StarCraft: Brain Storm

Chapter 50: Echoes

Morganholt sat in his command chair on the bridge of his flagship, the Noranda, his chin resting on the palm of his hand as he watched Moria recede from view on the main screen. His fleet of fifty ships had left port this morning and due to internal problems they hadn't been able to warp jump successfully yet.

So at the moment, they were in limbo between Moria and its nearest sister planet, a gas giant called Keapthu. Morganholt truly felt like ordering the fleet around and heading back, just so that he could have a chance to kick CEO Saddler while in his command armor. Hearing the man's bones snap like twigs would almost be worth the execution later on.

What had Morganholt, a veteran of countless military operations, worried was just how Saddler had arrived at his newest decision. The man had listened to his most trusted General tell him of the threat, explain it in very simple terms, and then dismiss it as not important. Then, when a message gets intercepted telling the whole sector that the rebels are gathering forces and intend to attack Antiga Prime, the little corporate prick decides to take action. He graciously gave Morganholt the additional ships he'd asked for with orders to head off the rebel attack at Antiga.

In Morganholt's eyes, the whole affair was one big example of how the Combine held reactivity over action.

Sighing, he leaned back in his chair and watched the main screens, waiting as the warp calculations were plotted and relayed between ships.

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Bill stood on the Tarsonis' bridge, his armored hands clasped behind his back. As the ship exited warp, he set a foot out in front of the other, bracing himself against the inevitable bump. The bump came, and he held back his forward inertia. The main screen flickered on, peeling away the blank blackness of warp space to reveal the fleet's target.

Moria was a dark brown sphere. There were several reasons for this. One was the fact that most of its surface was covered in thick, nasty mud. The only real plants that could grow out of the thick sludge were hardened, rugged looking trees with gnarled roots and tough branches. The leaves were typically a shadowy green, making the few remaining forests dark enough to be overshadowed by the brown around them.

The planet's ocean surrounded its lone continent, the ground's runoff giving it, too, a brownish color. Another reason for the color was that the Morians, where possible, had constructed tenement-filled and overpopulated urban slums that could barely pass as stand-up cities. The steel color of the urban areas blended easily with the surrounding brown, creating a slightly lighter brown where the Combine had packed in its brainwashed employee families.

This world was sick. Sick with propaganda, sick with disease, sick with famine, sick with corruption and most of all sick with tyranny.

"Status of the fleet?" Bill asked his operations officer.

"All ships reporting, Colonel. Captains' ready signals are green across the board. Missiles locked to pre-determined targets," the ensign replied, voice wavering with nervousness.

Bill picked up his headset and fitted it over his head, getting it snug against his ears. "Patch me through, fleet wide," he told the communications station.

The headset crackled, then went into an atmospheric drone. The COM officer gave him the thumbs up gesture, and Bill started in on the little bit he had prepared.

"Men and women of this great rebel coalition, what we are doing here today is something symbolic of what is good in Terran nature. If one were to look upon our humble fleet, they would observe some of the strangest and most spectacular sights ever to grace this sector. Dominion and Confederate flags flying together. Pirate bands whom once spit on each other's bodies working side-by-side."

Down in the launch bay of the Tarsonis, Jim listened over his helmet COM channel as he counted off marines, pounding up ramps into the mobile command center at his elbow. Each of them weighed in at two tons and their boots banging on steel created quite a racket. But somehow, Bill's voice cut right through all the noise.

"We have journeyed a long way to participate in this monumental occasion. Some of us further than others. Korhal, Tarsonis, Antiga Prime and even Earth herself all have children taking part in this war on tyranny."

Katsuragi sat on the bridge of the Shogoki, cigarette smoke curling up from the object between her right index and middle fingers. She idly cocked her head to one side, listening intently to the powerful words of the ex-Confederate colonel.

"This war has been one of haste. Hastily concocted, hastily prepared, hastily organized, and in a moment at least, hastily completed. You all, each and every one of you, know your part in what will be looked back upon as a turning point in Korpulu Sector, scratch that, human history. The point where things changed. The point where men stood against an ominous, evil opponent. And the point that changed the course of the wicked to the road of the righteous.

"And with that, my colleagues, my brothers, I say: give them hell."

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The Apocalypse missiles streaked across space, hurtling along one billowing columns of pure white jet vapor and crackling pillars of flame. Moria's gravitational pull accepted them like long-lost children, bringing them into a planetary bear hug. The weapons' trajectories curved as they independently targeted their pre-determined destinations.

They rocketed past one of two space platforms that Moria possessed, throwing off the large steel structure's orbit slightly, forcing its thrusters to compensate for the disturbance. Adhering to their design, the nuclear-equipped missiles moved to quickly to be targeted by any defense system. A point of concern during the operation's planning had been if the Combine would be able to shoot down the missiles with newer technology, as that would have thrown a cosmic-sized monkey wrench in the whole affair.

Thankfully, as the first missile hit its target, the concern was rendered unwarranted.

A section of continent vanished, replaced by a festering bulge of nuclear fire that radiated outward to encompass an area of 100 square miles. Forests were set ablaze, burning to ash in a matter of milliseconds. The muddy landscape was churned up and vaporized into steam, leaving behind only the rock that made up the planet's crust. In this roaring whirlwind of destruction, high-rise skyscrapers were toppled and tossed around like children's toys, their debris scattering for miles across the planet's surface.

The rest of the missiles soon followed the first's example and hit the planet wherever it was deemed necessary. The brownish oceans disappeared; turned to steam which was then destroyed by the nuclear division manifesting itself all across Moria. Cities were hit directly, turning to dust as if time had turned backward in the blast radius, reducing the steel to its most primitive form.

Clouds across the world were ripped apart, replaced instead by a red maelstrom of fire that raged across the landscape. 200 mile per hour winds wracked the newly ruined planet, scraping the surface clean of any thing left over, like a big scavenger picking clean the bones of some animal that had been slain by another.

Now the former brown-colored Moria was reddish black, seemingly painted that way by some demonic forces. Its surface churned like a possessed creature, the very crust buckling and rippling from the millions of megatons of power that had been unleashed upon it. And then finally, the cancerous planet's atmosphere, rendered unstable from the bombardment, collapsed in on itself.

The sudden compression of air doubled the combustible pressure and the planet's surface literally exploded, engulfing the two orbital platforms in waves of blooming, incendiary decimation. The fire kept expanding and roiled over the rebel fleet, peeling off paint as it lost energy and finally dissipated due to a lack of oxygen in the vacuum.

On the main screen, Bill saw got his first look at the new Moria. Its mud-colored surface was gone, leaving behind a blackened lump of stone that seemed to make an attempt at being spherical. The two space platforms had fallen down to the planet's surface, crashing amid the rest of the debris from the destroyed urban areas. No air was left on the planet, meaning that none of its citizens were alive, even if they had survived the initial nuking.

However, Bill would put money on one place being safe from the apocalyptic disaster that had reduced Moria to its blackened form. The Directors' Tower was rumored to have an underground bunker complex deep enough to survive a nuking such as this, and the job wouldn't be done until that had either been confirmed or proved to be false.

"Okay, fleet," he said into his headset, "Prepare to drop."

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Six command centers barreled down out of the sky, heading for the ground. They were the tip of the spear, all sixty some odd Battlecruisers following them. In the lead command center, Jim stood behind Ian's piloting chair. The young man was wrestling with the controls, trying to keep the building steady as it dropped.

Ian sighed. "Jim, again with the shoulder thing-"

"Ah fuck off," Jim retorted, moving out of the control room and onto a balcony overlooking the center's main room.

Utilizing the command centers as oversized dropships had been the brainchild of two days earlier. Jim and Watson were drinking coffee in the Tarsonis' break room when the idea had popped into the Dominion lieutenant's head. He told Jim about it, and over night they'd performed mechanical surgery on six of the domed buildings.

All the internal walls that formed office cubicles and partitions to separate different departments had been removed, leaving behind a hollowed out cavernous space. Into this space they'd crammed sixteen platoons of marines from assorted factions, making a very diverse and very large task force. The reason for this immense size was the logic that the Directors would be protected rather well and their defenders would be capable of putting up a strong resistance.

Of course, the side effect of the planet's atmosphere burning off really hadn't been factored into the mission planning, so there was a bit of mystery surrounding if there would even be that many troops garrisoning the target area. Jim strode down a rickety flight of stairs to stand at the front of the command center. The door controls were at his elbow and he was very much aware of the vacuum that resided just beyond the thick slab of well-oiled neo-steel.

The building pitched on its thrusters, moving one side up more than the other as Ian angled it in for a landing. First the southernmost struts touched, quickly followed by the northern ones, and the engines died.

"Okay, people!" Jim shouted, reaching for the door control, "Seal your suits!"

When the symphony of hissing vacuum clamps stopped, Jim hit the 'open' key. Air rushed from the room as the door slid aside, making the interior of the building one with the outside world. Jim pounded down the ramp and onto the ground, quickly followed by Nick and the rest of the marines. Looking around, he could see the other centers releasing their payloads of armed men, and at the far end Watson was releasing his two platoons of Arclite Siege Tanks.

Jim had been in more than his fair share of infantry charges and his body knew what to expect from such an event. There was the thundering of a thousand boots, the roaring battle cries of men at war and the barking of rifle fire filling the air as smoke billowed up off of the battlefield, accompanied with a sense of absolute exhilaration.

But as he ran up the rocky, burnt black hill to where the squat executive bomb shelter sat, Jim was experiencing none of these things. There was no air and therefore no sound, no enemies fighting them and therefore no weapons fire, and not one man was yelling due to the strict regulations set against clogging up the COM channel with unnecessary noise.

When they had reached the top of the hill Jim was finally able to get a good look at the target building. The executive bomb shelter sat with its gray sides bleached white from radiation. The nuclear attack had taken its former sky scraping cover and tossed it, shredded, across the continent like confetti. Shockwaves had cleared the dirt from around the structure, leaving it bare to the elements.

Jim held up his hand, stopping the entire column of men in a heartbeat. He then slowly moved to the reinforced entranceway. Tapping on it, he guessed that it was at least six feet thick and that there was no way to blow through it without totally destroying the airlock system and venting the complex's air. Bill wanted the Directors alive, not suffocated.

"Tech front and center," Jim said over the radio.

A marine bounded forward out of the assembled army, an engineer's wrench painted onto his right shoulder pad. "Yes sir?" he reported.

"Run a bypass," Jim ordered.

"Right away sir."

Stepping out of the kid's way, Jim looked up into the sky. Without any oxygen in the atmosphere, Moria's sky ceased to be a blue wonder. In fact, it should have just been black, one with the vacuum of space. However, thanks to the generous Apocalypse barrage, there was a haze of blood red hanging over the land, chuck full of radiation.

Jim was right in the middle of speculating on the truth behind stories of nuclear-war induced acid rain when the tech marine sounded that the door was hacked.

Upon inspection, the airlock was revealed to only be large enough to accommodate one squad at a time. Quickly, Jim selected a team to enter the facility. "Jefferies, Nick and Watson: on me. Second Platoon, First Squad come through next cycle," Jim said, stepping into the antechamber.

Once his handpicked group had filed in, Jim cycled them through. The interior door opened to reveal a short entrance hub, with corridors splitting off in three directions. No lights were on in the facility, but Jim's suit showed that air had been retained. He popped his visor up and breathed, immediately catching a distinctive smell in his nostrils.

"Blood," Jefferies said, having smelled it too upon taking his cowl off.

"Split off. Radio if you find something. Watson, watch the door," Jim ordered.

Watson spat on the steel floor. "Got it."

Heading off down the middle corridor, Jim started checking rooms. He seemed to be in the living quarters, as each of the rooms he entered were small dorms. Each one had a king sized bed, sheets neatly pressed and made, with a little kitchenette and office space. Pretty ideal place for surviving a war, in Jim's opinion.

Nick's voice suddenly cut through on the COM channel. "Found 'em."

"Which ones?" Jim asked immediately, backing out of an apocalyptic survival suite.

Nick barked a short, humorless laugh. "All," he answered, "Come check this out."

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When Jim reached Nick's position, he found himself standing in a cafeteria. Blood was pooled everywhere, spread across the tile flooring where it had been evacuated from the 26 dead bodies that lay strewn about, having fallen from the tables.

"Mass suicide," Jefferies observed from where he'd walked up unnoticed by all, "Guess they didn't want to stick around for us to do it."

Jim looked down at one body, identifying it instantly as CEO Saddler. The tubby little man had pressed a Slugthrower to his temple and used his own brain to paint the wall next to him. Sad, Jim thought, that the man had so much gore on his expensive suit. It might have been worth something to a collector of dead leader's clothing, or at the very least a history museum curator.

"I was hoping for a fight," Nick sighed, "Guess I won't get one know."

Jim opened his mouth to comment when a radio call came in. It was Bill, and he sounded stressed.

"Jim, get your people up here pronto! Enemy ships incoming!" he shouted, then said to someone on his bridge, "Charge the laser banks!"

Racking his Impaler's bolt, Jim turned to Nick. "You wanted a fight? Well, you've got one. Get topside, people!"

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Jim looked to the east as he exited the bunker. Fifty Kel-Morian Tiger-class Battlecruisers were coming over the horizon, their laser banks heated to the verge of melting, giving the impression that the ships' hammerhead bows possessed a set of angry red eyes. Above Jim, the rebel fleet was squandering as it tried to organize into a defensive phalanx.

Bill's face appeared in Jim's HUD, taut with stress lines. "Look, we're not sure yet, but it seems like the guy commanding this attack is-"

"Hello, Colonel Jax," said a new speaker, appearing in a fresh window that popped on before Jim's eyes.

"Morganholt," Bill replied, snarling in a tone of voice Jim had never seen him use, "You're late. We've captured the Board. You should probably leave before we decide to get trigger-happy with these hostages. Besides, you're outnumbered."

Morganholt's lips were a thin line, his jaw set squarely, and his forehead was furrowed. Everything about his expression showed anger, except his eyes, which were opened in a blank stare. It was the stare of a man who had begun to lose his rationality, his grip on sanity. Jim had seen it a thousand times before in men who'd seen too much war, and he was positive Bill had spotted it as well.

The loss of rationality was only made more evident when he spoke. "I've served the military for 22 years, ever since the Guild Wars. Throughout that whole time, I fought to protect my homeworld, not some useless mining corporation. The Board of Directors can die. I don't care. You destroyed the planet I grew up on. The planet I've fought for all these years.

"I don't give a shit if you've got me outnumbered. I won't stop until I've turned you and all your rebel buddies into burning scrap heaps," Morganholt finished, his eyes as absorbent as black holes. Then he signed off, and his window in Jim's HUD collapsed.

The two fleets of Battlecruisers finally drifted into range of each other. Morganholt's ships fired first, launching a salvo of Yamato beams across the burned landscape, and the battle was joined.

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"Mark," Katsuragi said, as if she was addressing someone in pleasant conversation.

Hyuga punched a key on his console, enacting the predetermined maneuver. The Shogoki's thrusters fired, pushing it up and out of the way of an incoming Yamato cannon shot. The red beam slashed past, close enough to the UED-made hull that some of the steel boiled. It hit another Battlecruiser designated Ruin's Edge halfway back on its main super structure.

The energy from the shot rippled up and down the ship, shaking it violently until it split in two. The individual pieces fell to the blackened earth, crashing in spectacular explosions of steel debris and orange flame. Looking down at her tactics table, Katsuragi saw that the Ruin's Edge was one of seven rebel Battlecruisers that had been destroyed by the enemies' opening barrage. Joining it on the ground were the destroyed hulks of the Tygo, Invulnerable Hulk, Waterlogged, Sarajevo, Red Dawn and the Edmund Duke.

The loses were really Bill's fault, Katsuragi thought as she dissected the situation with a practiced clinical mindset. Allowing the ships to cluster one atop the other was one of the first things they taught you not to do in fleet school. Spreading them out would have been better. Putting two ships in any way but side by side when facing an enemy was typically a bad idea unless it was in a certain tactical movement, such as leapfrog Yamato shots.

Katsuragi knew that, and Bill Jax should have fucking known better.

"Hyuga, full speed ahead," she said, looking at the enemy formation on the top-down tactics table view, "We can't count on our allies for much more than cover at this point."

"Yes ma'am."

As the Shogoki lurched forward, drifting with a quickening pace toward the fifty enemy ships, a few of the rebel Battlecruisers managed to get off some shots with their own Yamato cannons. Katsuragi looked up at the main screen in time to see the friendly red beams perform clean misses against the Morian skirmish line.

As she watched, half the Morian ships warmed their cannons. Katsuragi realized what Morganholt had done, and respected him for it. He'd had half his ships fire the opening volley, leaving the remainder charged. Now that the second half was firing, they had much more specific targets and they avoided two beams hit the same ship. This way they saved a great deal of energy, which would be a precious commodity when the two fleets met at close range in a minute.

Of course, Bill still hadn't gotten his damn ships to spread out, and the second Morian volley was even more damaging than the first. Eight rebel Battlecruisers detonated, their reactors redlining from the energy overload, and fell to the ground as useless hunks of metal.

"Shogoki!? What the hell are you doing!?" Bill shouted, appearing on the first of her three main screens.

"Either cover me or don't, but the last thing I need right now is your ugly face taking up valuable space on my screens," she replied, not looking up from her tactics table as she shut him out, "And get your ships into a workable phalanx, you stupid bastard."

On the center screen, the first of the Kel-Morian Battlecruisers was only two vessel-lengths away from them. Its laser banks were ready to fire, and as she looked Katsuragi could see its missile turrets swing around to aim at her ship.

"Hyuga, pull up 34.45 degrees. Divert all power to the shields."

The Morian ship fired, sending a mixed hail of missiles and beams up to meet the UED ship. A blue bubble appeared around the Shogoki, blocking the incoming fire with rock-hard finality. Using technology stolen from the Protoss during the First Invasion, UED scientists had managed to reverse engineer plasma shielding for use on Battlecruisers.

That, coupled with the experimental-all-power reactor, made the Shogoki a hell of a tough vessel to beat, a lesson that the Kel-Morian ship captain below them was about thirty seconds from learning the hard way.

"Power to engines. Pull to port."

The Shogoki's shields dropped and it drifted around to port, lining its nose up with a ship alongside and above the ship that it had just defended against.

"Power to Ion Cannon," Katsuragi said, selecting the exact spot to tag the enemy vessel, which wasn't reacted out of confusion.

In her position, Katsuragi was safe from everything but an enemy captain's stupidity. If they shot her now, they would drop her ship directly on top of an ally, thus killing both an enemy but also losing a ship of their own. Of course, the ship below her wouldn't be alive for long anyway…

"Target locked, ma'am."

"Fire."

Another of the Shogoki's upgrades due to the new engine and reverse engineered technology was an Ion Cannon in place of the traditional Yamato Cannon. Also powered by the fancy reactor, the Ion Cannon had enough power to slice through the crust of most planets. Needless to say, it didn't have any trouble with this poor Tiger-class Battlecruiser.

The blue Ion beam hit it in the wing, destroying two of its engines and ruining the ship's gravity accelerator balance. It listed down to starboard and collided with the ship below Katsuragi, driving the both of them down into the ground where they vanished in a nuclear fireball.

But the Shogoki was already on the move, flying past the falling ships and toward the next ship in line. It unloaded its full complement of automated laser turrets, stitching burning blue lines across the top of the Kel-Morian ship, igniting fires and throwing molten Neo-steel everywhere. The turrets hit the bridge, bursting through glass and killing the command crew. Now without a brain, the Battlecruiser blindly moved forward only to be hit by a rebel Yamato beam.

As her third victim exploded, Katsuragi directed the Shogoki toward its next target: Morganholt's flagship, Noranda.

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Bill had finally managed to get his fleet into something resembling a skirmish line, and began to move forward. As the two fleets met at close proximity, it became a fight of who could fire the fastest. Lasers and missiles crisscrossed the air between the two fleets, sizzling hulls and exploding against plating.

One of the Kel-Morian ships exploded along its spine, the product of a missile cluster hitting it right in the Yamato barrel. It ripped in half laterally, taking two nearby allies with it. Ships were dropping like titanic, Neo-steel plated horse flies, and their hulls littered the ground beneath the aerial battleground of laser blasts and missile contrails.

As the battle raged on, Bill looked at a holographic tally coming out of his command chair's armrest. They'd lost twenty-five vessels already, while the Combine had lost twenty-three. It was at that point that the Noranda came out of the crowd of fighting Battlecruisers, smoke billowing from a multitude of damage to its hull.

It was moving backward, a result of being physically pushed backward by the Shogoki, which had rammed its nose into the Morian flagship's con tower. Finally, the strain against the superior plasma engines took its toll on the Noranda's reactor, which couldn't support the duel any more and shut down. With nothing to keep it afloat in the air, the heavy Battlecruiser started to fall.

The Shogoki pulled up in a turning helix maneuver and joined the rebel skirmish line just as the Noranda collided with the ground, crunching its rear end like a pop can under a boot. Bill's bridge erupted into cheers as the officers realized what had just happened. A terrific boost of moral washed over the fleet, emboldening individual captains.

Never one to lose the opportunity for a good speech, Bill activated the fleet-wide channel. "Their leader is gone, my comrades! Crush them!"

And with that, the rebel ships swept into the Kel-Morian ranks, firing in all directions at point-blank.

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Thump. Beep. Beep. Wham!

The door blew off its hinges, allowing Jim and Nick to swing around the frame and into the Noranda, their flashlights playing across the walls. There was still air within the crashed ship, allowing the many fires that had broken out in its hallways and compartments to continue burning. Jim led, scanning the path with his Impaler.

Someone coughed from a compartment ahead and the two men stopped, dropping into crouches out of instinct. A man emerged, his uniform soaked through with a mixture of blood and sweat, and he was grabbing at his throat as if the smoke was choking him. Jim squeezed the trigger, spraying the man all across the hallway in a bloody, goo-strewn paste.

They moved on, sweeping rooms one by one, not even having to speak as they searched for General Stephan Morganholt.

Outside, the rebel fleet was beating the Kel-Morian opposition to death, solidifying the victory that Jim had figured won hours ago when the Apocalypse missiles had decimated the surface. But now, as he combed the corridors of this ruined Battlecruiser, he couldn't care less about what was going on outside. He was going to kill this man. The possibility that Katsuragi had crushed him didn't even come into his mind. Morganholt simply had to be in here, waiting.

"Goss!"

Jim yanked his head around to see Morganholt standing fifteen feet away, his feet squarely planted in the middle of the hallway. The General was wearing a command suit of powered armor and held a wood-paneled Impaler in his hands. An Impaler that was pointed squarely at Jim.

Grunting, Jim hurled himself behind a bulkhead just in time to dodge the first burst of spikes. The wall shook as the foot-long rounds hammered into his cover. Morganholt kept the trigger down as he swept the rifle across the hall toward Nick, who jumped into an empty room to avoid the stream of lead. The grinding sound of a weapon's bolt jamming back from lack of ammo filled the hall.

Hearing this telltale sign of weakness, Jim rounded his cover and fired. He landed one spike in Morganholt's right thigh, electing a pained shout out of the General as he limped back into the passageway he'd come from.

"Come back here!" Jim shouted, standing and chasing after his target.

Nick stood up and walked to the door of the cabin he'd taken refuge in, intending to assist Jim in his search. He had just gotten out into the corridor when a huge crash sounded from behind him. Spinning around on one heel, Nick saw the hulking form of a man suited in Marauder power armor. He had evidently just burst through a door that, judging by its remaining label scattered across the floor, had led to a mess hall.

"Stop right there!" the suited man proclaimed, "Though you have bravely entered this vessel to assist your commanding officer in hunting down mine, your fight is not with them. It is, however, with me!"

Nick reached down onto his belt and grabbed a D18 charge, unlatching it from its place with an almost casual manner.

"I am Colonel Timothy Banner, second in command of this vessel! I challenge you to a fight, evil rebel!"

With one forceful movement, Nick kicked Banner's right kneecap. There was a sickening crack as the steel forced his joint to break backward, toppling the Colonel to the ground in a moaning heap of metal. Calmly, Nick set the D18 charge next to Banner's face, letting the Combine officer get a good look at it.

"Here you go, Banner," he said, arming the charge, "A nice little present."

As Nick walked away, Banner tried to think of something to do that would stop the explosive from accomplishing its goal. Eventually, he gave up and settled for screaming angrily at it at the top of his lungs, hoping that the volume would somehow freeze the chemical reaction within the charge. His plan failed, and his head exploded from the force of a blast meant to destroy well-built military structures.

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Jim rounded a third corner, still hot on Morganholt's tail, and found himself in the ship's reactor room. Or, what had been the reactor room before it was crunched like a cockroach beneath Katsuragi's unconventional attack. Now it looked more like a bullet hole in a steel wall magnified a hundred times. Equipment was strewn everywhere, thrown around from the impact, and it was impossible to tell what was what.

A fist punched Jim in the chest, knocking the wind out of his lungs. He collapsed to one knee, wheezing from the pain and cursing himself for being so disoriented by the room's condition. Morganholt kneed him in the shoulder, spinning Jim onto his back to where he could look right up into the face of his attacker.

Morganholt reached down and took the magazine from Jim's Impaler, limping uncomfortably on his injured leg. He held it up, looking it over for any damage, and slid it into his own weapon's empty slot. The bolt snapped forward with a healthy click, and Morganholt calmly pointed the weapon at Jim's face, who was still trying to get his breath back.

"Major Goss, you've killed a lot of my best men in the last few months," the General said.

Morganholt began applying pressure to the trigger; "It's a shame, really. You had an honor that can't be found much nowadays in this business. I'll miss you."

"And I you," Jim replied.

The psi bayonet activated, popping into existence and slicing off Morganholt's left foot. With a shout, the man fell, spraying spikes across the wall as he did so. He landed, banging his head into the metal grating of the floor.

Jim stood up and rolled Morganholt over with the barrel of his rifle. He looked down at the man beneath him. Morganholt was shaking from the pain as blood poured from his severed foot, making a small pool. Between that and the wound to his thigh from earlier, he would bleed to death soon enough. Calmly, Jim lifted his boot into the air and brought it down heel first on the bridge of Morganholt's nose.

The weight of the powered shoe crushed the man's skull, breaking his brain case and pulping the entire cranial structure. In a residual nerve spasm, the dead man's trigger finger jerked, firing one last shot off in honor of its now-deceased owner.

Jim held his boot there for a minute, waiting for the feeling of satisfaction.

It never came.

Toji was still dead, as was Harris and all the other people who had died in the war to overthrow the Combine. Jim picked up Morganholt's customized Impaler and began to head out of the ship the way he had come in, linking up with Nick along the way. The Reaper looked at the second rifle in Jim's hand.

"You kill him?" he asked.

"Yeah," Jim answered, "I left him back there. Figure burying him in his ship is about the most honorable thing I can do for him."

"Honorable? Why be honorable about it?" Nick asked.

Jim shrugged. "I don't know. Guess because he'd have done the same for me."

And with that, they stepped out of the ship and into a brave new world.