For those who aren't in the know, Heart of the swarm is coming out in March, so I decided to release this to celebrate the occasion. Believe it or not, the premise of this fic is actually older than invasion of chaos- I just got a little lazy.
And now for the disclaimer: I own neither StarCraft nor Mass Effect- those belong to their respective copyright holders: Blizzard and BioWare respectively.
On Mar Sara, James Eugene Raynor sat at his desk lost in thought, reminiscing about the past 13 years… About the time leading up to and since Mengsk was overthrown and lost one of his best friends in the process.
In many ways it all started in the time after he retrieved the Xel'Naga artifact from Xil. Raynor's old comrade, the Dark Templar Zeratul, had somehow managed to stow away on the Hyperion, with the intent of delivering some most dire news in the form of a data crystal. From this device, Raynor divined Zeratul's travels to acquire a prophesy by his people's uplifters, the Xel'Naga. This led him to search out an unexpected source of information- the corpse of the Zerg Overmind on the protoss home world of Aiur. This message was a warning of Armageddon and the previously unthinkable means to avert it: if they were to live, so to must Kerrigan- former ghost and friend of Raynor, now Queen of Blades, murderer of billions, including several of Raynor's best friends and Zeratul's own precious matriarch, Raszagal.
The call came around at the worst time, mid-battle, upon Korhal while they were attempting to broadcast the files on the captured Adjutant to the news corporations operating throughout Terran Space. Tyrador, the planet home central to the Mobius Corporation which was paying them was under attack by the Zerg. Given the choice between leaving Korhal and leaving behind their chance to strike a serious blow upon Mengsk (not to mention Tychus was having the time of his life) and having a quick celebration before zipping off to Tyrador in very short order, it's obvious he and the crew chose the latter.
This cost them, as by the time the Hyperion reached Tyrador, Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades had already set foot upon the world. In a mad rush to stop her from getting to the data cores she came there for, Jim Raynor and his crew set out to destroy them, and succeeded in obliterating two of them. The last one however was too well defended, with the nearby Zerg managing to hold their ground long enough for Kerrigan to reach the last data core and extract the information she needed from it.
After that she, and by extension, the Zerg as a whole dropped off the map and for thirteen years has been eerily quiet. There were rumors of an attack on a Tal'darim base on Typhon XI, and the crew did not manage to collect all the pieces to the mysterious artifact they were collecting, but for the most part they just disappeared. An expedition to Char several years ago revealed that even that planet was mostly abandoned by the Zerg.
This did not mean Raynor and his crew were done though; Mengsk was still in power, however tenuous his grasp was on it. On Shiloh, Raynor's own home planet, Raynor got his chance to bring down the Emperor once and for all. Rousing his troops and the citizens of the planet, Raynor's forces defeated those of Mengsk and with him the Dominion. In its place would rise the Koprulu Section Republic, which would be democratically ruled and seek to right the wrongs of its predecessors.
Sadly, that was not all that happened during that day. Tychus Finday, Raynor's old friend and drinking buddy also died, his suit pumping poison into his blood stream after being triggered to do so by a remote source.
Since then, Raynor has been in charge of the organization and reorganization of the new military power. He now knew many things he didn't know previously, including the fact that Sarah Kerrigan was the one who killed Arcturus Mengsk's father along with three other ghosts. Previously he thought that the man abandoning her to the zerg on Tarsonis was his crossing of the line- now he wondered how he managed to stand her that long. Another thing he found out was that his long lost son, John, was still alive after all those years and reunite with him.
Raynor then looked towards a relatively innocuous paper on his desk, one of the prototype proposals for the reorganization of the ghost program into a new, voluntary organization known as the N7 (Headed by none other than Tosh). The ghost program as it was had left too many wounds upon him, and the loss of his son to them was merely the greatest. No more would we conscript children from their parents with psionic potential, (though those that did would still have to have some special training to reduce their potential danger) but instead they would be treated as human beings with the ability to choose, just like everyone else.
It was then an alarm blazed that brought him back to reality.
***Codex***
Terrans
Terrans are an offshoot of humanity that came into being after an accident into developing faster than light travel sent the inhabitants of four sleeper ships all the way to the other side of the galaxy. Relatively mundane in comparison to their neighbors, the Protoss and the Zerg, the Terran have no known connection to the Xel'Naga precursors whose relics dot the landscape of various worlds in the sector, though psychic powers are developing within their species and their militaries can match either given the same amount of resources. In general, Terrans are a suspicious group with until recently, two of their three main governments (Kel-Morian Combine being considered a government for the sake of this entry) being considered tyrannical and having somewhat poor relations with other sentient races in the sector.
For Information on the UED, please consult their entry