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

[DragonCobolt]

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)

 

[DragonCobolt]

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...


---
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

Spoiler: Mechanics!

XP: 20
DANGER: 32
ENEMIES: Zerglings: Diff 5, People 3(Size 1)

Plan One: Take the Zerglings down with Leadership - using your Orbital Command as a secondary characteristic to bump their people characteristic down to 1. Spend 1 Econ spark for +1 Total Cost: 6 heat, vent to 0 with Just as Planned.
Plan Two: Take the Zerglings down with Leadership and one Ultralisk. Total Cost: 1 Heat, vent to 0 with Just as Planned.
Plan Three: Take the Zerglings down with your psi blades. Total Cost: 3 heat, vent to 0 with Just as Planned

 

[DragonCobolt]

You had to get into those tunnels. You could send in the mech marines and the titans - but you'd seen Cr up close and personal and knew better than to underestimate what a mass of zerglings, coordinated by a Cerebrate, could do. Doubly so when they had the tunnel advantage. Your fingers began to tap away at the controls - drawing out attack lines. They led straight through solid rock, which threw up several confused error messages from your poor dumb robots. But the ultralisks knew. Oh they knew exactly what you were planning. Your mind and theirs connected, and their deep, deep thoughts rumbled through out. Without a nearby overlord, there wasn't quite the human level context that you had enjoyed on the leviathan...but...

You were actually getting a little better at hearing the song and understanding it, even without an overlord. Time, practice, beginning to find your place in this hybrid world, who knew. Take your pick.

Maybe it was just right now, you didn't have time for introspection.

The ultralisks plunged towards the rock and burrowed. The burrowing system the Zerg used involved high speed vibrations and digging motions combined with their superhuman strength. When something as big as an ultralisk did it, it looked like the earth had become nothing but water: Flowing away from their bulk and freeing up space for your bots. The zerglings were caught in a nearly totally open tunnel system. They reacted with immediate, vicscious eagerness - shooting from their hiding spots and scrambling towards the bulky ultralisks. One of them shook itself, wildly as you focused. Tugged them back. Hurry! Hurry!

The one that was slightly faster dove into the ground - burrowing away from the razor sharp claws.

The other lowed in pain and rage, its massive scythe blade mandibles sweeping dozens of zerg away in a single swipe. Blood splattered...but most of it was the ultralisk's own. You had never seen the legendary piranha skeletonize a cow, and you were pretty sure that even the reconstituted ones that had been reintroduced after the 26th century hadn't been able to actually do it.

Well.

Now you knew what it must have looked like. Zerglings crawled all over the beast, their claws slamming into carapace, their teeth chomping down. Their blades plunged into weak points in the armor, into joints. And the entire ultralisk just...came apart, exploding into a spray of red ruin that made you wince. You felt the ultralisk's consciousness sweep past yours, thrumming into the gestalt hive cluster intelligence that was being guided by your Queen. For just a second, you could feel its feeling, its emotions.

Pure affrontery.

How dare! How dare something small bite so hard.

The thronging zerglings massed - clearly preparing to push their advantage.

And ran directly into a wall of high energy plasmafire. While the UEF had a long line of kinetic projectiles - hell, you kind of wished you still had your sidearm, purely for reliability - they knew the place of energy weapons, and put a fuck of a lot of them on their assault bots. The Titan had two, arm mounted with quite a lot of swivel. They could put out enough energy to liquify a distressing amount of hardened concrete per shot - and they were firing at soft targets whose primary advantage was their speed and numbers, when they were in a depression about fifty meters wide, three meters deep, and were slipping on blood.

It would have been the most violent thirty seconds of your life, if you hadn't been on Aiur. And you were pretty sure it was going to get worse.

The Titans, unperturbed, marched into the spreading cloud of boiled blood, their feet stomping the burned husks of bodies into the dirt. The mech marines swarmed around and past them, filtering into the tunnels. They'd be the first to do, so you'd know where and how to focus the slower Titan attacks. As you worked, you spoke into the com. "Dostya, the tunnel systems are clearing up - the Monkeylords can resum their advance. Clarke out."

"Very good, General Clarke. Dostya out."

The experimentals continued to start thumping forward - while Matt's artillery began to open up. Half the plateau was crumpling under dedicated fire, as protoss capital ships hovered in the distance, their interceptors streaking through the sky. You nodded slowly - and then saw it. The sudden seismic shift. The burrowing signatures, coming up from every direction. Through the guncam footage of your mech-marines, you saw the first of them bursting from the walls: Something low and chunky, hissing and spraying acid.
Roaches. You frowned as your fingers flew across the console - but then something else caught your eye. On the plateau facing your base, in a thin strip that wasn't covered by your AA guns or Matt's artillery or the Monkeylords, several hatcheries had throbbing masses of eggs. Something about them tasted wrong. Then they burst apart - and you hissed.

Scourge flew into the air. Not just one or two in escort to their mutalisk brothers, but dozens of them. Maybe even hundreds. They swarmed upwards and began to gather, then stream through the chink in the air coverage.

You saw it all in a flash: The roaches couldn't take you down, but they could draw your attention.

Those scourges hoped to slip past...

Hit the carriers.

Wipe out the air cover.

Daggoth could breed up an entire army of mutalisks.

The monkeylords would be wiped out.

His plan was immediate.

Obvious.

And a pain in your goddamn ass.

---
HEAT: 1/6
SPARKS: Econ (9), Just as Planned (6)
HIT SPARKS: Roach Infestation (2)

So, mechanically, those Scourges are spawned, but rather than having them attacking (WHICH I COULD HAVE), I chose to have them do nothing - representing the Protoss air cover that you voted on earlier. However, if you don't take them out and let them act again, they will drop hit sparks on you. A lot of them! (This representing them destroying the Protoss.)

[ ] Plan: Air Wall - build as many air defenses as you can really, really, really fast. It will take some of your economy away from producing Titans, but that's okay - your micromanagement can keep the roaches busy while you deal with the scourges and plug this hole.
[ ] Plan: Air Walk - ...fuck it. You can teleport. Teleport up, slash the scourges down in a tearing hurry, teleport into the tunnels and slash the roaches up, then teleport back into your ACU. It's not like anything can go too wrong while you're stretching your legs (warning: will lightly overheat you)
[ ] Plan: Air Theft - ...can you do it a second time? Yank the scourges with your telepathic powers to have your own set of cruise missiles just in case. Then focus on crushing the roaches with swarms of your mechs.

Spoiler: Mechanics!

XP: 20
DANGER: 15
ENEMIES: Roach Swarm (Diff 2, Durability 4(People 1), Scourges (Diff 5, Damage 5(Damage 5), Speed 4(Size 1))

Plan one: Use your nanofabrication characteristic to reduce the Scourge's speed from 4 to 2 (representing you building lots of anti-air buildings) means you only need to beat 6(6) sparks and diff 5 with your leadership of 4. That's +13 to be heat 0! Well, you have 6 just as planned and can use 2 Econ to do it all with 6 heat in total. Then vent 4 heat to use Adaptation to have the Roach swarm delay itself with tunnel fighting so you can take it out next round.

Plan Two: Shadowstep, wipe out the roaches with your personal skills for 0 heat, then refresh your shadowstep using your Close COmbat skill for 2 heat, then shadowstep and wipe out the scourges with your personal skill for 5 heat (Diff 6 vs 2). Lightly Overheats you.

Plan Three: ...Telepathic Domination again. Take 1 heat, then 2 heat to snag the scourges as they go flying by, then use Leadership vs Diff 2+2 for 2 heat, burning through 6 just as planned and 4 Econ sparks to beat down the last 2 durability (the rest is reduced by your nanofabricator mastery.) This kills the roaches. VEnt 6 heat to get +1 Just as Planned spark.

 

[DragonCobolt]

You had fought this kind of thing before. It was part of the...strangeness of being an active warrior on a battlefield...and yet never having to really sprint or run anywhere unless something actively went very wrong. You coded in the first line of defenses with a series of rapid button presses - using your left hand to tap as fast as possible at your console and your screen. Green outlines of buildings that hadn't been built yet started to cover the ground between the Plateau and the incoming air forces - your brow furrowing as your other hand pushed forward on the stick. The ACU started to thump forward as your engineers shifted from assisting the construction of Titans and Mech Marines and towards this task.

The first job was leveling the ground. Nanolathes flickered across in a fast grid pattern - leaving behind simple concrete weave. It wasn't even tough enough to stop a Zerg burrower, but it would at least give the buildings something to go up on that wasn't volcanic glass and cratered holes. You glanced up overhead and saw that the Scourge were starting to take to the wing, moving in thick clumps as they were focused on by Daggot, then sent out towards their targets. This meant the formed a jagged string, like beads on a necklace. You could see where they were going too - the carriers.

Artanis, though, wasn't asleep on the switch.

A double wing of scouts and corsairs swung away from the main Protoss formation. Strobing blue flashes came in through the side cameras of your ACU as your nanolathe joined the engineers, dust pluming up around your massive feet. "Come on, come on, come on..." you muttered as more and more Scourge were born from their eggs and screamed into the sky...

...and ran into the first three heavy flack cannons that your engineers had built. Exploding flashes of glittering white monomolecular chaff bloomed into the air, spreading out and turning the Scourge's own speed into their own doom: The flimsy critters came apart as they streamed forward, exploding into bursts of gore and their binary explosives, which mixed together to create a shimmering curtain of fire overhead, fire that was joined by the hammering of railguns, and the hissing streak of surface to air missiles as the tier three defenses started to come online. Your grin was fierce and feral as you watched the SAM missiles slamming into scourge after scourge - and the entire massive swarm was whittled down.

We can do this all day, Daggoth.

He didn't respond - but an intense low droning note of pure superiority rang through your mind, like a God was playing the cello.

The scrouge were delt with. But at the same time, you had needed to work on the tunnels. Roaches were streaming through them, and without your attention, they were going to overwhelm your forces. You couldn't just...rely on production now, not with your Titans having dropped to a standard factory rate of production. It'd take time for your engineers to get back, and to resume pumping them with extra nanolathe beams. Which meant the fifty or so Titans you did have were all you could work with for the moment.

You could handle this.

You drew a central core of your Titans back into the main nexus of tunnels, putting them back to back. The roaches started burrowing, appearing on Dostya's omni-scanner and piped directly to yours. You grinned and started to tap and give specific target acquisition orders, hitting the underground units before they could emerge. The result was a lot of blasted silt and crumbling tunnels, smoke obscuring the visual cameras - but the Titans had a suite of sensors that would let them operate in pitch blackness. They could handle this. Within a few moments, the very basic adaptive programming on your assault bots had figured out the basics.

Meanwhile, Dostya's Monkeylords had reached the plateau proper. Their massive legs were reaching up dragging themselves up inch by inch as their direct fire weapons ceased - but their missiles continued to streak up and slam down, impacting into creep with sprays of gore - fountains of red blood spurting into the air.

"We're running into some static defense, but it should-" Dostya started.

Six tentacles exploded out of the mesa wall. Their tips were hardened chitin, their bases were glistening, almost tongue-like muscle. They slammed into the belly of one of the Monkeylords and ripped through the relatively thin metal, tearing and exposing machinery. Then three more tentacles slammed in...and through. The entire experimental trembled, then started to fall backwards. It tumbled away from the mesa, dropping a mere ten, twelve meters. it was still enough. The entire thing exploded with a roar of white light and a concussive shockwave that blew through your base camp and caused the tunnels to shiver.

"Sunken colonies," you growled quietly. "They must be in the secondary level - they can attack through the ground."

"Hell!" Dostya snarled. "Why are they so powerful?"

"They're the last line of defense for most Zerg hive clusters," you said, quickly, thinking as you adjusted your thinking. The Monkeylords were continuing up the mesa, but with one down...and-

More tentacles exploded from the plateau wall. The Monkeylords were ready for it this time - and electron bolters slammed into rock and tentacle alike.

It didn't help.

One of the monkeylords started to fall - its left upper arm sheered off at the exact join between body and limb. Sparks flew as it tumbled backwards, then crashed into the ground on its side, crumpling armor and sending out a spray of flame and sparks as internal components burst apart. "Shit," Dostya muttered, sounding less furious and more mildly annoyed.

The reason why was that two more Monkeylords had just emerged from her base, and a third was almost finished.

I wonder if Daggoth is beginning to feel what he has made others feel for so long, you thought, grinning slightly. This is what it's like, you ugly motherfucker.

---
HEAT: 5/6
SPARKS: Econ (7), Ultralisk (1)
HIT SPARKS: Roach Infestation (1), Sunk Attack! (4)(6)

[ ] Operation: Point Blank - absorb the destroyed monkeylord to buff your economy, repair the damaged one to get it moving again - then, at the same time, direct your engineers to build some Tier 2 artillery and fire them through the mesa into the sunks - they can penetrate. Just barely.
[ ] Operation: Lead from the Front - Teleport with your shadowstep into the sunks and start taking them out like how Zeratul might - while disrupting the hive mind as much as possible to open up avenues for Matt and Dostya to send in their forces en mass.
[ ] Operation: Swarm - bolster your economy by getting out of your ACU and spawning some Zerg bioforms - send Zerglings in after the Roaches, and burrowing Roaches in after the Sunks. Supported by your titans, of course.
[ ] Write In

Spoiler: Mechanics!

XP: 20
DANGER: 0
ENEMIES: Roach Swarm (Diff 2, Durability 4(People 1), Sunken Colonies (Diff 5, Durability 5 (Size 2), Damage 5 (Durability 2)

So! Things are coming down to the wire here. You take out scourges, then created sparks that the Roach Swarm had to deal with - so they didn't create any additional sparks. But then BOOM! Sunken colonies! They are whacking you! Now, I didn't apply your durability to the roaches because they were attacking your units, but I did apply your durability to the sunks, what gives? well, simple: Narratively, they're attacking monkeylords, which are big lads, so it makes sense that durability would apply.

...listen, heat isn't actually made to play RTS games. I will make an Advanced Tactics chapter at some point if the kickstarter does really really well, so I'm mostly just loosy goosing it. And honestly, the fact that even with me improvising a lot, it still works really well? That's cool!

ANYWAY!

Plan One: Use your Nanolathe ability to bump away your hit sparks for 0 and 0 heat, then vent 2 heat to use Adaptability to destroy the Sunks with their own Damage characteristic.
Plan Two: Use Shadowstep to teleport to the sunks, then vent 3 heat to give Matt and Dostya an action using your Leadership to attack. Then make a melee attack with a +2 bonus, taking 1 heat to kill the sunks.
Plan Three: Use biomorphic spawning as a narrative justification to slap away all the hit sparks for 0 heat and 0 heat, then use it to attack the Roach Swarm (diff 2+2) for 0 heat. Vent 2 heat to destroy the sunks with their own Damage characteristic.

 

[DragonCobolt]

Your eyes flicked from the camera view - as more sunken colony tentacles plunged out and crashed into the belly armor of the third Monkeylord. Armor crumpled, but it kept stomping up, trying to get onto the top of the mesa before it was taken down - then down to the display of the strategic situation. You chewed your lower lip...nodding.

You didn't have the economy to produce enough. Not to take out the sunks and the roaches.

However...there was another economy that was running alongside yours. One that you could have tapped at any time. You hesitated, then smiled.

You were the Hilt, after all.

You tapped a few buttons. Matt, his voice concerned: "Uh, General CLarke, I am reading that your ACU hatch is opening. Everything all right there." Your thumb swiped, giving the ACU some automated commands to rebuild some economic systems to support future operations. Your grin was fierce as the silt and singe of Char came to your nostrils. You breathed it in and breathed out an aggressive sigh. You had to admit...a big part of you wanted wanted this for a while.

"I'm good, Matt," you said, then leaped.

You landed a few seconds later, the ground splintering under your weight. You had aimed at the basalt beyond the concrete sprawl of your base. The heavy rumble of mechs stomping away from the factories came to your ears as you rubbed your palms together, then placed them against the ground. You felt something deep lurching in your body...and then groaned quietly as you felt skin splitting. Tearing fabric. Shifting bones. Your eyes closed - a human part of you withdrawing from what was about to happen. You groaned, pained and soft, as something surged from your body. When you opened your eyes, you saw creep was spreading out between your palms, a pulsating tumor throbbing at the heart of it.

THe creep spread and spread - and your hands wrenched, then lifted upwards, twisting fiercely. Your teeth clenched as you called out - snagging onto the world around you.

The first zergling emerged with a squalling hiss, digging up and out of the ground. First there were a little. Then there was a lot. They scrambled out again and again, drawn by the Creep, drawn by your call. And they were eager. One of them brushed against you, Cr's head bumping against your shoulder as he chittered. Without an overlord, the context lacked the familiar voice- but you didn't need it. You pressed your head against his side, then whispered.

"Fuck them up."

You could see it all through her mind's eyes - the information spiking into your brain, through your senses. It came from all the Zerglings, and you saw their red-tinged vision, felt the eager song. They crashed into the roaches, a hammer against your Titan's anvil. Claws bit into chitin and the tunnels began to flood with rusty red blood, greenish gore. Roaches sprayed acid, and Zerglings died, but they died knowing they were winning. Your hands thrust out - and you caught the surviving roaches. In their fear and their panic, you felt their structure, heard their pattern. Your eyes closed and you felt pressure against your spine.

You cried out and closed your eyes - not wanting to see your body twist and distort. Not wanting to see how far your form could be...changed.

When your eyes opened, you saw glistening eggs, dozens of them.

You felt wrung out and light headed.

Your earpiece crackled.

"My second formation of experimentals are arriving," Dostya said.

"Good," you whispered.

You leaped from the ground to the back of your ACU. A touch and a key-pad combination got the hatch to open. You swung in, slid in, strapped down, and watched through cameras and your eyes. The Titans were advancing through the tunnels. They had reached not just the deep tunnels, they were reaching the underground hive cluster. The Sunken colonies were forced to spread their attacks from the exterior of the mesa to their own internals. You watched as a tentacle slammed down and glanced off a Titan's shield, shattering it into a spray of hissing sparks. A second and third plunged through its core, ripping it apart in a flare of white light...and through the rubble marched another Titan, and another.

They entered into the hive cluster under the mesa and you could see the glistening eggs. The hatcheries. The lairs. The cobweb of complex organs that were the 'buildings' of a Zerg base.

And you watched as electron bolter rounds and Zergling claws alike ripped into them. Blood splayed and misted as you nodded, then focused - your telepathic awareness finding the eggs...which were hatching. Your own roaches. They burrowed immediately - digging in and rushing. Rushing. Without an opening for the sunks to target, they were unstoppable. Implacable. And so, a Titan after Titan fell, as the hives and hatcheries blew apart, the roaches reached the sunken colonies and began to vomit their acid upon them.

It was absolutely hideous.

The noose was drawing in tighter and tighter. From overhead, you could see the Monkeylords mounting the mesa. AS they reached the top, their microwave lasers swept back and forth, back and forth. Hives and hatcheries there began to flash into clouds of boiling red mist. Creep erupted. Eggs shattered. The Zerg were being burned off the surface of Char - not all of them, you could feel the song of them beyond this point. But the cancer that was Daggoth was being scorched away.

Only the energies of a Dark Templar can slay this beast...

You weren't sure if it was a memory or Zeratul speaking to you directly. Your hand went to your chest and you rolled your shoulders.

Your ACU started to advance, stomping towards the mesa.

***
​

An ACU was not meant to climb.

That's why you didn't.

Instead, once you were close enough, you programmed in a return route, focused, and slipped between spaces. Your body vanished and appeared again with a flash of smoke and a rippling sound. You landed and saw the Monkeylords advancing from the far side of the Mesa, the roaring blaze of their microwave lasers adding an apocalyptic screech to go with the Armageddon thunder of Matt's artillery. Explosions roared and rocked and the ground quivered. You kept your feet, jogging forward. Several hydralisks that had survived everything so far hissed, writhing up like snakes, barring your pass.

One spat some shards at you. You rolled aside, parried a spine, then thrust your psi-blade into his gut, ripping up, spinning and bringing the other into the head of the second. Both fell.

And there, ahead of you, was Daggoth. He had formed into the sprawling, brain-like shape of the Overmind, his spurs reaching up towards the heaven. The psychic weight of him this close was stronger than you thought it would have been.

You can't kill me, he said, his voice deep and throbbing through your bones. I know things. I know what you don't. I can offer this knowledge to you, General Clarke. Knowledge that will save...billions of human lives!

---
HEAT: 0/6

[ ] Accept his surrender (gain 15 Daggoth Chained sticky sparks)
[ ] Destroy him (mentally - 30 XP fight)
[ ] Destroy him (physically - 30 XP fight)

​

 

[DragonCobolt]

You narrowed your eyes. "And what do you ask in return? Hmm? What-"

Danger.

The instinct roared through you as you tensed and flung yourself aside. The ground humped and burst open as an ultralisk bigger than anything you had ever seen in your life came surging out. It was the size of a Monkeylord - and three times as fast, sending chunks of dirt and rock flying. Boulders the size of houses slammed down around you as the immense beast roared down at you, mandibles spreading. Its back puckered and biological drones came slithering out - feathery, tendrily things that whipped out through the air. You slashed out with your psi-blades, cutting one down, then another, but each time you slashed one down it exploded in a spray of greenish glop that hissed and splattered the ground. You danced backwards, focused purely on survival for the moment, before coming to a stop a few dozen meters away.

The Monkeylord was far off. This fight was going to be too fast for them to get involved.

"...you dick!" you shouted at Daggoth. "That's fucking war crime, that is!"

He didn't even have the decency to fucking respond.

***
​

Earth.
T-Minus 300 seconds.

The top commanders of the UEF were shouting at one another, and President Riley was beginning to realize that consensus wasn't coming. Or, at least, not coming fast enough. He twirled the medal of valor between his fingers, frowning intently. General Hall slammed his finger into the countertop, glowering. "Fletcher, listen here, if we obliterate the Aeon Homeworld and the Aeon Queen isn't on it, then the surrounding Aeon planets will have a cause to flock to for generations - a figurehead to lead them. And worse, it'll be a figurehead that has an entire fleet of experimental warships."

"Those ships are pathetic in a straight up fight," General Fletcher said, waving his hand. "We can shoot them down with interplanetary missiles."

"You presume a hell of a lot," Hall snapped.

"Oh, do you think she's gone full De Galle on us?" Fletcher shot back.

The ghost of the disgraced officer suddenly felt rather heavy in the room. Riley faintly remembered him - something about building a fleet of interplanetary starships? He frowned, then shook his head. "We can't risk it," he said.

The collected generals turned to him. "Sir, I-" Fletcher started.

"We can't," Riley said, then stood. "If General Clarke was still with us, maybe. I'd trust her to lead a counter-insurgency, considering the talents she showed in the Koprulu Sector. But she's not with us. And we...will still have Black Sun once we've located the Aeon Princess and her fleet. Once we have a target, we can still fire the weapon."

"This is a mistake..." Fletcher said. "Sir, they must know that something is about to happen-"

"And they're going to try and attack Earth? Our most heavily defended planet?" Riley shook his head. "If they try, they die." He paused. "Just in case, General Hall, begin preparations for a planetary defense program to be implemented. Fletcher, I want you ontop of working up a plan on what to do with this fleet of CZARS when we find them."

He tapped on the com in the center of the meeting room table. "Dr. Narud, come in."

"This is Emil," a cheerful older voice said. "We're about two hundred seconds away from activating the Black Sun project."

"I'm sorry, Dr. Narud. We're scrubbing the attack," Riley said.

"Beg pardon?" Narud sounded faintly confused.

"We've decided-" Riley started.

"I'm sorry, Mr. President, I cannot quite understand. You appear to be breaking up," Dr. Narud said. His voice sounded oddly...amused. Like he was just barely able to hide his laughter. Riley's brows drew in and he frowned.

"Dr. Narud, this isn't funny. Power down the Black Sun device immediately," he said.

"If you can hear me, know that the powering up cycle is going exactly as planned, Mr. President."

Riley frowned, then turned to one of the techs in the room. The tech, who was already typing. He frowned. "Uh, sir, everything's fine - but...the power signature is ramping up past the planned levels. A fifty percent spike." HIs eyes widened. "Sir, the power conduits for the Eurasia grid are switching on. We're getting brownouts across China and Japan."

"Son of a-" General Hall snarled, actually striding for the door. He reached it, then turned back to the President. "I'll handle this."

"Do it," Riley said.

"...sir, I'm detecting alien bioforms in the Black Sun chamber!" The tech said, his eyes widening. "They're...they're... that's impossible..." His eyes widened more, his fingers freezing.

"What?" Riley and Fletcher went to his side.

The screen showed the alert - and the cross-referenced data thrown up by the Adjutants that were hooked into the system. The flashing red and black indicator was clear.

"...Zerg?" Riley asked. "How the hell did-"

The distant sound of gunfire began to echo throughout the bunker.

"Get an ACU here stat, we need to shut that system down!" Riley snapped.

The timer continued to tick down. Second by second.

***
​

You glowered at the ultralisk.

Daggoth was working on something, and you had to kill him before he did it. The psychic energy he was building up was unmistakable. So, you just had to kill something the size of an experimental combat robot with your bare hands.

Fuck it.

It was the sixth weirdest thing you've had to do since you came to this stupid, backwater, fucked up part of the goddamn galaxy. Easily.

You squared your shoulders.

---
HEAT: 0/6

So, for those who want to write in but find mechanics confusion: The Tarrasque is a lot like Fenix - he's multiple parts, sharing the same durability. You can focus fire on a part to disable it, or if you kill the central body, you kill it!

[ ] Sprint up towards the creature, leap onto its back and start ripping the spore launchers out before they bombard you more - then hang on for dear life as you drive it into a hole and trip it up on its own weight.
[ ] As above, but slash off a scythe. Then take cover under its belly, so the spores have to hit the legs if they want to hit you.
[ ] As above, but slash its Achilles tendons with your psi blades. Then, when it tries to bite you with its scythes, dive so that incoming spores hit said scythes.
[ ] Write In

Spoiler: MECHANICS!

ENEMY:

Tarrasque Body (Diff 10, Durability 6 (Size 2))​

Tarrasque Legs (Diff 5, Speed 4 (Size 1), Sparks: Internal 6)​

Tarrasque Scythes (Diff 5, Damage 6 (Size 2), Sparks: Internal 6)​

Tarrasque Spore Launchers (Diff 2, Damage 4 (Reliability 1), Range 4 (Range 1), Sparks: Internal 3)​

Plan One: Use physical perfection to remove the internal sparks on the Spore Launcher, then use your melee vs Diff 2+1. your physical perfection lets you beat the range, then your melee combat skill lets you slash it off for 1 heat. Next, use physical perfection at a diff of 1+2 to remove Internal Sparks on the Scythe for 0 heat. Since your melee skill of 2 vs a diff of 5+3 would be 6 heat, and thus, overheat you, you instead vent 1 heat to use Adaptable and trip the critter up with its legs

Plan Two: Same format as above, but you instead target the scythes. This gets you 4 heat, which means you can vent 4 to use Adaptable to have the spore launchers target its own legs via trickery.

Plan Three: Same format as above, but you take out its legs, then use its spore launchers to target its own scythes.

​

 

[DragonCobolt]

The experimental Ultralisk - the Tarrasque, the name blooming in your mind with the same unnerving already learned sensation that a lot of telepathic overlap gave you - roared and charged. So, you simply were not where it was going to be. You vanished, popping to through that space-between-spaces as Zeratul had taught you. You appeared and saw that even that much distance hadn't been quite enough: The Tarrasque's reach was wide and its reaction speeds were incredible. You rolled backwards onto your back as the scythe blade swept over where you had been, the wind buffeting you, roaring past your face and ears.

You continued the motion, rolling over your head and to your feet. You came up, panting - and saw that the spore launchers were firing their deadly payload. The wet slap noise of them disgorging into the air was hideous. The spores were a lot faster than you expected too, whistling around and slamming into the ground to your left and right. Explosions of gore that turned into fireballs as the binary explosives mixed in the air slammed to your left and right. You crossed your psi-blades and snarled.

More spores came down, right on your position.

Of course, you weren't there anymore.

Smoke bloomed around the beast's ankles as you stepped from the space between, and time slowed as you focused. His legs were armored too, but that didn't matter. Your psi-blades crackled and you sprinted forward, then slashed left, then right, then left, then right. Each time, the blade found an exact nick in his armor, and when they cut, you pushed and twisted with your mind.

Just as Zeratul had said.

The damage didn't just bite. If it had, then the Tarassque would have healed the damage as quickly as you did. Instead, it tore out concepts, the possibility of repair. The weave itself was gone, untangled in your fingers as you sprinted past. You spun around and saw that the Tarassque was already falling. Stumbling. Its knees hit the ground as you skidded to a stop. The spore launchers started to fire, their payloads arcing up into the air.

In a flash you saw the opportunity. You turned and started to run, sprinting full out. Your legs had never pumped so fast, so swiftly as you arced back and around. The spores whipped after you, their courses leveling out as their stupid brains tried to keep pace with you - and then you threw yourself into a baseball dive, skidding underneath the scythe blade that protruded from the Tarrasque's jaw and made a shoulder high wall ahead of you.

You came up the other side and glanced back, just in time to see the spores crash into the bone blade. Explosions ripped out and you winced as the scythe was turned into a spray of shattered bone. You stood, panting, and looked into the vast, pained eyes of the Tarrasque. You felt their lowing confusion, their pain.

"Sorry," you said, then thrust the psi-blade deep. It's mind swirled and then rushed past you as you drew it away and sent it, threading off into the greater hive mind.

Then you turned to Daggoth.

Wait, I-

No. Not this time.

You sprinted forward, your feet crunching on the ground. The massive brain-shape of Daggoth swelled, but his psychic presence was vast enough that you didn't even need to reach him to touch him. You focused on everything that you had learned - the pattern of light energies, dark, energies. The swirling mass of energy locked inside your mind, that you could draw on, that you could use to make and unmake the song. It was funny...you realized that, in a way, Kerrigan had been teaching you too. Ever since you woke up, changed and confused, you had been learning to hear this. To understand this. Without that, Zeratul never could have taught you. Without that, you'd never have been here.

Would someone else have killed Daggoth?

You...didn't know.

You couldn't know.

Your mind reached into the vast shining core of that thing, that nascent Overmind, and you realized how fragile it was.

Your mental fingers touched Daggoth and you felt his haughty fury, his rage, his utter shock that something as singular as you could dare to do this. To him. To Daggoth. To the first amongst Cerebrates. He really did see himself as better, more, greater than even his fellows. You felt his acid-bitter jealousy for Kerrigan - spoiled human child - and his mingled joy and terror at the death of his parent mind. The Overmind was gone, and finally, he could grow and grow and grow...

And you twisted him apart.

The knot of light exploded and you blinked as you stood in a half real place - the distant land of Char was a shadow, and the vastness of Daggoth's body nothing but smoke. The glittering beads of light that were his mind drifted around you.

Like a human with slit femoral, he was dying and here to know it.

I'm...afraid...

His voice was softer now.

Your lips pursed slightly. A distant rumble shook the ground - nuclear weapons or artillery. Or-

Oh.

He sounded shocked.

Oh I understand now. Why he did it. Why he made her. Oh...

Daggoth's voice was softer still.

I'm...not afraid anymore, General Clarke. I don't...have to...I don't have to face them...

Your brow drew in. "What are you talking about?" you asked, quietly.

The Destroyers. They're here. He actually chuckled - the lights growing dimmer, dimmer. Dimmer. I...don't think...you're going to...

He was silent.

He was dead.

The light returned as all the world seemed to still. The clouds of Char spread overhead. Golden rays of sunlight shone down onto the battlefield as the writhing mass of the Zerg laid down to rest, the driving force of Daggoth well and truly quieted. You breathed a slow sigh out, then turned back to start walking to your ACU. Before you could, you saw a dark spot in the sky - it grew and dropped before you...and Sarah stood. She looked severe and grim, her features splattered with blood. Her wings folded behind her back, though she hadn't been using them to fly. They had no flight surfaces, after all.

You smirked. "It's done, my Queen," you said. "Daggoth is dead. Now we just have-"

"Sam," she said.

You paused, smile faltering.

She looked aside. "...I..." she was quiet again. "I just wanted...to..."

***
​

President Riley was being hurried through the corridors of his own bunker by men with guns. For almost five hundred years, the secret service of the United Earth Federation hadn't fired a shot in anger. Why would they? Who would try and use violence against the man, woman or enby who was personally responsible for bringing forth the bounty of nanofabrication and the quantum gate network? Politics in the UEF had lost the hard edged, knife sharp quality that came with hunger, want, need.

Despite that long dulling, they were doing their jobs admirably.

"We have a quantum gate link to San Francisco," General Hall said, his sidearm in his hand. "Fletcher had gone ahead to get an engineering unit - it's not quite an ACU but-"

A secret serviceman lifted his hand. "Wait!" he said, his rifle snapping to his shoulder.

Hissing, the beast that came around the corner was familiar to President Riley. He'd read dossiers on the Zerg and knew this was a Zergling. It was the smallest kind of Zerg there was. They were slaughtered in carload lots to secure a few inches of ground. Pathetic beasts, torn apart by artillery and laser fire.

It was the size of a small human being, and it sprinted down the corridor faster than a blink. The man ahead of Riley got off three shots, and the small caliber rounds pinged off the carapace. He went down, screaming, blood spurting as General Hall and the other members of secret service opened fire as well. The Zergling swept out with a single claw - and cut a woman entirely in half. But the concentrated fire managed to find something weak and soft in that edge of carapace and muscle. Red blood exploded and the Zergling staggered back and to the side, shaking its head.

Hall slapped a new magazine into his pistol, stepped forward, planted a boot against the Zergling's muzzle, jammed his pistol directly into the eye, and fired several rounds. The top of the Zergling's head bulged, then exploded with a spray of gore. Steam rose from its mouth as it slumped.

In its death throws, it had managed to impale a third serviceman.

President Riley panted. "Jesus," he whispered.
"Lets go," Hall said, gesturing.

Riley shook his head, then grabbed one of the dead men's guns. He checked the chamber, frowning - while General Hall gave him the smallest of nods.

They came to the plaza where the gate was located. Two mech marines stood beside it - and gore splattered the walls. The corpses of a few Zerglings were sprawled here and there.

"I want this base secured," Riley said, growling as he strode through the gate. He stepped out into a heavily secure room - cannons aimed at him and Hall. They walked past it and into the command center of the UEF, with a big window looking out over the bay and the pacific ocean. Riley flicked the safety on and tossed the rifle under handed to a secretary, who caught it nervously. As he did so, he continued talking. "I want the whole damn island secured. And..." He paused. "Scramble tier three bombers. I want to nuke the damn Black Sun device into slag before-"

The sky turned dark. An ultraviolet throb pulsed through the clouds, which bloomed away into nothingness. The whole building quivered and glass shattered across the city's streets. Everyone stood, silent, watching.

Then...the blue sky returned.

"...what happened?" Riley asked.

"T...The device failed, sir," a tech said. "It just...discharged into nothing. Nowhere. The energy's just gone."

"I may be a general, son," General Hall said. "But I didn't flunk out of high school physics - energy can't just vanish. It has to go somewhere."

"I...I mean..." The tech frowned, while the computer screens continued to scroll by. "Entropy, maybe?"

"Entropy is why a coffee cup cools, not why enough energy to power the entirety of China for a year vanishes with no effect!" General Hall snapped.

The sky turned silver. It was not the same all encompassing color-flare as before - instead, it was like a curtain being opened. The silvery tear had a gently curving edge that was perpendicular to the horizon, but the upper side was a wildly chaotic shape, plunging up, sweeping down, becoming narrow points and cathedral arches. Riley glanced down at the computers and confirmed what he knew in his gut: The tear was over the Sandwich Isles. That meant that it had to be huge and high up. It was big enough for him to see over the goddamn horizon.

"Sir, it's...a...a stable...quantum gateway," the tech who had been speaking said. "But the destination points we're getting from the signature - they're not to this universe."

"That's impossible," General Hall said.

A radar tech called out. "Detecting an incoming object. One. It's big, sir. Experimental class." She licked her lips. "T...Two. Three." She paused. "A dozen. Sixty eight. Four...hundred..." She paused, then turned back as the numbers kept skyrocketing - the radar reports showing them as a marching set of smallpox spreading across the meridian line that the tear spread along. "...sir, thousands. And more are coming."

"How many are experimental scale?" General Hall asked, sounding like this was just another day at the office.

"...all of them, sir."

"Whose are they?" Riley snapped.

"We don't know," the radar tech said. "They're fliers and-"

A distant pinprick of white light bloomed, just barely visible over the horizon. It was the smallest flash, and that alone made it clear how massive it was - to be visible at such distances.

The radar tech tapped away at her controls. "I don't even know what that was - it's power outstrips any of our strategic nuclear weapons, but there's no radioactivity. It's like...sir, Oahu is gone. All of it."

"Fletcher..." General Hall whispered. General Fletcher had stayed behind on the Sandwich Isles - was he even still alive?

President Riley felt the cold clawing weight of panic hit his back.

But he had not been elected because he couldn't make decisions.

"General Hall, effective immediately, I am ordering a complete evacuation of the Earth."

"Yes sir," he said.

Another flaring pinprick came from the horizon. And in the distance, silver birds were flying above the ocean.

They were getting closer.

***
​

"...I wanted to..." Sarah started again.

And then it hit you.

Pain. It exploded from inside your head. No. From deeper. From the hive mind itself. It was blazing fire, it was all consuming. It was a single word, a throbbing totality. It was something you had never imagined...but part of you had dreamed it. Red energy flared around your head and you and Sarah fell to your knees. You clutched your head, screaming. You couldn't help it. But you weren't alone. Every Zerg on the planet was screaming.

In the distance, red lightning crackled around the Protoss carriers.

SUBMIT.

The totality burned in your nerves, along your spine. Blood dripped down your nose - you clung to yourself with frantic claws. Not again. Not again. Not again. Not again. Not again.

SUBMIT.

Sarah fell to her side, clutching herself. The red haze grew thicker. The two of you were sinking into it, like the air had become blood. Sarah looked so terrified, her eyes meeting yours. Her lips formed words, but no sound came out, and no matter how hard you pushed against the blood-air, you couldn't move. It was like a nightmare - the kind where you knew you slept, and you knew you dreamed, but as you struggled to wake, you couldn't. You couldn't help but see those kissable, purple lips forming the words.

"H-Help...me..." she whispered.

You tried to reach out to her.

You felt mind meeting mind.

And in that moment, there was strength. She closed her eyes.

"...I...love you, Sam."

She took that strength you had given you - and she used it against you.

The pain was unbearable. Blazing. The agony was nearly as intense as the sense of betrayal. She had thrown you aside, dropped you like you were a tool to be used. Your back hit solid ground and you gasped, blinking, opening your eyes. You sat up, your head throbbing. Blood dripped down your nose as Sarah writhed on her back.

You felt hollow. Empty.

And you realized what it was.

Sarah had ejected you from the hive mind.

The only pain you felt was the loss of the song.

You stood - and turned - and saw the red haze was covering Char.

***
​

President Riley stood in the tertiary command bunker, located in the Ural mountains. He had needed to evacuate twice in fifteen minuets.

"Sir..." The tech standing before him was the same quantum tech from the first base. He was holding a pad and looked grave. "...the quantum gate network has hit its capacity."

"How...can it hit a capacity, it's the goddamn gate network!" Riley snapped.

"It's never had to move five billion people in an hour!" The tech shouted back, his voice breaking. "W-We don't have the computation power, fuck, sir, we don't even have the destinations. We can send, at max, twenty million people to our colonial settlements every...every..."

Riley looked at him.

"Every day," the tech finished.

Riley turned back to the window, his hands behind his back.

The tech looked haunted. "There's nowhere to go."

On the screen, the red line of dots had reached the Sierra Madre mountain range - and had left a smoldering pyre behind them. The southern line had just reached Peru, Columbia, Chile.

***
​

In the quiet of deep space, in a room of silver and glass, a woman stood and watched the stars. Her gown felt gaudy, and the creature comforts of her room felt like an insult - a degradation worse than any misery and privation might be. A wine glass was held between her fingertips as she watched the stars. It was strange. They were normally so comforting - but today, they just felt cold.

The door behind her opened. Another woman stood, bowed. Her green and black armor glittered, and her facial tattoos that marked her a Crusader glowed in counterpoint.

"Princess," she said. "The sensor officers have determined that you are correct. The Earthers have attempted to fire their weapon."

"And the Earth?"

"It is the first site of Amon's attacks."

The Princess was silent for a long moment. She half turned. "Rhiza, I want you to go to the command and control center and open the Aeon Illuminate's quantum gate network to the United Earth Federation. No limitation, no restrictions."

The Crusader looked shocked. Her eyes were wide. "P-Princess I- the...the Order faction will not take this lying down. Evaluator Kael-"

"I know what Kael has planned," the Princess said, sadly. "I know it will be civil war. But I cannot let this happen. Do it."

Those words were gentle. They were soft. They were, fundamentally, kind. And they were made of steel - stubbornness that could quake the galaxy. Crusader Rhiza bowed again, then turned to go.

Princess Rhianna Burke turned back to the stars. She continued to twirl the wine glass.

Her fleet continued, into the darkness.

Into the unknown.

***
​

Brasília was a writhing carpet of panicked humanity. The public transport stations had broken down, the point to point teleportation pads weren't working. The skycars threaded through the air, but they were heavy. Sluggish. Moving as if they were trying to carry too much. Some took off with people clinging to them - and they fell, screaming down into the megacity below, dropped like bombs onto the panicking crowds. Tramping feet and pressure had done enough to bring down more people than one would ever want to think, and it was still not as bad as what was happening to the west.

In the distance, traceries afternoon sky - anti-aircraft weaponry firing up into the distance. Engineering units and even a few ACUs had been mobilized. But most of the UEF's immense military might was focused outwards. Not inwards. Who had ever imagined that Earth, venerable Earth, would need to be defended.

For Bruna...all of this felt surreal.

Bruna was just an average woman, who had been living her normal life. She had gone to college, met a boy, married, had children. She designed consumer goods at a corporation that handled right-management for day to day consumables. Her workweek was about six to seven hours on a busy day. The rest of the time she spent with her children, or in play. She enjoyed reading trashy romance novels, and studying pre-nano cultures. Every year, she took a month out of her time to visit a revival retreat that recreated some fascinating slice of the 20th and 21st century.

She had just come back from the Enclavers run - it had been scary and thrilling to sit in an actual bunker from 2056, lovingly recreated and maintained, and eat real food that clavers had eaten. Well, okay. They had been recreated real food. But still.

It had seemed so safe. So distant.

"Why can't we go through the gate?" Her youngest, Ferdinando, asked. He tugged at her sleeve. João and Hipólita were both sullen and quiet. Their phones were unable to connect to the communication grid, their friends on Mars and Luna and Europe were all as unreachable as if...well, as if they had lived on Mars, Luna or Europe.

"I don't know, honey," Bruna whispered, brushing her hand through his hair, while her husband stood. There were masses of people streaming into the gate nexus area, but the normally bright and welcoming quantum gate doorways were all empty. Quiet. The big letterboard signs that proclaimed where people were to go in every language were flashing red warning signs. People kept trying to run through the gates, stepping into the empty arches, as if they expected to get somewhere.

A sudden scream split the air.

"They're here! They're here!"

Everyone turned to look.

The incoming bombers were massive. They were like someone had taken a wedge of sky and given it teeth - silvery birds, with a circular hole in the center that let loose a low, thrumming pulse. Projectiles slammed into them, but they shrugged them off. Barely noticed them at all. Bruna drew her arms around her children, pulling them in close, her heart hammering. The surreality had become nothing but thick, animal panic. The pressure of their slender bodies, the warmth of their skin, it all felt like a sick joke. She almost wanted to laugh.

Then-

"The gate!"

Who shouted it, she didn't know. But the cry was picked up by another - and Bruna lifted her head, to see that gate after gate was coming online. People surged forward. Her husband grabbed her arm, she grabbed her children. They rushed forward, along with the streaming mass of humanity. People screamed and cried out - and they were through. The flash of light was subtle and the change in gravity made her want to throw up. She stumbled, and blinked as a comparative trickle streamed out of the gate behind her. Surely, someone was splitting the destinations up, to not dump the entire population of Brasilia on some single colony.

The buildings around her were silver and the people were dressed strangely.

"...where are we?" Ferdinando asked.

"...I don't know," Bruna whispered.

The Aeon Illuminate civilians surrounding them blinked as, for the first time in six centuries, the two branches of humanity stood in the same room without a single gun.

***
​

You scrambled to Sarah's side. "Sarah, honey, Sarah, take me back." The words were babbling, inanity, stupid. Stupid. Stupid. But they were the first and only thing that came to your mind, a panicking need to not be alone. Stupid. How had you gotten like this? How had you gotten so fucking codependent?

Sarah remained curled up. Then, quietly, she whispered. "Sam...run..."

You froze.

Her hand closed around your throat. She lifted you and squeezed. Your legs kicked, wildly, eyes widening in shock.

Sarah's eyes flared with a red light. When she spoke, her voice was so smug. "Pathetic," she said. "To think, the traitors thought that your kind would be able to stop us."

Your hands scrabbled at her throat. "S-Stop...who?"

She laughed. "The Xel'naga, of course," she said.

Or...

No.

Someone else said through her.

Your eyes narrowed. Your vision was going dark as she squeezed and pressure thumped against your cells - burning dark fire.

"Who...are..."

She laughed, then threw you. Your back smashed into the ground and you skidded dozens of meters, coming to a stop. You gasped heavily, your eyes wide and confused as Sarah blurred atop you with shocking speed. Her foot smashed into your chest, pinning you down. She smirked. "A thousand years of war, and you don't even know why." She grinned. "I am General Amon, leader of the Xel'Naga Empire's Expeditionary Force. And you? Are a bug." Her foot drove in, hard.

"Get away from her, you bitch!"

The booming voice came from the PA system built in the final Monkeylord. You had no idea how distracted you had to be to miss a whole goddamn experimental robot from stomping up on you, but apparently, it was this distracted. Sarah-Amon turned and stepped away from you. She spread her arms, and laughed.

The microwave laser blazed to life. You lifted your arm, wincing.

The light faded.

Sarah was gone.

But you knew she wasn't dead.

Your hands scrambled and you found your earpiece. You tuned in - and heard panic over the freqency. "Artanis, your forces are attacking mine- Artanis, what the hell is going on down there buddy!"

"T-The Zerg that Kerrigan suborned are swarming my positions - I don't have defenses back here!"

"Sir, the Protoss are launching interceptors! Incoming-"

"-antimatter missiles hitting my-"

"Their shields are on maximum!"

"-Zerg are hitting our flanks-"

"Scourge! Evasive! Evasive! Evasive!"

And through it all, Dostya's voice.

"General Clarke! Your orders, sir."

You frowned, then tapped at the earpiece. "All forces, retreat. Immediately! Disengage Protoss and Zerg forces. We're leaving! Now!"

You turned.

And saw that Sarah was emerging from the ground. A crackling buzz of a point to point teleporter filled the air to your right. Artanis appeared, his body wreathed in red flames. His eyes glowed with the same unnatural red light. The monkeylord staggered as several Protoss scouts swooped upon it, opening fire. Their proton cannons slammed into the thin armor.

You weren't getting saved twice, it seemed.

"Artanis?" You asked.

He shook his head, eyes blazing. You may actually be a threat, looking at everything you've done through my tool's eyes, General Amon said, his voice amused.

You wiped at your jaw, then activated your psi-blades.

"I'm going to find you, Amon," you said. "And I am going to fucking kill you."

I've heard that before, Amon said. In a countless worlds, from countless mouths of countless mayfly species. Bravado in the face of extinction repeats across convergent evolution again and again and again, like bilateral symmetry and sexual reproduction. It's gone from cliche to comforting, I have to admit.

You snorted. "Do you always fucking talk this much?"

I've been told I am somewhat verbose, yes.

Artanis' voice sounded so wrong, speaking like this.

Then he and Sarah rushed you. You parried a blow from Artanis - a spray of crackling energies from psi-blade meeting psi-blade - only for Sarah's knuckles to crack into your jaw. Your head snapped aside and you fell. Artanis kicked your stomach, then stabbed your shoulder, slicing deep. Your Zerg regeneration struggled, while Sarah knelt down, grabbing your head. She started to tug at you - and the strength of her was stunning. You squirmed, focused, then vanished. Your body flickered from place to place and you appeared, standing, your arm half-hanging off your body. You clutched it to your side, trying to will your regeneration to go faster. You spat blood.

"You know, I actually think if you surrender, my Zerg puppet here will resist fractionally less," Amon said, through Sarah. His hand caressed her body - using her own fingers. You saw red. "Think that might make it more or less painful for her?"

You clenched your teeth. "You bastard..."

Well, I-

There was a flash.

A momentary haze, a pause in time. You saw Artanis, moving, turning, his pony tail flickering through the air. And suspended in the air behind him was Zeratul - his body still wreathed in the smoke from his shadow step. His blade plunged down. He was aiming for Artanis' pony tail...

And then, with blurring speed, Sarah got between the two. Her palm slammed into Zeratul's chest and sent him flying away. He crashed into the ground, skidding to a stop. Artanis brushed his hand along his ponytail, while Amon spoke through him. A simple weakness, easily rectified in time - and one you will not exploit, insect.

No... Zeratul whispered.

Both Sarah and Artanis' heads jerked - as if they had both heard the same thing. Sarah grabbed onto Artanis and he vanished with a whirring blast of a Protoss teleporter. Zeratul reached for him. ARTANIS! He bellowed.

Your head swam with the pain of it all.

Huh.

Your regeneration wasn't...working...quite as well as it was...

You blinked, wobbled, then fell to your knees.

Zerg were crawling over Matt's ACU. Their claws slashed into his armor. Mutalisks were swooping towards the Hyperion, which bled smoke from its engines as scourge were barely kept at bay. Protoss fighters were blowing apart Wraiths - both those marked the blue of Raynor's Raiders, and those painted the red and black of Alpha Squadron. The Norad III loomed over head, surrounded by a haze of Protoss interceptors. And it all felt so very distant.

You closed your eyes.

When you opened them again, the sky was full of silver disks.

Beams of searing heat came down and washed the world clean.

You closed your eyes again.

***
​

You opened your eyes. You were wrapped in medical equipment. Soft voices spoke. "What if it's a backdoor? Something that Amon could use-"

"I won't allow anything to be done to Samantha without her consent. She's gone through enough, damn it."

"But the Way-"

"Shh. She's awake."

A face swam into view. She was so beautiful.

You smiled. "Hey Sarah..."

"I'm not her, Sam." She looked exasperated. "You are on quite a lot of painkillers right now. I need you to focus. You can be made free of the Zerg. We...can make you human and keep you safe from Amon. But there's another way. If you wish, you can stay this way - you can stay Zerg and we can still shield you, through the Way. It's your choice."

You focused, hard. Scrabbling for clarity.

You found it.

You...

---
[ ] Become Human - respec character
[ ] Stay Zerg - keep character as is

 

[DragonCobolt]

You wanted to be you.

"I want to be me..." You reached up towards Sarah. She took your hand and nodded, then lifted her head.

"We're not changing her."

"We can't risk that! The Xel'Naga-"

"There's a Way. Don't worry." Sarah smiled down at you.

Your eyes closed.

***
​

Time passed.

You woke, at last, with a groan, your head throbbing. It felt like there were a thousand ghostly whispers trying to slide into your mind, pressing against your temples. Your hand went to either side of your head - and you groaned as you sat up, slowly. You were laying in a large, silvery chamber. Everything was smooth, rounded, and the table beside your bed floated without being attached to the floor. There was a glass of water and a small bundle of greenish fabric. You were naked, but there were several small disks attached to your body - on your arms, shoulders, back. You felt those first, touching them.

The disks came off your body, one by one, slipping away from your skin and skimming away into the air. Your eyes widened as you saw them stacking up against the wall, then retreating into it, flowing through the metal like it was water. Your hand went to your hair. Spines. You looked down at your arm. Pale green, with carapace.

What had you been thinking?

I want to be me...

You frowned. "Painkillers..." you muttered, but you knew it was a lie, bald faced.

You stood up, naked, and rubbed the back of your neck. The strange green fabric, when you unfurled it, turned out to be what you recognized from a screen and intelligence reports: A crusader jumpsuit, the kind that those...fanatics in the Aeon Illuminate wore. Your lips pursed and you sighed. "I'm about to learn a lot about them, aren't I?" you asked, then started to tug the clothes on. You weren't about to meet your second Queen buck ass naked.

The clothing skimmed onto you and tightened, fitted, shifted. It didn't reveal as much as you'd have thought - there was padding and sockets mounted across it for fitting into an Aeon ACU. But as you felt it shifting on you like those fancy nanosuits that had been all the rage about a decade ago on Earth, the door chimed. You sighed, then squared your shoulders.

"Enter."

The door opened and...Princess Rhianna Burke entered the chamber. Without the haze of painkillers, you...could see almost why you'd mistaken her for Sarah. She was incredibly femme, with delicate cheekbones, kissable lips, a narrow and delicate nose. But her hair was brown and her eyes were far too sad to be Sarah's.

Sarah never got sad, exactly. Not without getting mad too.

You nodded to her. "Princess," you said.

"General," she said, her voice soft. "I'm glad you are awake. Sadly, we're going to need to be quite close to one another for the time being."

You noticed something. The whispering was...

Not gone.

But distant.

You rubbed your neck slowly. "I guess this is going to take some explaining, huh?"

"Quite a lot," she said, then grinned ever so slightly. "If it helps, I've gotten this down to a expositionary science. And unlike General Hall and Dr. Brackman, you've already seen it."

"Seen...what?" you asked.

"The Infinite Empire," she said, simply.

You focused on it. Drew closer.

Then for a single flashing moment, you saw something - a shadow of a shadow, slipping through mines. The shadow didn't move with feet, it rippled between space-time like an eel, slithering across physical space in a between-world that you could almost see...a membrane of pure darkness stretched over an infinite glittering light. And every time they risked that step, the light focused, drew in, the sense of danger was overwhelming. The light, though. The light was amazing. You looked at the bottom of the membrane, like peering into the bottom of a ecotour boat.

It was like looking into a cathedral made of mirrors - an infinite reflection of more and more brilliant light. It was beautiful. And...cold.

And then something noticed you.

You blinked, the flash of memory so intense that it shook you. "...start talking."

"Come," she said. "I'll show you to the bridge of the CZAR 1." She quirked her lips. "Apparently, our cousins in the Koprulu Sector name their starships. Such a strange custom."

"It's...grown on me," you admitted.

***
​

"They're called the Xel'Naga," Burke said, her voice soft as the elevator hummed up the shaft in the center of the vast, circular starship. "The scripture says they rule an infinite empire, sprawling universe after universe. This is...inaccurate." Her lips quirked up. "It's closer to three or four. And they don't rule entire universe. As you are well aware, habitable planets are rare and terraforming is difficult. A single sentient species can claim an entire galaxy in remarkably short order, on the celestial timescale. But then we run into issues of scale. What do you do when every world is tapped and the energy emissions of every star in a galaxy still can't bridge the vastness of space between galaxies."

"...you enjoy yourself?" you asked, mirthlessly.

"Empires don't survive on stasis," Burke said, quietly. "There's always a need for more resources. More slaves."

You looked away, watching the silvery elevator shaft passing by with a quiet, susurrating hum.

"The Xel'Naga found that the barrier between dimensions was vastly easier to pierce. And so, they came to their next Milky Way to conquer. It was a bloodbath. A millennia and a half of endless slaughter. And so, the next time, they grew craftier. They found ways to tune the dimensional equations - to arrive in the Void between universes. Where time is programmable, variable. Controllable."

The elevator stopped and the bridge stretched around you - a circular bay of silvery metal and sheer glass. Through it, you could see dozens of other CZAR ships floating in space, arrayed with battlecruisers, transport ships, and the trusty, plucky old E1. Aeon officers glowered at you from a distance as Burke led you to a railing, to look out into space.

"The next time was handled better. Their agents lurked in the Void and shaped the evolution of selected species. They crafted the perfect weapons for their invasions - essence..." She held her hand out. "...and form. Genetic variability and psionic potential, both in hive minds that can be centralized and controlled."

You frowned. "The Protoss and the Zerg."

"From what I've managed to discover, they're not the first one. The Quel'dorei and the Gul'danians, the Voshren and the Sha'dyian, the...the names are meaningless, aren't they?" She chuckled, softly. "Sorry. I've been devlving into ancient lore so long, I forget not everyone has the same academic interests." She breathed in, then pushed herself up a bit by her palms. "What matters is the system is the same. Craft their races, turn them into weapons, use them as a way to form a bridge head, annihilate all resistance. Expand."

"What about us?" you asked.

"We're one of the wild cards," Burke said, smirking slightly. "They crop up once in a while. A race that doesn't quite measure up to their requirements, but isn't so easily disregarded. Our destruction was to be via plague. A biogenic weapon, designed by scientists who sacrificed decades of their life by traveling from the Void to our galaxy. You see, in the Void, centuries, millennia, it can pass in a heartbeat. To come here is to live as we do. And even for the Xel'naga, it's quite a choice."

You frowned slowly. "...Seraphim II," you whispered. "Colonel Trent."

"Colonel Trent and the United Earth Empire did not find a Xel'naga colony by accident. They were lured there to give the Xel'naga everything they ever wanted," Burke said, her eyes flashing. "Colonel Trent survived fifteen minuets before a Xel'naga agent named Duran had killed him, impersonated him, and instituted a quarantine."

"Studying human captives to wipe us out," you said, turning your back on the railing. "And your great-great-great grandmother..."

Burke chuckled. "She did what we Burkes have always done, General. She used her words. We...the name...of the Xel'naga researchers she spoke to is lost. General Amon and Duran slaughtered them. But in the uprising, we my ancestor learned the truth. And she crafted a solution. A weapon. The Way. A psychic method to purge Xel'naga influence."

Your scowled. "Then what the fuck has your people been doing the past thousand years?"

The princess looked ashamed. Her hands twisted. "One in every ten million humans has psychic potential. Though, apparently, that's fixable." She cast you a wry look. "The Way became a religion. Religion became...intolerance. Intolerance became...war." She hung her head forward. "I've spent my life, struggling to learn what I know. To find these scraps of truth, to wring out of ancient books and corrupted data-files some semblance of reality! And now...now, no one believed me until it was too late!"

You sighed, quietly.

It all fell solidly into place.

Except...

"What about Sarah?" you asked.

"I have no idea," Princess Burke said, shaking her head. "She could be anywhere as part of Amon's forces."

"No, I mean how does she fit into these fucker's plans?" you growled, quietly.

"I'm...not sure," she admitted.

You frowned, slowly, then tightened your grip. "Princess Burke, who is your highest ranked military officer?"

She stood, slowly, then squared her shoulders. "You are."

You almost tripped, despite standing perfectly still. "W...me?" you asked. "What about High General Kael?"

"She, along with a significant portion of the Illuminate military have defected to General Amon in the wake of my...opening up Aeon Illuminate gate networks to the UEF," Princess Burke said, her voice soft. "...it was the only way to save...anyone from Earth."

You did sag now.

"...what happened to Earth?" you whispered.

***
​

The map of the galaxy flared like a cancer scan on a world without a medcenter. Earth was a red circle, and radiating red lines shot out from it to every major UEF colony. Cybran space was buckled, and the green of the Aeon Illuminate had become crosshatched with orange lines, indicating newly minted Aeon Order's control. Purple, spreading splotches and burnished brass markers for subverted Zerg hive clusters and Protoss fleets. Engagement markers along the entire spinward boarder between the Koprulu Sector and the rest of the milky way. The circular table had people from five armies and, counting you and Cr, three species.

Four, actually. Depending on how you counted yourself.

"Two billion dead and our homeworld has been turned into a Xel'Naga stronghold. That gate of their is bringing in Xel'naga ACUs as fast as they can - Amon has been joined by half a dozen of his subordinates," General Hall snarled, his mustache bristling. "The Cybran and Aeon have both fallen into civil war at the same exact moment, and not one but three alien species are romping through human space. It's a goddamn disaster out there, and my best general is...is..." He turned to you.

"Zergified," you said, dryly.

Cr, who sat on his haunches beside you, churred and chittered happily.

"And you brought a goddamn dog into the meeting room!" Hall snapped. "What the fuck am I supposed to do with ANY of this!?"

"Now, hold your horses, General Hall," Jim Raynor said. "Lets see what we do got to work with. You have my boys-"

"Oh, a platoon of colonial pirates," Hall said.

"You have Major Horner and his ACUs."

Hall grunted. "Major Horner's services have been...exemplary."

"You have the Nerazim," Jim said, nodding to Zeratul.

And I as well! Fenix boomed from beside him. You shook your head.

"How the hell did Burke get you?" you asked.

Tis a simple matter - my connection to the Khala is weak and pitiful compared to the mighty, virile thread that ran through my mind before my wounding! Fenix said, his voice grace. It kept me from the vile Amon's grasp until I reached the protection of an Aeon ship.

You nodded as Jim kept ticking off on his fingers. "And then we got Dostya and her Cybran boys."

"Dr. Brackman has made himself quite comfortable," Dostya said, nodding gravely. "The three ACUs are...less than I'd wish."

"That's less than twenty five percent of known Cybran assets!" Hall snapped. "The rest of them..." He shook his head, sighing.

"I wasn't the one who activated a quantum super weapon that allowed a hyper-advanced alien empire to invade our galaxy," Dostya said, cooly.

"There's one thing you're missing, Jim," you said. "We have another upside: Sarah Kerrigan ripped that bastard Duran's heart out. Apparently, he was one of Amon's best agents."

"There is that, too!" Jim said, nodding. "I've been in long odds before. This might be the longest I've ever seen, honestly. But we still got cards to play and, by hell, I say we play em. According to that Princess there...these Xel'Naga have been kicking over galaxies for millions of years. I say it's time we show 'em what for."

Hall stuck his tongue into his cheek, considering. He grunted. "True." He said, quietly. "And, hell. I'd rather go down swinging."

You nodded, slowly. "If we're going to run this, I need to be in command. I want total authority for this...alliance."

Everyone regarded you.

"I'm in," Jim said, without hesitation.

As am I! Fenix said.

Zeratul inclined his head. He seemed...more somber. Sadder. As if he had seen something slip between his fingers. You knew the exact feeling. Your hand stroked Cr's head, while Hall sighed, then nodded as well. "The UEF chain of command is shot to hell, but you have seniority. And President Riley..." His face looked shadowed. "His last order was...if possible...to give you this." He reached into his vest, and took out a medal box. You took it. You didn't open it. You held it, and felt the bitter taste of it - of getting what you'd dreamed of your whole life...and to now want to throw it out an airlock. You tapped it against your forehead.

Dostya's eyes were closed. She opened them and nodded. "The Cybran Nation has held a vote. By an amazing majority, you have won our loyalty." She smirked. "Don't let it go to your head. Our non-subverted members are lesser in number than I'd prefer."

You nodded.

Swann's voice cracked in over the PA, making Princess Burke - who had sat quietly, her head bowed in thought - to jerk her head up. "Jimmy boy, you will never fucking guess whose fleet just warped in."

Jim and you both stood at once.

In a flash, you were on the bridge, and both of you boggled at the battlecruisers hanging in space.

"No," Jim and you said at the same time.

"We're...getting a communication message, my princess," one of the Aeon women said.

"Bring it up, if you would be so kind," Priness Burke said.

The glassy wall that marked the outer edges of this open air bridge shimmered and, projected on it, larger than life...was...

"Raynor." Emperor Arcturus Mengsk I and his son, Prince Valarian Mengsk looked down at you all. "Clarke. I believe we need to talk."

***
​

Jim refused, point blank, to have Mengsk anywhere near the circular, egalitarian conference room where the Alliance had had its first meeting. And so, instead, you all met in a side chamber, a meeting room that Burke got together - though her expression went from polite interest to a serious frown as you sketched out the basics of Mengsk's rule. When he finally did arrive and you were in the same room as the man who had betrayed Kerrigan and left her to die, the man who had taken a fight for liberty and revolution and made it all about him...you felt the impressive weight of his personality slam into you despite that.

Few men could pull of a cloak with a gold skull clasp. No one, you were sure, could make it fit so naturally as Arcturus Mengsk. He wore the clothes of empire as if he had been born to them, unlike his son - who always had felt like he was in a costume, even when he had come to you hat in hand.

Now, you and Mengsk squared off.

You were a little bit taller than him.

He...wasn't actually that tall. You wondered how much of that was growing up on Korhal and spending his life running from Confederate reprisals. His eyes and yours met. Then he inclined his head. "My condolences," he said. "I've...lost a homeworld as well."

"Yeah, and wiped one out too," Jim muttered.

Mengsk politely ignored him.

"I've been informed of the strife now sweeping throughout the galaxy and I am aware that humanity's future is in peril. These...Xel'Naga..." he frowned. "My scientists have fed me a great deal of information about them, what we've learned from the Zerg and the Protoss, it seems that this legion of fire that's now seeking to tear down our two great empires can only be defeated and driven back into the void from whence it came by our cooperation. I know you see the Dominion as a mere...backwater. But currently, General Duke and General Warfield, as well as other commanding officers, are securing vital mineral and vespine resources. My scientists have already begun to make immense strides in our SCV construction capacity just by being aware of more advanced nanolathe technology. I..." He paused, then for a moment, there was no Emperor, no politician, just a tired, old father.

How much of that was a mask too?

"...I want a galaxy for my boy to grow up in, Samantha."

Your head spines twitched subtly and your glowing eyes regarded him, cooly.

"...this is horseshit," Jim said, quietly. "You just want to keep your crown. This is all it's ever been about! You fuckin' tried to throw in with the Protoss, shit, you tried to work with the Zerg."

"Ironic, I know," Mengsk said, and his eyes flicked from Jim. To You. To Jim again.

Jim scowled. "That's different, you-"

You grabbed his chest, stopping him.

You made your decision in a flash.

---
[ ] Take the Dominion as allies
[ ] Refuse
[ ] Write In

 

[DragonCobolt]

You rubbed your temple slowly, trying to get your headache to settle down.

"Mengsk," you said, flatly. "What the fuck do you think is going to come out of this?"

He frowned at you. "I see you're as blunt as ever, General Clarke."

"I've had a long day. My homeworld is in cinders, the galaxy is in flames and, oh right, my...Sarah has been mind-fucked by an interdimensional Conquistador," you said, throwing yourself back into a chair - lounging in flagrant disregard of the way that the Emperor of the Terran Dominion remained standing. You were pretty sure this was a breach of some protocol, but you didn't care. "So, lets cut the bullshit. You want to maintain your throne. Your...power. That ain't happening. You know it's not happening."

He frowned, slightly, looking square into your eyes.

"I have not worked for so many years to have the only hope of humanity..." His mouth worked, then he looked aside. His hands clenched behind his back. "You could still wipe us off the face of the galaxy. Not easily, I don't recon, but given time. You have, according to my intelligence, six, seven of those ACUs. I saw the orbital surveillance on Aiur and Char."

You nodded. "It might cost us the greater war. But we could do it." You leaned forward. "...I am going to give you a compromise. Because while I think we can kick your ass, I don't want to waste the time or the lives on it. You abdicate, become an advisor. Valerian takes the throne." You gestured to him. "He's a good kid, and after the war...maybe you can hope that we're all too busy rebuilding to remember to put you on trial."

"I-" Mengsk regarded you with eyes that glittered like cold, distant stars. He looked like someone weighing every option. "And my generals?"

"They're subordinate to me, but, they would be either way," you said, then shrugged. "It's a unified army, I'm the grand commander. Like..." you tried to think up the last time there was a coalition like this, in a similarly high stakes war. You frowned. "...like Eisenhower."

"Who?" Mengsk asked, brow furrowing.

You shook your head. "Nevermind. Do you take these conditions?"

Mengsk stepped away from you and to the curved window of the silvery room. He looked out into space, his brows drawing in, his lips turned into a frown. You glanced back and saw that Jim had the biggest, shit eating grin on his face. You couldn't blame him.

"Father-" Valerian started.

"Son," Mengsk said, quietly. "I know you want-"

"No, I don't want the throne," Valerian said, quietly. "Not like this. I-"

Mengsk lifted his hand, and Valerian quieted down. He turned back to face you and Jim and his son, his expression resolved. "I did everything I did for humanity. You may not believe it. But I saw what happened when we were given free reign. The Guilds of the Confederacy, the old families, put profit over everything - and in exchange, they incinerated Khoral. Your UEF seems to put Earth over everything - and you'd sacrifice the rest of us to keep it pristine and safe. Me? I know when to fold. For humanity."

You tried to read him. Did he believe that.

...you couldn't tell.

"I will abdicate my throne," Mengsk said. "I will stay as my son's advisor - but advisor only. And once this war is over? I will retire - to either a very nice palace or to a prison." He smirked. "Or, if you do not turn out to be the general we all hope, to a wall with a blindfold and a cigarette."

"Not sure if the Xel'naga go in for that," you said, trying to not smile. Goddamn it he was charming when he was trying...

Mengsk inclined his head. "Then we shall have to hope for your success, General Clarke."

He turned to go. Jim shook his head. "Better than what that lying snake deserves," he muttered.

You frowned. This was the man who had abandoned Kerrigan to the Zerg. Who had killed billions on Tarsonis with a single psi-disruptor. Who would have been happy to destroy you and the UEF and everything you stood for - even if the UEF was nothing like what you wanted in the galaxy. And yet, when you talked to him, it was all so easy to forget. You leaned back in your seat, and spoke: "...I have to know, now. Before...anything else." You licked your lips. "Why'd you do it? To her?"

Mengsk turned to face you. He didn't bother trying to play a poker face - he knew what it was you were asking about. He lifted his chin. "Did she tell you about her past?"

You nodded, then frowned. "You knew she was a Ghost. You knew she was being controlled. How-"

Mengsk's frown grew more intense. His eyes showed a real, honest emotion. It was anger. "Sarah Kerrigan butchered my family with a machete. Somewhere in that head of hers was that person. Blocks and memory wipes can't take away that kind of blood. Any more than they can wash it off my hands. And so, I saw a chance to not just get some justice for Korhal, for my family, and for the Dominion to be...but also..." He looked away. "...I saved my entire battlefleet. Every ship that wasn't sunk, every soldier that didn't die that day went on to serve in my name." He looked back, his eyes cold as steel. "Does that answer your question, General?"

"Get out of my sight," you growled, claws digging into the armrests.

Mengsk left.

Valerian paused, only to bow.

Emperor Valerian.

He left.

Jim breathed out slowly. "Shit," he said. "...you wanna get dunk?"

"God yes, but," you said, then stood, leaving the armrests tattered and ruined. "I have work to do."

***
​

You took a moment to regard yourself in the mirror.

You licked your lips, then brushed your hand along your collar.

I wish Sarah was here to see it, you thought. She'd either chew this off me or laugh herself silly.
When you entered into the main planning room for the galactic war, the rest of your commanders came to attention - General Duke, General Hall, Lt. Colonel Horner, Fenix, Jim Raynor, Dostya and a slender, young looking Aeonite named Ryza. Her glowing tattoos made her look as otherworldly as her skintight outfit. They all took a look at you. You'd taken the UEF dress uniform you'd be expected to wear for this, but stripped off the UEF patches and replaced them with a symbol you had worked on. The visual design libraries of the CZAR-1 were fairly advanced and you were able to finagle together a three colored triangular patch - green, red, and blue on the outer edge, representing each of the factions involved. Green for the Aeon and Protoss, Red for the Zerg and Cybran, and blue for the colonials and the UEF.

You were still obviously a Zerg under the uniform, though. And you'd forgone the cap.

It kinda itched.

"At ease," you said, then took your seat. "Report."

"Well, the Dominion has already run into serious trouble," Jim Raynor said, grimly. "Pirates and raiders are starting to pick at their supply ships that are taking materials to our lines. They're mostly Terran, so I think this is just general opportunism..." He made a face.

"We should hang every last dirty bastard from the highest noose we can find," General Duke harrumphed.

"Possibly," you said. "But I'm more worried about those." You nodded at the red blips.

Dostya came to attention. "These are the two nearest planets - on the Koprulu line and the nearest part of UEF space. Borealis is under attack by a Zerg hive swarm being controlled by Amon. They have dug in, but they won't last." She gestured. "And on the far side, we have Typhan II, a UEF colony world that is now being overrun by a Xel'Naga attack. There are reports that they have an ACU."

"A staging ground for them to hit into the Koprulu sector directly," General Hall said, nodding.

"Without a doubt," Dostya said, nodding curtly.

"And this one?" Ryza asked, pointing at a blip in deep space.

"It...appears to be a zerg hive fleet. Unknown what their objectives are. But there are high levels of psionic energy being detected by Aeon sensitives," Dostya said, firmly. Aeon sensitives. One in a million people, and they could barely hear your thoughts if they touched you. Meanwhile, you could crush their brains like grapes. It made you feel like a giant in a playground sometimes. "It is not attacking anyone - but...if the psionic energies indicate...Kerrigan."

You shifted in your seat, frowning.

"And finally, here, is the Golden Armada," Dostya said. "This is just a theory of where it is - it is highly mobile and actively engaged against us in multiple places. And...if unchecked, it may threaten entire planets."

"Mar Sara on steroids," Jim said, quietly.

You nodded.

Time to get to work.

---
HEAT: 4/6

There's a big complicated galactic war mechanic if you want to engage with it! But, also, you can just vote for this stuff!

The pirates?
[ ] Bribe them to get them to shut up and go away. It'll take up a lot of the resources from the dominion, but keep your backline quiet. (Use charm to snuff their sparks - removes the Dominion's resources from play. Reduces danger, reduces future payout.)
[ ] Send Jim Raynor to deal with them. (Improves Stake, allows Golden Armada to act - this is true of all "Send NPC" and I won't reprint it each time)
[ ] Send General Duke to deal with them.
[ ] Deal With it Yourself (the Golden Armada will attempt to assassinate you mid-mission.)
[ ] Write In

The siege of Borealis?
[ ] Send Dostya to deal with it.
[ ] Send Ryza to deal with it.
[ ] Send Jim Raynor to deal with it.
[ ] Send General Duke to deal with it.
[ ] Send Matt to deal with it.
[ ] Deal With it Yourself (the Golden Armada will attempt to assassinate you mid-mission.)
[ ] Write in

The Invasion of Typhan II
[ ] Send Dostya to deal with it.
[ ] Send Ryza to deal with it.
[ ] Send Jim Raynor to deal with it.
[ ] Send General Duke to deal with it.
[ ] Send Matt to deal with it.
[ ] Deal With it Yourself (the Golden Armada will attempt to assassinate you mid-mission.)
[ ] Write In

The Zerg Hive fleet
[ ] Send Dostya to deal with it.
[ ] Send Ryza to deal with it.
[ ] Send Jim Raynor to deal with it.
[ ] Send General Duke to deal with it.
[ ] Send Matt to deal with it.
[ ] Deal With it Yourself (the Golden Armada will attempt to assassinate you mid-mission.)
[ ] Write In

Obviously, you can't send an NPC to two places at once. Each NPC will succeed at their mission - the main difference is in HOW they succeed, which is based on their character and the mission!

Spoiler: Mechanics!

We're in the most freeform stage of the game - you're the high commander of the Allied forces, and we have an entire galaxy to take back! You have the following Resources (these are going into the GALACTIC WAR MAP for future reference.) These resources can be Backgrounds, Masteries, or Motivations. Backgrounds give access to gear, and more gear at higher levels. Masteries improve one of your masteries by their rating when you use them. Motivations create powerful sparks based on their narrative description!
Each round, you will face down Sparks that represent danger and opportunity unlocked by your Stakes.

Each Spark can be handled in a Defensive, Offensive or Reckless way!
Defensive actions (growing economies, building bases, evacuating refugees, diplomacy, and similar actions that are low risk) will snuff those Sparks out. Once all sparks are gone, then the galactic war wraps up. However, it will also wrap up as it currently is, narratively speaking - so, it won't get WORSE than how it is currently, but it's not going to get any better. Defensive actions are an excellent way to remove dangerous sparks that you don't want to really deal with now - since you will need to split your attention sometimes.
Offensive actions (launching invasions, engaging battlefleets, preparing massive nuclear bombardments) are operations you handle by telling an NPC to go take care of something. This lets the sparks decay into a new Resource reflecting which NPC you send - putting General Duke into a space battle will probably get you victories but might have human costs, while Jim Raynor is more likely to cut and run but leave you with resources to use later. The main weakness of Offensive actions is they take time and, since you're not there, may not go the way you expect.
Reckless actions are you personally getting involved and doing actual on the ground operation and it triggers a classic battle. These are high risk (cause you might die) but they're high reward - they're the only way to remove opponents.
Opponents are the enemy resources and work a lot like NPCs in normal combat.
Now, the map!

YOUR RESOURCES
TERRAN DOMINION [Background] (1)

The men and material of the Dominion - limited, but they're mustering as we speak. ​

ALLIANCE EXPEDITIONARY FORCES [Mastery] (1)

While you have access to several ACUs of every faction, they lack economic and technological support to be fully effective. ​

ZERG HIVE [Mastery] (1)

The scant few Zerg you control that are free of Amon's influence. Mostly Zerglings. ​

AEON FLEET [Background] (1)

While half a dozen CZARs seem impressive, they're not actually well made for ship to ship combat. ​

ALLIED COHESION [Motivation] (1)

The alliance is fragile and weak. ​

YOUR OPPOSITION
XP VALUE: 5
THE MIND CONTROLLED GOLDEN ARMADA: Diff 6

Commanded by a mind controlled Artanis-Amon, the Golden Armada is striking terror into the Koprulu Sector. ​

Now, a final detail: Unlike in normal combat, XP values in this kind of encounter can go up. And, moreover, since ending this galactic war means that...the quest is over the XP value does not super matter for rewards - but instead, it is the ballpark for how complete your victory over Amon is. Do you vanquish him utterly and drive him from the galaxy, or do you merely force an uneasy peace with a carved out enclave surrounded by the Xel'Naga? Spoiled for people who don't want to know the exact numbers.

Spoiler: Victory Results

A Ghostly Resistance (XP 5-10): The Xel'naga rule the majority of the galaxy, and the scattered survivors of the Forged Alliance eek out a subsistence between the stars. If Kerrigan has been saved, she is a broken shell, aware of what she has lost and Sam never recovers. She dies, an ancient zerg-human hybrid, after having led this bitter resistance for seven thousand years.

A Bitter Truce (XP 11-20): The Koprulu Sector stands alone, triumphant and surrounded by enemies. While the rest of the human race are yoked as slaves to the Xel'naga, you have at least made one bastion of freedom. If Kerrigan has been freed, she slowly recovers, but never is quite the same woman she was before.

The Galaxy Aflame (XP:21-30): Half the galaxy is ruled by the Alliance and half by the Xel'Naga Empire. The war will go on for countless aeons - maybe until the end of time. But you've done enough. Billions live in freedom and security, thanks to you. Kerrigan is able to smile, assuming she is rescued.

Close Shut the Gates of Hell and Slay the Gods Themselves (31+ XP): Amon is driven from the universe and the reverberations will one day shatter even the Infinite Empire. You did it!

So, for the first round of the Galactic War, each of your resources generates sparks!
Pirates Raiding 6 (Supply Lines in Disarray 1)
Borealis Siege 6 (Zerg Ramage 1)
Typhan II Occupied 6 (Xel'Naga ACU Spotted 1)
Zerg Hive Fleet Spotted 6 (Kerrigan? 1)

 

[DragonCobolt]

You gave your orders.

"Jim, I want you to take care of these pirates. Use as gentle a hand as you think you can get away with - they're pirates, but we have bigger fish to fry right now," you said, clacking your claws on the metal edge of the table. It deformed slightly, then repaired itself with each tak noise that rang out. Jim, his hands holding a small notepad of paper, scribbled them down.

"Understood, General," he said, nodding.

"Dostya, we need to start getting the galactic powers more used to fighting in space," you said, firmly. "I know that going up against a hive fleet isn't the best way to cut your teeth - but we have to learn fast, and you can evacuate easier when fights take hours to come out and you're far away from any gravity wells." You smirked. "Sound up to it?"

Dostya nodded. "Dr. Brachman has already started to lay out some...ideas for Cybran space vehicles and combat capacities. And worst comes to worst, I can always turn asteroids into nuclear parks." Her lips quirked. "I take it you wish me to engage with the Zerg Hive fleet. I...had thought-"

"You're the best one of the job," you said, firmly. "That hive fleet isn't threatening anyone. The one attacking Borealis is. Borealis has a million people on it."

She nodded.

"Major...Lt. Colonel," you said, correcting yourself with a wince. Matt gave you a thin smile - he clearly didn't mind. "I hate to send you up against a Xel'Naga ACU - we're not exactly sure how their technology racks up compared to ours. But if anyone can boot this alien asshole off Typhan II, it's you."

Matt nodded. "I'll make you proud, sir."

"You already have," you said, wryly. "Ryza, Hall, I think you should begin working on our backline infrastructure. We're going to need more ACUs eventually and I want you to be able to produce them. And if the Golden Armada makes a move..."

"Understood, General," General Hall said, nodding, while Ryza bowed her head.

"Your will be done," Ryza said, solemnly.

You gave her a firm look. "It's not my will I want done. It's your initiative," you said, a bit severely. "We're not going to win this war by being Amon - we're going to win this war by being ourselves."

Ryza frowned. "...it's a phrase of respect."

The tension grew tighter, and Jim cut into it with a little chuckle. "Well, thank you, Ryza. We're all a bit on edge, since the whole galaxy happens to be on fire," he said, then stood. "And our supreme commander just gave us jobs to do. And she's got something on her plate too, hmm?"

"Quite," you said, then stood, giving Ryza the smallest of nods - the most you could do in the way of an apology right now. She saw it, narrowed her eyes, then inclined her head again - and you felt the tension relax slightly. Stupid, Sam. Stupid. But you couldn't help it. The Aeon hadn't exactly endeared themselves to the UEF...though...how much of that was propaganda? You supposed asking about it would be like poking a...rotting tooth with your tongue.

Everyone filed out. You waited, until the last was gone, then sighed and glowered at the map.

"Borealis..." you said, softly. It had once been an initial target of your invasion plans to hit this entire sector and gobble it up for Earth. Back when things had been simple. It felt right that it would be your first place to attack here. And now.

You smiled.

"I'm coming for you Amon," you whispered, then flicked off the holographic table.

***
​

Cr was waiting for you in the robing chamber for the ACU bay in the CZAR. You weren't exactly sure how the big zergling had managed to sneak around, but he seemed damn proud of himself. You knelt down, chuckling quietly. "I'm still glad I managed to get you," you said. You only half remembered the panicky, swirling mass of psionic energy swirling around you, and everything that had happened. But when Cr tried to speak to you - mind to mind...it was like he was communicating through a thick wall. Muffled. Faint. You felt emotions and you felt intention, but no clarity.

You felt a lurch as you realized it wasn't cause you lacked an Overmind for their precious context.

It was because Sarah had jettisoned you from the hive mind.

You sighed and started to take your dress uniform off, unbuttoning the jacket and letting it hang open around your pressed white undershirt. A quiet chime came at the door. You paused, then turned. Figuring you were still pretty dressed, you said: "Enter?"

The door opened and Princess Rhianna Burke stood there, holding a small silvery crystal in her hands. She paused, then opened her mouth. Her eyes widened as she saw...well, you. You wondered what you looked like to her. Then you wondered how sheltered the princess was when a rumpled bit of under shirt and maybe half an exposed shoulder got her face to blush like that. Her eyes jerked up to yours and then she stammered. "S-Sorry, I...I wanted to catch you before you..." She hesitated, then tried again. "You are going into the fire. And while we have a UEF ACU for you to use...if you wished, I also...I wanted to offer my people's technology. Our ACU's are extremely effective, and...unlike the UEF, Amon has not fought any of us."

You smiled slightly. "You think that would give you an edge?" you asked.

"We did create an entire religion to manifest a psychic shell to try and keep him out," she said. "The Way is worked into our very technologies, it..." She blushed, then held out the crystal. "It may not be as valuable to you as something you're more used too. But I believe that...it's best you have the choice."

You took the crystal, looking at it. The silvery thing shimmered and shifted its hues as you adjusted it in your grip - letting light refract through it. You grinned, wryly, at the princess. "You know, I think you're the first person I've ever met who claims royalty who also seems utterly dedicated to letting me choose."

Princess Burke risked a glance up, her eyes meeting yours. The contact made your head spines tremble and the predatory instincts in your cells let out a little purr. You squashed the immediate reaction, feeling a mixture of guilt and confusion. The worst thing was, you weren't really sure what you wanted to do, under your worries and stress and million plans. For all you knew, if you let the Zerg half of your body take control, you'd end up...

No. Not going to think about that. Not gonna do it.

"It's what we're all fighting for, isn't it?" Princess Burke said, her voice a bit sad.

"...very strange thing to hear from a royal, I must admit," you said, chuckling.

"The Aeon Illuminate is a constitutional monarchy, I will have you know!" she snapped, then frowned. "The crystal, do you want to attune to it or not?"

---
Before we head to Braxis!

[ ] Attune to the Aeon crystal (use Aeon ACU)
[ ] Thanks, but no thanks (use UEF ACU)
[ ] Write In

(The mechanical distinction is nill - the anti-Amon effects are roughly on par with Sam's increased expertise with the UEF units. The narrative difference is pretty huge, since it determines what sparks you can logically create, and, thus, what units you can call on in the battle.)