Chapter 1: An Evolutionary Response
In had been only two years since the incident occurred on the 3rd moon of Tyconus. Swarms of zergs had already obliterated hundreds of settlements, raided thousands of outposts, overrun millions of worlds and infested countless number of human beings. They had defined their own '3 all' to those who stood in their path.
Destroy all, consume all and infest all. Millions of worlds were laid to waste by the zerg swarm. Millions of cities were desecrated and infested. Billions of lives were slaughtered with unimaginable brutality. Seven of the thirteen systems were taken by the zergs before the United Systems Defense Protocol was formed. All systems had agreed that the zergs would be the undoing of humanity if not stopped immediately. The new military resolution was adopted with overwhelming popularity by all the leaders and their people. Soon millions, maybe billions of troops and reserves were called to arm. The human alliance struck back with ferocity. Military forces began to pour into various troubled systems and started a massive intergalactic war with the zergs on all fronts. Both sides were overwhelming in number and triple beyond prepare, however for nearly two years the humans were fighting a losing battle as the zerg gained new ground day by day. More lives were lost, more cities had fallen to the zergs, and the human race was heading closer to extinction and if the heroes do exist as the prophecy said, now was the time he would come to light. Only if he existed in this universe.
Zerg cave, City of Marjib, Planet Colo Colo, D'artina system
Through the dark alleys of the ancient city Marjib, troops of the 153rd battalion were moving swiftly towards the hot zone. There was only minor zerg infestation on this sector and heavy artilleries and massive air power encircled them. The only thing need was the troops to go in there for the mop up. With the absolute destruction of this zerg cave, Colo Colo's zerg population can be cut dramatically by 80 percent since this planet was only a small zerg outpost, there won't be any other zerg producing caves. None would be formed yet.
Lieutenant Coleman was running at full bar towards the hot zone. Flanking him was his nineteen-year-old protégé Sergeant Zhang. Behind her were the other troops of the Bravo Company. Sergeant Zhang's eyes were like those of the eagles sharp and always pin pointing. Two months as a scout was enough experience for her to be one of the most deadly believers in the army. Burning wreckage caused by aerial bombardment and shelling made the terrain nearly inaccessible. But the marines still advanced rapidly with the aid of their intense training of the past three years and their adrenaline rush.
'Okay, 2nd platoon and 4th platoon, watch the flank, 7th platoon watch our rear. Readings tells me the zerg hive is not far.' The newly invented bio scanner made by some geniuses had eased the jobs of the marines by a considerable margin. On the scanner, those that glowed red were all zergs and there was a whole heap of them gather together ahead.
Speak of the zergs, around thirty popped out of their burrow and headed right for the marines. The only thing nowadays that was faster than the zergs were the bullets from the gun.
'Alright boys, teach them some rules of engagement.' That was Zhang. Not only she was one of the youngest soldier ever to be in the marine, she was also one of the best marksman/woman. At least in her battalion.
The newly modified M-209 assault rifle was bulky but was amazingly light and reliable. Each marine had one of these, one would be fool without it. This was the bread and butter of the marine corp. The M-209 assault rifles allowed its magazines to vary but each marine had the maximum round capacity of 200. With an over and under grenade launcher. Anyone carried this toy and with some decent armor can be a force to be reckoned with. Around fifty of these rifle opened fire with the support from M-6000s light machine gun and IC-11 flame-thrower. The thirty zerglings were shot, burned and cut down before they even reached half the distance. With up to one hundred guns firing at the same time, everything in front of the marines was a field of distortion. The marines didn't stop firing until everything in front of them stopped moving.
The marines quickly hopped over the bodies of the zerglings that were either burnt or riddled with bullets. Another wave of zerglings with some support from the hydralisks made their charge against the marines. Again there was a big firefight and the marines didn't stop shooting until everything wasn't moving. The marines continued as they increased their winning streak to 2-nil.
The area around the zerg cave entrance was quiet as expected; they were all zerg like. In other words, everything in the area that was infested by the zergs had organic matter on them. The young and resourceful Zhang nearly threw up like, likewise for a few hundred men behind her. The zerg certainly had and edge over the other races in a war. Everything about the zergs were terrifying, their architect, if any, body appearance, tactic, you name it. The humans were not immune to their stomach-churning atmosphere either. Just about everybody had their molecule curled for a while before they got used to the zerg 'culture'. Only lieutenant Coleman seemed to be functioning normal. He quickly issued command to move in.
'Lieutenant, it's all clear.' Corporal Boon reported in. The marines now advanced with great caution, knowing that the zergs would ambush them at the turn of every corner. They reached the zerg infestation with no engagement.
The zerg cave was basically a huge organism that was buried underneath the ground, not that anybody had been down there. Satellite data had shown that there were about four hundred separate tunnels that connect the cave to the surface. A small cave hosted at least forty thousand zergs of various kinds and they could surface out of any of the four hundred tunnels simultaneously.
Seemed like Bravo Company wasn't the first group of marines to arrive, the troops of the Charlie Company were already there thrashing about. They fired at everything that moved. Pretty scenic when watching from afar but not so fun when anyone was in the thick of the action. Since there were only two kinds of lives that move, the zerg or the human. If the one wasn't a human then it must be a zerg. Charlie Company was heavily engaged in action, they were swarmed by the zergs. Wave after waves of zergs were repelled as they forced their ways though the blockade. The lucky thing was that the Charlie Company had a few dozens of those newly developed mobile infantry support suits.
The battle suit wasn't pretty but robust enough to handle any terrain and situation, especially ones like this. The interior of the suit was pretty much as anyone would have expected, tight and uncomfortable. The occupant had to be secured by harnessing all the seat belts together. The designer didn't care about the comfort of the occupants, only for the combat effectiveness of the suit. As long as the occupant won't suffocate, that was fine.
The suit was big, bigger any of the humans. It was extensively armored in all areas. Its reactive armors were sufficient enough to cover all parts of the body as they could stop any projectiles with less than 1500mm of penetrating strength. Its joints were protected by extendible armor when moved into an exposing position, so no cheap blow could easily cripple the suit.
For a single suit, it easily weighed about 760 pounds and for that weight, it still moved with amazing speed and agility. The armored body suits were outfitted with the latest military technologies. Apart from its built in 360 degree by 100 meters motion tracker and GPS equipment. It had electronic shock wave glass visor to allow the person inside to view its surrounding in infrared, electromagnetic and x-ray. The visor also had built in auto aiming system for its missiles.
The battle suits were also outfitted with the latest killing tools. Mounted on both shoulders were the new MR 22s missiles. Fitted with high explosive and napalm that ignite on impact. The only thing that could fully kill a zerg nowadays was fire. The missile could also function as rockets. They were very useful if an area needed immediate cleaning. Each suit was equipped with about 200 of these. The suit had no hand but in replacement, they were armed with a pair of 9mm chainguns, one on each arm. Accompanying the chaingun was a flame-thrower similar to that of the IC-11 except with a larger muzzle and a bigger fuel canister. The other sidekick to the chaingun was the LZ-3000s particle beam laser cannon. Accurate and penetrating. No zerg carapaces could stand against the laser. The only draw back was that the laser soaked up the energy too quickly and would shut down if overheated. The most important aspect of the suit was that it was also equip with the movement sensory tools. Other words, whatever the occupants do, the suit would do the same. The suits could also jump to a considerable height that no human could. 5 meters was the maximum because of the mini nitrogen booster fitted on the bottom of the feet. If the suit happened to be in an unfortunate position, they could always jump out of it, and crush a few upon on their landing.
While the Charlie Company was cutting through the zerg ranks, the Bravo company slipped in unnoticed, or that was what they thought was. Although the zerg had no defense structure, it didn't mean they had no defense for their cave's entrance. When the Bravo Company had ventured onto their creep, sections of the creep sunk into and revealed their defensive spikes stored within and began to project them at the marines. Few were caught straight on and the pikes easily drove through their bodies. The luck few were maimed, even though the pain was excruciating, it was still better than being dead.
'Scatter! Grenade the two pits!' The order of Coleman was sharp and sound. The marines quickly dived for cover and shot back. Neither bullets nor grenades seemed to be able to cause any harm. When the grenades were lobbed at the spike pit, it quickly let the creep cover it as the grenades exploded harmlessly. Only when the Red Arrow hand held missile launcher was brought in play, some fruitful result happened.
Although the pit could stand bullets and grenade, it could not hold off the missile. The heavy penetration of the missile easily ripped through the creep and blew the three spike pits inside out by three Red Arrow missiles.
The Bravo Company moved forth yet again. Having only lost about 20 men so, far they have done pretty good. The cave entrance was only about 200 meters away as the fighting around it was getting intensive. The Charlie Company got most of the zergs pretty well occupied as the Bravo Company had relative little resistance. Little resistance in this case meant no more then two hundred zergs went for them.
'Get the cavern buster ready!' The cavern buster was like a mini nuke, especially designed for the unreachable zerg cave. It had a timer set and will go off after the time had expired. The buster was like a bag and it had to be thrown into to the cave's entrance and let it fall deep enough into the cave and let it explode from inside out. The cave may be invincible from aerial or orbital bombing, not from a little spark within it.
The distance was shrinking as the Bravo boys and girls were uninterrupted. A cheap victory could happen shortly but the zergs had other plans. From hundreds of the tunnels, a few hundreds zergs came out and charged for the closest human enemy.
The zerglings charge the marines with amass, they just pounced on anything that was not zerg. The hydralisks were far more dangerous as their carapace provide all the difficulties for the bullets to penetrate as the marines had to switch to the rather more risky weapon, the grenade launchers at close quarter. Result was as imagined. Quiet a few were killed by the shrapnel of the grenade explosions. However, not all were bad, as the grenades in the hands of the pros were truly deadly. Veterans could single handily flatten a closely-knit groups of zergs with one grenade if shot with great precision.
'Veterans' like Rebecca Zhang took out anther six zergs with a calm and well placed lob of grenade that exploded in the centre of them. More zergs were coming from the flanks but in all of sudden, the zergs were crawling out in front the marines as well.
The only way was back for the Bravo Company. And that too looked impossible when another group of zergs emerged from the hidden tunnels behind them. There were fair amounts of covers in the ruins of the long abandoned city.
Machine gunner Jackson and Rudy were merely missed by the spikes shot from the spiklings. The pair of machine gunner gave back their immediate attention and pumped the zergs full of lead before they had any chance to recuperate the spikes and shoot again.
The zergs were mobbing in from all direction. And the marines were slowly encircled. Bombing was called off as they would surely kill scores of marines as well as the zergs. The top priority now was the total destruction of the cave. Lieutenant Coleman desperately urged all to advance but that was getting difficult by the minute.
'Platoon 3 and 4, you hold them off. The rest of you charge for the cave entrance and just get the damn buster into it!' The lieutenant had the cave buster in hand as he led the marine forward. But suddenly the ground beneath him diverged as he fell, into a pit of zerglings
His scream of anger not of pain. Sergeant Zhang rushed to rescue but she knew before hand that was useless.
'You…have just been promoted to lieutenant…take this and…blo…' That was the last thing Rebecca heard from Coleman before he was taken down and shredded.
Rebecca picked up the explosive and unconsciously noted that it had been armed. Probably from the finger jerking by Coleman when he was attacked. A flame thrower soldier fell right beside her as two hydralisks headed for her way. She dropped to the ground and let the flame soldier's body as a shield for the two spikes and then she used the flame-thrower to ignite the zergs. Burning them always gave her the satisfaction. Only to the fact that her parents were victims of the zergs' infamous 3 all. She glanced at the time again, and now it dropped to 4 minutes. She also looked at her palm radar and she was only 50 yards away from the entrance. She looked at her path while wiping the sweat off her head, she decided to make a break for it.
This was like the good old football match back in the college days. With the flamer from the dead soldier in one hand and the buster in the other, Rebecca ran with full pace towards the entrance. Here was when all similarities with football ended. Back in the college, the opposition guys tried to tackle and stop her, the opposition zerg here will probably do anything to put her out of the contest. When zergs tried to crash at her straight on, she unleashed a stream of liquid napalm and toasted a whole bunch of them. Another three hydralisks charged at her. She timed a perfect leap over then with amazing acrobatic ability, while doing a mid term twist in the air. She also managed to turn the three hydralisks to crisp with doing the flipping.
The last few seconds went by in almost slow motion. Rebecca knew that the time was down to ten seconds and she was still ten meters away. She threw the buster bag with all of her might. The bag went over hundreds of zergs as they too looked at it in bewilderment. The zergs' expression changed from bewilderment to shock then to terror as the bomb went straight into cave in a perfect arc. The ground rumbled shortly as the cave exploded from within. The ground near the cave all bulged upwards and the full impact of the explosion rocked everything in its 1-mile radius. The seismic wave also ripped through countless hordes of zergs that were within the explosion area. Their bodies simply went apart. The humans were affected much less as the seismic shock was designed to kill zergs.
Through the mist of smoke, Rebecca could smell the strong odor of the zerg. When the smoke had dissipated, she could see a huge crater created by the explosion and bits and pieces that belong to the hive along had been blown to the surface. Something that look like the unhatched eggs were still alive but slowly they died. Rebecca showed no remorse as she simply stepped on them and deliberately meshed them to ensure they won't pop up again.
The foul smell of rotten flesh and stale egg combined was too foul, Rebecca could even taste it. She threw up, even her vomit tasted better then the foul stench. When she had finished she could feel her body was shivering all over and was perspiring cold sweat. Other soldiers came up to her and patted her as a congratulation. She barely had the strength to return the thanks. She felt weak, every sound sounded so dragged and unclear. Her vision was also a blur. The last thing she remembered was that her knee buckled as she fell and everything went blank.
Alfred's army hospital
Rebecca woke in a nightmare as she was chased down by a few thousand zergs and was slowly dissected and played around by them. She was well alive as the dissection took place. She felt much stronger now, still sweating heavily. The doctor told her that she fainted from over exhaustion and needed rest. She was given two more days of rest in the hospital
On the final day, she was visited by General Fallconio, a four star big shot who normally didn't give a damn about the lives of the soldiers, only their pride. This was different, through the most talked about the scene capture on screen of Lieutenant Zhang's inspiring throw of the bomb that rid the last remnant of the zergs. He had to pay a visit.
As he entered her room, Gen. Fallconio saw Zhang was up and was exercising the traditional push-ups. She immediately noticed the general and saluted with discipline. Rebecca Zhang reminded the general of his long dead wife. She was oriental by the Earth standard. Head strong and dashing in action, striking beautiful in appearance. Rebecca was a lovely girl, by her nature people will immediately be attracted to her. She had long black hair and soft brown eyes. Even though the battlefield had made her rough and 'man' like, she was still gentle and caring for most of the time. A person's nature can never be changed no matter under what circumstances. At one stage Fallconio even pitied Rebecca that a person of such quality was wasted in the army, she should have chased other professions such as modeling or the movie industry, while being rich and famous, she could also stand out of the war. He decided to hold his question because he thought it as silly. That could well hurt the pride of a soldier. The worst injury to a soldier was not death but the damage of the pride.
'At easy Lieutenant.' He said.
'Sorry sir, lieutenant?' She choked up the title.
'First lieutenant, when you are ready to leave, sign up at docking bay 4 and that will get you to Corrojeva.' Fallconio explained. 'So, lieutenant familiarize yourself with the new rank and I will see you around. You might one day be seated next to my office for a few more moves like that at Marjib.'
'What would I do at Corrojeva'
'Well, let me offer you a clue, the only thing more difficult to handle than the zergs are to make beardless grunts to hate them.'
'An marine instructor.'
'Well, a lieutenant has his or her difficulties too.' He saluted, turned and left.
Hmmm, first lieutenant, not bad, she thought, at least she could exert some authority over the troops at last. She would carry on the job of the past away lieutenant Coleman. She shrugged off the thought and continued the push-ups.