A/N: So, I'm having trouble trying not to go too fast while still keeping the story interesting, so forgive the frequent time skips :S
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Kane: Well, as for the elite marines, they use the Mercenary gear from StarCraft II...
The tree, however, is just where Sven lives for the moment.
Also, I believe I read somewhere that the Zerg can use every source of energy available to them already, including photosynthesis...
Finally, their friends... Uh, I dunno, man, I'm working on that D:
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Zaku Unit 2.0: Indeed, and quite a damn bridge to cross... I'll have to read tons of wiki pages before I can stepon it...
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Carlo Gesualdo:
1:I know, I intend to make this fair for everyone with equal amount of strengths, weaknesses and atrocities for every side of the conflict.
2:I didn't know about that :O I'll think of something latter... But the wiki timeline said Khorne was born at some point between M2 and M3... Well, suspension of disbelief, I guess :S
3: Actually, I've been writing in english for a while now... I take it you read one of my old stories or...
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chaosrafter008: Honestly, I've been making this up on the fly since chapter 4 :S
1: Yeah, trying to keep a good balance between story-telling and interesting :S
2: Don't worry, they'll have their moment too :D
3:I'm not sure what you mean, to play it off as a Tyranid invasion; as in block all warp travel and suck the planet dry before anyone can call for help?
As for the other races, it's part of the plot...
Solca Industrial Village
01/13/00
Braxis
1010 hours
"So what's your plan? Go in and start hurling skyscrapers at everyone?"
The Laspistol seems to have very little faith in my capacities…
"No, I'm planning to sneak in and steal what I want, you got a better suggestion?" Speaking to my gun inside the cockpit of a phased out Starfighter en-route to steal stuff I could normally buy off E-buy is not what I envisioned when I was offered this job as the Zerg Overmind…
"Yes; there are combat servitors patrolling the streets, a slight reprogram and they're killing everyone on sight. Meanwhile, we can loot anything we want in peace."
I got nothing against that plan, but I'm a Spectre, not a Reaper, I get in and out without anyone noticing, I don't kill everything in sight…
The cockpit hisses open and I jump out just as my cloaking field engages.
I'll keep in mind the possible army of cyborg as backup, but for now, let's focus on infiltrating the actual factories…
"What's been constructed in this place?" I ask the gun while peeking over the edge of the roof I'm perched on. The village underneath is barely more than a shanty town, with shelters made out of steel plates and blankets, set up between the perfectly kept church and imposing concrete structures that make up the industrial part.
The only protection the locals have from the wilderness is a bunch of mindless automatons. Such bullshit…
Many people in my situation would whine about the weight of responsibilities that accompany their task and, to some extent, they'd be right, it is kind of a pain to know one of the most powerful force the universe has known is under my control, but I get to eat tree meals a day, can do very wicked shit with just my brain and I'm about to have my whole slave army, so I wouldn't trade places with those poor bastard even if I could.
"First building's a bottling plant for some energy drink ," The gun's thoughts jerk me from my day dreaming, "the next makes power cells and the last was refurbished to produce flashlights."
Flashlights? "A flashlight factory?" That just doesn't sound right; why refurbish something to manufacture flashlights?
"Lasguns, most people call them flashlights, because of their… Sub-optimal firepower…"
Lasgun factory, huh? Imperial Guard must be getting ready to conscript locals… No one told me anything about that, but the town was marked yellow, so I guess no one will mind if I impede the mobilization effort. It's my swarm that'll be on the receiving end of those guns after all…
First things first, though, find the chemicals.
No need to rappel down or anything, my hardened bones, organs and muscles can easily sustain the drop from the eight meters high church roof.
I land with a roll just between a pair of crumbling shelters. Whoever's inside only get a glimpse at a shivering shape.
By the time anyone can look at what it was, I'm twelve meters further down the street and jumping over the industrial complex's electrified fence.
My left boot slips in the dirt upon landing and I end up in a half crouch, weapon trailed at a patrolling automaton that suddenly emanated from a door, tree meters ahead.
It looks left, ahead, right, ahead, left and ahead before backing away into the factory's darkness. A click tells me that door's locked, but it's not really a problem. Well, it wouldn't be if I intended to enter that way, which I don't.
"Think you can cut their power for five minutes?" I ask the laspistol.
"What? You're the Psyker, handle yourself!"
"Don't you have any kind of powers?" I fume, looking at the outlines of the pistol in my hand. Damn useless smartass piece of scrap…
"Yeah; I make dead peoples." It groans as I begin climbing the wall trough use of my Psi blade, levitation and enhanced strength, " And I am about ten thousand years old, all of those years I spent on the battlefield, so if you'll listen to me from time to time, maybe you would be more appreciative of my presence…"
This… would be a good argument if I wasn't certain it wants me dead.
Once on top, I keep my blade in one hand while aiming the pistol down range.
There are four blast furnaces lined up before me, two of them missing half their length, and the roof was repaired with large plates of bronze or something related…
"Heh, this place has really been falling apart since the old man decided to just bum around on his throne…"
"Shut up." Is the only appropriate answer.
"Do I disturb your religious belief?"
"No, you just get on my nerves."
I psi-jump on the edge of a damaged furnace and peek down.
"No way…"
"Way."
I step in the smoke and curl into a ball as I begin my descent down the burning shafts, protected by my Hostile Environment Suit and small psi-shield.
About three seconds go by before I hit something and whatever it is, I'm too heavy for it, as I rip right trough.
I spin in midair and land on my feet somewhere between a conveyer belt and a basin.
The bottles on the conveyer leave little doubt as to my current position; the bottling plant.
"Think we'll find mutagen agents in here?" I ask the pistol before ducking under the conveyer.
"It's the Imperium; anything's possible."
I'm about to get going when the huge metal cylinder filled with an ultra popular drink, to my right, give me an idea…
I practice a tiny incision with my psi knife near the top and the larvae on my back pumps a large quantity of Hyper-evolutionary virus in the thing.
Now, let's get a move on.
I'd like some kind of indication with 'Mutating Shit: This Way' but need to use logic instead, and although I have very good deduction capacities, the Imperium doesn't seem big on logic…
So, hazardous material used to grease gears, clean machinery and fuel stuff, where would I hide if I was one of those?
I send a psi-echo in the factory and analyze the feedback carefully; two conveyer belts working in parallel, catwalks all over the place, six small room on the other side of the room, clustered together along the northern wall. Offices?
I guess it's worth checking out…
There is a procession of servitors patrolling the central corridor, between the two conveyers, and they seem to have thermal imagery, so cloaking won't do shit.
I set one on fire and, while their thermals are still adjusting, jump across the hallway to slide under the second belt. There, I get back up in a blink and whip up my gun and knife, holding the firing hand with the slashing hand's wrist.
No one in sight. Lets check out the rooms.
First one contains only files and such. I could shuffle trough for an inventory, but I'm not really a crack chemist, so it wouldn't be much use…
Next one has maintenance tools and such, but also a few bottles of oil and grease…
I smell every bottle, but don't feel the sensation Kessler described, so I move on to the next one. Spare parts. Fuck.
Next room contains many bottles of many chemicals that shouldn't be anywhere near a population center, in my humble opinion, and sniffing them would be enough to send a normal man tripping for a looong time.
I'm not that lucky as the only effect it has on me, when it's not an urge to throw up, is a slight tingling that announces a winner.
It's a small metal can of blackish substance, not much of it, but enough to trigger a reaction, so I guess I'm taking it.
Kessler provided me with some sort of Zerg sample collection device, pretty much a larvae he mutated on the fly to act as a backpack. Knowing exactly what I need, the sampler extends its 'straw' over my shoulder and drink the liquid in ten seconds flat before stocking it in some internal sack.
Moving on…
The other rooms contain nothing but machinery, so I leap on a nearby catwalk, leading the concrete bridge that links this factory to the others.
I press my back against the wall, at the corner leading to the bridge, and peek in.
A servitor is guarding the thing, but a bit of technopathy and it sees the same image in a loop, so I just need to crouch-walk trough.
The next factory has the same layout and I repeat the same operation; burn a servitor, sprint across the room and hide behind the conveyer belt.
For this one I hit the jackpot; whatever substance they uses for their power cells, it triggers a reaction from my brain akin to a kid in a candy shop. Whole kegs full of mutagen vectors, barrels filled with radioactive wastes and chemical agents.
All six rooms are filled with those, too much for me to carry or even fit in my Wraith, so I take samples of everything and leave it there for… Wait, I don't really have to leave it…
I extend my consciousness to the whole town –not that wide an area- and begin reprogramming a few Servitors to work for me…not to kill everyone, but bring the chemicals close to my hive cluster then return to their duty. Just a slight tweak, something that'll appear as a random bug in their programming.
By the time they arrive, however, I'm already heading for the last factory.
I jump down a catwalk and land straight on the left conveyer belt, then roll off it and land in a crouch right next to the first 'supply closet'.
The Lasguns take a long time to be assembled, almost ten minutes a unit, but there's a healthy supply of them stacked in the storage rooms of this factory.
You know what I love about the Imperium's constant over the top attitude?
Self destruct function on their individual weapons.
I kneel next to the pile of weapons and tell all of them to go off in five minutes. They don't have a timer, so I establish a psi link between them and some servitor. It's a bit like an internet connection, except… well, okay, it's not really like it, but the concept is the same.
Then I climb the wall with my psi blade and slowly make my way to a half fixed hole in the ceiling.
It's too small for me to squeeze trough, but I psionically make the steel edges peel back like a wet sheet of paper and telekinetically jump trough.
This would have exerted an important strain on me, before, now it's just a little bothering…
I know Kerrigan had a PI of 12 before being zergified and that it played a great role in her ascension as queen bitch of the universe, but I really don't get how anyone could have stood up to someone maybe three steps stronger than I am… I bring down Battlecruisers with my brain for crying out loud!
I sprint across the roof top and use levitation to glide over the twelve meters gap before repeating the process on the next roof.
Thirty-four meters separate me from the church, no way I can jump this, but I still try; leaping high in the air. Arms and legs spread wide. The air rushes around me and I float a good twenty meter above the street, slowly loosing altitude and soaring forward. Almost got it.
My gun laughs his ass out as I hang with a single hand from the edge of the roof.
A kinetic pulse gets me on the roof proper, where I can see the outlines of my Wraith waiting for me.
Well; next.
I spend the rest of the day and a bit of the next one doing this; stealing chemical from small towns and taking out any military support structures I come across. The larvae on my back soon growing the size of a Zergling.
This is a long and overall eventless task that I perform as if on auto-pilot. Most didn't even have security forces.
I'm flying back home for some chow and sleep when I get I get a warning from the Zerg part of my brain; the Zerglings, Kessler and the drones were engaged by a pack of small, black Ursadon-like wolves and are fighting back.
One of the wolves already had its face melted by the drones' combined efforts. Kessler swaps one it mid-flight, cutting clean trough before grabbing another wolf-like creature from over a Zergling with his frail arms and tearing it in two like cardboard.
The Zergling rolls off the floor and leaps at a tree, using its many claws to stay in place. It observes the battlefield for a second, transmitting its knowledge to me and, by extension, to its brothers; five wolves remain now, circling around the Zerg convoy and looking for a weakness. One of them attempts to attack the second Zergling, but gets both attack claws stuck in its flanks.
The Zergling lifts the bigger predator off the floor, earning panicked whines, and then bite its head off before throwing the corpse away.
I wait a second for the wolves to grow nervous and give everyone the order to counter-attack.
Kessler reacts first, slithering forward before rising like a cobra, all weapons spread wide in challenge.
The wolves focus on him and he easily dodges most attacks while the drones and Zerglings flank the predators and cut them to pieces.
One Zergling was pretty badly wounded and Kessler has a few deep cuts, but they're Zerg, they'll heal soon enough. And we won. This feeling is unlike any I ever experienced. No I, no they, we are the swarm and we won.
"You did well, brothers," I congratulate, "Kessler, I have a lot of mutagens incoming…" I link him with the larvae on my back and earn a sinister laugh, "And the Imperium truly wonders why the mutant population is rising?"
Heh, yeah, it's pretty funny when you think about it… "Have you found anything?" I continue while ordering one of my new Overlord to go at the clearing I told the servitors to leave the barrels.
"Indeed, many plants here, if correctly altered, could aid me in my work."
"Think we could grow them in our hive cluster?"
He thinks about it for a few seconds before admitting it would be a first for the Zerg to actually cultivate something that isn't infested, but until we have the Evolution chamber, -Which is under way right now- we can't create new strains of individuals or structures. Once that's done, however, we might be able to whip up a structure that produces low level mutagens…
Great. I have one of the three drones still at home begin evolving into a Roach warren, as we'll need the big guns if there's any more wolves around here. Another one, I turn into a Spine crawler –I like creep colonies and all, but don't have the resources to create static defenses-.
As for the last one, I'm a bit short on minerals, but still have it start morphing into a Baneling nest, as I'm sure we'll have a steady supply of minerals long before our reserve is depleted… I hope so, anyway…
Finally, I have two larvae morph into drones. I'll have to think of some way to build structures without sacrificing drones… Maybe have them grow directly from the creep or something… The last larvae I turn into Zerglings to help escort the drones and protect the growing Vespene extractor.
In the distance, I can make out the tip of the hatchery, blending in with the trees, but not perfectly…
The heat it emits would give away our position on any ship's thermal imagery, except many trees in this forest give up even more heat, effectively protecting my hive cluster from prying eyes.
Once I touch down and leave the Starfighter, I am greeted by Kessler, eager to test the samples. He can't implement changes without the evolution chamber, but can still use his stock of DNA to make tests and run simulations, like I did on the computer, except once he's found a viable combination, all he'll have to do is to enter the genetic code into the evolution chamber and the changes will take effect immediately.
I give him the sampler and, knowing its task, the thing opens its rib cage to let him access to sacks.
"Excellent… Excellent, sir, this will allow us to create many new strains…" He whispers, half to me, half to himself, but since he's a part of me, I guess it doesn't change much…
Kessler know exactly what I want, he was made for this, so I tell him to get to work whenever he's ready and head for my root-cave for some shut eye.
As I walk, I bend over and grab a handful of creep. It tastes like… Well, like whatever I want it to taste, really, I'm the Overmind after all, so… Apparently, right now I want it to taste like chicken and, quite frankly, the living substance is much closer to the actual thing than any MRE I ever had…
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Stiletto
01/13/00
Braxis' orbit.
1010 hours
Shaanis and Karen stood side by side in the airlock, a pair of Force Recon Marines flanking them.
One had an Impaler fitted with a Psi bayonet while the other carried a Heavy Gauss Rifle with an Imperial Bolter replica attached under the canon. The things didn't fire as fast or accurately as an Impaler, but packed much more punch and had been adopted as Impaler attachment or secondary weapon by most of the First Company.
When the bulkhead parted before them, Karen's first reaction was to wonder why there was a clown greeting them. The second was amusement at the two Power armored soldiers standing behind the clown; both were actually Stewarts and had been ordered to try and look menacing.
Next to the tall and slender… Clown… Stood a small and chubby man with a pretty flamboyant purple shirt that doubled as a cape. He also wore a tricorn hat, and that, in itself, was hilarious.
When he spoke, it became obvious he was the one who had contacted them back on the ship, yet was not the one in charge…
"My name is Siras, the master will meet you in a moment, please follow me."
The brightly dressed alien, Ilvian, from what little thoughts Worst could intercept, was an Eldar, a dying race of aliens a bit older than the Protoss…
They stepped trough, the two Terran Marines walking in perfect synchronicity with their boss and were led to an ornate door, just twenty meters further down that same corridor.
"Please step in. Your escort will have to wait outside, however, as the library is forbidden to Power Armored personnel, for obvious reasons…"
A simple nod on the Ghost's part and the Marines took positions on either side of the door.
The Commander and Librarian stepped in the dimly lit Library, admiring the finely decorated room.
Straight ahead was a fireplace illuminated of a dark red chemical flame, to their right, a wooden staircase led to a second level, this one filled with bookshelves, themselves packed tight with old and tired looking volumes.
To the left was a set of three leather lined armchairs, set in a demi circle.
An average sized man sat in one, dressed in jeans and leather, smoking a cigarette. He pulled on it and an unshaved face was revealed for a second.
"Well, you boys sure didn't waste time getting to work…" He laughed, batting some ash in an ashtray. The man radiated power and intellect, while retaining a rugged cowboy look. Both Revenants tried reading his mind and both were met with a metaphorical wall of Neosteel.
"Who are you?" Worst asked, taking a seat when the man offered her, "who are those friends you told us about?"
"Call me Eugene, as for the other question… Well, I'm afraid secrecy is one of their rare remaining assets and they wish to keep it that way, sorry."
Shaanis sat in the other chair, awkwardly, then spoke, "What is it you want from us?"
Eugene crushed his expended cigarette in the ashtray and leaned forward, his grizzled face now appearing in the light, revealing a few small scars and a longer one, under his right eye "I want nothing from you, man, just wanna help is all."
"Why?" Karen had enough cryptic bullshit, she wanted some fucking truth, even if it was only half formed ones.
The man smiled faintly at the outburst and nodded,
"Alright, let me cut the crap:
The Imperium, it was great once, real great. It helped resurrect the human race when the Xel'Naga played god again and without it, the galaxy would belong to the Hybrids…"
He rose from his seat and fetched another hand-rolled cigarette from a metal pack in his back pocket. Eugene offered one to Karen and she took it, then he lit the two sticks and continued, "Ever since the Emperor got outta the game, everythin's gotten corrupt, like the Dominion or the Confederacy, but spannin' the whole galaxy. Peoples support it 'cause they don't have a choice, its serve or die."
His eyes were now shining with sheer determination, "You guys will give them choice, you'll give 'em an alternative. May not be tomorrow, may not be with an army at your back, but you peoples are the key to clearing away the corruption and bringing this whole mess to an end…"
Both Revenants stared. "Just who are you?"
His voice got somewhat playful, "Well now, darlin', I think I said enough already, how 'bout you speak your piece? What's your plan for dealin' with the big bad evil empire?"
Shaanis and Worst made a quick mental exchange on what they should reveal or not, but ultimately decided that guy probably knew all there was to know already.
"We are selling our services to them in exchange for resources and using these resources to read our force, so we can defend ourselves when they attempt to hit us."
"Hmm, yeah, sound plan, but I'm afraid you have a few weeks top before they decide you're useless, then it's 'kneel or die'… And no matter how much Protoss tech you pack, they'll find and crush you in a month, top…"
Karen grinned, "We have a plan for that..." She was surprised he didn't ask about the recruits… Probably a don't ask don't tell situation…
He frowned and his voice hardened, "You can't plan with the Zerg, Commander; they don't follow any clean-cut agenda!" He calmed himself and sighed, "They're a force of destruction, but I'm sure you know this, so what kind of control do you have on them?"
How that guy could know about such a thing was completely beyond even Shaanis, so was the fact that he wouldn't know about Sven.
"The Spectre…"
"The dead one?"
"He's not dead, we made him the Overmind." She was about to explain what an Overmind was, but the guy seemed to know already.
"Oh…" A smile crept its way on his face, tugging at the corner of his lips, "Now, that's… Devious… Lady, I like your style. So, this guy controls the swarm, makes the Imperium decide to keep you around some more as a cheap and efficient force… And they practically mine the minerals you'll kill 'em with."
"Exactly, so, what do you bring to the table, Eugene?" Shaanis was now completely convinced they should bring this guy along, if only to find out where he had found all these information, but Karen didn't want to just accept right away…
"My navigation data, contact with every major races and access to any spaceport controlled by civilized peoples. How's that sound?"
"Like a deal."
