
"I know. I've been talking to her about that, too," he admitted. "She's right that we haven't actually lost anybody, not completely, since she joined up. On the other hand, we've got a
lot more injured. Medbay is pretty clogged, even with Doctor Hanson joining in."
"Mmm."
"But she says that MannCo could offer some help with that, too, after this job," Jimmy shrugged. "Probably gonna be some kind of wild crazy tech again that they won't let us look at."
"Probably," Tychus sighed.
The two of them watched as Yuriko hit the protoss again and again. On occasion, the Tal'darim managed to set some fighters on her tail, only for her to 'phase' or whatever it was again. She wasn't shy about using her psychic powers while flying around either, throwing protoss units at one another and at one point letting loose some sort of shockwave that somehow set the protoss to attacking one another. All the while, the Tal'darim Executor was shouting at them all. Blasphemers, heretics, fools, so on and so forth. Something about their name being emblazoned in the stars to be punished, or at least something similar to that.
What mattered was that the Tal'darim on Xil were finished.
A few hours after Yuriko declared she'd once more exhausted her nuclear and EMP stockpile, the Tal'darim rallied up what remained of their forces and attacked en masse, something that Jimmy and Tychus had to get up close and personal with. Jimmy swore he even saw a few probes here and there, just zapping with their little alien tasers. Unfortunately for the protoss, they ran into a line of bunkers, perdition turrets, siege tanks, munin auto turrets, and banshee bombs. Even worse, for the aliens at least, the Hyperion jumped back in towards the halfway point. She was smoking and bleeding, that was for certain, and would likely need a few days of repairs, but she was still flying. It was more than could be said for all of the Tal'darim that had followed her out of the atmosphere. There wasn't much more the Tal'darim could do after that, other than retreat or die. And they evidently preferred the latter more than the former.
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"Yeah, I can get this thing running again, sure," Swann grunted as he looked up at the broken drill. "It'll take me, like, a few hours at most. The Hyperion'll take me a day."
"Really?"
Jimmy looked at the Hyperion as it rested on the plateau that had been scraped clean of all the Moebius wreckage. SCVs covered it like ants. Up close, he could see that it had actually sustained a good bit of damage. It would have been a complete wreck without the upgrades though, Matt and Swann had both emphasized that fact.
"Psh, yeah, didn't you hear? Stetmann invented this crazy bio-steel stuff, the ship'll literally work on healing itself while we do our work."
Now Jimmy stared at him.
"Really?"
Swann just nodded, a genuinely impressed look on his face.
"Doctor Hanson figured out some kind of…cellular energy reactor thing, too. So that should help out in a couple of ways – I like the predators more though."
"The what now?"
"Predators," Swann shrugged. "Best name we could come up with. Spooks came in dragging Stetmann by the lapel and said he was trying to make a robot with his zerg research, threw me at the problem," and then Swann let loose a full toothy grin. "Wasn't hard to come up with the schematics either. Spooks says that MannCo'll buy the plans off of me for a huge payoff, too. Ain't that great, cowboy?" He slapped Jimmy on the arm. "Might let me buy some Hercules for us, too, now that I can modify 'em into mega dropships."
Jimmy's head spun. He hadn't actually looked at the research console recently, with everything going on. But he remembered vague potential applications that Stetmann had listed, had even picked the shrike turrets to be worked on for the bunkers. But, just like Stetmann, he'd apparently run into tunnel vision on the projects, rather than getting help from the other experts. He'd known that Doctor Hanson was helping out, but not Swann.
"I thought Stetmann didn't like you in the lab?"
"Ah," Swann waved it off, "He was worried I would shoot that protoss crystal thing out of the ship, but Yuriko said she could tell it was actually feeding power into the ship, smoothing things out – and you know what?" The engineer looked at him, eyes wide. "She was right! Crazy stuff…after that, no way the kid was keeping me out from looking around."
That, Jimmy remembered. Stetmann had been terrified that Swann would shoot it out the airlock, had begged him not to say anything. Apparently he hadn't thought to say anything to the psychic commando they had on board.
"Was anybody going to tell me about this, or was I just supposed to figure it out on my own?" Jimmy said in annoyance.
"Hey, it was gonna be a surprise!" Swann protested. "The bio-steel, sure, Stetmann was gonna tell you about after the battle anyway, but I haven't even built any predators yet, let alone tested 'em."
"Just…just get the drill working Swann," Jimmy sighed. "I'm gonna go get a drink in the cantina."
"All right, see ya later," Swann waved at him as he left.
Sometime, Jimmy wondered what it would be like to be a certified genius like those three. At the moment though, he just wanted out of his armor for a bit.
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The lights flickering out was the first sign that something was wrong. After all the repairs and refits, the lights on the Hyperion quite simply did not flicker anymore unless the bulbs were going, not because the connections were weak or rusty. They especially should not have shut down on both sides of him, one after another, in sequence. The damage to the Hyperion wasn't that bad, despite all appearances to the contrary. Apparently the armor was what took most of the beating, which was what it was supposed to do.
Jimmy paused in his walk through the corridor, wiping his chin as he screwed the top of his flask back on and put it in his pocket. His other hand drifted down to his revolver. Something itched at the back of his neck.
"James Raynor…," a weary echoing voice came from the darkness behind him, causing Jimmy to whip around and see a face he'd never thought to see again. "I bring tidings of doom."
"Zeratul," Jimmy said, his shock only barely muted.
The dark prelate clutched at his arm, every movement tired and pained.
"I have pierced the veil of the future…and beheld only…oblivion," Zeratul collapsed to his knees, and Jimmy fell to his own to help him before the protoss looked back and continued to speak. "And yet…some small measure of hope remains. You will hold her life in your hands…and though justice demands that she die for her crimes, only she can save us!"
Jimmy recoiled from him as he realized what Zeratul was saying.
"Wait a second…you're talking about Kerrigan!" He sputtered, gesticulating wildly. "It's been four years, you show up out of nowhere-," he was cut off as Zeratul grabbed his arm and placed something within his hand.
"Time is short, you
must understand!" The protoss withdrew his hand to reveal a small gold and green metallic object inset with emerald colored crystals. "The answers you seek…lie within," Zeratul said as the object activated, revealing a crystal in midair above it, while the protoss withdrew back into the shadows. "Study...it well. The fate of creation…hangs…in the balance."
"He's not wrong," Yuriko's voice appeared from behind Zeratul, causing the dark prelate to spin about to face her, the lights of the corridor flickering back on.
Jimmy stared at the psychic as she matched eyes with Zeratul. Her arms were crossed over her chest, the glowing power lines on her environmental suit pulsing quicker than usual. She was also wearing her additional armor plates and helmet, with even her overpowered rifle on her back. The sorts of things she only wore into serious battle. Zeratul, on the other hand, held out the arm with his gauntlet to the side but clearly at the ready. He couldn't see Zeratul's face from here, but he could see the complete tension in the protoss' body.
"You…,"
"Me," Yuriko nodded before tilting her head slightly to give the appearance of looking past Zeratul. "You remember those answers you wanted, Raynor? They're in there," she said before looking back at Zeratul. "I'm not here to fight you, Zeratul. Even after what happened before."
"That-," Zeratul cut himself off, glancing back at Raynor. "I was not expecting to see you here."
"Of course not," she tilted her head. "There's no prophecies about
me to nearly get yourself killed over."
Then she said something in a language that Raynor simply didn't know, and from the looks of it, neither did Zeratul. Only after that did she sigh, slowly relaxing her stance, something that Zeratul shortly did afterwards.
"There's no hard feelings. So long as you know that I'm
not His precious backup plan, you understand?" She said with a deadly calm, though Jimmy had no idea who 'He' was. "Remember that."
Only afterwards the psychic stepped to the side and gestured past herself.
"I just really, really wanted to emphasize that. Plus, I'd offer help, but I'm sure you'd refuse," she jerked her head back along the corridor. "So you can go disappear back into the shadows if you like, now."
Zeratul was still for a moment before shaking his head.
"The arrogance of terrans," he muttered as he stumped past.
A few feet more and the lights went down again, centered completely around Zeratul before turning back on to reveal he'd disappeared. Jimmy was left standing there with the crystal in his hands blinking in complete confusion. Yuriko then walked up to him, still wearing her concealing helmet.
"I'd recommend getting that in the lab, and maybe a chair. It's going to take a lot out of you."
Then she faded from sight, sound, and feeling, leaving him alone in the corridor.
