StarCraft: From Within
Chapter Two: An Old Friend
"Wake up!" Tera screamed in Damien's face as his eyes opened. Alarms sounded all around them. Even in the dim glow of the emergency lights, he thought she looked amazing.
"Time to get up, Lewik! It's the zerg."
She didn't need to say anymore. He jumped up, grabbing his rifle that was propped up against the wall next to his bunk. They ran out of the men's rooms in the barracks and head toward the Deployment Station, where he would get fitted into his CMC power armor. As they navigated the halls, she briefed him.
"The zerg we were sent here to eradicate found us and started hitting hard. Several overlords suddenly swooped over the camp and started dropping zerglings, hydralisks—you name it."
"Suddenly swooped over," Lewik repeated as they entered the Station and the workers started directing him to a machine. "How do zerg 'suddenly swoop' over a military base in the middle of the desert?"
She gave a shrug as he stepped into the machine, then watched as his body was covered with armor. When the process was complete, he stepped down from the platform.
Between them, Lewik was first out the door. Everything went from order and quiet to absolute chaos instantly.
Outside, zerg and terran forces were clashing nonstop. Just in front of them, a terran in his skivvies was fighting a zergling, who pinned him to the ground, until Tera's telekinesis threw the thing off. Just a few yards away, two ghosts were surrounded by a couple zerglings, a hydralisk, and a hovering mutalisk. And just beyond that, a medic was wrapping a bandage around a man's arm. He kept pointing at the battle like he wanted to get back to fighting.
Ghosts in the Protectorate had a habit of protecting each other before all others. So, Lewik wasn't surprised when Tera leapt into action to save the other two ghosts. Turning, Lewik saw a group of marines with a pack of hydralisks tearing down on them, and decided to run over to them and started firing, taking down a hydralisk that was replaced by two, then another that was replaced by three. The marine to his left was taken down by a spike just as the hydraklisks were in range to slash at them. With a quick jump and roll backward, Lewik was able to get away from the monsters' grip, but the others were not so lucky. With the hydralisks a meter away, Damien felt his heart go cold. Then this golden-haired beauty drops in from the sky. She lifts her hands, and brings a wall of psionic energy crashing down, killing the four hydralisks. She whipped around and smiled at him as she spoke.
She said, "Guess that's another one you owe me, D," and she winked.
From the clifftop nearby, Lewik sat and stared, forcing the tears in his eyes back. Down below, white-clad Umojan marines pulled a large black bag from a truck. They were taking her body away. Tera. She'd saved him from the Swarm and to repay her, he ripped her still beating heart from her chest. Damien was frozen in place, watching as they zipped the body into the bag and loaded it into the truck.
As the doors shut behind the marines and the door started to drive away, the realization of what had happened truly hit him, and he stood up.
"NO!" He told himself out loud. "You are not to blame for this. The Swarm is." He hadn't realized it, but he started pacing.
"I'm going to take down the Swarm. But to do that, I need a plan. Well, first things first, I need an army." Then a great idea hit him.
"I'll use the zerg to take down the zerg. I need a drone."
Closing his eyes, Lewik stretched his mind and sensed for the nearest zerg. It didn't take long. A small group of zerg nearby were fighting each other. Two zerglings were fighting while a hydralisk turned on the last drone in the group, after having just killed one. Damien supposed his disconnection to the brood caused some issues. He was right in the middle of the chain of command.
Taking control of them took no effort.
Calm down! He ordered mentally. He wasn't close enough for them to hear his voice. Find a nearby spot for our hive cluster. Signal me when you do. Protect the drone with your life.
And he headed for the nearest resource-rich spot.
Eventually, he met up with the small group of zerg and looked at his numbers.
"One drone, a hydralisk, and two zerglings stood in the middle of a clearing near a patch of minerals and one vespene geyser.
His stomach (what was left of it) dropped when he saw the faint vespene filtering up. The geyser wouldn't last long—he'd need another spot. Without vespene, he'd be limited on which units he could create.
"Oh well," he said with a sigh, then turned his attention to the drone. "Morph into a hatchery, there," he commanded, pointing at a spot close to the mineral patch. The drone silently glided to the spot, planted itself in the ground, and began the process. The other zerg moved slightly closer, having been ordered to protect the drone with their lives.
It only took a couple minutes for the sinewy skin of the drone to expand as the creature within started to swim furiously in the green liquid inside. It grew larger and larger over time, until the skin burst and a hatchery stood where there was once a drone.
Then he waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, a larva found its way out of the hatchery walls and lay on the ground, barely moving in the layer of creep that started spreading from the heart of the hive cluster.
"Mutate into a drone." He said. The larva's skin stretched similarly to how the drone's did, albeit on a much smaller scale. Again, a minute or two passed until the cocoon split open and a drone hovered in it's place. That is, until it was ripped to shreds by glaive wurms shot from mutalisks above. The wurms continued to pound his hive cluster, and although two mutalisks were killed, they easliy destroyed his forces.
He could tell that Niadra controlled these creatures. She wanted him back under her command. He turned and ran as fast as he could, but even his zerg-enhanced speed wasn't enough. The mutalisks drew closer and closer.
He saw something then that almost stopped him in his tracks—a viper, flying straight for him. Something about this viper though—it didn't seem hostile. Behind it was an even larger wave of mutalisks than the one chasing him. When the viper was right overhead, it used its long tongue to pick Lewik off of the ground and a man's voice rang out in his head.
"No need to worry," it said, "you're safe. My zerg will protect you."
As the viper and a small group of the hydralisks took him off into the distance, he heard the sounds of the zerg fighting behind them.
After nearly twenty minutes of flying, the viper finally set Lewik down in the middle of a fully functional hive cluster, complete with a hive, a spawning pool, spire, and lurker den. The only thing it was missing was an ultralisk cavern. All of the zerg went about their tasks completely ignoring his presence.
"Ah," a voice said behind him—the same voice that spoke to him before.
He was an infested terran. One super long limb on the left side, where most of the mutation seemed to have occurred. His eyes burned red below the bill of his army hat, adorned with a star between a pair of lightning bolts, set above a skull with wings.
"Who are you?" Lewik asked.
"I," the man replied, "am Alexei Stukov."
That name sounded familiar.
"What do you want with me, Alexei?"
"Please," he replied, "call me Stukov. You look just like her, you know. But that's not a surprise."
"What are you talking about?" Lewik asked.
"Why, the Queen of Blades, of course."