.Operation Hotshot


Two weeks after the hatching of the egg in Tel Aviv.


"Madame President," the Secretary of the Treasury Sheryl Sanderg said, "the Zerg have left us with little choice as to what we should do. The situation in the Middle East was bad enough when the war started, but now..."

"What are you suggesting?" Secretary of State Bill Burns asked.

"We can't afford to let the Zerg take the Middle East. All of their infrastructure would be useless with those beasts over there." Sanders said.

"We don't know what the Zerg want, and we can't act on information that doesn't exist. I think it is prudent to prepare for just in case the Zerg to try to take the Middle East, but to act so soon could undermine our relations with Israel and gain us nothing." Tom Donilon, the Director of National Intelligence stated.

"I don't think you understand just how the loss of the Middle East will affect this country." The Secretary of the Treasury countered. "At best, we are looking at gas prices around six dollars per gallon nationwide for an indefinite period of time. At worst, we could end up in one of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression."

"I think that, first and foremost, we need to start turning to alternative oil and energy sources." President Hillary Clinton stated. "If we can start moving towards the right direction economically, then the shift of losing the Middle East will affect us less. Until then, we will start making plans to prevent that from happening. If we are put into a situation where we need to take decisive action against the Zerg, then we need to be fully capable of doing so."

"We are going to need to divert a massive amount of resources to effectively monitor them." Donilon said.

"And we are going to need a lot of elbow room to adapt to their exponential growth." Defense Secretary Michele Floury stated.

"We will need to be flexible. Of that, we can be certain." Clinton said. "If they are capable of rapid, covert, long distance travel, then we need to be prepared for them to appear anywhere. More than likely, they will choose the least hospitable and most concealed areas they can find to set up shop. They may already have.

"Something of this scale will not go unnoticed by the U.N. so we will need to seek their approval on all of this. Hopefully, we can get them to see the seriousness of the Zerg threat."

For hours, the group of top officials in the American government discussed their plans. For weeks, the U.N. debated on what to do. For months, plans were created and replaced. The final iteration of their plan was to destroy the Zerg the moment they stepped out of line. To squash them like bugs. Operation Hotshot was established behind closed doors, but its consequences, if acted upon, would mark the most destructive day in history.


November 20, 2017. 12:46 A.M. UTC.

Local time: Classified.

Location: The Atlantic Ocean.

"Pressurize tubes one through twelve to normal launch depth." The captain's voice commanded through the headset.

"Pressurize tubes one through twelve to normal launch depth, aye aye sir." The operator replied.

"Weapons con, ready tubes one through twelve." Came the unmistakable voice of the captain.

"Tubes one through twelve ready."

"Weapons con, you have permission to fire."

"Weapons armed. Initiating fire."

"Initiating fire." The other operators confirmed.

"Fire one." The captain ordered.

The operator pushed the designated button.

"One away."

There was a moment of silence as the next missile's target was put into the system.

"Fire two."

The next button was pressed.

"Two away."

Silence.

"Fire three."

"Three away."

Silence.

Over the course of several minutes, a dozen missiles were launched into the sky.

"Fire twelve."

"Twelve away."

"Weapons con, permission to fire has been removed." The captain said.

The operator took a deep breath as the reality of what just happened began to sink in. Meanwhile, twelve nuclear warheads soared through the sky and reached up to touch the edge of space. Had it been possible to see the view, it would have appeared serene and peaceful.

The reality was that the missiles were traveling over twenty two times the speed of sound, and their intent was far from peaceful. As the warheads reentered the atmosphere, they slowed due to air resistance to a speed of around three times the speed of sound.

In spite of the incredible speed of the missiles, the flight took over twenty minutes. When they reached their targets, their peaceful flight had long been abandoned and exchanged for a fiery rage as the friction created by the air made their noses glow like candles.

The first missile detonated. Its payload pounded against the ground with prejudice, but the structures hit by the blast refused to yield. Before the first blast had formed a mushroom cloud, the second blast came. Then the third. Then the fourth. Fifth. Sixth.

Again and again, the ground was shaken by the bombs. By the time the last nuclear weapon detonated, nothing was left of the intended targets other than burning flesh and melted ice and snow.

The primary Hive cluster of the Swarm was gone. The only surviving members of the attack had escaped via Nydus Worm or Leviathan. Unbeknownst to the attackers, the escapees numbered in the tens of thousands, and only a few had been left behind.


November 20, 2017. 1:00 P.M. UTC

Local time: 7:00 P.M.

Eight minutes before the first nuclear missile impact.

A black car sat on the side of the road. Its occupant waited for the order to carry out his mission.

It was simple and fairly easy; go in, take out the targets, and leave. The targets were nobody special in any way. Lauren and Clark Flowers. The hard part would be making the incident look like a murder-suicide.

The agent got a call and received the order he had been waiting for. He got out of the car, approached the target's home, and jumped over the back yard fence. The back door would be the best entry option. People were more likely to leave their back door unlocked than their front door.

Unfortunately, the door was locked. It wouldn't be much of an issue, but it would be an annoyance. He pulled out his lock picking set and went to work.

After unlocking the deadbolt, the agent opened the door. He could hear voices talking in the next room, but he made his way to the kitchen instead. He had memorized the house's layout, and found the kitchen with no effort.

After searching through several drawers, he found a decent sized knife with a sharp point. He grabbed the knife with his gloved hand and made his way to the room where the voices were coming from. If he was going to make this look remotely real, he would need to use a weapon from the scene.

He peeked around the corner to see his targets, a man and a woman, sitting on a couch while talking to someone on speakerphone. The man was on the agent's left and the woman was on the right. Inbetween, the two held a cellphone that they were focused on.

There wasn't any concealment with which to mask his approach. Both of the targets were facing him, so he wouldn't be able to get them by surprise. He was on a tight schedule, so he did not have time to wait for a better opportunity. He would have to do things the hard way. The agent's adrenal glands and neurons began dumping adrenaline into his blood as he readied himself. The agent peeked around to see if the targets had any weapons. He saw none available to them, and thus, began to move.

He ran out of his concealment and headed straight for the man. The movement attracted both of the targets' attention. The woman screamed and leapt away and out of her seat, but the man was eerily calm and collected, and that fact disturbed the agent.

He didn't have time to fully consider the man's behavior, but he assumed the man must have been well trained in some form of martial arts, and thus was confident in his ability. As the agent ran, he could not help but to ask himself if he missed something. The agent jumped over the coffee table and the man put up one of his feet, preparing to keep the agent away.

As the agent cleared the table and nearly landed on top of the target's upheld foot, the agent heard the familiar boom of a 40 caliber handgun. He had seen both of the target's files, and there was no record of either of the two owning any firearms. The agent went to lunge at the target but his arm failed him. The target pushed the agent off of him and onto the coffee table.

The agent noticed that his right arm still didn't work correctly and that there was blood spattered on the target's face in spite of the fact that he had missed his target. The agent realized two things he had missed. The target was both armed and was left handed. The target fired again, and the agent instinctively began counting to keep up with when the target would need to reload, but the agent quickly lost count as his mind faded into an eternal unconsciousness.

Clark took a deep breath as Lauren stopped screaming.

"What was that?" The voice on the phone asked.

"Someone just tried to stab me." Clark said.

"Where are you?"

"1732 West Latimer Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma." Clark answered.

Lauren spoke up. "Oh my gosh! Are you okay?!"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"There's blood all over you! You're not fine!"

"Honey, it isn't my blood."

"Don't go anywhere and don't call the police." The voice on the phone said. "I'm sending some...you will be picked up. Someone wants you dead, and the government can't protect you. We will be at your door in about five minutes. I have to go, but don't freak out when we get there."


November 20, 2017. 12:57 A.M. UTC.

Local time: 7:57 P.M.

Location: Scranton Pennsylvania.

"My queen," Matilda called psyionically, interrupting May's conversation with her parents, "Overseers have detected multiple ballistic missile launches."

"Hold on just a moment." May told her parents. Her dad had arrived from his work not long after she called, and she was speaking to both of them on speakerphone.

"Where are they headed?" May asked Matilda.

"Their trajectory has been mostly upwards since their launch. Any lateral movement could be due to the high winds in the upper atmosphere."

"How many are there?" May asked.

"There are twelve so far. No missiles have been launched for nearly a minute. It appears as though there will be no more."

May thought for a moment and quickly decided to assume the worst. "Evacuate Broodland. If they are hitting us, I want the damage to be minimal. I want half of our ground forces in the Leviathan if possible and all of our air. The rest, send to the Nydus Network. If they are hitting us, then we will still be able to protect Israel while we rebuild."

"Yes, my queen." Matilda replied.

"Send Drones out in Overlords to secluded locations around the world. I want five Drones per Overlord. Send all of them, but leave two hundred on the Leviathan for later. Have one Drone per group morph into a Hatchery, and one per group morph into an Extractor.

"How has our underwater...research been going?" May asked.

"We have developed underwater strains of Hatcheries, Extractors, Drones, and Hydralisks. Our Hydralisk Dens, however, have rejected the modifications and cannot remain viable underwater."

"Do we have any underwater strain Hydralisks right now?"

"We do."

"Then send a dozen of the Drone filled Overlords to areas where the ocean is deep, and have each one escorted by the water strain of Hydralisks. And give them a new name. We need an easier distinction between them and normal Hydralisks."

"Yes, my queen."

"And send a few Hydras to the missile launch location to find out who is doing this. Let me know when you find the sub."

May returned to her conversation with her parents.

"I'm sorry about that. Something came up."

"Is everything alright?" Lauren asked.

"Probably not."

"What do you mean by that?" Clark asked.

"We have a possible situation in the making. Our forces are being eva-"

May was interrupted by screaming over the phone followed by several bangs.

"What was that?" She asked.

"Someone just tried to stab me." Clark said.

"Where are you?"

"1732 West Latimer Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma." Clark answered.

Lauren spoke up. "Oh my gosh! Are you okay?!"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"There's blood all over you! You're not fine!"

"Honey, it isn't my blood."

"Don't go anywhere and don't call the police." May said. "I'm sending some...you will be picked up. Someone wants you dead, and the government can't protect you. We will be at your door in about five minutes. I have to go, but don't freak out when we get there."

May hung up.

First a missile launched, now her parents were attacked. Things weren't looking good for her own chances of being attacked, or rather, they were looking too good. May ordered her Leviathan to prepare to jump to her location. Subtlety was out of the window if she was being nuked.

May then turned her attention to the Overseer watching the car John had entered. It was still sitting there, and neither John nor Timothy had made a move to get out.

They couldn't bomb her, not in the middle of a city, and there were no windows from which someone could shoot at her. May figured that they must have wanted to contain her. Although she knew that they would not be able to keep her locked up due to her psionic abilities, she worried that they would be able to slow her down.

With this in mind, May opened the warehouse door she came in through. She slipped out, taking the phone with her, and took off toward the car John and Timothy were in, flying low to the ground to avoid being spotted. She took a circular route around the car that let her approach the car from behind. Landing softly just around the corner of a nearby building so that she could look around at the back of the car without being easily spotted, May watched the two intently. They appeared to be talking.

Matilda sent her an update on the location of the missiles. They headed for Broodland. There was nothing she could do, so May simply waited. For a couple of minutes she waited and prepared herself mentally. The missiles were seconds away from impact.

As each missile struck, May felt the nuclear bombs' power through her psionic connection to the Hives, Lairs, and Hatcheries. After the third missile detonated, an explosion shook her physical body. She snapped out of her connection to the Zerg and saw a building a couple of blocks in front of John's car collapsing into its own footprint. The building she was just in.

As the implications of this sunk in, the sound of the settling rubble died down. John and Timothy's car started and began to drive away. May, wanting to know how deeply they were involved in all of this, gently lifted their car off of the pavement and firmly held the doors shut.

May broke from her cover and walked up to the passenger side with the window held at eye level. Timothy pulled out a handgun and leveled it at her face before squeezing the trigger.

Though the crack of gunfire echoed through the night, it was largely muffled by the fact that the bullet never made it to the window, but instead, stopped just inches away from the barrel and dropped harmlessly into John's lap. Without a word, May psionically ripped the gun from Timothy's grasp and through the passenger side window, shattering the glass.

"You're coming with me." May hissed before taking off into the night sky.

The car followed closely behind, carried in May's psionic grasp. As May flew, much of the sky began to glow an eerie orange. The glow gradually intensified before flashing brightly and fading away. Moments later, a boom ripped through the skies, busting windows for miles. At over ten kilometers long, the Zerg Leviathan was large enough to cover almost the entire city it was now hovering over.

May flew straight toward the massive flying creature while ordering an orifice near her to open. Several lights were beginning to shine upwards through the night sky and on the bottom of the massive creature.

May ignored the lights and eventually made it to the Leviathan. After flying through the orifice, car in tow, May silently ordered the Leviathan to jump to Tulsa Oklahoma.


"Does that mean she's sending Zerg?" Lauren asked.

"I don't know, but we need to be careful if what she said is true." Clark stated.

"I'm calling the police." Lauren said as she reached for her phone.

"That might make things worse." Clark stated. "We don't want to draw attention to ourselves. In fact, we should probably turn off all of the inside lights and turn on all of the outside ones so that nobody can see in."

Lauren processed Clark's reasoning for a moment. "I'll get upstairs."

Within a minute, the inside of the house was completely dark and Lauren was double checking that everything was off. Lauren walked back into the living room to find Clark hunched over the body on the coffee table.

"What are you doing?!" She hissed.

"Seeing what he had on him. The car across the street was his, but I can't find anything on him except for his keys." Clark said as he rifles through the dead man's belongings.

Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of loud banging on the front door.

"Police department. Search warrant. Police department. Search warrant."

Not a second later, the front door was busted open and a bang proceeded shortly thereafter that made their ears ring. Before Lauren and Clark knew what was happening, the room was filled with smoke and men with rifle mounted flashlights.

"Hands on your head! Hands on your head!" Several of them yelled repeatedly. Lauren and Clark immediately complied.

Two of the men came up behind the couple, where the men had come from, they did not know, and began cuffing them. Clark's pistol was removed from its holster and the two were quickly escorted outside as the rest of the house was searched.

Once outside, they were made to sit down on the street curb among several police cars and an armored S.W.A.T. car. Before the married couple were given time to ask what the heck was going on, the attention of everyone present was diverted upwards by an orange glow that filled the entire night sky and lit up everything with an eerie orange light.

The sky flashed bright orange for a moment before being replaced with utter darkness. No stars, no moon. Just darkness.

Lights were soon pointed upwards to reveal that the darkness was not simply clouds, but rather a dark textured surface that covered the entire night sky. A soft whistle began to echo through the streets that slowly grew in intensity. Suddenly, the whistle was replaced by a earth shaking thud, followed by dirt raining down on everything in the area.

Lauren and Clark had been covering their eyes, but when the dirt stopped falling, they looked behind them to see a dozen S.W.A.T. officers pointing their guns at a massive new hole in the front yard.

"Put down your weapons." A voice commanded from within the hole.

The officers all looked toward an older officer who was also looking into the hole. The older officer spoke up.

"What are you? Zerg?" He asked.

"I am, and I am here to retrieve those two people you have handcuffed on the curb." The voice said from within the hole.

The officer glanced over to the two suspects in custody. "I'm afraid I can't do that. They are to be processed and detained."

The officers around the hole began backing up as something stirred within. As the officer in charge backed up, a dragon emerged from the hole and towered over the officer.

"I did not ask your permission. I told you what I am going to do." The dragon said once out of the hole.

"You aren't leaving here with those suspects." The officer stated, his rifle trained on the dragon.

The dragon turned to Clark and Lauren. "Where's the body?" It asked.

"I-it's on the coffee table in the front room." Clark said nervously but loud enough for his voice to carry.

"Did he have anything on him?"

"Just his keys."

"Where are they?"

"In my pocket." Clark replied.

Clark and Lauren's handcuffs clicked and became lose on their wrists.

"Find his car and get in." The dragon said before walking off towards the front door. Clark and Lauren watched in confusion as none of the officers moved an inch in spite of the dragon having walked out of their line of fire. Clark snapped out of his stupor, got up, and helped Lauren do the same.

Clark fished out the stolen keys and pressed the lock button on the key fob, causing a car a couple of houses down to honk. As the couple made their way to the car, they noticed that several of their neighbors were watching from their windows or front doors.

Clark and Lauren got into the black car, Clark on the driver side and Lauren on the passenger side. Clark started the car and drove it into his driveway before rolling down the window.

The dragon walked up to the car and held out an open paw next to the open window. Clark looked down at the paw in confusion before noticing that it held his Glock that the police had taken away from him. Clark thanked the dragon, took the pistol, and holstered it.

"I'm going to take you up to the Leviathan where you will be safe until I can find a place for you." The dragon said. "I'm going to need you two to stay calm and stay put while I pick up the car."

Lauren's eyes went wide. "Wait, what?"

Before they knew it, the car was being lifted into the air somehow. Lauren and Clark held tight to anything that seemed solid and Lauren let out a yelp of surprise.

The dragon took off in front of the car with the dead body in its claws, and the car followed behind with a slightly terrified Clark and Lauren inside. The flight was a strange one, to say the least, but it was mercifully short. Before they knew it, the car was resting back on solid-ish ground inside of the Leviathan.

The two quickly noticed that there was another car parked next to the one they were currently in, and that the whole place felt wrong in some strange way. After getting out of the car, the couple noticed that the room they were in was not lit by normal lights, but was instead lit by a glowing substance that ran along the walls, ceiling, and floor.

"Welcome to the Leviathan." The dragon said, gaining their attention. "Just a few minutes ago, the main Zerg Hive cluster was destroyed by nuclear weapons, I was nearly buried underneath a building, and you two were nearly assassinated. We just found the submarine that launched the nukes, and that is where we are headed. I'm sorry that things are the way they are, but it cannot be helped at this point. You are free to go wherever you wish, and if you get lost, just call out for help and it will come. I have to go, but I will hopefully return within an hour or two."

At that, the dragon began walking off.

"Oh." the dragon said. "We are about to jump, and you will probably be more comfortable buckled in the car when that happens."

As the dragon disappeared, Lauren and Clark got back into the car and buckled in. The two sat in silence for several moments.

"What do you-" Lauren began, but was cut off suddenly by the feeling of extreme weight that lasted for less than a second, followed by weightlessness. For several seconds, the Lauren, Clark, and the car were completely weightless, and the car even began to lift off of the ground. The feeling of extreme weight returned for a split second, and the car was violently dragged back to the ground with a thud.

As suddenly as the experience came, it was gone, and Lauren and Clark were left trying to recover from the shock of the abnormal physics of the "jump."


May picked herself off of the fleshy floor of her Leviathan. She had figured that the jump would be somewhat rough, but she had not expected to be tossed up into the air and violently thrown back down to the ground. She mentally thanked herself for telling her parents to buckle into the car before the jump.

May reached into the Swarm's collective mind and searched below her. What she found was two things. One, Matilda was able to come up with new names very quickly. Two, Matilda did not fully understand the concept of verbal communication. Matilda had renamed the water strain Hydralisks, but the new name, though creative, was so similar to the old one that they were nearly exactly the same. May was not sure that she would be able to tell the two apart in verbal communication.

May just sighed and decided to address the naming issue later, for below her, hundreds of underwater Hydrolisks swarmed around a large submarine. Through their senses, she could "see" the submarine responsible for the destruction of her Hive cluster. The Hydrolisks were mostly blind, so she could not literally see the submarine. They did, however, have a sonar of sorts that Matilda had found during her search for undersea essence.

Psionically, May reached out and grasped the underwater machine of destruction. Gently, she tugged the submarine upwards. The sub was far beneath the ocean surface, and May sat still for several minutes as she dragged the thing closer to the surface. Upon reaching the surface, May felt the submarine become significantly more difficult to lift.

While keeping the submarine on the surface, May ordered her Leviathan down to the ocean surface. The massive creature slowly reached the water, but it did not stop when it touched the waves. Instead, it kept going down until it was halfway submerged next to the submarine.

A massive orifice opened on the side of the Leviathan, and May psionically pushed the submarine through the entrance. Once the submarine was inside, the Leviathan sunk a bit more to fill the orifice completely with water. Once the orifice was filled, it closed, trapping the submarine inside.

She had a submarine, two prisoners, her parents, and no Hive. Now what?

May began to think over her priorities. Her first priority had been to make the Zerg into a nation.

No.

Making a Zerg nation had been a means of preserving the Zerg. Now that they were under attack, avoiding further attack was her main priority. With the Leviathan, that would not be a problem.

If her first priority had been to preserve the Swarm, then her second priority would be to grow the Swarm. With hidden Hatcheries being scattered over the planet, that had already been somewhat taken care of.

Third priority. Protect Israel. No. That had been part of her becoming a nation. Was that still a priority? Israel faced a similar problem she did, and she had considered them her allies. They could not run away like she could. They could not simply jump to another system in a-

May's eyes shot open, and she immediately ordered the Leviathan to jump to Jerusalem. Hopefully she could get an audience with the Prime Minister or the Knesset. Anyone who could make a decision would do.

As the Leviathan began to jump, May realized that she had not told her parents about the jump. The people in the submarine were even less prepared.

"Oops." May whispered just before the Leviathan vanished from its place in the ocean.


So, sorry about the wait. I had actually intended for this chapter to be about 2-3 times longer, but I realized that that would have made the time between chapters just incredibly, stupidly long. I hope you guys enjoyed it though. School, and procrastinating doing school, has been making it difficult to find time to write. I want to say that I can get the next chapter out in less time than this one, but...no promises. :(

Oh, and we broke 100 comments...er, reviews. Thanks!