StarCraft: Brain Damage
Chapter 3: Something to Shoot
At 0300, the entire invasion force had been split up into separate companies and sent on their own individual missions by Raynor. Each company was 100 units strong, made up of whatever best suited the job at hand. Which meant that Jim's company had dick-shit in the way of heavy equipment. Moving fast and quietly was the main focus behind their task force.
They were being sent out behind enemy lines to find a bunker where an ex-Confederate scientist was still holding up with a weapon rumored to be able to stop the Zerg. It wasn't known what the weapon did or if it even existed, but apparently Raynor thought it was worth a shot. That was probably why he had sent his best Ghost out with them.
In his heavy armor Jim looked much, much bigger than the woman walking next to him did. Asuka kept casually glancing around; looking for any threat to their marching formation, which was lined up single file. Or would have, if they themselves hadn't been breaking the rule. But since she was in charge no one was going to complain or risk getting either A) the hell kicked out of them by the muscle-bound Marine next to her, or B) get a canister round in the face by Asuka herself.
Maybe there was even a third option, depending on how Nick felt about lapsing back into creepy-ass serial killer mode.
"So, where'd you grow up?" Asuka asked him.
"Mar Sara," Jim said, "And you? Wait, never mind, stupid question."
"Yeah kinda," Asuka agreed, "So, did you know Raynor before this whole thing? I hear he's from Mar Sara."
"I'm a lot younger than him, but yeah I remember him. He was the Marshal of the area we lived in," Jim explained.
"And when he started the Raiders you just joined him?" she asked.
"I was in Duke's Alpha Squadron when the Confederacy still existed. I never really liked that asshole, and Mensk wasn't my type if you catch my drift," Jim told her.
"So you just picked the lesser of three evils or what?"
Jim shook his head. "No, I like Raynor more than any commander I could ever think of. I'd follow him anywhere."
"Strong words," she mused, "I like it."
"Enough about me, though, what about you?" he asked.
Asuka opened her mouth to respond but was cut off by Nick, who was walking two people in front of them.
"Zerg!" he shouted and chucked a D8 charge up the bank of the canyon they were walking through.
Jim tracked it with his eyes and saw it latch onto a rock under a Defiler, beep twice, and blow up in an explosion that destroyed both the scorpion-like alien as well as the rock it was standing on. Asuka's C10 canister rifle barked six times in what seemed like an instant and four Zerglings and a Hydralisk met their ends in explosive splashes of red.
A Marine screamed as around sixteen Hydralisk acid spikes penetrated his armor and sent him reeling onto the ground. The kid's finger still held onto his trigger, however, resulting in a stray spike round hitting a Firebat's fuel tank. Instantly, ten more Marines' vital signs flatlined.
"We can't hold out much longer!" Jim shouted over the collective gunfire from the entire company opening fire.
"Don't you think I fucking know that!" Asuka shouted back, firing her rifle with deadly accurate shots.
A Marine dropped next to Jim with a Zergling gnawing at his face through the cracked visor. Jim fired a quick burst and blew the smaller type of Zerg off of the most certainly dead Marine. Jim looked up at the top of the canyon and saw a Hydralisk start to bunch its back muscles up in the direction of Asuka, signifying it was about to fire an acid spike at her exposed back.
Taking aim, Jim pulled the trigger in anticipation of recoil and a spray of blood from the Hydralisk. Instead, he was rewarded with a click and an empty bolt. Cursing, Jim threw his empty Impaler aside and picked up a dead Marine's ballistic combat shield. He dove up behind Asuka just in time to catch the acid spike on the shield. Half of it was sticking through and hovering just in front of his visor, threatening to drip acid through it and onto his exposed eye.
He calmly adjusted the shield so that it wouldn't drip and valiantly took another spike. The second thudded hard enough to knock the shield back into his helmet violently.
"You want to take care of that!?" he shouted to her over his shoulder.
"Take care of what!?" she shouted back.
"The fucking Hydralisk!" Jim shouted.
Asuka took a quick peek over his shield and saw what he meant. Then she jumped fully up and fired three shots, all three hitting the ranged Zerg in the neck with enough force to blow its head off.
Further down the canyon, Nick pinned a Zergling to the rock wall with one arm and shot it in the head at point blank range with the other.
"I need help over here!" shouted a Firebat from behind him.
Turning, Nick saw that the Firebat was in reality beyond help. Lying on the ground, the squirming flame-thrower troop had seven Zerglings swarming all over him stabbing at the weak points in his armor. Calmly, Nick took aim at the Firebat's fuel tank with one of his pistols.
"I got your help right here," he said and squeezed the trigger.
The resulting explosion killed every Zergling as well as the Firebat. Nick viewed it as a cost-effective use of a bullet. Just then, Asuka and Jim ran up with ten remaining Marines.
"Come on! We're leaving!" Jim shouted.
"Why and where?" Nick asked.
"Why?" Ayanami asked from where she stood in the group of Marines, "Because everyone's fucking dead and they've got more troops coming! Look!"
Nick did look and saw that there were too many Zerg to count crawling out of holes in the canyon walls, turning toward them with deadly intent.
"Oh, so I take it we're running that way?" Nick pointed the other direction from the Zerg rush.
"You think?" Jim asked sarcastically.
Nick didn't wait and instead jump jetted ahead of the rest of the company. Soon, the rest of them were right behind him running scared for their lives and leaving their eighty seven dead behind for the aliens to feed off of.