CHAPTER THREE
It wasn't the Hyperion, but the Peleus Myrmidon was no slouch of a cruiser, either. It was one of Valerian's ships, a gift from the throne, as the young man had put it - which meant that it was head to gills full of the latest, even experimental Dominion technology.
Valerian had even offered them his own personal flagship, the Bucephalus, as a gesture of his esteem and respect,but Raynor would never part a commander from his own ship, even though he suspected Valerian had several ships he called his own. Though he accepted the compliment. The Peleus Myrmidon was, in a word, rich. Maybe not spiritually, like the Hyperion was, which still slightly outclassed her in firepower – but if Stetmann were still here, he'd be having a field day with Swann, who was almost always lost somewhere in the ship. Fresh ideas, Raynor, Swann had chided him, as if he had disagreed instead of being just as curious, if not possessing as many engineering degrees as the ridiculous, moustachioed and stalwart fellow did.
Dual class photon emitters for the yamato cannon. Redundant sub-space field generators. Banks of high-intensity disrupter turrets re-classed from diamond-back technology with some of most advanced radar tracking in the system. This thing was built to get up and go. Swann and he had a good few hours going "ah" over the schematics, best damn time of his life he'd had lately. Watching Kerrigan leave, again, had put him into a depressed funk, but this at least gave him something interesting to focus on.
He really didn't know… where she was… he supposed she wasn't the Queen of Blades anymore, that had been an odd way to fulfil a passion-made prophecy – but she was still… not here…
He didn't know what that meant, but he had to focus on the job at hand.
Valerian's contact with the Umojans had obviously paid off, those science-types were pretty good at coming up with whacky ideas and turning them into military hardware. Raynor had a few nasty run-ins with it himself a time or two.
Raynor had been itching to get to know the Peleus Myrmidon better. Nothing like looking under the hood of a new ship. Although Raynor was no longer an outlaw, he found that maintaining independence was better in the long run – not everyone trusted a Mengsk, or the Dominion, which was still flying under that flag, and Jim didn't blame them. Better to keep a cool, separate head, than get into bed with something with that kind of history.