Date Unknown
Arm Heavy Cruiser Dauntless, Location Unknown – 2310
For the second time that day, Toric found herself facing her new officers across the broad span of the conference room table. However, in stark contrast to the tension of the morning meeting prior to it's rude interruption, the mood that hung over the room now was smoothering. It had been most of a day since their rag-tag flotilla had thrown itself into the unknown, and everyone in the room had been busily engaged in repairs and sensor sweeps since then. The damage caused by a single direct D-cannon strike could be devestating, Toric reflected, even on such a massive vessel. And worse luck, it had happened to strike dangerously close to the bow holds containing the interdimensional transfer device, causing possibly fatal damage to it.
She waited a few moments for everyone to take their seats, then began the meeting without ceremony. "There are three things I want to know before we leave this room," she said firmly. "One, where the hell are we? Two, how badly are we damaged? And three, what can we do about it?" When no one aswered immediately, she ground her teeth togther menacingly. "I don't care who answers, I just want to be answered, and answered right."
The officers glanced about, somewhat abashed. After a moment of heavy silence, Professor Seyda spoke first. "Commander, as you know, we took a D-cannon hit to the bow sections, and while localized, the damage was extreme." As he spoke, a hologram of the Dauntless appeared slowly rotating above the center of the table.
Toric, and several others who had not yet seen the extent of the damage, sucked in their breath. A shaft nearly 100 meters in diameter had been punched through the ship.
Seyda continued. "The impact destoyed several critical power mains, as well as..." here he paused significantly, "the dimensional locator." Seeing confused looks, he amended, "The targeting device."
The news took a moment or two to sink in, but Toric suddenly gaped, hoping she was wrong about what she though he meant. Judging by the shocked and anxious expressions around the room, everyone else had reached the same conclusion. "You mean we can't go back?"
Seyda flipped his tail agitatedly. "It is unfortunate, but it is the truth. And before you ask, no, I do not know how to replace it, nor does anyone on my team."
Toric raised her voice over the ensuing uproar. "Quiet down people! We still have more pressing problems to deal with."
The babble of raised voices died, and several of the officers glanced around guiltily. As soon as silence was again upon the room, Toric hit them all in turn with a scathing glare. Even Tarn and Gerard sat down, abashed.
"I still have two more questions. And keep in mind our new circumstances." Toric snapped. "I want a full fleet damage report, and repair estimates."
Gerard cleared his throat, and stood to speak. "We other than the irreplacable targetting device," he glanced at Seyda, "the repair drones are already at work. We should have that hole completely gone within the hour. The rest of the fleet is in good order, except for Montressor, which took more fire than even we did. They'll surivive, but their engines were destroyed. Since we do not have any drive specialists with us, the work is going somewhat slower. The engineers report it could take three days to get the drives fully operational again. Until then, it will need to be towed, which limits our cruising speed significantly."
Toric nodded glumly. "Now what do we do about this? We were supposed to establish a base of operations here, on the nearest planet. Where would that be?"
In a flutter of spidery appendages, the Dauntless's first officer, Omandro H'Ting, lifted his body slightly into the air. "That's going to be something of a problem, Commander."
Toric turned her steely gaze on him. "What do you mean?" she asked in a tone of voice that suggested this be a damn good excuse.
"As you know, Oriens Gamma happens to be situated in the gap between two galactic arms, where star density is quite low. Unfortunately, while we are in orbit of the star, the planetary system never formed in this universe. In this universe, there is nothing but loose gravel orbiting the star."
"Where's the next nearest planetary system then?"
H'Ting shrugged six limbs. "Unknown. We've completed sensor sweeps out to two hundred lightyears, and found no planets or asteroids of sufficient size. However," he paused significantly, "we have detected interstellar broadcasts."
"You mean artificial? As in created by intelligent life?" Troic pressed.
"Yes." Before he could be questioned further, he continued. "However, the source is roughly 300 parsecs from here, and the signal is too faint to decipher. We would need to get closer to the Signus cluster in the Sigittarus Arm."
Toric pondered this development for a moment, giving it careful deliberation, or what she hoped sounded like careful deliberation. "Set course for the source of those signals Captain Gerard. Take Montressor in tow, and get the fleet into hyperspace."
Gerard closed his eyes, and suddenly a new holograph replaced the damage indicator on the conference table. It was a course overlay through hyperspace. Gerard looked over at Toric. "We'll be underway in a moment Commander. Estimated Time of Arrival is four days from now, at 1300 hours."
Nodding drowsily, Toric rose. "Alright, dismissed everyone, it's been a long day."
The lost fleet faded into the hyperspace of an alternate universe for the first time, confident that they, at least, had survived, and would strain every nerve to return home. The inky void remained empty for a time, but was for the second time lit by the light of another universe, as a second searing portal wavered into existence. There was no hesitation or distress about the dagger-shaped forms that briefly filled the portal before it again swirled shut. To the unaided eye, this new fleet of massive black warships would be little more than a flickering beast moving in front of the stars. A flash of warp energies, and again, the failed solar system was alone against the night, burning itself out as it had for so many aeons before the intrusion.
Arm Heavy Cruiser Dauntless, Location Unknown – 1430
The Arm fleet had been cruising through hyperspace for nearly four days now, and was nearly upon their objective, a cluster of solar systems where radio signals were being emitted in a great flurry. Unfortunately, Toric reflected, while repairs had finally been declared complete, Professor Seyda had made it very plain that while the "Inter-D" as the crew had begun calling it, worked fine, and could be used safely, the targetting and detection systems were essentially gone. If they did jump, it would be blind. Toric and Gerard had conferred, and decided that the safer course of action would be to investigate whatever civilization sprang from this particular universe, and attempt to find aid there.
At least she had a chair now, Toric thought from her designated bridge seat, that while situated off to one side, had a clear overview of the command deck. She had taken to sitting long shifts on the bridge, merely observing the activity. However, at one point, Colonel Rickett had given her a tour of the cavernous dropship hanger, where over a dozen massive dropships were arrayed and constantly prepped for launch. Peering inside the hanger of a dropship suspended over their heads, Toric had gaped, seeing thousands of Arm battleunits of every classification and function suspended in great racks within it's belly. The enormity of her command and responsibility had hit suddenly, causing the room to seem to swirl around her. Shrugging it off as vertigo, she had thanked the Colonel, then made her way back to the quieter confines of the bridge.
Of course, she knew it was only a momentary repreive, because is less than an hour, they would reach the source of the transmissions, and no one knew what to expect, she least of all. But she was the one the rest would turn to for leadership. Being overall Commander seemed suddenly like a very lonely position.
The big moment finally came almost an hour early, when the communication officer's console begin beeping steadily. Curious, Toric left her overwatch seat, and covered the distance to the flashing console in what she hoped looked like a dignified hustle, but what she feared looked like what it was... a sprint.
Suddenly nervous with the Commander standing next to his elbow, the communications officer checked his readings a few more times, and finally looked up. "Commander, we've intercepted a clear communication from a star system ahead. It's in the clear, a visual transmission between two starships."
Toric shivered nervously. "Put both sides on the screen, but do not, allow them to see us. Hell, keep them from knowing we exist, if possible," she snapped.
The startled comm officer glanced to H'Ting, who was folded into the command chair, for confirmation.
H'Ting rose from the seat, and scuttled to the center of the command deck. "Crewman, that was a direct order from the Commander." Turning to the helmsman, he said, "Set course for that source, but do not take us out of hyperspace."
The helmsman, in a clipped voice, announced, "Aye sir, ETA to signal source, nine minutes, fifty-three seconds."
Above the tableau of the tense Arm bridge, the forward screens flickered to life with the intercepted transmission. On the left side of the screen was the visage of what was obviously a human man, with a steely grey beard and an aura of calculated cruelty. On the right was a second human, a younger man with what Toric quickly decided to be a ruggedly handsome face, who also sported the barest stubble of a beard.
For a few moments, the figures conversed in a tounge unitelligible to Toric or the rest of the crew. The comm officer activated the translation algorithims, frowned at the results, tried again, and swore at the computer. "Commander," he said, "there's gotta be something wrong with this computer. It's identifying their language as a slightly distorted form of Old Terran English."
Toric waved him off. "Just play it." Time enough to figure out that particular riddle later, although she already suspected she knew the answer. At that moment, Captain Gerard bolted onto the bridge, followed a heartbeat later by Lieutenant Tarn. Both paused in at the back of the bridge, so they wouldn't miss the conversation occuring onscreen.
"... and I can't believe even you are capable of allowing them all to die! You're using the Zerg as a weapon on innocent civilians, and as if that's not bad enough, you're sending down Kerrigan against the Protoss, with no backup!" growled the younger man with a dangerous edge.
The older man developed an insane glare, and hissed, "I've come too far! I will not be stopped by you, or the Zerg, or the Protoss! Jim, you will obey me or be crushed."
The younger man, now identified as "Jim", shook his head disgustedly. "The hell with you Mengsk. I'm going back there."
"I'm warning you Raynor, if you allow the Protoss to burn Tarsonis before the Zerg finish..." the threat hung in the air for a moment, then the transmission cut.
Toric turned to Gerard and Tarn, while scanning the wide bridge with it's suddenly silent crew. "Anyone make any sense of that?" she demanded. The translator worked, but some of the phrases and terms used by the two humans were unfamiliar, although the hostility between them was not.
A junior sensor tech stood from her position at the rear of the bridge, just to the left of the conference room doors. At Toric's affirming nod, she said, "Commander, I believe I can identify one of the phrases used in their discussion. According to my databanks, the word 'burn' was, among other things, once a vague colloquial term for scorching, or otherwise rendering the surface of a planet uninhabitable. That would make this 'Tarsonis' a planet that would seem to be in immediate danger of such a fate."
Toric walked over to the tech's station, and said, "That seems like and awful lot of if's in that assumption."
"Well," gulped the nervous tech, "this would seem to substantiate an event I've been picking up for the past two standard hours."
"An 'event'?" said Toric evenly.
The tech nodded. "Yes sir. The fourth planet in this system supports an atmosphere that is well within Terran limits, and shows many signs of an industrial space-faring culture. I can pick up almost three billion human life signs. But there's something else there... millions, no, billions of alien life-signs. They appear to be originating from some sort of FTL transfer node twenty-five thousand kilometers from the planet. I – I don't know what they are!" said the tech, with a notable look of desperation.
"Excellent work," Toric said, putting a friendly hand on the woman's shoulder. "Captain Gerard, can we communicate with this 'Jim' person without him spotting us?"
Gerard bit his lip. "It depends on their tech level Commander. I haven't seen anything to indicate that they can scan hyperspace. I tend to think as long as we remain here, they can't see us."
"Very well," Toric announced. "Hail his vessel." She felt her insides tense. Just like in the dropship hanger, the full weight of her decision fell upon her, and she sucked in a deep breath. At the comm-officer's glance, she began.
"Damn!"
Former Mar Sara Marshall Jim Raynor slammed his palm into the arm of his command seat aboard his command ship Hyperion. He fumed at Arcturus Mengsk, and the bridge crew quietly tried to make themselves invisible. "Of all the low-down slimy..." He was cut off mid-rant by a tonal beeping near the back of the bridge, and swinging around in the seat, snapped at the crew behind him. "What the hell is that?"
Several of the crew flinched at his tone, but one of them tapped thoughfully at the console, his expression melting into confusion. "Sir," she announced, "we're being hailed... and it's very strange."
Raynor seethed. "Now what? Kick the damn thing a few times, it works on my toaster oven."
"Uh, sir, the signal is directed at our ship alone, but it's tremendously powerful, and on a high frequency we can barely pick up." The flustered crewwoman bit her lip, and started punching sequences into the panel.
"Well, can we at least find out what it is?" Raynor said with a quiet lethality.
The woman didn't answer, but punched in a final combination. "Playing now sir," she announced unecessarily as the bridge forward screen fill with an image that was unmistakably the bridge of another starship.
Raynor gaped involuntarily. The bridge on his screen appeared to be at least several times the size of his own. The center was taken up with an imposing command chair filled by a burly human who was clearly in charge. Next to the human stood what appeared to be a tumbleweed with compound eyes. The rear of the bridge, up on a terrace, was ringed with consoles and control panels, broken only by two doorways. Crewmen bustled about behind the Captain, but the floor in front of the command chair was empty, save for a young woman with russet hair, who wore a blue uniform and air of supreme confidence.
"Greetings," she said. "Are you the one called Raynor Jim?"
"Uh, yeah, I'm Jim Raynor," said Raynor. "Who are you, and how did you know my name," he demanded pointedly.
The woman seemed momentarily taken aback, but she responded quickly. "We intercepted your communication with the lead vessel in the fleet that departed a moment ago. To answer your second question," she said, smiling now, "I am Arm Commander Marla Toric, and this is the Dauntless, the lead vessel under my command.
Raynor frowned imperceptably. Toric seemed friendly enough, but he didn't like the idea of her spying on his conversation with Mengsk, nor her fleet which couldn't be seen. However, the Zerg were already beginning to land on Tarsonis, and he didn't want to stick around, no matter how much he wished he could save Kerrigan. "Listen, Commander...ah, Toric. Look, I'd love to sit and chat, and find out more about your invisible ships, but if we don't get out of the system, and fast, the Zerg are gonna spot us, and that won't be pretty," he said finally, in a rush.
"Zerg? Is that what you call those... things?" Toric queried, eyebrow cocked. "Our sensors are reading over three billion human life-signs on that planet. What will happen to them?"
Raynor sighed miserably, acutely aware that the annihilation of Tarsonis was in good part, his fault. "They're dead. Those things are like organic killing machines... they're attracted by psionic emissions."
Toric's face froze. "What kind of psionics?"
Raynor shrugged, too absorbed in his guilt to notice her reaction. "Near as we can figure, any kind." He glanced up from the decking. "Look, we have got to go now, or they'll come for us too." At Toric's wintery glare, Raynor quailed. "Listen, I'd love to go back and save those people, but there's nothing we can do. I've only got what's left of the Mar Sara militia that's still loyal, and that's no where near what we'd need to save that planet. I'm sorry."
"Give me moment." Toric turned away from the now blank screen, and stood next to Gerard, still in his seat, and H'ting. "Captain Gerard, there are three billion humans on that planet, who are going to die without serious help. I want to save them, but I need to know, before I give the order, if I'm acting too much on emotion."
Gerard gazed at her impassively. "Commander, this is a risk, and some, perhaps many, fine soldiers will be back in the recloning tanks before long. That said, our singular, all important intent, is to protect organic life, and preserve our civilization." He paused. "These are not our citizens. But they are real flesh and blood humans. If Core does eventually succeed," He frowned at the concept. There were very few people who could still imagine something as dynamic as a victory or defeat. "It will be some comfort to know that somewhere, somewhen, the human race will continue. Those are innocent humans being slaughtered down there, we have the ability; we owe it to them and to ourselves to protect them. Even from each other."
Before Toric could comment on the captain's unusually verbose speech, H'Ting raised a segmented limb. "I must concurr. I do not know that we Zhe'tlik exist in this reality. But our goal is to preserve all sentient life." He gestured with three limbs at the screen. "And there it sits."
Toric smiled. "Thank you, both of you. Then I can give the order with a clear conscience." She stepped back to the foward part of the bridge. "Get Marshall Raynor back on the channel."
When the screen first went blank, Raynor had waited patiently for several seconds, but was soon glancing nervously at the black cloud of monsters pouring onto Tarsonis. At any second they might detect his fleet. Fortunately, as the urge to bolt was becoming undeniable, his main screen came back to life, once again displaying the Arm bridge, and it's occupants.
At the forefront, Commander Toric stepped forward, and almost instantly, with a rush of hope, Raynor knew. "You're going to help us?"
Toric's arched eyebrow indicated her surprise. "Yes, we have decided to assist you. However, we need to formulate a strategy, and quickly."
Raynor took a relieved breath, and said, with a ferverence that surprised even himself, "Thank you Commander." He quickly ducked back into business-as-usual mode though, since he knew the worst still lay ahead. "Well, Tarsonis isn't a world big on rural life. Most of the population lives in the big cities, so that's were we should concentrate the defenses." He waited for Toric's nod, then continued, "Tarsonis is defended by major space platforms, but those are probably shot to hell now, so we can ignore them."
"Yes, we noticed those," Toric stated. "However, we're not reading any power signatures from them anymore."
Raynor nodded. "Good. We won't have to tangle with them anyway. We'll be deploying our transports outside the major cities. According to the last report from Kerrigan, the Confederate military is holding out, but they won't last for long."
"What is the terrain like outside the cities?" Toric asked.
Raynor shrugged. "Like most of the planets in the Koprulu sector; barren, flat," he shrugged again. "Lousy views, but plenty of room to land ships." Caught up with a sudden thought, Raynor gazed levelly at the Arm Commander. "Just how big are we talking, anyways?" he asked suspiciously.
Toric cleared her throat. "A bit over two klicks long," adding hastily, "but we'll only send one to each city."
"Alright, but..." Raynor stopped, and stared pointedly at her. "Two KLICKS? As in kilometers? Each?" He blinked, and swallowed hard, trying to fit this together in his mind. Several gasps around his bridge suggested he wasn't the only one having trouble with this idea. "Well, uh yeah, there's room... but two klicks? Shit!" Before Toric could remark on this, he held up a hand. "If we're gonna do this, we better do it now... so, uh, let's get to it!"
For a moment, Jim Raynor and Marla Toric shared a warrior's grin at the upcoming battle.