-Starcraft

--Dead on Delivery

---Chapter 6: Now from All Sides...

Before I knew it, Fahren's guys had ripped us out of the truck, and forced us to get on our knees with hands behind our heads. It was perfectly clear that if we tried something, full automatic retaliation was not out of the question. The only thing I could look at a time like that, was the truck. It looked bad. Headfirst in a crater. But the trailer was still on even ground. It's just the truck cab that was almost underground. They had gotten another tank to swing around, and began to pull the thing out. But we hadn't forgotten. There was still a Siege Tank in Siege Mode not to far away... This must have been all new stuff. I mean... most of Fahren's crap was destroyed by Zerg right? Of course... now that I think about it. We hadn't stuck around to see how that fight worked out.

There wasn't much we could do anyway. They had taken all our weapons and Orange's tanks so he couldn't light a candle. Well, actually, let me rephrase that. They pulled my revolver out of my jacket and simply laughed at it. They tossed it some ways away without so much as another thought. When they did that... I felt... so... naked.

"Boss!" Crick cried. "What's going on? We thought you were dead!"

"We thought we were goners with all those Zerg running around." Orange continued.

"Shut up! You infested bastards!"

Infested? What?

"Soon as you took off, so did the Zerg! They were just covering your escape!"

"What!?" I nearly yelled.

I could feel someone's heavy rifle stock hit me in the back of the head.

"God damn boss. They're after the truck. They're after something Derringer didn't want us to know about." Crick tried to reason.

"And you f#$ing morons opened it up did you? You little bastards..."

"Wait! You knew?"

"Of course I knew! You don't think I'm stupid enough to take a job without inspecting the cargo!"

"You are way too paranoid! We were running for our lives! The Zerg are still after us! They almost killed us!" I screamed.

Ouch, the next blow was with some force behind it. I went face first into the sand, with the world spinning around me. I could still hear them talk.

"Lay off the civilian boss!"

"Oh yes. About your civilian friend..."

Farhen marched right up and picked me up off the ground by my hair. I took hurried breaths, it was excruciating. But Fahren wanted it to be like that.

"Your friend is one of them! One of the Zerg! That's how they found us!"

Crick, Orange, and even Scratch turned to look at me. No way they were buying this shit. I'd think I would know if a Queen flew to Arid Col and shoved a parasite down my throat while I was sleeping. They didn't say anything. Just lookin' at me funny like they believed Fahren... Wait... they wouldn't actually believe Fahren? Would they?

"Infested?" Orange repeated.

"Damn right! You sorry piss ant! I'm gonna burn his sorry ass so the Zerg parasite goes with him."

He threw me face first to the ground and caused my nose to sting even more than before. The warm icky sensation of blood flowing soon found it's way there, and now I had a bloody nose thanks to that paranoid weirdo! Somehow, I managed to push myself up off the ground and began to cough.

"What about the Protoss? How'd they find out?" I choked out.

"What Toss'? There aren't any Protoss on this world! And even if there were, don't think I'd believe an infested #$% up like yourself!"

"Protoss are here." Scratch reported slowly.

It figures Fahren would pay attention to a Ghost instead of me. But that got across the message. He didn't seem to worried when Orange coughed up the moment about the Dark Templar. Their commander just threw his head back and let out an angry laugh.

"High orbit Science Vessel is going to let us know everything we need to. So just sit tight. The only place you four are going, is a body bag!"

"What? An execution out in the middle of the desert?" Crick asked.

Fahren paused cocked his head to the side and began to pace. He was thinking. He was thinking up a very painful way to kill us. Something so cruel it was just the embodiment of space. Lifeless, devoid of any feeling. I don't know how long he moved back and forth like that. But I did remember when he turned and put his hands on his hips.

"I'm leaving you four out here. In the desert. You can walk off your sentence. The sun or the Zerg or whatever else is out here will make short work of you. The only way you'd escape from this is if I came back to get you."

Oh shit. He was going to leave us out here unarmed in middle of the shifting sands. With the Zerg moving in all around us... oh god... oh god... oh god...

"Nice of you to do that boss." Scratch said sarcastically.

"Humph. So the killing machine does have a little soul left in him. Now I know why you went along with these bastards."

With that, Fahren turned away and called down a Dropship. He did leave plenty of guys to make sure we didn't try anything and once they dug the truck out of the smoking crater and got it road ready again, they were off. All we could do, with the Siege Tank pointing it's Shock Cannon in our direction was watch them and suck the fumes of that rickety old truck. I had to close my eyes as the sand kicked up from the Dropship and the fleeing vehicles got in my eyes. By the time I had rubbed them enough to get the sand out and looked up, they were gone. Scratch was first to move and stood up. He looked around for awhile and then shrugged. Crick and Orange stood up as well. But I stayed on the ground.

"God damn... the desert... we'll never make it..." I realized.

It was just sand and rocks and canyons in every direction. I looked to see they were walking, going somewhere...

"Where are you guys going?" I stuttered.

"Away from you Raleigh. We'll live longer." Crick answered.

My heart almost stopped beating.

"What!? You don't mean to tell me... you believe him!? Infested? Me? I'm a nobody! Why would the Zerg screw around with me! I'm a nobody! A nobody on a nobody planet!"

They just kept walking, and I stood up to follow them. That's when Crick turned around and put his fists up like he wanted to punch me good. I stopped immediately.

"Look Raleigh! Even though our boss just backstabbed us, we'd trust him more than some guy we never met before."

I took one more step and nearly tripped over something. It was my revolver. Quickly, I swooped down and picked it up. Cocked the hammer back, and aimed it at Crick's forehead.

"What the-"

"Shut up! No one move! Specially you Scratch! Cloak and I'll wax him!"

"What if I don't care?" Scratch asked.

Geez... what a time to develop a mouth. I thought this guy was silent?

"Look, I don't want to hurt you guys... I just don't want to be left alone... Out here... in the middle of nowhere..."

I couldn't aim my gun anymore as I realized just what I was going up against and fell to my knees. None of them tried to disarm me even though it probably would have been a cake walk and just stared. They knew I was too unstable to pose any threat.

"Raleigh... you could be Infested. Do you know what that means?"

"Yeah... I could be a Zerg magnet... But we don't have the truck anymore... we shouldn't be bothered right?"

They didn't have any answers and just looked off into the distance.

"Let's just... walk..." Orange decided for us.

So that's what we did. Just walked across the hot desert, one foot step at a time. Sand blowing in our faces and everything. Some time later it was dark now. Night time. We had to rely on Crick and Orange's suit lights. It was maybe a lighted view a couple feet ahead of us, but it wasn't much. Other than that, it was just like that tunnel before, pitch black. We walked and walked and walked some more in complete silence. There was nothing to say. Well, maybe to complain about the heat which seemed to triple when we were outside the truck. Even when the sun went down, it was still f#$ing hot out.

Just when we thought we might as well just sit down and die, we saw some lights on the horizon. Hell, any light out in the middle of that darkness would have been a beacon. A regular light at the end of the tunnel. All of us just stopped dead in our tracks when we saw it.

"What is it?" I said for all of us.

"Some kind of vehicle... flood lights... possibly search lights..." Scratch reported as his goggles tried to provide a better view.

"Oh god, I hope it's some crazy hick who lives on the fringe and cooks Zerglings for breakfast..." Orange said as we all began to pick up our pace.

"I hope it's some guy who got a flat and needs some help changing the tire."

"Shut up Crick, no one uses tires anymore."

"Screw you Orange."

It almost felt like we were normal again, with Orange and Crick bickering over nothing like they usually did. I felt better already. Well, I felt better until we reached the source of the lights and saw it was that damn truck again. We couldn't seem to escape it.

"Oh, hell no." Crick nearly yelled.

The truck was slightly turned with his blinkers on. There was gunshots and alien slime all over the place. Terran bodies were all over the place, along with some black marks on the ground. Scratch took an interest in those pretty quickly as the rest of us just looked on. From what I could tell, it looked like someone took a giant knife and took a couple cracks at the trailer.

"Protoss were here..." Scratch told us while moving from black mark to black mark. "Recently..."

"How do you know?"

"Dead Protoss don't leave bodies. Well at least the really dead Protoss don't."

"What's that supposed to mean? The really dead?" I was confused.

Scratch just ignored me and kept going.

"Their Psi energies are too strong. When they get killed, most disappear in a burst of energy. The only thing left, is a black mark on the ground."

"Shit. They the ones who hacked the truck and these guys up?" Orange asked.

"Don't be stupid. Warp blades ain't that big..."

That's when we saw a pile of... something... It could have been a person. We weren't sure. Of course, that's when we realized this pile... was a crushed Terran. Someone had stomped half of these guys into the ground. A couple others, were cut in two. Crick gulped while I was pondering this. The color drained from his face.

"It's an Ultralisk..." He muttered.

Well... you know... I could be really surprised right now. But I already found out a long time ago, we're in for the worst of the worst out here.

"Where'd it go if it killed everyone?" Orange asked.

"Hard to drive a truck with Kaiser Blades I guess." Crick muttered. "Maybe it's going after guys who tried to run."

We got silent. Scratch was still poking around the areas where the Protoss supposedly died, but he was quiet for the most part. Out in the darkness of that desert, that truck looked like a bunker. Something where we could hole up and think for awhile. Hell, we had been driving it for so long. Escaping death a couple times here and there... it was almost another guy we were running with. We cared for the truck because it kept us moving toward safety. The truck cared for us because it if was caught by any Zerg or Protoss, it'll be scraped for sure. It wasn't alive and had no AI to talk to, but god damn if it didn't feel like another helpless wretch out in the middle of this mess.

"Ready for more bad news?" Scratch said suddenly.

Huh?

"I counted at least ten of those marks for dead Protoss. Now, they could have all been Dark Templar or some other Protoss but the point is... Look around. See any Zerg bodies?"

There were none... I already had a bad feeling where this was going.

"The only Zerg Ultralisk I know that can take on Toss and Terran without getting itself killed or severely wounded is a-"

"Don't say it man! That's f#$ing impossible!" Orange interrupted.

"Shut up Orange." Crick snapped.

It was clear to me they already knew what Scratch was going to say. But I didn't. So... I had to swallow my tongue and ask out of fear.

"What were you going to say?"

"Torrasque." Scratch laughed like he had remembered an old friend. "The advanced Zerg Ultralisk strain. We first saw it on Char, it was protecting the Overmind."

"How tough are we talking?" I stuttered.

"It's unstoppable."

"Bullshit!" Orange yelled. "We blew it to hell a couple of times."

"Yeah, we did didn't we?" Crick began with a smart tone. "Except when we did, there were rows of Siege Tanks and Battlecruisers firing on it. What do we have? Fists? Oh my god, don't even go there."

Crick turned around in anger to catch a gun before it hit his face. Scratch had been scavenging for weapons. But the weapon he handed to Crick didn't look like the Gauss Rifle I saw most Marines carry. It had a pretty big stock, and some kind of pump on it.

"Holy shit. Is this what I think it is? An Assault Shotgun?"

"That could put a hole in the Torrasque." Orange said confidently.

"Bullshit. It'll probably tickle the damn thing. No, much better on lighter targets."

He was aiming the weapon into the air as I looked it over. It must have been my facial expression, because the next thing they said was...

"Some guys call it the Tailbone. They call it that because if you don't fire it the right way, you land on your ass and bust your tailbone." Crick laughed.

Pretty soon they stole some dead Firebats' tanks and hooked it up to Orange's suit. They didn't dare offer me any heavy weaponry, mostly because I'd probably shoot my foot off if I tried. A Gauss Rifle, is not a handgun. Something a drunk buddy of mine demonstrated a couple years ago when he wanted me to empty the clip and show off his new rifle. Yeah, I shot a couple trees and some rocks, but not the target he set up on the side of this derelict building. Probably a laugh compared to Scratch's sharp shooting with a Canister Rifle... and somehow he found one. Looks like someone didn't want to dispose of a weapon like that and kept it after taking it from him.

And we didn't even have to talk about getting back in the truck. It was our only way out of this desert. Even if it was a Zerg magnet. We had to take it while the taking was good. It really didn't feel different. I drove, and the trio took their original positions. The only difference now was the fact that Fahren is probably wondering why he lost contact with the truck. Hopefully, we wouldn't see that asshole again...

"Well, take two..." I sighed.

-To be continued...

--Next Chapter: Running of the Zerg