When my overlords arrived at Tython, I immediately realized I was in trouble. Tython's star had started to go supernova. Its size, heat, and light were increasing exponentially, and the hemisphere of Typhon that faced its sun was slowly boiling away under the relentless solar assault. Obtaining the artifact piece was now on a serious time limit. It wouldn't be long before the star exploded and destroyed the whole planet upon which the artifact rested.

Fortunately, the signal pointed me towards the dark side of the planet, which was as yet untouched by the violent solar energies. Unfortunately, my minions could also detect unsubtle Protoss psionic signals in that area. Tal'Darim.

I couldn't just land at the artifact's location. I didn't have enough men to take down all those Tal'Darim. I needed to morph more. But I was on the clock.

I ordered a few mutalisks to quickly scout the area. When they encountered a resource-rich plateau mostly devoid of Tal'Darim, I had them clear the area and then landed my forces, immediately ordering drones to begin the morphing of a hive cluster. Far on the horizon, my flying scouts could spot the moving line of fire that marked the spot where the planet's rotation brought new land into direct contact with the sun's burning energies. I could possibly have found a better base location on the other side of the artifact from the wall of fire, but I didn't have enough time to be choosy.

I unloaded all my units onto the plateau and set about constructing more. The Tal'Darim knew of my presence and sent occasional attack waves at me, but their attention seemed focused on the impending wall of fiery doom. I would have been surprised they didn't just evacuate the planet, except it seemed entirely in character for the Tal'Darim to commit suicide in their attempts to keep Xel'Naga technology out of others' hands.

Problem was, if I had to fight my way through every Protoss between here and the artifact, I'd lose most of my forces. It'd be a toss-up whether I could even succeed. And I only had one shot at this. I needed to think of something more clever.

The air grew hotter around me, and I began to smell ozone burning. This hive cluster would be incinerated soon. I needed to move it, but I couldn't just lift off like I could when I was a Terran Commander working with Terran buildings. Zerg buildings were stuck to the creep they grew out of. If I had an expansion and a Nydus canal, I could at least move my minions to safety through the canal… wait. That was it! Abathur had evolved Zerg Nydus networks over the preceding years. Now, only the entrance needed to be on creep. A worm would burrow to wherever I wanted the exit to be.

A plan took shape in my mind. There was no time to lose. I ordered every flying unit to rise, even the overlords. I lifted them all back into orbit, out of reach of the Protoss photon cannons, taking care to keep the planet between them and the sun. I moved them to the area directly above the artifact's signal, evading Protoss interceptors and other flying units as best I could. Then I had them all descend.

My fliers were swiftly torn apart by the enormous number of Protoss defenses concentrated around the Xel'Naga temple that clearly housed the artifact. But many of the Tal'Darim foolishly targeted my overlords instead of my combat fliers, buying my mutalisks and other fliers enough time to carve out a space just large enough for a burrowing Nydus worm.

I gave the order. It took a while for the worm to burrow through the sunbaked ground to the location I'd indicated, but I micromanaged my fliers well, and I had taken the Tal'Darim by surprise, and that bought the worm enough time. The moment it emerged, all my ground forces poured out of it, and I followed personally soon after.

Almost all my overlords had died, so it was extremely difficult to keep control of my minions. Fortunately, half-feral zerg were all I really needed. My minions rampaged through the Protoss base. We were just in time; I could sense the pain of the hive cluster I had left behind as the moving wall of solar fire finally reached its outskirts and the creep began to boil. Under cover of the chaos I had created, I took a drone and infiltrated the temple, located the artifact piece, and extracted it. I'd been careful enough not to let every overlord die, so the drone, myself, and the nearest handful of units quickly boarded an overlord and blasted off into space, followed by every surviving flying unit I could command. The rest of the zerg I had brought or morphed I left to turn feral, distract the Protoss, and then die a fiery death.

…

When I returned to Char, I found Stukov waiting for me at our primary hive cluster.

"How did your field test go, Stukov?" I inquired after seeing to the safe delivery of my artifact piece to the evolution pit.

"Very well," Stukov responded, positively beaming. "I commandeered a giant laser drill the Moebius expedition had brought with them and used it to bore through the impassable Xel'Naga temple holding the artifact piece. The Tal'Darim were there, and tried to stop me, but I used armaments from the UED I had captured and infested, bunkers and siege tanks, to hold them off while the drill worked. Then I unleashed my grand new weapon, a truly unique marvel of Terran engineering combined with Zerg evolution. It succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, but I don't want to spoil the surprise. Next time you need a doomsday device, let me know, and you'll get to witness the power of what I have created first-hand."

I was intrigued. I was tempted to push the infested Terran to be clearer about his new weapon's capabilities, as one of the first rules of strategy in warfare is to always know what resources you have at your disposal. But I didn't think it could be harmful to let him have his little secret for now. But the other thing he said… "Sounds great, Stukov, but did I hear you correctly? You infested bunkers and siege tanks? How could you possibly infest machinery?"

"Simple," Stukov answered, a smug look in his eye. "If an Abathur applies enough zerg biomass, anything can be made a zerg unit, part of the hivemind. Add a nervous system and a motor system to a siege tank's swiveling gun, and you can telepathically command it to fire. Add a sensory system and it can detect when to fire on its own."

That… had never occurred to me. But it was brilliant. Perhaps I had been underestimating Stukov's tactical genius. "We don't even have to go that far," I realized with a start. "An infested terran pilot can pilot any vehicle or starship they could before they were infested. This whole time, we should have been making a point of capturing as much Terran armament as we could, rather than destroying it!"

Stukov's voice took on a cautionary tone. "Well, we don't have the factories to produce Terran bullets and explosives. The marines I infest always run out of ammunition after a skirmish or two. So it'd be a short term solution, assuming we can't reliably scavenge ammunition from Terran bases."

I frowned. "Could we imitate the Terrans and morph factories of our own?"

Stukov shook his head. "Zerg biomass can survive extreme temperatures, but not direct exposure to molten rock or fire, as would be required by the process of forging Terran armaments. We'd need an infrastructure based on metal, not flesh. Fortunately, Abathur and I solved that problem by designing my siege tanks to transform any available biomass into explosively acidic biomass, which they can then load into their cannons. They effectively shoot banelings." Stukov smiled proudly.

"Wow." I shook my head in amazement. "I see I have misjudged you. You have adapted well to the Swarm. Impressively done, Stukov. I look forward to personally witnessing your work on the battlefield."

Stukov's smile broadened. "You haven't even seen my most impressive innovations yet. But I thank you, Cerebrate. Now, how did your own battle go?"

…

I sensed Kerrigan returning by the time I finished relating the events of my own battle. I also sensed the Leviathan she had insisted on taking with her. It was hemorrhaging blood. Lots of it. Gallons and gallons of the massive beast's black life force spilling out into space, creating a trail of inky slime into the distance from which the creature had come. Even as I watched through the eyes of a nearby overlord, gravity forced some nearer drops of blood to glob together and begin to fall towards Char. There would be a blood rain over the hive cluster tonight.

"What the hell?" I shouted at Kerrigan telepathically. "What did you do to our ship?!"

Kerrigan's voice sounded exhausted. "I'm fine. Thanks for asking. Glad to hear you were worried about me."

I blinked. She had a point about my priorities. Still, there was a reason I wasn't particularly concerned about her. "No, you wouldn't be glad. That would mean I don't have faith in your abilities. Of course you're fine. How could you not be, with all your power? But just what happened to the ship?"

Kerrigan chuckled once. "Heh. You might be right. Still, that was a demanding fight. You should be grateful the Leviathan survived at all. I'll tell you about it in person."

"Alright."

A short while later, Kerrigan joined Stukov and I on the creep outside our main hive on Char.

"The Xel'Naga starship was covered in rip-field generators. And Tal'Darim," Kerrigan began without prompting.

I groaned. The Tal'Darim again? They had controlled literally every artifact piece except the one on Mar Sara. If they weren't so superstitious they probably could have assembled their pieces into something incredibly dangerous. At least this proved that, despite Narud's claim that Amon controlled the Protoss, he couldn't control the Tal'Darim. If he could, it would have been much easier to just get them to assemble the artifact, instead of us. Hell, if Amon possessed enough Xel'Naga technology to do something suitably godlike, the Tal'Darim's superstitions would probably have compelled them to obey him regardless. I paused. Which begs the question… why didn't he? Does he not have any Xel'Naga tech?

"You paying attention over there, Cowboy?" Kerrigan asked, waving her hand in front of my face and snapping me out of my musings.

I blinked. "Sorry, I… wait, 'Cowboy?'"

Kerrigan hesitated. "Err… nevermind," she said quickly. "One would think you'd care more about the state of your precious Leviathan."

Given my own slight embarrassment, I wasn't about to press her on hers. "Sorry, go on."

Kerrigan took a deep breath. "Well, as I said, the rip field generators slowly tore apart everything in range that wasn't shielded. The Tal'Darim were shielded, and were everywhere. There was no way I was going to be able to engage them to get at the artifact with traditional units. Zerglings and Scourge would get torn apart by the rip field generators almost instantly, and hydralisks, mutalisks, and everything else wouldn't survive much longer. I needed something massive, something that could get slowly torn apart on a molecular level without losing too much combat functioning. The Leviathan was all I had."

"Ultralisks?" I prompted.

Kerrigan shook her head. "Maybe once I finish evolving more of those Torrasques like the one we found on Braxis. My ultralisks could survive long enough to engage the Tal'Darim, but not long enough to cost-effectively destroy them. Especially with the carriers and void rays they had. Oh, and did I mention? They had a mothership."

"A mothership?" I echoed, confused.

"A truly massive Protoss vessel. Even with all the rip field generators and Protoss defenses, I would have broken the Tal'Darim easy if it weren't for the mothership. I'm not stupid; in preparation, I morphed several control groups of queens inside the Leviathan, shielded by it, to repeatedly transfuse the creature and keep it healthy. But the Mothership cloaked the Tal'Darim fleet like an arbiter, strafed us with millions of supercharged laser shots, and even created temporary black holes to trap the mutalisks I sent out in desperation. By the time I got through the Mothership's shields, every one of my queens had run out of energy and could no longer transfuse."

I frowned. "How did you survive?"

Kerrigan adopted a somber look. "I didn't. I speak to you now from beyond the grave."

What… my mind reeled. There's no way that's possible… and then Kerrigan burst into peals of throaty laughter.

"Hah!" Kerrigan announced triumphantly. "I actually got you with that. I wasn't sure if you'd so much as blink, but you should have seen the look on your face."

I breathed a sigh of relief, then rolled my eyes. "Real mature, Kerr," I muttered. At least she's happy.

"Eh, anyway," Kerrigan continued as though nothing had happened. "When the Leviathan started oozing blood everywhere, I reluctantly retreated. Warped out of the rip-fields. Then, get this, the Tal'Darim executor decided he wouldn't let me get away with my 'wanton sacrilege' and pursued me! Away from the rip field generators! Once he got close enough I deployed all my scourge and watched as they tore through his fleet. He didn't even have time to finish the dying curse he transmitted to me. After that, I warped back, destroyed the now unguarded rip field generators, and then retrieved the artifact piece. Not bad, huh?"

I smiled. "Sounds like his overconfidence was his downfall." I looked at Kerrigan pointedly.

Kerrigan noticed, and scowled. "You trying to say something about me, Cerebrate?"

"Perhaps," I allowed, but swiftly changed the subject. "Anyway, good job. We have all the artifact pieces now. We should take a few days to repair the Leviathan before we assemble them, in case we need to make a quick escape. But then we can begin the next phase of our plan."

Kerrigan nodded. "Perhaps you're right, Cerebrate. Things seem to be looking up."

It didn't take long for that to change.