Author's note: My first fic, so be as mean as possible, no sugar coating. Also, I've written the beginnings of an extremely spoiler-heavy outline, which, if you desire a peek at the overarching plot, I am willing to publish. Also, I wanted to draw your attention to a few changes I've made to Terran weapons and technology. First, Banshees have guns as well as rockets, since it makes no military sense to design a close-air support vehicle without them (in-game, it's an issue of balance). Second, I have conceived of Vikings much less as walker/jet, and much more as a heavy air superiority fighter, similar in many ways to the Valkyries from Brood War. These Vikings are heavily armored and, like Banshees, also come equipped with cannon in addition to their torpedoes. In this fic, their walker mode is extremely rarely used, and really only in emergencies, since it is extremely dangerous to the pilot (true even in-game), and because it's not certain that a Viking can transition back to its far more mobile aircraft mode. More changes, hopefully making some tech more realistic, will surely come later.
Again, as mentioned in the summary, this is set during Kerrigan's invasion of Korhal during Heart of the Swarm, and the plot will ultimately concern the hybrids and Kerrigan's role in stopping the Dark Voice, though she herself is not an important character. On a personal and story note, this fic will feature Gabriel Tosh heavily, due to my disappointment at learning that HoS will not feature this crazy awesome character. Aside from those canon characters already mentioned, Zeratul, Ulrezaj, Samir Duran, Jim Raynor, the Tal'darim, Emil Narud, and, of course, Arcturus and Valerian Mengsk will feature heavily and importantly. Nevertheless, the main character, Oswald 'Ozzy' Barnes, is an original creation.
They say a man never really knows himself…until he's faced with his own mortality. I wonder, Mr. Barnes, how well do you know yourself? You may ask yourself how you can know anything about who you are, when your mind's been wiped. And to that I say the past is irrelevant! Who we are is in the present, that we are who we choose to be, every minute of every day. And so I wonder, Mr. Barnes, who will you choose to be, and when you face your death, who will you become? Because war is coming. With all its glory, and all its horror. And if you survive it, you shall not be the same. I wonder…
-Arcturus Mengsk, to Oswald Barnes, upon his conscription from cryo-sleep into the Terran Dominion Armed Forces.
"Bandit Six, this is Falcon Two-Six Actual. My copters are headed to your location for fire support, ETA seventy-three seconds. Withdraw up the boulevard to clear the killbox," Ozzy heard over his squad comms.
"Bandit Six Actual. Negative, Falcon Two-Six," came the reply from Ozzy's company commander, "cannot withdraw, civilians already in the line of fire. Bring it danger close."
"Roger that, Bandit Six. Danger close." As Ozzy listened to the conversation, three wickedly barbed spikes, coated in a garishly colored poison, slammed into his suit's shoulder, but didn't penetrate far enough to dose him with that horrible substance. "Too damn close," he muttered, throwing himself down and behind a hastily erected trench wall. He felt the spikes prickle into his undersuit, causing its ferrofluidic filling to harden slightly, keeping the projectiles from skewering his shoulder. In the trench, he yanked the spikes out with his power-gauntleted left hand, and crushed them under foot.
He popped back up, identifying the hydralisk that had shot at him, quickly peered down the long telescopic sight that ran the whole length of his gauss rifle, and squeezed off two shots, the first destroying the creature's head carapace, where it stored those spikes, and the second in its midsection, destroying the lowest part of the hydra's exceptionally long brain stem. As he ducked back down, he identified two more hydras, but before he could target them, six long, sleek, black aircraft powered by massive turbofans screamed around the street corner behind him, filling the whole boulevard with a hideous, ungodly wailing that set Ozzy's teeth on edge even through his suit's powerful audio filters. The noise, he thought, must be unbearable outside.
Indeed, the noise had momentarily stopped the apparently inexorable Zerg advance, as they rolled on the ground, in obvious pain. The civilians fleeing up the boulevard, however, were in no better shape. Many of them began to spasm, falling to the ground, and Ozzy could see blood running from the ears of those civilians closest to him. Again over the squad comms, Ozzy heard his commander shout, "Falcon, shut that racket off! Now!"
Falcon didn't respond, but the noise suddenly disappeared, though the gunships' turbofans spun no slower. From up the boulevard, Ozzy could see militiamen driving around the wide street in their combat jeeps, rousting the civilians, getting them moving again. He noticed that the militiamen bolstering his company's own position, mercifully provided with aural protection, were doing the same.
After a fractional hesitation, the Banshee gunships accelerated in Ozzy's direction, and just as he saw their underbellies, they began firing. Thousands of cannon rounds from their double-mount gatling cannons, and hundreds of rockets from their beehive-like rocket pods hammered the street not five feet from Ozzy's face, turning the Zerg filling the streets into so much bloody mulch and charred carapace. They plowed down the whole road, before encountering four odd, stationary growths that spat acidic projectiles at the gunships, which crippled one Banshee's left engine, sending it tumbling from the sky. The pilot, clearly a professional, fought for whatever control he could get over his crippled machine, bringing it into something like a controlled crash landing, in the middle of the next block. The airworthy Banshees shot straight up and behind the cover of a tall, narrow office building.
In her cockpit, Falcon Two-Six, known to some as Captain Lauren Hastings, swore foully as one of her copters fell from the sky. "Mayday, mayday, mayday. I'm going in, Laurie," Falcon Two-Two, Lieutenant Charles Cassidy, said over the flight comm, sounding slightly panicked but in control. "I'm gonna try to bring it down as close as I can to those marines."
"Don't die on me, Chucky. You welshed on that bet, remember, and I intend to collect!" She heard a snippet of manic laughter before Chucky's comm cut off. She opened her comm back to flight-wide, and said, "Okay, boys and girls, we're going to cover Chucky while he goes down, make sure he doesn't get hit by any more spores. Then we'll cover him while the marines extract him." She heard four affirmative beeps over her comm as they circled back around, jumped out from behind their cover building in a stack, and launched a huge, blind attack, hoping to destroy some of those colonies.
As they moved back out, one of the colonies spat another gobbet at them, but was shot down by the Hastings' gun mount, commandeered from her control by its automated point-defense protocols. The other four gunships unleashed a short storm of cannon fire, silencing the last air defenses, as the remaining mobile Zerg continued retreating, obviously regrouping.
"Bandit Six," Hastings shouted into her comm, opening the channel back to the ground commander, a Captain Wallace Baird according to the top-right corner of her visor's HUD, "this is Falcon Two-Six. No doubt you just saw my guy go down. I need you to send some men to recover him."
"No problem, Falcon," Baird said, from the ground. He turned and shouted, "Hey, Ozzy! Get your section. Need you to go get that pilot." As he did so, a ping from his comm confirmed that Falcon Two-Two was still alive. The other Falcons hovered around the crashed bird, letting off occasional bursts of gunfire, cutting down the odd zergling.
As Ozzy gathered his section and checked his shotgun ammo, a huge flight of hideous, bat-winged things with horrific mouth-like openings on their lower bodies, from which issued volleys of the feared glaive wurm parasites, appeared in the skies above the downed aircraft. The parasites sped towards the stationary gunships. Their gun mounts quickly swiveled, intercepting many, but several slammed, violently, into the hovering 'copters, damaging them slightly, and bounced down to the stricken Falcon Two-Two. "Falcon Two-Six, scramble! Now!" Baird shouted.
"Read my mind," came the reply. On the ground, Ozzy could hear Falcon Two-Two firing his personal defense weapon, attempting to defend himself from the wurms. As his fellow marines began firing upon the mutalisks, attempting to prevent them from following the gunships, Ozzy and his section, three other men, tossed their gauss rifles into the magnetic clamps on the backs of their powered armor, and ripped their cut-down combat shotguns from their quick-draw thigh holsters, and sprinted towards the downed plane. Behind him, Ozzy heard the roar of afterburners, as a pair of Viking jets streaked down the boulevard, their powerful anti-air missiles and heavy cannons tearing into the mutalisks descending upon Ozzy's company, but only a part had engaged the marines, and most had followed the Banshees. Ozzy heard angry buzzing sound of rotary cannons from several blocks away, as the Banshees attempted to hold off the mutas.
Ozzy and his men let off occasional blasts from their shotguns as they made their way toward Falcon Two-Two, eviscerating several zerglings. Ahead of him, Ozzy saw that the Vikings had not even stopped for his company, instead firing the one volley as they passed, on their way to back up the Banshees. After a few more seconds of running, Ozzy and his men arrived at the wreck, where Falcon Two-Two was frantically firing at the glaive wurms, and which was being circled by several hydralisks. Ozzy's section let off a volley of shotgun rounds, distracting the hydras, as Ozzy continued running, firing his own shotgun at the glaive wurms. Ozzy yanked the battered pilot from his cockpit without a word, firing a few blasts from his shotgun over his shoulder, and carrying him bodily towards his section, who had taken cover and were laying down a withering shotgun barrage. They had killed several hydras and forced the others to retreat, but in the heat of battle, a pair of zerglings had ambushed one Ozzy's men, chopping off his leg before they could be killed.
The man, Brian 'Bear' O'Neill, was not screaming, and in fact had a somewhat distant look on his face as he fired his gun with unerring accuracy, due to his suit's automatically applied painkillers. His segmented upper leg armor had extended downwards slightly, and had enclosed the bleeding stump, as the suit administered a huge dose of coagulants and antibiotics. Ozzy's other two men, George Grimm and Max Hauser, picked the Bear up, carrying him between them, as they retreated, while the Bear continued to fire his shotgun, blowing off a hydra's mandible. Sniper fire from his company felled two more, discouraging any pursuit.
As they returned to the company, the last few mutas had fled, while a medevac dropship flew down the boulevard, low and fast, trailed by a pair of Goliaths. The medevac stopped just as Ozzy and his men returned, took on several marines wounded by glaive wurms and hydra spikes, including the Bear and the downed Falcon Two-Two. The Goliaths stayed, and for a moment Ozzy wondered why, given that the Dominion military was typically stingy with such formidable hardware.
That was when the walker's autocannons started pounding, and Ozzy realized that the Zerg must have regrouped. He spun, dispatching his remaining men, both marksmen, to take up overwatch positions, as several hydralisk spikes thudded into the medevac's left engine, causing it to slew dangerously, crunching several wrecked cars. However, Ozzy noted with approval, it was capable of flying on one engine, and quickly got back on course, speeding away from the onrushing horde.
As Ozzy surveyed the approaching Zerg, he felt a great rush of gratitude that the street behind him, finally clearing of civilians, was substantially more heavily fortified that the couple of puny trenches his company huddled in. "All right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls," a voice crackled over the comm, "this is it. Unfortunately, we have no other support than those two walkers there, and I'm told this looks like the main Zerg push. If you need motivation, think about this: behind us is the main evacuation center for this sector. Four million people trying to get off this hellhole, and only two thousand of us. Make it count, people. Mortars! Fire at will." To his left, Ozzy heard the muffled crumping of mortar rounds being fired, while the heavy guns mounted in the sole bunker that formed the crux of his company's defense opened up on the fast-approaching Zerg, cutting down the front ranks, while the Goliaths' guns blasted holes in the Zerg column further back. Dozens of gauss rifles added their voices to the racket. Ozzy, laying on a slightly elevated pile of debris, rested his rifle against what had been a car fender. He spotted a small group of what his fellow marines had taken to calling roaches: big, low to the ground, encrusted in thick armor, with razor-sharp manibles and a deadly acid saliva. They were clearly hiding among the other Zerg, attempting to get close enough to reduce the Goliaths to goo.
He set his scope to 4x magnification, and planted the crosshair on the closest roach's front leg, right at the joint. He squeezed the trigger three times, sending three tungsten carbide spikes toward the hapless creature at 2000 meters per second. The projectiles severed the front leg, and pulverized the one behind. As it fell, he sighted the one behind, firing a single round into its hissing mouth, turning the acid glands inside into paste, and burning it from the inside out. He sighted a third, which was using its saliva to melt the carapace off its fallen companion, probably to eat the corpse. He flicked a switch, setting his rifle to full auto, and fired off a medium-length burst of ten rounds, which smashed its carapace and gutted the roach.
Ozzy was about to fire on a fourth roach, when he realized that his company had much bigger problems. "Captain," he said into his comm, "I'm going to assume you know about this," as he methodically shot down hydralisks.
"You still need to work on your condescension," Baird drawled back. "It's not nearly as annoying as my father's."
"I've been taking lessons."
"Get a new tutor."
"So what do you want me to do about the ultralisk?"
"Nothing, you moron. We're falling back. They got siege tanks further up the line. They can deal with the ultra."
"What about those Banshees?" Ozzy asked, firing off a burst from his rifle, shredding the wing of a solitary mutalisk peeking over one of the buildings.
"Just got a call from brigade command at the evac point. Five ultras heading towards them from the north. Those gunships have more important things to do. No. We fall back." Baird switched to company comms, into which the two Goliaths had been patched, "Boys, we are falling back. Do not attempt to engage the ultralisk. Bunker, put some fire on it, see if you can't slow it down."
Around him, the company reloaded their weapons and prepared to retreat, and Baird took stock of his company over his suit's HUD. He had started today with eighty-two men, had suffered twenty wounded and eight dead, all in the last hour or so. "And the day's just getting started," he muttered, as he checked his own weapon's ammo. The Goliaths and the bunker redoubled their efforts, spitting out fire at an unsustainable rate, trying vainly to draw attention from the company's backs as they fell back in leapfrogs. In the street, the slackening fire had allowed a mass of zerglings to get into the trenches.
The fast, horrifying little things swarmed over his marines, hacking them to death with their vicious armor-piercing claws. Baird fired a burst from his rifle, catching several as they came down the trench, six abreast, going for two of his men dragging another wounded. He dove, smashing into the wounded man's legs, but his momentum carried him through, putting himself between the retreating men and far, far too many zerglings. From his prone position, he let off a long burst, blunting the zergling advance slightly.
They quickly resumed their attack, and Baird realized they would not be held by his fire, so he stood, extended his rifle's bayonet, and began hacking, slashing, and stomping, hoping desperately that the little beasts wouldn't drag him down.
Eventually, their numbers told, and they began to swarm over him, their claws banging like gunshots off his armor as they tried to kill him. From above the trench, Ozzy and his men, among the last to retreat, fired rifle grenades into the trench, splattering carapace chunks and squishy innards all over the trench walls, before they pulled out their shotguns and began cleaning the remaining beasts off Baird's flailing body with a modified form of birdshot Ozzy designed for just these situations. Ozzy hopped into the trench and hauled the captain to his feet, saying, "Nice job. Time to go, you crazy bastard."
"Thanks for shooting me," Baird snarked, as he scooped up his rifle and wrenched up his wrecked visor, which had been destroyed but not punctured by the birdshot.
"Any time," Ozzy said, as he and his men switched back to gauss rifles, firing long bursts at the zerg continuing to swarm the trench. They began running, staying below the trench to avoid the huge swarm that was, mercifully, mostly ignoring them, driven by bloodlust or some other force to pursue the juicier targets ahead. About a block ahead of him, Ozzy heard the thunderous impacts of shock cannon shells impacting the street, telling him that at least some of the company had passed within their range, and now had some real cover.
As they exited the trench works, Ozzy spied the smoldering corpse of a Goliath, which was being swarmed by zerglings. From within, Ozzy heard a submachine gun being fired, and made to try to get the pilot out, but Baird clamped his hand on Ozzy's shoulder, preventing him from going, and said, "Nothing you can do, man. We got to go, in case you hadn't noticed the Zerg everywhere."
Abruptly, Ozzy was reminded that they stood in a river of Zerg. He gave the battlefield a quick scan, before Baird tried yanking him off to the side to hide in an office building, and noticed that one Goliath was still standing, retreating with the company, and that, for whatever reason, the Zerg seemed not to care about the four men in their midst. Ozzy quickly found the office building extremely attractive, feeling, deep in his bones, that whatever was holding the Zerg to such a singular purpose would soon end, and he would disappear under thousands of zerglings and hundreds of hydra spines.
Baird, from inside the building, opened a channel to his second in command, Bandit Five, or Lieutenant Arthur Bering, saying, "Artie! I need you to take command of the company. Obviously, we're separated, and I won't be able to get to you any time soon. Don't screw this up."
"Thanks for that. No pressure, right?"
"Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Artie."
"Command does. Don't be surprised if, when you get back, they've given me your spot."
"Ambition doesn't suit you either. Baird out." He turned to the three other men, doing their best to look inconspicuous, a forlorn hope considering they were about nine feet tall and weighed a metric ton in their armor, and said, "Okay, gentlemen. Ideas?"
"I'm up for killing the ultra," Ozzy said
"And the captain already called you a moron. I agree," said Grimm.
"Is that a spine you've grown there, George?"
"Maybe I'll use yours when the ultra spits it out."
"Ouch," Baird said, sucking his teeth, "You know our weapons won't even scratch it."
"Every suit of armor has a chink. I know the ultra's. And maybe I'll let you have part of the ultra's when I rip it out, Georgie."
"Zerg don't have skeletons. They have carapaces," muttered Hauser.
"Everyone's a critic," Ozzy said. "Come on, boss. You know I can do this. And you know that the men defending the evac point need all the help they can get. If I die, it's just one marine. If I kill it, well…"
"Where's this chink of yours?"
"Where else? Where the head joins the body. I'll hop on, slide down that big ridge on its back, open up its neck with my shotgun, put a few rifle grenades in there. Bam. Done."
"Like it's nothing."
"Well, I will need your help. Even from the top of this building, I can't make that jump. I need you guys to get its attention."
"Oh, wonderful," Grimm said, cycling to explosive rounds on his gauss.
"When the smaller breeds come after you, just retreat upwards. Rig up some grenades for proximity mines. Never know, we might survive."
"I love your plans, Ozzy," Hauser muttered, checking his grenades.
"I know, right? Got the warm fuzzies just thinking about all this teamwork." Ozzy said, with a grin that was at once evil and childishly irritating.
"What are you going to do after you kill it? You'll be standing in the middle of an ocean of zerg," Baird asked
"Don't kill my ego trip with your logic."
"I'm serious."
"I like that you're already assuming that I'll kill it."
"I hate you," Baird said, as he took aim at the nigh-invulnerable, eighty-ton monstrosity.
"Well, let me get into position, first. And as for escaping, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. And see if you can't get us a pick up. Something that flies."
"Oh, that's likely," Baird said, but started muttering into his comm anyway.
"Which?"
"Either. Both. Go."
"Yes, sir," Ozzy said, with a mocking little salute, and pounded up the staircase. On his way up, he heard noises from inside some of the offices, sobbing and scrabbling as people tried to barricade their doors. Ozzy stopped for half a second, "Damn," he said, under his breath, and kept running.
"Okay, Captain. I'm on the roof. See if you can get its attention."
"Roger." Below him, Ozzy heard several muffled thumps as the three other men fired rifle grenades. The grenades impacted the ultra's side, as it lumbered up the street, exploding against its carapace. The ultra roared in pain, though from what Ozzy could see through his scope, the grenades hadn't left more than a few scorch marks.
"Nice work!" Ozzy shouted into his comm, as the ultra bellowed and rammed itself bodily into the building, which shook, while the other zerg massed for an attack.
"Did I mention I hate you?!" Baird shouted back, firing his rifle.
"Seconded!" Hauser and Grimm shouted nearly simultaneously as they fired their shotguns, while the ultra proceeded to pulverize the building's façade with its giant, slashing claws, as though trying to create an opening large enough for it to enter through. The building shook violently. "Time to make that jump, Ozzy! We're retreating," shouted Hauser.
Jumping time, Ozzy thought, suddenly a little hesitant. He clamped his rifle to his back, and pulled out his combat knives, planning to sink them into the joints between the ultra's carapace plates to keep himself from careening off the ultra's back, assuming he managed to hit the ultra. He stepped back, and took a massive running start, plunging off the side of the building and down into the urban canyon filled with bloodthirsty, vicious creatures. For a split second, just after he jumped, Ozzy finally realized what a bad idea this was. Committed now, he thought. Might as well make the best of it. He angled his knives down, planning on hitting the ultra's back as hard as he could.
For a moment, it looked as though his jump was perfect, and he would land right on the ultra's back. However, it triggered a proximity mine as it eviscerated the building, causing it to flail. "Shit." Ozzy said, as he glanced off the sloping side of the ultra's carapace. He lashed out desperately with his knives, trying to catch the ultra's side, somewhere. The knives skittered across the ultra's carapace as he continued to fall, but the knife in his left hand managed to wedge itself between two carapace plates.
Unfortunately, he was now hanging off the ultralisk's side, over a hell of a lot of zerglings and hydralisks, by a narrow strip of neosteel. From his perch, he threw his second, unused knife into a hydralisk's mouth, and quickly jettisoned every grenade he had, except for two rifle grenades, setting them to bouncing mines as they fell. When they impacted the ground, the bounced in the air and sent shrapnel flying in a wide, circular pattern, largely clearing the area around this side of the ultra. Ozzy knew he only had a few seconds, and so heaved as hard as he could with both hands on the knife. His effort sent him up the ultra's side a few feet. He managed to shove his fingers into a similar joint further up.
The force and tightness nearly crushed his fingers as he reached back down, yanking the knife out of the ultra's side. He opened his visor and stuck the knife between his teeth, and hauled himself further up, using his fingers as he had the knife. He suddenly felt a rush of painkillers and knew he had broken at least one bone in there, probably several. Despite the lack of pain, however, that hand had now weakened significantly.
Luckily for Ozzy, the ultra was too angry at its tormentors in the building, and didn't seem to be going out of its way to shake Ozzy off, though its constant battering of the building caused Ozzy to nearly fall several times. He reached up with the knife again, found purchase again, and hauled himself further up. This time, he decided to stand on the knife, jump, and make a grab for one of the large spikes protruding from upper parts of the ultra's otherwise sloping carapace. As he readied his one-footed jump, he felt the neosteel of the knife crackling dangerously beneath him, and put all the force he could into that one leg, sending him lurching into the air, even as the dagger shattered. He made a frantic grab with his good arm for the spike, and thanked God that he had rubberized his gauntlets, giving him enough of a fingertip hold to bring his other arm up, and finally managed to throw both arms over the spike, giving him a moment to rest.
He eventually pulled himself up to a standing position on the spike, allowing him to jump onto the ultra's topmost carapace ridge, which, if he slid down it, would take him straight down to the ultra's small and well-protected head. He made the jump, but just as the ultralisk attacked the building again, causing him to be thrown into midair. He crashed down, painfully, on the top ridge as the ultra swung the other direction on his way down. Feeling another rush of painkillers, he was able to gain control of his wild slide just enough so that he would not, if only just, fall off. At the bottom of the ridge, he managed to stop just short of running into the massive horn on the ultra's head, which he felt sure would draw its attention.
As he tried desperately to pull out his shotgun, he realized he hadn't heard anything from his section for a while, and was suddenly very afraid they had died. He finally managed to rip the shotgun from its holster, and put a few frantic armor piercing blasts into the point where the head met the rest of the ultra's body, causing it to bellow and buckle slightly, threatening to simply toss Ozzy off. Now that he definitely had the beast's attention, it stopped its attack on the building, and began trying to throw Ozzy off.
Knowing he wouldn't be able to hold on much longer, Ozzy dropped the shotgun and tore his last grenades from their magazine, set them to maximum explosive power, and shoved them into the small rift he had just created, with both hands. The ultra's bucking tossed him free almost instantly, and, by some miracle, sent him flying through the air towards the building the ultra had been attacking. As he flew through the air, the grenades exploded, vaporizing the ultralisk's head. The huge, dead thing slumped, somewhat anticlimactically, to the street, crushing hundreds of zerg under its bulk. Ozzy impacted the building with great force, and managed to get his hand on a window sill as he fell. His great weight in the suit threatened to tear it from the wall, and so he rapidly pulled himself up and into the now-critically teetering building. He made his way back to the stairs, and above him, heard gauss rifles and shotguns firing, and shouted into his comm that he was coming up, but received no response. He pounded up the stairs, slashing at the zerg all around him with his rifle bayonet, hoping they wouldn't drag him down. When he finally reached the top of the stairs, he was greeted with a blast of shotgun pellets to the chest, which sent him toppling backward, crushing a couple of zerglings.
"My God! Ozzy! We thought you were dead!" shouted a jubilant Max Hauser, who ran over to where Ozzy had fallen. Hauser shoved the shotgun into Ozzy's hand, who fired blindly into the oncoming Zerg as Hauser dragged him onto the roof, which was mostly clear of zerg thanks to the volume of fire Baird, Hauser, and Grimm put out, though it sloped dangerously.
Ozzy, inside his suit, had had the wind knocked out of him, and managed to choke out, "Thanks for shooting me, you bastard."
"Sorry about that. We hadn't been able to get in touch with you, so we assumed you were dead. You should have let us know you were coming."
Ozzy was about to say that he had, when he glanced at the comm display on his HUD, and realized his comms had been knocked out, probably by the fall. Instead, he simply said, "Yeah, okay. Turns out my comms are broken."
The other two men, though they looked happy to see him, couldn't spare their attention, as the zerg had taken advantage of the defenders' preoccupation with Ozzy's arrival, and had now managed to break through the bottleneck that Baird and Ozzy's section had held at the doorways, and they were swarming over the whole roof now, even as the building collapsed. "Hope you got that pickup, Captain," Ozzy shouted, as he began firing his own weapon. "Else we're screwed."
"Supposed to be coming soon. Good to see you, you asshole. And nice work," Baird said, as he cut down a hydralisk forcing its way through one of the doors opening onto the roof. The marines started lobbing the last of their grenades, even as they retreated to the farthest corner of the roof. It wasn't enough. "Well, at least we killed the ultra," Grimm snarled.
"Hey now, I killed the ultra," Ozzy snarked, continuing to fire.
At that moment, a medevac dropship crested the building, its double-mount gauss turrets scything brutally into the onrushing zerg. It's long, low ramp opened, and the four men threw themselves onto it, just as the building lost the ability to support itself, and collapsing. As they jumped, they were followed by several hydralisk spikes, two of which skewered one of the waiting medics and one of the marines aboard giving them covering fire. Another smashed into Ozzy's helmet, shearing off about half of it, but not impacting Ozzy's fragile skull. The force of the spike, however, sent Ozzy tumbling into the medevac, eventually coming to rest against the forward bulkhead, as the ship pulled some truly dangerous maneuvers and sent it rocketing towards the evac center. Mercifully, Ozzy lost consciousness.
