Third Person POV

"Cyrus, we require more minerals!" Jeena shouted up through the duct system. The two royal zerg rejects had formed a sort of makeshift alliance with Cyrus's company. In return for possibly saving the entire Nanairo system... again, Cyrus gave the two former patrol officers an unused boiler room and all the un-sellable minerals they wanted. The spacious boiler room, nearly 60,000 square feet of ground space, provided more than enough room for a good-sized hive cluster to form.

"Keep your cage on!" The large man hollered down through his end of the ducts. He began shouting at his least favorite workers to start carting off the rejects to the autolifts. He turned back to the pipe and said, "I got 'bout a thousand more coming yer way."

Jeena sent a Komaling to the door of the lift to retrieve the mineral load. The tiny, red zerg hauled the hovering mine cart back to the massive Ruin-hive at the center of the cluster. It then returned to sniffing around the cavernous room for any trace of minerals buried in the ground.

"Why're we still ordering minerals from Cyrus?" Rallen asked Jeena through the Seer system. "Don't you think 650 supply of spectrozerg is enough?"

"It'd be fine for taking down the hive cluster on Ziba's moon," Jeena said, covering the duct opening so Cyrus couldn't hear. "We'll need at least six times that amount if we're gonna go after the queen's swarm on Genshi."

"We're not gonna have time for that kind of production, are we?" Rallen asked.

"Of course we will," Jeena responded, "We've got all the time in the world. If the Queen of Blades tries anything, we can stop her armies before they morph the first hatchery. It's offense we're not ready for."

Rallen waved off a pair of Zozaroaches that were pestering him. "So, what if she attacks us here, full force?" A Zazaroach joined the two obnoxious Zozaroaches.

"She doesn't know where we are, though," Jeena replied matter-of-factly.

"Oh, right..." Rallen turned away from his Vilaseer for a moment to get the spectrozerg to stop pulling at his prizmod arm. "So, what are we using these minerals for, anyway?"

"We're expanding our Nydus Network. We've gotta be able to go anywhere on Nessa at any moment," Jeena explained, keeping the duct behind her covered. "We're going to need at least four more Nydus Kugasters and Mesa Worms."

"Is that all?" Rallen asked.

"That depends on Cyrus," Jeena stated as she turned back to the air ducts. "More minerals!" Silence. "Cyrus, you there?" A sputtering noise echoed through the cavernous boiler room.

"They're here!" Cyrus's husky voice hissed down through the pipes.

Jeena sprinted from her and Rallen's room in the Ruin-hive. Making her way to the Corona Warren, she began shouting through the mental airways of the overlords. They found us! The Queen of Blades has sent her swarm her to destroy us. Prepare to fight!

Prince of Stones's POV

The massive facility, known to the Terrans as The Colony, was full of more minerals than my brood knew what to do with. What do these miserable creatures intend to do with such resources? That was a question for another day. I now had to think about what I should do with it. Perhaps this was just what I needed to achieve my goal of overthrowing the Queen.

"Prince of Stones!" a queen reported. "We have discovered spreading creep in the lower floors of the Colony. This has given us reason to believe that our targets are somewhere below as well. Are we to begin a search?"

"The renegades are here?" the Prince asked no one in particular. "Send out zergling scouts immediately."

"There is a problem with that, Prince," the queen explained, bowing her head. "The creep is emitting strange psionic pulses. If we send a zergling onto this creep it will slowly be destroyed from the inside out."

"Then send ultralisk scouts, brood lords, whatever. Just send something in there to scout around," I spat back. I've found that these queens know nothing of strategy unless I tell them what to do.

I linked my psionic vision to that of the scouting unit. The viewpoint seemed oddly close to the ground... This was a drone!

"Queen!" I called the bishop back to my side. "What is the meaning of this? You tell me the creep is killing our units, so you send a weaker unit?"

"Ultralisks would not be able to fit through the halls of the Colony, as they were designed for Terran use," the seemingly strategically stupid queen explained humbly. "Also, the creep's unusual negative properties do not seem to affect non-combat units. The only side-effect the drone is feeling is the 40% increase in speed that the unusual creep provides for units containing the zerg virus."

I attempt to link back up with the drone, assuming it would be dead by now, but it was healthy and roving around the facility at mach speed. I told the queen to bring the caged creatures down from orbit. I turned back to the drone's view just in time to see it go black as it rounded a corner labeled "Engineering Block."

"That's it, we've found them!" I shouted back to the rest of my brood.

Rallen's POV

I heard the telltale crack of Aurora Crawlers lashing out, and I started to panic. I sprinted back to the massive Ruin-hive to find Jeena. They found us faster than we thought.

"Rallen, what's wrong?" she asked as I came flying into the room, panting.

"They're here. They found us," I gasped as I quickly regained my breath. "Our crawlers just killed one of their scouts."

"Alright, I didn't think we'd need to do this, but..." Jeena hesitated for a moment. "Get in." A stiff structure that greatly resembled my seat in the patrol cruiser was pushed up through the floor of the room. I will never get used to this whole zerg biostructure thing. Then I felt the room start to rise. "I said get in, Rallen!"

I flopped into my seat, which felt a bit squishier than normal, but whatever, and grabbed the steering... claws on the surface in front of me. That was when it occurred to me. "Does this thing fly?"

"Why else would I call it the Ruin-hive?" Jeena responded with a brief smile.

"But how are we gonna get out of this room?" I shouted the question over the roar of the engine.

"Up and out!"

The roof gave way as the massive pyramidal creature rose straight up through it. Below me, I saw our assorted Nydus Network openings spewing our hundreds of units out onto the open desert around the Colony. The confused zerg forces that had been looking for us had obviously found more than they bargained for.

"Where do we go now?" I asked once the excitement of flying again had dulled a bit.

"Right back down there," Jeena grinned madly as she pointed to the rubble that was once the Nessa Mining Colony. She regained her composure and continued, "We've got to make sure the survivors make it out."

Cyrus's POV

I crawled over to my desk, trying to keep myself from bleeding to death. Those mutated monsters think they can kill Cyrus with one shot? Well, Cyrus'll show them! Just as soon as Cyrus stops speaking in third-person...

I Reached into the hidden drawer under my desk and pulled out my blaster. Those spiny bastards wouldn't catch me off guard again! That was when one a them little suckers chose to hop up onto my desk. It's rows of teeth dribblin' all over my chair.

"You better be ready to pay for that!" I shouted as I pulled myself out from under the desk. The gross little mongrel looked at me sideways a moment before jumpin' at me. I pulled the trigger, there was a loud thunder-like noise, and everything went black.

Grant's POV

Fifteen minutes of peace. Thank you, Harry. I needed this. I was so worn out from fighting a war against the biokrawl that I hadn't slept in six days. This fifteen-minute coffee break was just what I needed. I looked down at my desk and saw something I'd almost completely forgotten about. It was Jeena's journal. I could have sworn I left that in Rallen's room in the Medical wing... Oh well, I've got some free time. I thought I might as well search for any information I can get on these biokrawl.

I flipped through the little book, looking at the dates until I got close to the day Jeena disappeared. A folded slip of paper flopped down from a later page. It was taped to the day that we found the journal on Daichi. I pulled the Folded paper out of the small book and unfolded it.

It was a note from someone calling himself or herself "N.T." He or she knew something important about the creatures we called biokrawl, but he or she referred to them as "zerg."

I needed to show this to my colleagues... after my break was over.

Finally! It's finished!

Anyone who can guess who N.T. is, don't spoil it for the rest of the readers. I want it to be a surprise-ish thing.

Should I bring the krawl into this? I've been debating that with my fellow artists for a while, so I was wondering if you guys any input.

We don't own Spectrobes or StarCraft.