Ash falling from the sky was tranquil in comparison to the chaos and horror on the ground below. On Char, home world of the zerg Swarm, the terrans were losing their final battle against The Queen of Blades, Kerrigan. Jim Raynor, leader of the final assault, paused to look grimly on the scene around him.
The assembled Xel'Naga artifact fell to pieces as a truly massive Ultralisk tore through it with one long kaiser blade, it was the death knell of their mission. "Shit! The Artifact has been destroyed. Men, this is it- kill every one of them sons a bitches, its the least we can do before we die!" Jim's white skull visor clapped shut and he returned to firing HEV rounds into the oncoming endless waves of zerg, big and small.
Beside Jim, an ally to the end, Tychus was cursing something fierce. "Get thawed out just to join you in getting eaten by god damned aliens, Jimmy. You're a son of a bitch!" Tychus' roaring in his comm was almost as bad as the disjointed screams of his men and the aliens as they ripped and blasted each other apart.
By the time they had fallen back to a high rise, shoulder to shoulder and back to back, a mountain of zerg either in the throws of death or twitching corpses around them, the Adjutant's cold voice overrode all other transmissions eerily.
"Alert. Class twelve psionic waveform approaching. The Queen of Blades is coming." The AI was refreshingly indifferent to their demise, although once its alert had finished Jim realized that the comm had fallen almost silent but for him and the men in his immediate vicinity.
Warfield, who had remained behind to secure their foothold on Char in a fortress overlooking a body-riddled trench, had announced that Nidus Worms were breaking through their defenses over an hour ago, and it was his last transmission. Matt Horner, commander of the Hyperion, the flagship of Raynor's Raiders, had also announced massive bombardment in space and gone silent some time ago.
The Adjutant was correct- Kerrigan was coming. Below them and their mountain of kills, a sea of zerg roared, stomped and hissed in triumph, no longer attempting to advance into range of gun fire. "Jimmy," Tychus growled as he puffed on his worn stump of a cigar. "she's coming. We could end this here."
Jim had the good grace to snort a ragged, tired laugh. "You don't have a clue, Tychus. If we shoot anyone, we should shoot ourselves. There are worse things than dying, you've seen as much." Jim's words were chilling as the implications set in for Tychus, he had indeed seen the infested.
"Got some shredder grenades left, could go out with a bang." Tychus grumbled, holding one up for approval.
"Yeah. That'll do, best do it quick. I can see her." Jim's heart raced, death had never felt so close when he saw the burning eyes of his former love below. The zerg had parted around Sarah Kerrigan as she all but sauntered to them, she had been approaching from her Hive for some time, confident in victory.
Standing at the base of their man-made mountain of death, Kerrigan smiled and planted a foot on the flat of a large dismembered kaiser blade. When she spoke, her voice pierced into their minds like a hot knife. Some of the lesser men left in their small number let out startled shouts of pain while others hissed their discomfort, but Jim knew it like a taunting caress. It wasn't his first rodeo against the Queen of Blades, after all.
"You've lost, Jim. Your forces have been crushed on every front: land, air, space. The Xel'Naga artifact has been destroyed, and you had completely relied on it. I thought you were smarter than that." They didn't have to see her face to know Kerrigan was smiling.
"You were the love of my life, and I would fight through hell and back to save you. Nobody will ever be able to say I didn't try." Jim struggled to voice his words past the tightness in his throat, but he spat them out all the same. "My only regret is taking so many good men to hell with me." From the corner of his eye he saw Tychus' grip on the frag grenade shift, thumb ready to activate it.
"Ah ah." Kerrigan raised her hand sharply, wagging a clawed finger at them and grinning. "You haven't entered hell yet, Jim. I plan on taking you and your friends there. Personally." Chuckling softly, she tilted her head and started striding up the hill of corpses to them. "Can't have you blowing yourselves up."
"Jimmy." Tychus' voice picked up immediately, sounding strained. "I can't move. I can't use the grenade." The panic in his old friend's voice was raw, identical to the time when he had discovered the name of the bounty hunter that was about to kill them over seven years ago.
"Sarah, you bitch!" Jim growled, straining to move immediately after Tychus alerted him to the fact that he could not. Sweat beaded down his face as Kerrigan crested the hill mere feet away, the dismayed cries of his last few good men rang clearly in his ears as they clued into their fates. "Just kill them, take me. I'm the one who lead them here, and they were just following orders. You know damn well what that is like!"
Smirking, Kerrigan plucked the grenade from Tychus' armored fist casually; looking over the assembled men, less than ten in total. Locking eyes with Jim, she telekinetically pulled apart the grenade and let its pieces and powder tumble from her hand uselessly. "Wish granted, Jim."
The sound behind him and Tychus was sickening, and Jim could only guess what she had just done to those poor bastards. It sounded like their suits had been crumpled like a can in a fist, but there was mercifully no cries of pain. Tychus, however, remained solid beside him. "Your friend gets to stay." She teased.
"Damn you to hell, Jim!" Tychus snapped as Kerrigan raised a finger to her lips in a shushing gesture, all light fell away as both men were rendered unconscious with a mere thought.
Getting Jim, Tychus and Warfield into space via zerg methods would have been completely futile had she not made sure their suits were undamaged. As it was, once the remaining terrans on Char who were of no use to Kerrigan were annihilated, she brought her little projects to the leviathan orbiting Char. While the final ground battle was in full swing, Kerrigan directed her leviathan to capture the Hyperion with as little damage done to it as possible.
The Hyperion was currently stuck to the leviathan's side with creep. The grand ship would have been hard to spot if it had not been still firing into the flesh of the leviathan with its cannons in a futile effort to do some damage before destruction.
Jim, Tychus and Warfield were taken to an evolution chamber where they would be imprisoned. Kerrigan couldn't help but smile to herself more, winning felt good after all. Through the eyes of the swarm, she observed the Hyperion and its condition as she made her own way to it. "You have a few more friends I am interested in, Jim." She commented to herself, entertained.
"Alert. Class twelve psionic waveform detected. The Queen of Blades is-" The adjutant blared.
"Shut up! As if this wasn't bad enough!" Stressed to the point of frantic, Matt Horner slammed his fist on the corner of the console he was giving commands from. As if he couldn't see her tearing a hole in the ship to get in.
The ship itself wasn't going anywhere- as soon as the leviathan caught the Hyperion in it's tentacles, it had forced the ship to press against it's flesh. From there, creep stuck to and seeped into the very foundations of the ship, rooting it to the leviathan. Matt and his men aboard the ship had been firing at any organism in reach since then, although no mass of zerg had tried to board them until now.
Kerrigan had taken her time looking for the best point of entry, it would not do to accidentally kill any of the people she wanted to keep, after all. Eventually she settled on telekinetically prying the doors of a small ship hangar bay open and sealing them shut immediately after entering by herself. Nobody even died. Yet.
"Greetings, denizens of the Hyperion." Kerrigan's voice pierced the minds of each and every man and woman aboard simultaneously. With her mind twisted by the zerg, it was actually difficult to come down to the level of terrans to do this kind of communication with them, they were in a way alien to her now. "You might have noticed that your ship is currently stuck to mine. I may yet let you live if you supply me with the following people: Matt Horner, Egon Stetmann and Rory Swann. Or you could spare your fellow terrans lives by simply coming to me quietly. Your choice."
It was a lie of course, not a single man or woman on this ship was going to be alive, or a Terran anymore, by the time Kerrigan was done. She had better things to do than chase a bunch of people around though.
"W-what?" Egon Stetmann, brows furrowed in pain, was writing notes as fast and furious as he could about the zerg intrusion in his mind when his name was spoken. It was like a bucket of icy water on his head. As silence settled over the ship, minus the continually blaring alarm system, he understood what he had to do. Placing his notepad down, Egon Stetmann strode from the lab with a determination and bravery he did not feel.
Bang "OW-What in the hell?" Rory Swann, Chief Engineer of the Hyperion, was sweating bullets as he heard- no, felt the Queen of Blades talking, and saying his name! He held his head with his remaining hand, the intrusion in his mind hurt: but so did banging his head on a pipe. The firebats he had been directing to carefully sear away the creep as it worked its way into the ship had stopped burning, standing and looking at him expectantly.
Glaring, Swann snapped "Don't do nothin' your gonna regret boys, get back to work!" Snapping his steel claw at them, they turned away from him and got back to work as ordered. His heart was heavy though, there was no way Rory Swann was going to run away from some zerg queen bitch if there was a chance he could save lives. Placing his hand-held torch in a safe spot, Swann strode with purpose into the ship.
Matt Horner, now he had already been running towards where Kerrigan had made her entry point in the ship, Gauss rifle clumsily held aloft. He was the last person who should be wielding a gun, but he wasn't going to let the Queen kill everyone lying down. "Adjutant," Huffing and running through a dim hallway, Horner raced to his destination and doom.
"Yes Commander?" The AI responded.
"Send out a message to anyone who'll hear it: The Queen of Blades has won, everyone needs to know what happened here and react accordingly." Slamming his hand onto an identification pad, Horner charged into the small hangar bay before the door was half way open, rifle in hand, and froze.
"Message sent, Commander."
"Hello, Matt. Glad to finally meet the brains behind Jim's operations." Sarah Kerrigan was so much more terrible in person, in Horners opinion.
"That's rude." Kerrigan chided, beckoning Horner over with a casual wave. Dropping the rifle to the ground, Horner scowled.
"You're not letting anyone go, are you?" The looks on Swann and Stetmann's faces, standing behind and on either side of Kerrigan- giving her ghastly wing blades plenty of room, said it all before she could.
"At least they'll just be dead. You noble types can be thankful for that, I'm sure." Snide and smirking, Kerrigan turned away from Horner and brushed past the two pale-faced men. Resigned to their fates, all three followed to the doorway into space. When Kerrigan pulled apart the doors their startled cries fell off quickly- the leviathan had an atmosphere of its own, apparently, and no one was sucked into the vacuum of space or robbed of oxygen.
Although, Stetmann's ever scientific mind whirred, the atmosphere is much harder to breath in.
"You came so much quieter than I thought you would, Jim and his friends fought much harder." Kerrigan critiqued as they stepped onto the fleshy ground and started their grim walk into what might have literally been the belly of the beast.
"What did you do to Jim?" Horner snapped, although all three of them jumped fearfully when a pack of zerglings thundered past them, chittering and snapping, and leaped into the open bay doorway.
"Nothing that I'm not going to do to you." A weathered looking zergling with a broken tusk sidled up beside Kerrigan, placing its head directly under her hand for pets much like a domesticated animal would.
A muttered fascinating earned Stetmann a solid elbow in the ribs by Swann, who was looking in disgust around them until he couldn't handle it anymore and focused on Kerrigan's back, not that it was much better. What they did not see were the Defilers and Infestors slipping into the open ship once they were out of sight. Wouldn't due to make them decide to fight, Kerrigan wanted the three in tact after all.
Smoke rose from Tychus' open helmet. When you're glued to a wall by alien goo beside your friends, wasn't much else you could do but take a drag. They were there, strung up like puppets beside him, in a chamber filled with green pools and cocoons. Groggy, Tychus rumbled "Any of you awake, or alive?" He had been the first to rise to consciousness and attempting to contact Raynor and Warfield since, he knew they were there on either side of him though, he could turn his head enough to see that much. He had also seen a few zerg, ones that he had never seen before, but they were being left alone.
"Findlay? I'll be damned. You're not here to rescue me again, are you? Because that'd be mighty nice right about now." Warfield, he sounded groggy and out of sorts too. Whatever Kerrigan did to put them under sure was powerful. A noncommittal grunt to Tychus' left also alerted him of Jim's returning consciousness.
"No such luck, Warfield. Not that I'd go charging into some alien mother ship to save your sorry ass, either." Tychus snorted, earning a weak chuckle from Warfield in return.
"End of the road. I had hoped the zerg were just going to kill me, no luck there either it seems." Warfield said.
"No. Queen bitch has some sorta plan for us. All too happy to gloat over a win. It's bad sportsmanship, that is." Tychus grumbled.
"Tychus, the last thing I need you doin' is remindin' me about what is gonna happen to us right now." Raynor finally piped up, gravelly but coherent.
"Too bad, Jimmy. Not unless you got a plan to get us out of this mess that you got us in-" Tychus said.
"Sir!"
"Matt?" Raynor sounded genuinely confused.
"Yes sir, all of us sir." Matt said.
"St-stetmann? The hell's goin' on?" The three men stuck to the wall saw Horner, Stetmann and Swann walk into view, each as pale and spooked looking as the next, but none the worse for wear. Kerrigan striding behind them wearing a shit eating grin set Jim to raging in a second.
"Frigid bitch! What have you done?" Jim roared.
"Nothing yet, Jim. Maybe I just want you to see your friends one last time before I dismember you piece by piece?" Kerrigan queried sweetly.
"I know you, you aren't even capable of a kindness like that!" Jim's suit groaned as he strained at the creep holding him furiously. Kerrigan's grin could only broaden.
"Now now. As guests of honor, you can choose your place on the wall. I promise." Tychus took a long drag from his cigar and spat it out over the rim of his suit, and Warfield had gone silent, brooding. Soon they were all in a row, stuck to the wall in a macabre display as the creep grasped, clung and coiled around them.
"I'll leave you boys to think about things for a while. I have some more... clean up to do." Smiling the entire time, Kerrigan left them.
Later, in the central nervous system of the leviathan...
"Their essence brings nothing to Swarm. Useless." Abathur complained, clawed hands grasped together. The evolution master did not understand, and that was fine.
"Abathur." Kerrigan stood in the center of the room, overlooking char through the eye of the leviathan. "Who leads the swarm?"
"Queen of Blades." Abathur said.
"Yes, and this is why I lead the swarm and you do not. You will not touch them, they are mine. Leave them be." Kerrigan said.
"As Queen commands." Kerrigan didn't need to be the most powerful psychic in the galaxy to know Abathur was frustrated, she was taking his passion from him after all. But she would not let him break bones and twist genes with this particular group, they were hers- and Kerrigan had a plan.
"My Queen." Izsha, the depository of Kerrigan's memories and plans, what was essentially the zergs version of the Terran Adjutant, patiently waited for her Queens attention.
"What, Izsha?" Kerrigan said.
"All of your Brood Mothers and their charges are now in space and en route to Char, as you instructed." Izsha said.
"Good. Everything is going as planned. Alert me if anything changes, Izsha. I have business to attend to." Kerrigan smiled.
"As her Majesty wishes." Kerrigan did not bother waiting for Izsha's response, already striding out of the chamber.
Back in a certain spawning chamber...
"You just gave up?" Tychus was incredulous.
"You wouldn't understand sacrificing for the greater good, convict." Matt Horner and Tychus had been going at it for a while now, and everyone else remained silent but agitated.
"I'm here with the rest of you, aren't I? And if I get out of this, I'm gonna beat your egg head in!" The sounds of Tychus' suit straining against the creep, whirring and groaning, entertained everyone briefly before Horner came back more heated than ever.
"Oh yeah? So why is your suit rigged, convict? If you really understood taking the fall for someone, you'd still be on ice. Who's your puppet master, huh?"
Tychus' voice was almost a growl at that point. "Kill Kerrigan, the damn mistress of genocide, and be free? Who wouldn't take that deal? Was worth a shot, and it was Mengsk, by the way."
"Seriously?" Raynor piped up, not believing his ears. "I knew you'd gotten yourself into some shit Tychus, but going with Mengsk behind my back?"
"Open your damned ears Jimmy. You can't tell me you wouldn't have done the same in my shoes." The bickering returned immediately, each man throwing in their two cents and frustrating the other even more. Warfield had remained silent up until then.
"Shut it! Just shut it! You damned fools. All of my men are dead and so are yours. All we got now is each other until this is over; bickering ain't gonna do anything for anyone. Wont bring them back from the dead and wont keep us from being dead!" Warfield spoke, his tone seething.
"So pardon me if I don't give a damn who's got some rigged suit and who hurt who's feelings. I want ideas and plans. So if you don't got either of those, you can can it!" Silence fell over them once again, and Raynor had to quietly admire the mans way with words.
"He's right. Stetmann." Refocused, Jim looked to his left- where Stetmann chose to be, and drew his attention.
"Yes, sir?" Stetmann said.
"Now you've been quiet this whole time, but I can hear your mind racing. Tell me what you got." Raynor said.
Even though he was covered damn near head to toe in zerg creep, Stetmann sounded excited. "Sir, I wish I had my tools with me to examine it but I think this living ship, leviathan, could be very easily killed if we found it's central nervous system. It has to have one. It's just a matter of-"
"Yeah that's great, egghead. Too bad this entire ship is packed with zerg, the Queen of Blades herself and oh yeah- we're glued to the god damned walls." Tychus snapped, silencing Stetmann who apparently didn't have a follow up. Raynor sighed tiredly.
"Swann." Raynor mumbled.
"I ain't got no plans Jim. I'm a miner and engineer, not some alien exterminator." Swann sighed.
"Right." Jim said.
When Kerrigan emerged from a fleshy mound in the floor, Stetmann let out a decidedly girly scream. Wing blades rising up and planting into the floor with decisive shtk sounds, Kerrigan raised herself up and landed on her feet as if coming out of fleshy holes in the ground were the most natural thing.
"So." Her voice was biting, red glowing eyes immediately locking with Tychus' warm amber ones. "Mengsk took you out of prison to kill me?" Her tone was angry and maybe a little confused. "And he rigged your suit too, just to make sure you would do it if you had the chance, hm?"
Huffing, Sarah stepped up to Tychus' and glanced over his suit, remarking in a thoughtful tone as her hatred of Mengsk lowered to a simmer- he'd get his after all, now was a time for celebration. "Well Mengsk has always been a fool, doesn't surprise me."
"Well at least we agree on something." Tychus muttered, staring into her eyes, challenging.
"Tychus..." Raynor's tone was low and warning, but unheeded.
"You look like a stereotypical brute, but you're rather clever aren't you?" Kerrigan hissed, picking at threads of his thoughts, her altered mind stringing them together in different ways until they came to make sense. Tychus was grimacing from the pain of the intrusion, but held her gaze- to his credit.
"I see how Jim came to rely on you. He's done worse, believe me." Grinning wickedly, Kerrigan's bladed fingertips struck once, twice, three times in quick succession and she stepped back as Tychus stumbled forwards, freed from the creep.
"Tychus, don't!" Jim shouted, as if it would make a difference in his friends next action.
Tychus' mechanized fists clenched and he lashed out with a bellow. Kerrigan casually stepped to the side and with a slight gesture the entire arm and shoulder of Tychus' suit disassembled and fell to the living floor. Committed to the punch but now suddenly lacking several hundred pounds of weight, Tychus flew forwards and barely caught his balance before stumbling back in confusion.
Findlay only had a moment to look at and remember what his bare arm and hand actually looked like before Kerrigan lashed out with a savage laugh.
The blades Kerrigan was so well known for struck, and Tychus would have been impaled through the chest had he not reacted quickly to turn and raise his armored shoulder for protection and to deflect the full power of the blow. As a sharp screech rang out, a chunk of the metal giving way to the deadly blades, Kerrigan made a more aggressive gesture with her fist and the entire suit arm and shoulder fell to pieces just as the first had.
"Fight Terran! You win your freedom if you kill me, after all!" Laughing viciously, Kerrigan pressed her offensive and Tychus could only be pressed back and away from his friends on the wall as he used his remaining steel-clad body parts to defend from the onslaught. Egon was watching in panicked horror, completely unused to combat; while Warfield, Matt and Jim were observing with more critical eyes.
Swann's eyes were glazed as he remembered the struggle against a superior, unstoppable force, and though the scoundrel had roughed him up in the Cantina, Tychus had Swanns sympathy just then.
"What's your damn game Kerrigan?!" Jim shouted, watching as Tychus' defenses were being sliced and pried off piece by piece, although his big friend was holding his own to everyone- including Kerrigans- surprise.
When one full wing of blades pierced the flesh beneath his feet and between his still mechanized legs, Tychus struck with a throaty roar. Stepping forwards and trapping the delicate-looking instrument of death in place with his legs, pinching it in place with mechanical thighs the size of tree trunks, Tychus brought both fists up and down in a heavy overhead blow to Kerrigan's shoulders. She crumpled heavily to the ground with a grunt.
"YEAH!" Egon screamed excitedly, practically vibrating in his confines, while color drained from the other men who knew much better.
"Maybe" Lashing out, Tychus let go of Kerrigan's wing blade and kicked her in the side, chasing after her as her body flew. "I" Another kick sending her tumbling in a twisted heap "WILL KILL YOU!" Tychus snarled, the two of them were in the center of the room, green bubbling pools of slime all around made the footing less sure and Tychus had slowed down.
That was the end.
As he raised his foot to crush her rib cage beneath it, Kerrigan shot to her feet in a flurry, eyes all aflame. A collective "Noo!" of dismay was cried by everyone as Tychus teetered back on one foot and, with a gesture from Kerrigan, launched back and upwards over a spawning pool.
"You have tried and failed, like many before you; but you will pay more dearly than most." Seething, Kerrigan snapped her arms in a violent pulling apart gesture and the remains of Tychus' entire suit all but exploded off of him, shrapnel flying through the room and nicking their unwilling onlookers.
Floating above the pool Tychus looked almost serene for a moment, wearing nothing but his prison-assigned ragged orange pants, before gravity returned. Tychus' ragged cry of horror cut off with a sick noise, not quite a splash as the pool was much thicker than water. Turning sharply on her heel to face Raynor and his friends Kerrigan glowered, looking well and truly like the monster she had become just then.
Raynor could only make a choked noise as blood trickled down a shrapnel wound on his cheek, unable to find words.
"Whatever happens to us, Kerrigan, trust that we'll see you in hell when it's all over." Warfield, rigid in his suit and full of fierce pride for Tychus and his last moments, announced gravely. The spawning pool was bubbling fiercely, but there was no sign of Tychus inside.
Gesturing at the pool behind her, Kerrigan's voice was still heated with rage. "You'll be there with me. All of you." With a decisive step, she slipped into the fleshy tunnel in the floor and out of sight.
Egon's voice was just a whisper, his spirit crushed. "He didn't deserve that."
"He fought as hard as he could until his last breath, you all saw it with your own two eyes. I'm proud to have fought alongside him." Warfield's attempt at cheering Egon was a true failure, the young man struggled to keep from sobbing and it was obvious.
With a resigned sigh, Horner mumbled "He was a self-serving convict but no, he did not deserve that- not by a long shot."
"Yeah, he was an asshole. I wouldn't wish that fate on any asshole, though." Swann mumbled, staring at the bubbling pool in shock.
Directly beneath them and listening to their conversation, Kerrigan was gazing at Tychus through the thick membrane of the spawning pool. The big mans struggle to swim upwards through liquid that would not give way had quickly devolved into the throws of drowning; he had only noticed Kerrigan staring at him through the membrane shortly before going unconscious, but he threw a swing that slid down the membrane wall just before going limp.
Impatient to begin, Kerrigan chided herself. Letting the enzymes in the pool fully soak into the body was the first step- the most important even, she would not ruin her work simply because of impatience. As she was the Queen of the Swarm, she had full access to Abathur's thoughts and experiences.
She remembered how careful Abathur had to be when he molded her form into what it was now, the same care- perhaps more- had to be given to her current projects. Kerrigan did have the benefit of having been human once to draw off of that Abathur did not, after all.
After the sleep of the exhausted, Jim was looking up at the ceiling watching a vein throb grotesquely through the pulsing flesh of the leviathan. He knew Horner was at least conscious, and so he questioned curiously. "Matt. What happened to Valerian and the Bucephalus?"
"I believe they escaped, sir. The Bucephalus never fully committed to the battle and remained on the outskirts. When we lost contact with you on the ground I instructed Valerian to escape, as the Bucephalus was the only ship left capable of a clean warp jump. Someone had to warn everyone, we also sent an open signal into space warning of what happened on Char, just in case."
"Good. Good thinking. You always were the brains of the operation, Matt." Raynor smiled halfheartedly.
"Thank you sir. It may have had its ups and downs, but I will never regret serving you and your cause." Matt said.
"Sir?" Reserved, if not broken sounding, Stetmann leaned on formalities if only for a semblance of sanity.
"Just call me Jim, kid. What?" Jim said.
"The pools and the eggs in this chamber, well we know what they do obviously. But I think the pools turn into the eggs, in time. There's one at the back of the chamber there, half in a pool that is almost gone." Stetmann whispered.
"Alright, and the point is?" Jim was only half paying attention, doubting Stetmann was really saying anything interesting.
"That means Tychus is in that pool, and it will..." A brief pause to gather saliva for a dry mouth and chapped lips. "It will invert and turn into an egg in time, with Tychus in it. He is being infested, right now." There was a delirious note to his tone, a hopeless panic that couldn't be calmed- and why would Jim try? They were screwed, he'd be the first to admit it.
Sighing heavily, Jim hated being right. "Well, always good to know exactly how you're gonna die, I guess."
"What if she makes him kill us?" Stetmann had worked himself into near hyperventilation at the thought of looking up at Tychus- by all rights already a scary man- but infested, and him following through on all the violence he so loved doing, but to Stetmann instead of zerg.
"You'd thank whatever god was out there and accept your death with thanks, kid." Warfield cut in. Hell, if Tychus was going to kill them then it was surely a blessing, not having to be infested like he was.
"I-I suppose." Stetmann went quiet once more.