JTHOOM THOOM THOOM THOOM THOOM
It's strange, Jim Raynor thought while firing round after round into the oncoming swarm, this really should be a whole lot more terrifying than it is. Am I really that jaded?
The Zerg just kept pouring through the corridors, individual drones just getting in each other's way, climbing on top of the fallen, doing whatever they could to get to the Rangers, and ended up doing nothing but decorating the walls with their blood. The Zerg's standard tactic, nearly useless in the confining hallways.
A dozen of his finest, good, loyal men all, were all that he could take with him, along with a number of medics to keep them on their feet. A few Protoss as well, taking point, their energy shields a whole lot better suited to taking what the Zerg could dish out than the powered armor the Raynor's men were wearing. And, even so, it was all he could do to not think this as too easy.
The telltale in his helmet flashed to him, and the warning tone sounded and, entirely by reflex, Raynor ejected the spent magazine, slammed in a new one, cocked the gauss rifle and resumed spraying the on-rushing horde with the spikes. He hardly had to aim, there wasn't a whole lot of places he could shoot that wouldn't hit a Zerg, either live or dead.
And, as the mind is wont to do when it is not being used, he drifted back to when this mission became a reality: Two days ago, when he met with Artanis and Zeratul, getting them to go along with this mission. Not that it was easy.
----------
"Are you certain?" asked Zeratul, his glowing eyes impassive as he looked to the only human in the room.
"It's not like there's a better plan. Now, I ain't waiting for Kerrigan to be ready for a fight, and there's gotta be a reason why she's stopped attacking everything in sight. But you Protoss are ready to fight her off, so's Mengsk, as far as I know. You beat the Zerg by taking out the leader, not by killing the troops. Don't matter how many of them you kill, they've got more coming right behind them."
"But they only have one leader," finished Artanis.
"It's the only plan that'll work."
"Your plan seems rather... optimistic, Commander. A fleet of Terran and Protoss vessels appear on one side of the planet, hopefully drawing off as much of the Zerg fliers as they can. Then you land in a handful of transport vessels, leading a force of twenty against Kerrigan herself?"
Hardly the army I promised her... Aloud, Raynor said, "I've been in those types of caves before, and it's perfect for this kinda fight. She can't use anything real big, so it'll mostly be Zerglings and Hydralisks. They can't use numbers in there and my guys have gotten real good at nailing them to the wall."
"It still seems..."
"Suicidal," Zeratul said, finishing the young Protoss' thought. "You mean to take a handful of soldiers and assault the most heavily defended location in the sector, assuming you even make it to the surface in the first place."
"I'm sure I'll make landfall, Zeratul," Raynor said, smiling wryly. "Question is how many pieces I'll be in." Even though Zeratul's face did not change in the slightest, Raynor got the impression that the joke was not welcomed. "I can't say why I know I'll make it, but I will. I just need three things from you."
"A fleet of vessels and the best of our warriors hardly seems like 'just', Commander Raynor."
"Just a skirmish, Zeratul. Just need you to make some noise until I get to the surface. And something tells me I won't need to look to find four great Protoss Zealots willing to go after Kerrigan. But, there's one other thing..."
----------
Ahead, the flood of monsters suddenly stopped. The earthen tunnel was half-full of zerg corpses, so perhaps they just got tired of climbing over their own dead. Still, couldn't be too careful...
Raynor signaled to the man at his side, who stepped up and primed a grenade. Sean Davies, a Mar Sara survivor and Sons of Korhal veteran, he lost everything when the Zerg first hit Terran space. Raynor hardly had to persuade him to come with him on this mission, just needed to say who the target was.
The grenade landed on the far side of the corpse pile and exploded, showering the assault team with blood and gore but also shredding the Zerglings lying in wait and clearing a path that could fit the soldiers in powered armor.
They went slowly, guns eternally at the ready and psi-blades constantly lit, but nothing. No Zerg at all, right in the middle of their central hive.
"Jimmy, this is way too easy," one of the marines said. Raynor checked the heads-up display: Jacob Fujikawa, his second in command and a Tarsonis native, before it got infested at least. Worked as private security for this major bank back in the day, simply amazing with a rifle, picking off targets with friendlies in the way. When Raynor had asked him about his odd name, Jacob just grinned, and said, "I'm half everything that ain't Protoss or Zerg. Just call me Human."
Little bit of a hero complex, too, but a good guy through and through. He first met the man when he was trying to rescue Kerrigan, couldn't find her position but he and a bunch of others needed rescuing themselves. That was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do, up till that point at least, but he wouldn't abandon those who needed him, not ever..
"Maybe, or maybe she's tired of throwing bodies at us," Raynor replied. "Keep sharp, there might be an ambush ahead."
"I would welcome a chance to flay Zerg flesh from bone! You Terrans have stolen all of the glory of this fight." That was Trannend, a Protoss from the capital city of Auir, one of the few who managed to escape the city before the Zerg overran it.
"Glory?" Fujikawa replied, laughing. "Tell you what, when we get back home, I'll tell all your buddies that our guns jammed when we landed and you killed all the Zerg, all by yourself."
"Your charity is not needed. Eventually you will run out of ammunition, but I will not."
"Comforting thought. Got any other morale boosters to share with the rest of us?"
"Yes. Even in that metal coffin of yours, I am still taller than you," Trannend said, psychically transmitting the Protoss equivalent of laughter.
"Cut the chatter, and stay sharp," Raynor said, barely resisting the urge to join in on the banter. We who are about to die will laugh at anything, he thought. Some clever line from some clever book, just slipped into his mind. His offhand slipped to his belt, patting his sidearm, making sure it was still there. Damn near everything rided on it.
A fork in the tunnel lay ahead. He concentrated for a moment on his surroundings, trying to remember something that had never happened to him, remembering someone else's memory.
Kerrigan's, to be precise. He raised his head, at least as much as he could in the restricting armor, and pointed to the left.
This is why he was so confident. Back when Sarah Kerrigan, the woman he loved, had been taken, something had called out to him, telling him where to find her. It was Kerrigan herself, the infested form at least, who was reaching out to him. But when she was finally born, there seemed to be no good left in her, just a being of pure evil.
Except that she let him live. She could have killed him a hundred times on Char, and yet she never did. After she became The Queen of The Zerg, after Raynor. Mengsk, Duke and Fenix had unwittingly helped her regain all of her power, she didn't kill him again, she let him leave, even after he swore to kill her.
Then again, she let Mengsk live, too, and only God knows how much she hated him.
But then he started dreaming again, dreaming about her. But not the romantic dreams he had before, back on Char, or the gruesome variety of her actual daily routine, but rather, just locations. Pointless little dreams of a strange cave, no, not even a cave. Just a bunch of tunnels in the darkness, except that the images burned themselves in his mind when he woke.
Part of her was helping him, probably even now. Kerrigan had to know that Raynor would not come all this way if he didn't have a plan, so either she was so damn arrogant that she could act this stupid, or something was staying her hand, maybe convincing her to be so damn arrogant. Or maybe she was just curious about a few things.
Like how Jim Raynor, rebel extraordinaire, could manage to get the Terran Dominion to help the Protoss on what was clearly a suicide mission.
----------
"You want me towhat?" Arcturus Mengsk, Emperor of the Terran Dominion, yelled over the comm. channel.
"I want you to send as many ships as you can to Tarsonis to assist the Protoss in giving me a distraction," Raynor repeated.
"I had thought you above prank calls, Jim."
"This isn't a joke, Mengsk. Now, look, I'll be honest. I hate your guts. You're an evil, vicious madman who's sold out everyone who's ever trusted you. You deserve anything horrible that could possibly happen to you, and there's not much that I'd like more than to put a bullet right in that damn skull of yours."
"Well, since you put it that way..."
"Shut up!" Raynor yelled through the mike, seeing red just like every other time he'd spoken with the man since he abandoned Kerrigan to the Zerg. "I just don't care all that much about you anymore! You're everything I said you, and probably more, but maybe humanity needs a complete bastard like you right now, and there's not a hell of a lot I could do to stop you!
"But the Zerg is ten times worse than you'll ever be. Humanity will outlive you, but it might not outlive the Zerg, and taking down Kerrigan is the best strategy that we have for beating them for good."
"That depends on if the Zerg is a snake or a hydra, Jim, but I can't think of a better idea. So, what's your plan?"
"I already have a ground force, with transports, ready, even got ammo and a bit of Deus Ex Machina prepared."
"'Deus Ex Machina'? You've been talking with Liberty again, haven't you?" Mengsk quipped, referring to the renegade journalist who had that sort of love for words. Raynor recognized the joking tone, something Mengsk did when he was hesitant but curious.
He ignored the little jab, partly because he had gotten the word from Liberty, and continued on. "I just need enough of a fleet to make the attack look legit. The Protoss have rebuilt pretty heavy, even got some fancy new ship designs. But two fleets are better than one. All I need is enough time to get to the surface, and then you can bug out if you want."
Raynor hated to play the trump card, mentioning that the Protoss were working on new ship types, but he needed the help. Mengsk was the sort who would ally with his worst enemy in order to get more intelligence about them, and from Raynor's trained eye the Emperor was close to salivating at the prospect.
"Very well, Jim. In fact, I'll do you one better. If you are going to be attacking her personally, you may need some more mechanized deity on your side..."
----------
"The Zerg approach," one of the other Protoss said. He was called Verranon, and could have been a Templar had he wanted. Instead, he became a Zealot and, during the Exodus of Auir, he was the last to pass through the Warp Gate to Shakuras, holding his position until Raynor had damn near kicked him through. Raynor knew he had a death wish, he could see it in his eyes. The last man of his unit, the rest dying on Auir, but Raynor chose him for this mission because he could sense the Zerg coming.
Just like now. "Where?" Raynor barked out, shouldering his rifle. They were at a delta of tunnels, five different paths, including one leading straight to the Queen of Blades herself.
"Everywhere, except this way," he said, pointing at one of the tunnels.
"Kerrigan's that way."
Verranon looked at him oddly, at least as best as Raynor could tell. "You are certain." Raynor just nodded. "Then go."
"We'll hold the fort here, wait for you to get back," Fujikawa said, lying through his teeth, and everyone knew it.
Raynor nodded and said, "Okay, but leave me some. I don't plan on being gone for long." Lying was contagious.
"En Taro Adun," Tranned said.
"En Taro Tassadar, and good luck," replied Raynor, and set off, running down the only empty tunnel, running hard. Behind him, the whine of the electromagnets, the thousands of tiny sonic booms, signaling a spike being launched by a dozen gauss rifles.
A tear escaped Raynor's eyes. He chose this group for a reason. Survivors, warriors, soldiers.
And alone.
Everyone there had lost everything to the Zerg, had no one to go home to, nothing depending on them for save what came out of their guns. They all knew that, unless a miracle happened, none of them had a chance of going home. And none of them cared.
But just because they were willing to die for the cause didn't make their commander any happier about leading them into the fire.
He thumbed the trigger on his palm, and the drug rushed into his system. Pure adrenaline, plus a few other powerful drugs, the military stimulant cocktail known as a 'stim-pack'. To Raynor's eyes, the world slowed down, but he didn't. A Hydralisk appeared on his right, and he brought his rifle around and fired before the enemy could react. He heard the sound of a Zergling behind him, and in a moment his weapon was trained on it.
It could have been the stim-pack, compressing time and confusing him, but it seemed like the Zergling didn't bother to move at all. It just sat there, at least until the spikes tore through its body, giving a strange little dance as it went down.
He kept running down the tunnel, his speed much faster than a human should be capable of, taking turns the moment he saw them, the fading sound of automatic rifle fire echoing in his ears, doing nothing for him but making his legs pump faster.
And then there she was. Evil, vile, monstrous, enemy of every living being in the sector.
Beautiful, intelligent, graceful, the love of his life.
Sarah Kerrigan, the queen of blades.
"Why, hello, Jimmy! Whatever brings you here at this time of night?" she said, warm and cheerful and in a voice that Raynor could not help but love.
Those rosy feelings were only there for a few moments, and then he remembered the anger. Fenix, the Protoss warrior he fought with, bled with, loved like a brother, murdered with a knife in the back. So many other dead, but it was the one that burned him up the most.
He let out a low snarl and went loud, unloading his magazine at her. She only hesitated for a moment, but she laughed and dove out of the way with ease, the uranium spikes much too slow for the ex-ghost's reflexes. "What, no time for banter?"
He replaced the magazine and opened up again, again missing, the gun clearly not remotely effective against this opponent. Not that Raynor expected anything else, he'd seen her evade the fire of squadrons of fully stimmed Marines, and that was before she was infested, before she'd gotten so much stronger.
"Oh, I see. Your men are in danger, and you don't want them to die while we chat. Fine," she said, and snapped her fingers, clearly a theatrical gesture. A few moments later, the distant gunfire stopped, and a confused voice spoke over the comm. channel. "Uh, sir? The Zerg have stopped," came the voice of Fujikawa.
"What?"
"They're just standing there. I mean, we'd still be shooting at them, but somehow that don't seem fair."
"Can you get out of there?" Raynor asked, his voice hopeful.
"No sir. Aside from the whole 'don't leave your buddy behind' thing, they're still there, just not killing us. We'd have to push our way past the whole damn Zerg army." After a moment's pause, he added, "Call me crazy, but I think this was a trap."
"You're crazy." He turned off the mike, and turned back to Kerrigan. "What's this about, Kerrigan?"
Her smile would have been warm and friendly, had it been on a human, on her human face. "Call me Sarah, I know you want to."
His eyes narrowed, and he raised his gun again. "I'll stick with Kerrigan."
"If you fire that, your men will die," she said, the warmth in her voice replaced by steel. Then, just as suddenly, the mirth returned. "It's been a while since I've had any good conversation, I just want to talk. For example, how the hell did you get that fleet together?"
He lowered the rifle with a sigh. He needed to get closer to her, might as well try talking... "Didn't you know, Kerrigan? Everyone wants you dead, except for some lunatics who think you can be negotiated with. I only had to get them to make some noise and fly away. Easy enough to do, really."
She laughed, and it was her old laugh. Sweet, warm, actually happy. He wasn't sure how, but there was barely a touch of the Zerg in her voice now. "You got Mengsk to work with the Protoss! That ain't easy, Jimmy. What'd you promise him?"
He was glad that his armor was shielding his face. He couldn't help it, but there was a twitch of a smile on it. "You, dead. And it's obvious that I can't get out without killing you, so one of his enemies is gonna die here."
"His favorite, the win-win scenario. You do realize he'll take credit for it?"
He shrugged, a massive movement in the powered armor. "Mike knows why I'm here. He'll be able to tell what really happened. Besides, Mengsk said he'll give me credit."
"Really." The sarcasm was thick here.
"Well, more like he'll say I came to my senses and did this for the Dominion."
She laughed, and it was as melodic as it was way back then. "Ah, yes, he loves to use the truth to lie. If it's any consolation, I bet he really wants you to win here, because I can't read your thoughts."
Raynor's hand strayed to the side of his head, or would have if he could actually touch his head. "Newest generation of psi-dampeners. He thought it might come in handy." He blinked, and bit off a curse. He didn't want to do this. Come here, do the job, get out if he could.
But, he loved Sarah Kerrigan, and this monster, not matter how much he tried to tell himself otherwise, was Sarah Kerrigan, at least in part. Evil, ruthless, twisted into something unholy, but...
Her voice, while still lower in pitch, was the same, and it made him just as weak at the knees as before. Her laugh was different, but there was still something familiar about it. The way she moved, from head to toe, was exactly the same as before. Even the spindly wings, the most definitively Zerg thing about here, acted familiar, just like he knew they should, and, God help him, they looked just as attractive as the rest of her.
"You still love me, don't you." she said, more a statement than question.
"I loved Sarah Kerrigan, not you," he lied.
"I don't need to be a telepath to know, Jimmy." Now, there was no warmth. "You're staring at me, like you did back on Antiga."
Where they had first met. He stared and admired her, and she overheard his thoughts and called him a pig. He shook off the good memory. "How do you know? My helmet-"
She sighed. "-is only dark when it's bright. Your suit is a different model than your men's."
"How-?"
"Read their thoughts. A few of them are jealous of you, Jimmy." She smiled at him. "You might want to watch your back when you leave here. Oh, don't look at me like that, it was a joke!"
He almost chuckled at that. Almost. It was eerie, but he realized that he wasn't surprised by any of this. How do you hate someone who looks and sounds and acts just like the woman you love? "Why the act, Sa-, Kerrigan?"
If she noticed the stutter, she didn't react to it. "Who's to say this is an act? You know Mengsk. He's an entirely different person to his enemies than he is to his friends."
"Or potential allies," he said, recalling the way Mengsk sweet-talked him into joining his little rebellion.
"Exactly. I'm not that much different from the girl with the beautiful legs you met on Antiga," she said, smiling playfully. "But my enemies? They need to see the harder side of me. Mengsk is afraid of me, the Protoss are hiding behind their fleet and the UED has been very careful about avoiding this sector ever since I destroyed their armada." She shrugged, still smiling. "It's just diplomacy."
"You know what the funny thing is, Kerrigan?" he said, taking a step away from her, readying his rifle again. "You're right, you're a lot like you used to be. You still smile a bit too wide when you're lying. How stupid do you think I am?" he said, his voice turning to stone. "Do you really think I'd forget how you murdered Fenix? All those good men, sleeping in because they thought the fighting was over? Hell, Duke may have been a son of a bitch, but he didn't deserve to die like that.
"I don't know what your game is, Kerrigan, but I'm not playing it!" He raised his rifle and fired, aiming to nail her body to the cavern wall.
Or tried to, at least, but a swipe by one of her wings sent the rifle clattering away and the other embedded itself in Raynor's armor. The lance of pain all along his side made his vision flash red. His right hand went to his side, fumbling around for his sidearm until the same bladed wing that disarmed him impaled his arm.
A few seconds of fighting, now that the Queen of Blades was actually trying. In the distance, he heard his team's rifles firing again, the grim realization that they as good as dead hitting him hard, as were his wounds. He knew they would probably die, they knew it too, and some of them came here to die, but a good commander still hates to see his men die.
Kerrigan, only five feet away from Raynor with her winds extended to their limit, smiled darkly at him. "Did you really think that could work? That I wouldn't be willing to hurt you? Kill you?" She stepped forward, drew back a hand and delivered a jarring punch to his helmet's faceplate, shattering it and exposing Raynor's head to the rank smell of the cavern.
"You work with Mengsk, bring only a handful of soldiers into my home, to their death, and your plan is to shoot me to death?" She laughed grimly, shaking her head at Raynor's tortured face. "And you used a stim-pack to get here. You hate those! You've lost men to them! Which one of your principals haven't you broken in order to die here?"
And then he stabbed her. His right hand was disabled, but the first set of bladed wings did not impale his left. And his left was now holding what had been strapped to his side. A small hypo-spray of Protoss design, containing a toxin designed to kill Zerg cells but leave the human ones intact.
"You can strike backstabbing from that list, darlin'," he said, watching Kerrigan collapse to her knees. He winced in pain as her wings left his wounds, but he smiled all the same. The plan worked. Get her overconfident and close to him, and he could cure her of the Zerg. Take out the leader of the swarm and rescue the damsel in distress, all at the same time.
He'd used it before, on a former human named Stukov, and it had worked perfectly. Got rid of the Zerg, but left the Human intact. "Sir! The Zerg are goin' crazy!" yelled Fujikawa over the comm. "Orders?"
"Clear a path and get out of there!" he yelled, watching Kerrigan throw up all over his armor.
"But-"
"Your job was to get me here! Now get out and radio for pickup, I'll be right behind you!" He clicked off the comm. and recovered his rifle. The Zerg might be mindless now, but he had no illusions that it'd be easy to fight through them with Sarah slung over his shou-
"A bit... ahead of... yourself, Jimmy," came Kerrigan's voice from the ground. Kerrigan, the Zerg, not Sarah.
"What-"
"Did you really think that would work?" she asked, climbing slowly to her feet. He raised his rifle and tried to shoot, but a swipe of her wings knocked the rifle away again. "Need to hold on tighter," she said, chuckling at the horrified look on his face. "Stukov was nothing compared to me. And the Zerg are the pinnacle of evolution, you idiot. You really thought a simple virus could work twice?" she said, sneering at him.
She charged him, using her wings to impale his armor but not his body. "You asked what my game was, Jimmy? I wanted you to come here. Do you really think there's some secret part of me that's a pure and noble soul? I sent for you, told you how to get here, led you in, all through your dreams."
"Why?" he said, still in shock.
"Why? I'm a queen bent on conquering the galaxy. I need a general. Cerebrates are too easy for to kill without the Overmind to regenerate them, and, frankly, I've gotten tired at talking at giant slugs. Terrans have a place within the swarm, as leaders."
"You're gonna... infest me?"
She gave him a wicked, evil little smile. "Why not? Liberty told me your son was a telepath, so you probably are a bit too. You might not turn out to be at quite my level, but I don't need someone to challenge me for ruler of the swarm. But I was a ghost, Jimmy. I do treachery just fine, I just need someone to handle the tactics."
"Don't worry. As they say, today is just the beginning of the rest of your life. And you thought you came here to die..."
All Jimmy could think about was, well, aside from how damn stupid he was for walking right into a trap that would just help the Zerg in the long run, was what he had to do next. Plan B.
----------
Two days earlier...
"I'm calling this Plan B," the tech said, pointing at the button on the glove of the powered armor.
"Plan B? Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" asked Raynor, somewhat sarcastically.
"'Cause you should. This is the latest model of infantry powered armor, powered by a tiny Cold Fusion reactor, that way it can run in the field for a real long time. Expensive as hell to make, though, so we don't give them out to just anyone, mostly Special Forces commanders."
"That button would normally phone in the call-downs. Just point at the target and click the button, and it'd throw a nuke, Yamato, plasma torpedo barrage, whatever. But, that ain't gonna be an option for this mission you're on, underground and all, so I switched out the code for something I've been working on, mainly for the hell of it."
Raynor sighed. He hated dealing with the chatty techs. "So, what does it do now?"
"Press and hold for five seconds, a warning tone will sound, and keep holding for another five seconds. Then the power core will feed extra fuel grains, reduce the mag containment, blow the fail-safes, both mechanical and programming, and keep feeding fuel until it's out. Should create a nice, unbounded recursive reaction."
Raynor stared at the tech. "Can I get that in English?"
The tech blinked. "That was English. You want it in Administrator? Wild-cat chain reaction in a fusion reactor leading to a matter-to-energy turn-around of about, oh, one to several million." When he saw Raynor's still blank gaze, he sighed. "Fine, you get it in Grunt. Boom. Or, more accurately, Really Freaking Big Boom. The suit becomes a walking nuke."
"A walking nuke..." he said in horror.
"Yep. It'll take maybe twenty to thirty seconds before it should go critical, so got some time for famous last words, even if no one'll hear them. At least, no one who'll survive the blast. And, don't start it unless you really mean it, 'cause I haven't quite figured how to turn it off yet."
----------
He found the button with the suit's middle finger and, grimly realizing the joke there, pushed it and held.
"What, nothing to say?" asked Kerrigan, triumphant in victory.
"Nope." He heard the tone, and, though his heart skipped a beat, he pressed on. "Can't think of a thing."
"What?" she said, surprised by the lack of vicious swears. "What are you up to?" Kerrigan asked. After a moment's thought, she reached into his helmet and tore off Mengsk's psi-dampener, about a second after the countdown finished.
Raynor watched, with perhaps a bit too much satisfaction, as her face went from curious to ashen. "No..."
He hesitated for a moment, her stunned was something new to him. He soon recovered, however, and flipped on his transmitter. "Plan B, Fujikawa. Run faster."
Raynor turned back to Kerrigan, and was about to make a few cutting remarks at Kerrigan's expense when he heard the telltale sound of tearing metal and sparking wires. "Where is it?" she yelled, tearing into the powered armor. "Where's the reactor?"
"They didn't tell me, darlin'." He heard Fujikawa's response, not much more than swearing. They might've been willing to die here, but that didn't mean that they wanted to.
"Why?" she snarled, still tearing apart his suit.
That was the question, the one Raynor had been agonizing over ever since he knew what he had to do. The clincher was a quote he read, from some old, bitter soldier who wrote it long ago. 'All people need to know about war is this: Good men die. They'll die when you fight, and they can die when you don't.'
Raynor didn't come here to die. He had no intention of making a Zerg burrow his tomb. Then again, after New Gettysberg, he had no intention of becoming a rebel leader. Funny how things could change when they needed to, he mused.
"I lost everything to you and the Zerg. My home-" He gasped in pain as Kerrigan's claws tore into his stomach. "Mind the flesh. My home, damn near all my friends, you. Won't let anyone else lose like that.
The wound was not shallow, and Kerrigan was not stopping, continuing searching for the elusive nuclear device. Between his previously impaled hand and the new injuries, blood was seeping out of him at a rate that he was idly wondering if he'd die of blood loss or the nuke first. He was dimly aware of the flashing telltales and warning tones as the suit pumped painkillers into his system, and he noticed Kerrigan's furious scream of anger and betrayal, but he didn't care.
On some level, he knew he was hallucinating. The painkillers were designed to keep him lucid even with severe injuries and blood loss, and the feeling by the Dominion designers was that they'd rather have half-dead Marines firing at shadows rather than falling unconscious, so they wrote off the hallucinations as acceptable.
So, on some level, he knew that he really wasn't seeing Liddy, his dead wife from long ago, standing with his dead son, pride shining bright on their faces. He knew he didn't see Fenix, his old war buddy, laughing with the joy of victory as only the mouth-less Protoss could. And he certainly didn't see Sarah, the old Sarah, the one who fell at New Gettysberg, standing there, thanking him for ending her torment.
Somehow, he just didn't care. He mouthed, "I love you," to the red-haired spirit, and closed his eyes.
The suit sounded its final klaxon, and Raynor, the marshal from the backwater planet, the Hero of Antiga Prime, the rebel by accident, and the man who loved a woman, was done.
And, in those brief moments remaining, hearing the final report from his men reaching minimum safe distance, he couldn't be happier.