CHAPTER FOUR
The ships began moving through the asteroid field, narrowing down on the signal. "Has to be an asteroid, right? What else is out here? Stray gas pockets?"
But Horner didn't reply, and Jim found himself looking at the scans pensively as well, a suspicion growing. Matt wanted to send out the fighters to scout ahead, but Raynor argued against it – didn't want there to be two problems instead of one if something happened. So the three battlecruisers continued. Carefully. The occasional micro-asteroid bounced off some neo-plating, but the repulsor fields kept the more dangerous ones at bay, as they manoeuvred around the largest ones.
Eventually, Jim relented. "Okay, Matt, send out one pilot. Get him to feed us a signal so we can see what's going on here. I don't like this one bit."
Matt nodded and gave the order.
"Coming up on the signal now." The pilot's voice was very clear, an odd contradiction with the scanner-impeded surrounded, muffling all their radar, and rendering the view largely black.
"Looks like a small planetoid, sir. But… very small." Matt commented, looking at the scans.
And then they saw it. It had bad colour, and the signal was suffering from constant interference from mineral echo, but it was… a show-stopper. Jim gaped. And his crew were similarly stupefied, standing at their stations to stare at it on every available monitor, and looking out the viewports as if they could see it for themselves. It wasn't a planetoid – it was zerg.
The whole planetoid. It's just one giant zerg creep-ball. How's that happen? Jim could barely believe his eyes.
Matt Horner whistled, looking at it.
"Must be what a planet looks like at the end of zerg infestation. The end of a life-cycle. We know they spread their creep to consume a planet. Char being the most advanced example."
"Yeah, but that's nothing but creep," Jim objected, looking at the scanner. "There's no planet underneath. It's just… a big zerg macro-organism."
"You figure it's like, a hive of some kind? Like a space station?"
"Beats the Hell out of me. Never seen anything like it."