Once back on his ship in orbit over Korhal, the Judicator immediately
retreated to his quarters and sent a communiqué to the newly-reformed
Conclave requesting a remote hearing. Calmly he sat waiting, not a doubt
in his mind that what he was to attempt was the right thing. He knew he
would face a great amount of protest from his fellows, but deep down he
knew that his was the only solution. Certainly, it would be regrettable,
but it was most necessary.
Some hours later, his communications terminal beeped a signal of an incoming transmission. When he accepted, he was confronted with not the usual one face, but with the visages of the entire Conclave. If it were possible, he would have smiled. It was time.
"Fellow Judicators, I have a proposition that is vital to the survival of our race."
* * *
Etris, accompanied by a small band of mutants and several Dark Templar, crouched on top of a ridge overlooking the primary Zerg Hive on Earth. Deep in the central area of the pulsating, living complex sat the massive, worm-like insectoid. Etris stared in awe for a moment, having never seen what the Zerg passed off for a base. There was a large number of drones actually collecting tiberium instead of the minerals native to their home universe. Several rifts opened and drones came through with an accompaniment of militant creatures. Each drone carried an organic package holding what he recognized from Arathes' briefing as Vespene gas. Various Zerg structures littered the area, all sitting atop the pulsating, expanding creep. Fortunately-at least he thought so-the Zerg had not yet matured their central structure into a Hive. It seemed that all of their most powerful units were coming in through the rifts. At this point, the defenders had come to the assumption that the Zerg leader-Kerrigan, Arathes said her name was-had somehow discovered a way to open rifts of her own accord, and passed that ability on to her Cerebrates.
"Arathes," he said into the radio link, "Are you in place?"
"Confirmed," the alien said from the other side of the Zerg compound. After the two teams were in place, Etris was to signal the attack force. During the chaos, the two strike teams were going to move in from opposite sides to increase their chances of at least one of the Dark Templar reaching the Cerebrate. Finally, the two teams were where they needed to be. Etris knew what he needed to do. Switching to the frequency used by the bulk of his force, he issued the simple command. "Go!"
A torrent of sound suddenly accompanied the noise from the Zerg base. Numerous tanks, many of them Mammoths, lumbered along the ground, infantry charged, and Harpies surged overhead. A few borrowed Protoss forces joined in the advance, including deadly Reavers and a fair sized force of Dragoons. An alarm went up within the Zerg base as the tanks began shelling the fringes. Harpies darted between firing spore colonies, harassing ground forces. The Reaver group launched their explosive scarabs at the spore colonies while a group of scouts attempted to knock out the ground-based sunken colonies.
Once the Zerg had fully thrown themselves into the fray, Etris ordered his group to move out. They scrambled down the ridge and into the middle of a fierce battle. Some tick tanks stolen from an old Nod base had run into a trio of Ultralisks. The massively tusked creatures were tearing into the dug-in vehicles. A pair of Mammoths opened up on the Ultralisks and Etris' mutants added their near-insignificant rifle fire if only to boost their own confidence. Confused by the barrage from all sides, the Ultralisks fell in a bloody heap.
From both sides, the strike teams dashed on to the creep, blasting through zerglings and hydralisks, dodging bombardment from mutalisks and guardians, and altogether avoiding more ultralisks. Several of Etris' men fell from surprise attacks launched by burrowed Zerg forces. A group of hydralisks burst up through the creep, immediately launching their deadly spines. The mutants fell so quickly, Etris hardly realized it had happened. He launched himself in a mad dash towards the Cerebrate, followed by two Dark Templar; the others stayed behind to fight.
Arathes' group had not fared much better. Already the diversion force was dwindling, and the strike teams were down to half size each. He seriously doubted their ability to complete the mission. Overhead scouts battled with mutalisks, dodging and weaving through scourge swarms. One scout's shields failed under the bombardment. A pair of scourges streaked directly for it. The pilot managed to swerve, but just barely. The scourges plowed into one of the scout's wings, tossing the fighter into an uncontrollable descent.
"Down!" Arathes shouted to his people just before the scout drove itself into a Spire. The explosion decimated the structure, sending bits of flaming debris and organic matter flying in all directions. A nearby sunken colony had just finished with a pair of attack cycles, and the heavily damaged structure drove a tentacle into the ground, only to have it burst up through one of Arathes' warriors. The mutant never knew what hit him. Enraged, Arathes turned aside from his path and, with assistance from two other Dark Templar, drove his psi blade into the sunken colony before it could attack again. The three turned away, leaving a bloody, useless mess. They needed to destroy the Cerebrate. He set his gaze upon it, and his determination grew still greater.
* * *
Safely at the outpost, Slavik watched as the Dominion idiots continued to bombard the capitol building, apparently unaware that their targets had fled. He was increasingly convinced that it was nothing short of miraculous that the Dominion had survived this long. Were all humans in this universe as incompetent as those he'd so thus far? Sighing in disgust, he turned to his comms officer once again.
"What's the status on the Banshee squadrons?"
"The Chronosphere is charging now, sir, they should be arrival any minute."
"And the Hand?"
"Base 2 is reporting that the Chronosphere there should be up and running in about fifteen minutes. The Hand is prepped for launch, and will be arrival not long after the banshees."
"That will leave them open to attack from those two Battlecruisers for a while. Not exactly an ideal situation. Tell Base 2 to cut the time in half or they can expect to be thrown out of the airlocks."
"Yes sir."
Slavik returned to watching the remote view available in the outpost command station just as one of the Battlecruisers amassed enough power to use its Yamato Cannon. This should be interesting. There was a relatively small glare on the screen as the energy started to focus directly in front of the large ship. The moment it was all condensed, it flew out, barely contained, towards the capitol building. In a brilliant flash, a huge portion of the structure disappeared. A moment later, the outpost shook violently, the somewhat weakened shockwave passing over them. Another moment, and the sound of the explosion, which must have been deafening at the site, reached them. The Wraith fighters strafed the remains of the building a bit more before moving to return to their respective hangars.
Just as they did so, a large rift was opened in mid-air, and swarms of Nod's Banshee fighters boiled out. The first few in range quickly dispatched several Wraiths with no trouble before the other Dominion craft started cloaking.
"Order all pilots to engage multi-frequency scanning." Ever since he first learned about the Dominion's cloaking technology, Slavik had had his technicians working on ways to duplicate, and counter it. As a result, they had quickly installed specialized scanning systems on all of the available Banshees that looked across the entire spectrum, and took several other factors into account. In essence, the cloaked fighters were still all-too visible for Nod's aces. What was more, Nod's disk-shaped craft handled much better in atmosphere than the bulky, oddly designed Wraiths.
The Banshees swept in and out of the Dominion formation, turning, rolling, spinning, and otherwise confusing the Dominion forces with great agility while the Wraiths struggled to keep up. The Banshees began splitting up by wing pairs and systematically blasting the Wraiths out of the sky. Somewhat to Slavik's surprise, more Wraiths rose from the surface, but instead of attacking Nod, turned on their fellow Dominion forces. A smile crept across the Nod leader's otherwise serious features. Victory was at hand. But still, it would take more than those fighters to eliminate the Battlecruisers, and even now the large ships' guns were opening up. While the fighters were agile enough to dodge most of the blasts, the persistent gunners nonetheless managed to wrack up a considerable number of kills in the cloud of ships.
The second cruiser fired its Yamato Cannon into a tight formation of Wraiths and Banshees. They all vanished in one massive explosion. Damn it, where is that-
As if on command, another large rift opened. Through it came Nod's newest weapon, the Hand of Kane. After Kane's second disappearance, Slavik searched some of his personal files. There he found notes on some of the things that his leader had learned from the Tacitus. After reviewing those notes, Slavik had immediately launched a mission to reclaim the crashed Scrin ship from the bumbling hands of GDI. The mission was successful, and Slavik set Nod's top scientists and engineers to work on taking the thing apart and adapting. The result now floated into his view, largely unchanged in design from its original form, but more suited for Nod's purposes. Massive and powerful, beautiful and deadly, the Hand of Kane was, he believed, a match even for the greatest of the Protoss's weapons. Its black-and-red hull was developed from a tiberium base into an alloy stronger than anything previously known. As if its near-invincible shell was not enough protection, Nod's scientists had recently adapted the shield technology from an abandoned Protoss vehicle a scout team had found at an old battle site.
To push the odds even further in Nod's favor, the Hand had a wonderful array of weapons. Numerous gun emplacements all along its hull fired variants of the energy blasts utilized by he Banshees; the blasts were similar, but about fifty times more powerful. They would easily blast a hole through any Dominion or Zerg craft or structure, and would even do severe damage to Protoss shields. In addition, the Hand featured a variant on the chemical missiles. The projectile would launch at amazingly fast speeds, embed itself in its target, and begin burrowing. Cutting through anything in its way, it would wait until it reached the interior of the structure or ship, and then release massive amounts of tiberium gas. If that did not kill everything in sight, the final, massive explosion would.
As the Hand moved into position, the Battlecruisers changed their focus to it instead of the fighters. Taking that opportunity, one squadron made a pass at the second cruiser's engines, obliterating them entirely. The Hand launched a trio of chemical missiles at the crippled cruiser, one straight into the forward decks, the others veering off to either side before impacting. The first began once again to charge its Yamato Cannon. Every gun emplacement on Nod's monstrosity with a clear shot opened fire on the Dominion ship. Several shots tore all the way through the ship, coming out the other end, and all caused considerable damage.
"All fighters pull back!" Slavik ordered.
The fire from the Hand breached the first cruiser's power core and the hammerheaded ship came apart from within at the same moment that the chemical missiles detonated in the other one, shredding most of it. Nod's fighters sped away from the disaster, most of them making it intact. The blast completely blocked out any view of the Hand. The burning wreckage- what relatively little there was left-crashed into the surface, setting off uncountable secondary explosions. When the screens finally cleared, the Hand was there. The perseverance of Nod's true leader lived on in their greatest weapon. Unhurt, it started towards the outpost. It was time they returned home.
* * *
Caught in numerous battles across the span of the Zerg base, Arathes had long since lost contact with Etris, and could only assume that the other strike team had been destroyed. He had with him only two of his Dark Templar brothers. Their situation had grown well past desperate to sheer hopelessness. It was suicide to stay, and it was suicide to leave. He had only one option. Just as he steeled himself to make a last-ditch mad dash for the Cerebrate, something above caught his eye.
Completely unnoticed in the raging conflict, one Protoss Arbiter floated alone in the sky. He could not recall having an Arbiter in his force. What was it doing? He reached out telepathically, and suddenly the horrible truth dawned on him. NO! With his mental cry, the Arbiter pulled back, revealing what it had been hiding. Now plainly seen above the battle was nearly an entire fleet of Protoss ships of the same kind used to attack the Terran colonies Chau Sara and Mar Sara. He could not believe what he was seeing! They were really going to burn this Earth just to destroy one Cerebrate when their best and only hope of truly killing it was no more than thirty yards away!
"We must kill the Cerebrate Now!!!" he called to his brothers over the rising shrieks of he Zerg forces. They ran. The guns powered up. They drew ever closer. He tripped over the corpse of a zergling, but his brothers ran on. They knew what was at stake. He jumped to his feet and sprinted forward. His brothers had reached the Cerebrate and were busily alternating between slashing at it and defending themselves from enraged Zerg. He looked up for an instant. They were really going to fire. He could see the Cerebrate weakening. With a tremendous, wordless battle cry, he leapt forward, and plunged his psi blade into the foul thing's brain, killing it. That instant, the ships above fired. The wave of energy overwhelmed him. He, his brothers, and everything around disintegrated. The ships continued their bombardment, systematically moving to position themselves for greatest destruction.
* * *
Having returned to his own universe aboard the Hand of Kane, Slavik was thoroughly pleased with himself and his men. The Brotherhood was on the rise again. Soon they would be an unstoppable force. A transmission came through to his private quarters from their Antarctic base.
"Yes, what is it?"
"Sir," the officer was panicked, "A Protoss fleet appeared a short time ago and began bombarding the main Zerg base. The base was destroyed, and now they're.Sir, they're destroying everything! The Protoss are wiping out all life on Earth! They will be here any second! We're the last, we." and with a burst of static he was gone. Slavik sat unspeaking. The ship's intercom beeped, undoubtedly his bridge officer reporting the same. Gone. It was all gone. An uncontrollable rage built up in Slavik. The Protoss had destroyed every last base, every last person, every last thing on the planet. Now Nod had nothing. Wrong. Not quite nothing.
Finally, he answered the intercom. "Sir."
"I know," he cut the officer off, "I know. The Earth is gone."
"What do we do now, sir?"
"Take us to the lunar base."
Fortunately, Slavik had had the foresight to begin setting up a small base on the moon. That was some time ago, and it had rapidly become large- one of their most important in fact. It was the base from which the Hand had first launched, and now they would return there. They would return to the last base at their disposal. And yet he was not totally without hope. They did have the seized Dominion bases on Korhal and several other worlds. They would rebuild somewhere. They would survive. But first he had to do something.
As the Hand made its final descent towards the moon base, a small craft, reminiscent of a Banshee, slid in behind it, completely unnoticed. When the Hand moved to enter its hangar space, the small craft broke off, and went to an older, less used area of the compound. There it settled, and its lone passenger disembarked.
Some hours later, his communications terminal beeped a signal of an incoming transmission. When he accepted, he was confronted with not the usual one face, but with the visages of the entire Conclave. If it were possible, he would have smiled. It was time.
"Fellow Judicators, I have a proposition that is vital to the survival of our race."
* * *
Etris, accompanied by a small band of mutants and several Dark Templar, crouched on top of a ridge overlooking the primary Zerg Hive on Earth. Deep in the central area of the pulsating, living complex sat the massive, worm-like insectoid. Etris stared in awe for a moment, having never seen what the Zerg passed off for a base. There was a large number of drones actually collecting tiberium instead of the minerals native to their home universe. Several rifts opened and drones came through with an accompaniment of militant creatures. Each drone carried an organic package holding what he recognized from Arathes' briefing as Vespene gas. Various Zerg structures littered the area, all sitting atop the pulsating, expanding creep. Fortunately-at least he thought so-the Zerg had not yet matured their central structure into a Hive. It seemed that all of their most powerful units were coming in through the rifts. At this point, the defenders had come to the assumption that the Zerg leader-Kerrigan, Arathes said her name was-had somehow discovered a way to open rifts of her own accord, and passed that ability on to her Cerebrates.
"Arathes," he said into the radio link, "Are you in place?"
"Confirmed," the alien said from the other side of the Zerg compound. After the two teams were in place, Etris was to signal the attack force. During the chaos, the two strike teams were going to move in from opposite sides to increase their chances of at least one of the Dark Templar reaching the Cerebrate. Finally, the two teams were where they needed to be. Etris knew what he needed to do. Switching to the frequency used by the bulk of his force, he issued the simple command. "Go!"
A torrent of sound suddenly accompanied the noise from the Zerg base. Numerous tanks, many of them Mammoths, lumbered along the ground, infantry charged, and Harpies surged overhead. A few borrowed Protoss forces joined in the advance, including deadly Reavers and a fair sized force of Dragoons. An alarm went up within the Zerg base as the tanks began shelling the fringes. Harpies darted between firing spore colonies, harassing ground forces. The Reaver group launched their explosive scarabs at the spore colonies while a group of scouts attempted to knock out the ground-based sunken colonies.
Once the Zerg had fully thrown themselves into the fray, Etris ordered his group to move out. They scrambled down the ridge and into the middle of a fierce battle. Some tick tanks stolen from an old Nod base had run into a trio of Ultralisks. The massively tusked creatures were tearing into the dug-in vehicles. A pair of Mammoths opened up on the Ultralisks and Etris' mutants added their near-insignificant rifle fire if only to boost their own confidence. Confused by the barrage from all sides, the Ultralisks fell in a bloody heap.
From both sides, the strike teams dashed on to the creep, blasting through zerglings and hydralisks, dodging bombardment from mutalisks and guardians, and altogether avoiding more ultralisks. Several of Etris' men fell from surprise attacks launched by burrowed Zerg forces. A group of hydralisks burst up through the creep, immediately launching their deadly spines. The mutants fell so quickly, Etris hardly realized it had happened. He launched himself in a mad dash towards the Cerebrate, followed by two Dark Templar; the others stayed behind to fight.
Arathes' group had not fared much better. Already the diversion force was dwindling, and the strike teams were down to half size each. He seriously doubted their ability to complete the mission. Overhead scouts battled with mutalisks, dodging and weaving through scourge swarms. One scout's shields failed under the bombardment. A pair of scourges streaked directly for it. The pilot managed to swerve, but just barely. The scourges plowed into one of the scout's wings, tossing the fighter into an uncontrollable descent.
"Down!" Arathes shouted to his people just before the scout drove itself into a Spire. The explosion decimated the structure, sending bits of flaming debris and organic matter flying in all directions. A nearby sunken colony had just finished with a pair of attack cycles, and the heavily damaged structure drove a tentacle into the ground, only to have it burst up through one of Arathes' warriors. The mutant never knew what hit him. Enraged, Arathes turned aside from his path and, with assistance from two other Dark Templar, drove his psi blade into the sunken colony before it could attack again. The three turned away, leaving a bloody, useless mess. They needed to destroy the Cerebrate. He set his gaze upon it, and his determination grew still greater.
* * *
Safely at the outpost, Slavik watched as the Dominion idiots continued to bombard the capitol building, apparently unaware that their targets had fled. He was increasingly convinced that it was nothing short of miraculous that the Dominion had survived this long. Were all humans in this universe as incompetent as those he'd so thus far? Sighing in disgust, he turned to his comms officer once again.
"What's the status on the Banshee squadrons?"
"The Chronosphere is charging now, sir, they should be arrival any minute."
"And the Hand?"
"Base 2 is reporting that the Chronosphere there should be up and running in about fifteen minutes. The Hand is prepped for launch, and will be arrival not long after the banshees."
"That will leave them open to attack from those two Battlecruisers for a while. Not exactly an ideal situation. Tell Base 2 to cut the time in half or they can expect to be thrown out of the airlocks."
"Yes sir."
Slavik returned to watching the remote view available in the outpost command station just as one of the Battlecruisers amassed enough power to use its Yamato Cannon. This should be interesting. There was a relatively small glare on the screen as the energy started to focus directly in front of the large ship. The moment it was all condensed, it flew out, barely contained, towards the capitol building. In a brilliant flash, a huge portion of the structure disappeared. A moment later, the outpost shook violently, the somewhat weakened shockwave passing over them. Another moment, and the sound of the explosion, which must have been deafening at the site, reached them. The Wraith fighters strafed the remains of the building a bit more before moving to return to their respective hangars.
Just as they did so, a large rift was opened in mid-air, and swarms of Nod's Banshee fighters boiled out. The first few in range quickly dispatched several Wraiths with no trouble before the other Dominion craft started cloaking.
"Order all pilots to engage multi-frequency scanning." Ever since he first learned about the Dominion's cloaking technology, Slavik had had his technicians working on ways to duplicate, and counter it. As a result, they had quickly installed specialized scanning systems on all of the available Banshees that looked across the entire spectrum, and took several other factors into account. In essence, the cloaked fighters were still all-too visible for Nod's aces. What was more, Nod's disk-shaped craft handled much better in atmosphere than the bulky, oddly designed Wraiths.
The Banshees swept in and out of the Dominion formation, turning, rolling, spinning, and otherwise confusing the Dominion forces with great agility while the Wraiths struggled to keep up. The Banshees began splitting up by wing pairs and systematically blasting the Wraiths out of the sky. Somewhat to Slavik's surprise, more Wraiths rose from the surface, but instead of attacking Nod, turned on their fellow Dominion forces. A smile crept across the Nod leader's otherwise serious features. Victory was at hand. But still, it would take more than those fighters to eliminate the Battlecruisers, and even now the large ships' guns were opening up. While the fighters were agile enough to dodge most of the blasts, the persistent gunners nonetheless managed to wrack up a considerable number of kills in the cloud of ships.
The second cruiser fired its Yamato Cannon into a tight formation of Wraiths and Banshees. They all vanished in one massive explosion. Damn it, where is that-
As if on command, another large rift opened. Through it came Nod's newest weapon, the Hand of Kane. After Kane's second disappearance, Slavik searched some of his personal files. There he found notes on some of the things that his leader had learned from the Tacitus. After reviewing those notes, Slavik had immediately launched a mission to reclaim the crashed Scrin ship from the bumbling hands of GDI. The mission was successful, and Slavik set Nod's top scientists and engineers to work on taking the thing apart and adapting. The result now floated into his view, largely unchanged in design from its original form, but more suited for Nod's purposes. Massive and powerful, beautiful and deadly, the Hand of Kane was, he believed, a match even for the greatest of the Protoss's weapons. Its black-and-red hull was developed from a tiberium base into an alloy stronger than anything previously known. As if its near-invincible shell was not enough protection, Nod's scientists had recently adapted the shield technology from an abandoned Protoss vehicle a scout team had found at an old battle site.
To push the odds even further in Nod's favor, the Hand had a wonderful array of weapons. Numerous gun emplacements all along its hull fired variants of the energy blasts utilized by he Banshees; the blasts were similar, but about fifty times more powerful. They would easily blast a hole through any Dominion or Zerg craft or structure, and would even do severe damage to Protoss shields. In addition, the Hand featured a variant on the chemical missiles. The projectile would launch at amazingly fast speeds, embed itself in its target, and begin burrowing. Cutting through anything in its way, it would wait until it reached the interior of the structure or ship, and then release massive amounts of tiberium gas. If that did not kill everything in sight, the final, massive explosion would.
As the Hand moved into position, the Battlecruisers changed their focus to it instead of the fighters. Taking that opportunity, one squadron made a pass at the second cruiser's engines, obliterating them entirely. The Hand launched a trio of chemical missiles at the crippled cruiser, one straight into the forward decks, the others veering off to either side before impacting. The first began once again to charge its Yamato Cannon. Every gun emplacement on Nod's monstrosity with a clear shot opened fire on the Dominion ship. Several shots tore all the way through the ship, coming out the other end, and all caused considerable damage.
"All fighters pull back!" Slavik ordered.
The fire from the Hand breached the first cruiser's power core and the hammerheaded ship came apart from within at the same moment that the chemical missiles detonated in the other one, shredding most of it. Nod's fighters sped away from the disaster, most of them making it intact. The blast completely blocked out any view of the Hand. The burning wreckage- what relatively little there was left-crashed into the surface, setting off uncountable secondary explosions. When the screens finally cleared, the Hand was there. The perseverance of Nod's true leader lived on in their greatest weapon. Unhurt, it started towards the outpost. It was time they returned home.
* * *
Caught in numerous battles across the span of the Zerg base, Arathes had long since lost contact with Etris, and could only assume that the other strike team had been destroyed. He had with him only two of his Dark Templar brothers. Their situation had grown well past desperate to sheer hopelessness. It was suicide to stay, and it was suicide to leave. He had only one option. Just as he steeled himself to make a last-ditch mad dash for the Cerebrate, something above caught his eye.
Completely unnoticed in the raging conflict, one Protoss Arbiter floated alone in the sky. He could not recall having an Arbiter in his force. What was it doing? He reached out telepathically, and suddenly the horrible truth dawned on him. NO! With his mental cry, the Arbiter pulled back, revealing what it had been hiding. Now plainly seen above the battle was nearly an entire fleet of Protoss ships of the same kind used to attack the Terran colonies Chau Sara and Mar Sara. He could not believe what he was seeing! They were really going to burn this Earth just to destroy one Cerebrate when their best and only hope of truly killing it was no more than thirty yards away!
"We must kill the Cerebrate Now!!!" he called to his brothers over the rising shrieks of he Zerg forces. They ran. The guns powered up. They drew ever closer. He tripped over the corpse of a zergling, but his brothers ran on. They knew what was at stake. He jumped to his feet and sprinted forward. His brothers had reached the Cerebrate and were busily alternating between slashing at it and defending themselves from enraged Zerg. He looked up for an instant. They were really going to fire. He could see the Cerebrate weakening. With a tremendous, wordless battle cry, he leapt forward, and plunged his psi blade into the foul thing's brain, killing it. That instant, the ships above fired. The wave of energy overwhelmed him. He, his brothers, and everything around disintegrated. The ships continued their bombardment, systematically moving to position themselves for greatest destruction.
* * *
Having returned to his own universe aboard the Hand of Kane, Slavik was thoroughly pleased with himself and his men. The Brotherhood was on the rise again. Soon they would be an unstoppable force. A transmission came through to his private quarters from their Antarctic base.
"Yes, what is it?"
"Sir," the officer was panicked, "A Protoss fleet appeared a short time ago and began bombarding the main Zerg base. The base was destroyed, and now they're.Sir, they're destroying everything! The Protoss are wiping out all life on Earth! They will be here any second! We're the last, we." and with a burst of static he was gone. Slavik sat unspeaking. The ship's intercom beeped, undoubtedly his bridge officer reporting the same. Gone. It was all gone. An uncontrollable rage built up in Slavik. The Protoss had destroyed every last base, every last person, every last thing on the planet. Now Nod had nothing. Wrong. Not quite nothing.
Finally, he answered the intercom. "Sir."
"I know," he cut the officer off, "I know. The Earth is gone."
"What do we do now, sir?"
"Take us to the lunar base."
Fortunately, Slavik had had the foresight to begin setting up a small base on the moon. That was some time ago, and it had rapidly become large- one of their most important in fact. It was the base from which the Hand had first launched, and now they would return there. They would return to the last base at their disposal. And yet he was not totally without hope. They did have the seized Dominion bases on Korhal and several other worlds. They would rebuild somewhere. They would survive. But first he had to do something.
As the Hand made its final descent towards the moon base, a small craft, reminiscent of a Banshee, slid in behind it, completely unnoticed. When the Hand moved to enter its hangar space, the small craft broke off, and went to an older, less used area of the compound. There it settled, and its lone passenger disembarked.
