DECISION TIME

By Ilia S.

Jul 18th,2017

This is another fun piece based on Starcraft II (this time, Heart of the Swarm), written - apart from minor editing - in one day. As I had stated elsewhere, Raynor and Kerrigan are among my most favourite fictional couples, so I decided on a whim to write something concerning their dynamic in one period depicted by Blizzard as among the most tumultous in their shared history: second part of SC2: HOTS. I felt that there was enough space between the broad strokes of the game's storytelling into which to squeeze some elaboration (that suited my ideas about their story, anyway :)).

StarCraft and all the characters are © by and property of Blizzard Entertainment.

I.

Jim Raynor was running through the palace corridors, following both his instincts and the sounds of battle echoing through the facility. He was seeing chaotic scenes unfold around him, as the huge complex was being slowly but surely overrun by the Zerg of various stripes as well as his own soldiers. The morale of the defenders was very obviously broken, so the Raiders were dutifully rounding up prisoners, and the Swarm was – in the same businesslike fashion – taking care of what few pockets of resistance had remained. He knew the general layout of the palace – thanks to the intelligence sources, as he had harbored every intention of one day storming it himself. Ironic that this time was now, and he had not just his own men to rely on, powerful as they might have become, but the alliance of the single most destructive force in the known galaxy. He just hoped that after these horrible allies would have withdrawn, enough of the civilization would be left standing to make it all worth this choice, morally dubious – any way one might slice it.

Kerrigan... he still remembered all the acidic words he threw in her face when he should have thanked her to no end for getting him out of the prison cell. He was aiming to hurt, even invoking – for the first time since their first reunion – the name of Fenix, something that he had tried to avoid the first time around. And in the end, she calmly presented him his trusty gun, obviously picked from the locker outside his cell, and dared him to pay the dues.

Would he have killed her – as he had promised the day Fenix died – if he hadn't heard Zeratul's prophecy that emphasized her importance for the future? He knew not. In the bloodshot heat of wrath that boiled inside him when he saw her true new form – different from the "old" one, as he had come to realize later, but monstrous all the same – he was all too inclined to say "yes". Later, when he was painfully analyzing the recent events and his own feelings about them while locking himself away in the Hyperion's infirmary, he was no longer so sure. He all but relinquished command of the Raiders for the time being, content to let Matt and Valerian command the force (which, to his shock and dismay, was now all but inseparable from the Zerg Swarm) while he was wallowing in his misery and reliving the choice horrible moments from the past.

But then, he overheard the exchange between Kerrigan, Horner and Mengsk Jr. just before the final assault was about to commence. And so his soul searching was suddenly over.

II.

"Move along now, dammit! We don't have all day before the Zerg come!" the Raiders sergeant clad in full armor (with nondescript militia markings to keep his allegiance secret) was yelling as a group of visibly scared, haggard civilians evacuating from a garden city in the suburbs of Augustgrad. They were clutching their children and bags of belongings – some quite oversized, the soldier noted sourly – as they were piling into a troop ship with the Raiders markings hastily painted over.

"The Swarm doesn't need your junk! And nobody in their right mind – our out of it – would go out looting while the Zerg are prowlin' around", he reprimanded a man who was obviously trying to evacuate a sizable chunk of his home appliances.

"How do you know it?" the man snarled back.

The sergeant rolled his eyes in exasperation, but did not hurry to reply as he knew more than he felt safe to explain aloud.

"Suffice to say, we know they're coming, and you should be cool with that. After all, your precious Emperor has left you to fend for your own sorry selves, and if the Crown Prince hadn't hired us out of his own pocket to help the citizens out of this mess, you woulda been marooned here right until them Zerglings become your only neighbors. Now come on, time is precious!" he continued, taking the chance to add some "hearts and minds" stuff to the mix, as was customary for the Raiders.

This seemed to chivvy the civilians along, as the soldier was nervously looking at his watch. He knew he had only about three hours remaining to get the whole populace of this satellite city to safety before the window of opportunity would close, and then... being with the Raiders for the last few years, he was all too certain of the fate that would befall these men and women if they got caught between the hammer of the advancing Zerg Swarm and the anvil of the defending Dominion army. The worst thing about this was the fact that even if it hadn't been the Zerg attacking, the outcome would not have been too different for the hapless victims. Being a civilian in the midst of any war was never going to be pretty.

III.

Now nigh alone on the Hyperion's bridge – there were the officers on duty, but they kept almost out of sight – Jim Raynor saw and heard this scene in full, as the tactical command feed from the squad was fully functional. He sighed and made a few motions across the master touchscreen, skipping through a few other feeds from the surface and elsewhere. He glanced out of the port window – and sure enough, the dark void of space was permeated with brown specks and shapes of the Zerg. It was such an eerie feeling – to stay almost in the midst of a Swarm that he was all too used to seeing from the other side of the frontline. That the creatures were presently not attacking the Hyperion, apparently ignoring it entirely, was not much of a consolation in itself. He was not entirely up to speed regarding Matt's and Valerian's terms of agreements with Kerrigan – in fact, he deliberately chose to be left out of it ever since his return from the Moros – but he knew better than almost anyone else how deadly the Swarm could become on very, very short notice.

He looked around a bit to find Kerrigan's command leviathan at the edge of this post's immediate area of sight. Actually, he had even briefly set foot inside its vast body, when he, Kerrigan, her remaining force and a bunch of terrans (former prisoners and the Dominion soldiers that surrendered on the dying jail ship) returned from the wreck. But he chose to literally block himself out, just waiting for the Raiders dropship to pick him up and bring him back to his flying home, even though he could have and should have studied his surroundings – if only to gain intelligence. However, he was too overwhelmed and conflicted to even think straight – and, to tell the truth, was still far from his best shape of mind even as a few days had passed. By now he had picked up some pieces that did a little to help explaining her decision: it appeared that right after he had been captured, the official Dominion news outlets broadcast news of his execution. It was meant to reach Kerrigan's eyes and ears, wherever she might have been at that moment, and so it happened. So could he have blamed her for giving in to despair – especially since Mengsk made sure that she could not find him even using her psionic senses? To add some measure of sadistic satisfaction – for himself – to the situation, Arcturus had once contacted Raynor, telling him of Kerrigan's change, but of course neglecting some crucial bits of information like the aforementioned broadcast. All in all, a cheap but effective move of psychological warfare, Jim had to admit.

But he could not help thinking that in doing so, Arcturus has ultimately made a grave, probably fatal mistake. Instead of a single Ghost, or even one with the full backing of his Raiders (and Jim was not delusional enough to believe that they had, by then, made any meaningful dent in Arcturus's hold on power) the Dominion was now facing the reformed Swarm. With all that implied.

Raynor just hoped against hope that Arcturus would not take too much of the fellow humans with him down to Hell.

And then, it appeared as though his whole field of vision suddenly shifted, as the brown dots jumped sharply downwards in an eerily cohesive motion. But it was not the Hyperion that moved. Moments later, the intercom came alive, and Matt Horner's voice stated calmly "Sir, the time is 17:00 KST. The Swarm appears to be moving towards the surface, just as planned. What are your orders?"

The ensuing second of thought was probably the longest in Jim Raynor's life.

"Follow them. We can't afford to be late to this party, can we?"

If Matt was surprised by this command, he was too well schooled to show it.

IV.

Jim had to forcibly remind himself all the time that the Zerg who had set up shop right next to his encampment were not the enemy this time. Years of warfare with (mostly) predictable spread of roles had ingrained the fear and loathing of this particular species deep in his mind. It appeared that most of his men were not really enthused either about the fact that the creep which has spread from behind the southeastern edge of the perimeter was now licking the base of the bunkers hastily built inside the badly damaged remains of a Dominion military facility that was levelled with an orbital strike before the Raiders moved in.

Of course, his glorious entry to the scene could not have avoided Kerrigan's attention, and after the mutual declarations of intent (Raynor would've lied if he had said that the conversation hasn't pleased him greatly) the Raiders became busy with their primary occupation, warfare (or preparations for it). Not half an hour had passed before the reinforcements promised by Kerrigan began crawling, running and flying in, and a rising level of creep signaled that she was extremely serious about protecting her allies as best she could. However, a whole platoon of Hydralisks that fanned out around the base was not entirely normal, even in the Raiders' line of work. Soon enough, a veritable forest of crawlers sprang up around the Terrans' defensive line – Raynor has noted that they were covering the most vulnerable direction. Then, a flock of Mutalisks descended – and Jim caught himself instinctively reaching for his rifle. All kinds of creatures were appearing from the southeast, as if on a parade of nature's abominations, and nonchalantly camping up on the outskirts of the base, or even inside it. At the very least the creep's growth has miraculously stopped right at the gates of the newly built encampment. Most of the soldiers were looking at this with apprehension, even though Raynor saw a curious Medic wander towards the edge of the creep-covered area to... collect samples, of all things.

Jim felt some kind of morbid curiosity start gnawing at him, as though everything happening was a weird game of mix and match. What would it be like to have these beasts at his command, alongside his trusted men? After a second he felt appropriately disturbed by this idea, because he didn't even have to remind himself of where this temptation has led the UED and everyone else who may have thought, in their folly, that they could harness the Zerg.

"I don't wanna think what happens if they decide to turn on us at some point", the chief engineer Rory Swann observed gloomily while he was ascertaining the situation from the observation deck of the Hyperion. The cruiser was parked at the surviving mast of the base's starport, now commandeered by the Raiders. Below, the base was engaged in hasty preparations, so far ignoring its hellish neighbors as best it could.

Raynor, mercifully broken out of his musings, only sighed in response. He had been in a weirdly similar situation before – even though back then, he did not "fraternize" with the Zerg quite as closely. A part of him knew that he had to stay on his guard, but at the same time, he was desperate to believe again... A pity that he had no ironclad proof that he could.

V.

The last checkpoint inside the palace was manned by a squad of his soldiers. A bunch of Zerglings was resting nearby, as though they were really nothing more than attack dogs (Raynor had heard of this tactic of the ancient Earth's warfare, even remembering vaguely that some animals were trained to be strapped with explosives and blow up tanks – the irony of witnessing the present-day Swarm using Banelings in precisely the same tactic was not lost on Jim). Neither side appeared to trust the other implicitly – Raynor noticed that his soldiers were positioned in such a way that if the Zerg had decided to end the alliance right there and then, at least the Raiders would not have been flanked and caught unaware. What (if anything) the Zerg were thinking remained a mystery, as always, but at least some of them kept staring at their Terran allies.

"At ease, Sergeant", Raynor casually remarked as the senior of the group moved to report.

"Sir, we got this junction under control. We, uh, got eleven Zerglings here but I'm not sure what to do about them", the soldier said.

"What's out there, and up?" Raynor inquired.

"Hard to say for sure. We've entrenched here but there appears to be some fighting still going on", the Sergeant replied with an almost guilty expression.

"I'm going there", Jim noted calmly.

If the trooper had asked him why he felt the need to wade into the uncertain battle situation – and the distant sound of gunfire was proof that the conflict was far from over – Raynor could not have given him a completely logical answer. Subordination, however, prevented the soldier from wondering aloud.

Indeed, Jim himself was not sure of the answer – so far it was little more than a nagging feeling of something not being right. Raynor was pretty sure he didn't know everything, but the situation was not at all adding up. Unless Mengsk had resorted to some secret underground tunnel to escape, he must have been still in the palace, as the Raiders and Zerg had the complex surrounded from all sides, controlling the airspace above and around it to boot. Kerrigan has gone in to find the Emperor (with only one possible intention, of course) – but it was very out of character for Arcturus to just wait for her to arrive. He was no real combatant by now – and even if he had been a battle-hardened veteran soldier, he could not have hoped to stand against the Queen of Blades for very long... unless he had an ace up his sleeve. Or a dozen of them, as would have been Mengsk's tradition.

Jim was – dare he say that? – starting to worry about Kerrigan a little. He nearly smacked himself on the face as soon as the word has formed in his mind. Worry about whom – the one that killed Fenix? Or... about Sarah Kerrigan as he knew her, but as she was no more? A fine time to be confused about his feelings!

Then, a few more pieces came together in his head. And with that, his blood ran cold. He very nearly started to run, but his training kept him in check. As calmly as he could he addressed the Sergeant.

"I'm going there. As soon as you are relieved, follow me with utmost care, and establish presence at the next suitable position".

"Yes sir!" the Sergeant replied.

Raynor picked up his rifle and walked down the corridor with as much dignity as he could. Only when he had turned the corner he allowed himself to start running. No need to let his men on to his emotional turmoil.

His instinct and – oh, God, he thought sourly – his heart were leading him through the dimly lit corridors, now devoid of any life. Here and there he saw the broken remains of war machinery and bodies of the Dominion defenders that marked Kerrigan's path into the depths of the palace and the general direction of Mengsk's personal quarters. He didn't have to ascertain the state of the soldiers strewn on the ground, as most had very apparently suffered "wounds not consistent with biological life", to borrow a phrase from his nigh-forgotten Marshall's work. Another reason to end this as soon as possible, he noted grimly, and to start healing the wounds of this war.

His trek lasted what seemed like hours, but it could not have been more than a dozen of minutes. The goal of his journey appeared before him without warning – the ornate doors (the decorations belied the fact that the metal plates could have probably survived a direct hit from a rocket mortar) that were pried open by some unknown but undoubtedly huge force, one half even becoming dislodged from its well-oiled runners. And there was only one force – that he knew of – which could have inflicted such damage.

Caution screamed at him to tread lightly – but when he slipped inside, he saw, give or take, precisely what he was fearing. However, his mind was made up by then – and if he could make a difference, he was far from done for! With a lightning quick motion, he dashed forward to forcibly clench his fist around the only thing that mattered now.

"Change of plans!"