Through Thick and Thin
Chapter 1: Facing the Monster
It was very strange being transported inside the belly of an enormous Overlord, though not as uncomfortable as she had imagined. The thing functioned like an organic Dropship, producing a soft and slightly slimy webbing to rest in, and to prevent its monstrous cargo from getting damaged. Sarah still had her armor, her weapons, her cloaking device – the Zerg had even managed to find her a box of edible SynthRations, delivered to her by a pair of crablike Drones, each about the size of a small horse. It was making her nervous.
I am being treated more like an honored guest than a prisoner of war – why? What does this alien bastard want with me?
She had reached the ruined surface of Tarsonis an hour previous, and had been transferred from one Overlord to another – collected and dropped off at different hive clusters, all of which seemed to be based in the ruins of major cities. As she watched, the Zerg seemed to be stripping the ruins of resources – including steel, petroleum, and vespene gas – and bringing them to the hive centers to be "eaten" by the huge, organic hives.
The process of collection and transport was comfortable, gentle even, and somewhere in the back of her mind there was a steady hum, pulsing to a lullaby rhythm that slowed her thoughts, relaxing her body like a narcotic. She didn't even realize that she had fallen asleep.
In her dream she was playing outside on her homeworld, Antiga Prime, her six-year old knees hidden in the tall grass. Her hair was plaited into red pigtails, and she wore a light colored jumpsuit that brushed against the meadow as she ran through. Suddenly there was a voice that she almost recognized calling her name.
"Sarah, Sarah, you need to get back to the house! Your mother is getting worried, you've been gone all day."
Somehow she knew this man was Father, but when she looked at him, he had no face. He beckoned for her, and she ran to him and hugged him, because she loved him. When she looked up, however, the man was no longer her forgotten father, but Col. Hunter, the harsh and bitter man who had been charged by the Confederacy to turn fifty boys and girls between the ages of four and seven into Ghosts.
Twenty-three of them survived the training and came out, twelve years later.
Col. Hunter scowled at her, and she broke away from him, afraid of his anger, but before he could strike her he disappeared and in his place was Arcturus, reaching out his hand to help her. She took it, because she knew that if she didn't, Col. Hunter would come back.
He smiled at her, and they walked together until she stumbled on a rock, and her six-year-old self fell and skinned her knee. When she looked to him for help, he struck her across the face and disappeared, leaving her alone and in pain in an unknown land.
"They all have hurt you, my daughter, abandoned you cruelly and left you to suffer alone." The voice was soothing, comforting, and healed her pain. "Soon, you will come to me, and you will be the most precious of my children, and you will never know fear or loneliness ever again."
She wanted to go to the voice, but it kept getting farther away... she ran after it, but the faster she pursued the more it fled before her, until she was chasing it endlessly... she needed it, it was the only way to end her pain.
Kerrigan awoke with a start, still enclosed in the protective cocoon within the Overlord's belly. She blinked her eyes rapidly and adjusted her protective facemask, trying to remember her dream. It slipped away from her, however, and her concentration was distracted by the background humming, which had grown more intense while she slept.
She opened her mind again, trying to find clues as to where she was, and was almost overpowered by the psychic pressure on her mind. Wherever she was, there was a being of enormous power nearby – power so great that it would make her greatest efforts seem like a flare next to a volcano. She hastily erected her psychic defenses again, and then checked her weapons and gear on reflex.
Not, she reflected bitterly, that they were going to do her much good.
She was placed on the infested soil of the planet by the Overlord with such speed that she didn't realize what was happening until she was already on the surface. Before her was the enormous shape of the Cerebrate. It was huge – it resembled nothing so much as an immense, maggoty brain, pulsing and quivering beneath an armored "skin." Keeping her defenses rigidly in place, she briefly opened her psionic senses and "saw" it for what it truly was.
It was utterly foreign and somehow wrong, an offense against nature, and it made the horror of its physical appearance seem almost pleasant by comparison. The cerebrate was situated at the center of an impossibly complex web of connection and control. Icy black tendrils of enslaving will radiated from it in four dimensions, and always they stirred and lashed about, seeking to dominate all living things. That which could not be controlled, she realized with a flash of insight, would be destroyed so utterly that no evidence of its existence would ever remain.
All around her, she could feel the pulse of the Zerg base, a deep basso thrumming like a satanic heartbeat, right on the edge of her subconscious. Kerrigan's body tried to shudder in horror, but she choked down the impulse. The Ghost's heart raced, and sweat suddenly slicked the inside of her skintight combat jumpsuit. All around her, armies of the alien Zerg scurried about, jostling at each other, and tearing apart what remained of the capital city of Tarsonis.
The voice of the thing before her seemed to come from everywhere at once. Touch my shell, Terran, it whispered in her mind. The creature pulsed, only a meter away from her, and she felt her arm move of its own accord.
She shut her mind in horror, straining with the effort, and battled mightily to bring her hand back to her side. "Not until I am sure you have kept your part of the bargain, Zerg," she said aloud. Her voice shook. "Show me that my brood is safe."
There was a brief pause, and when the creature again "spoke," it seemed almost amused. I could break your mind apart right now, oh Kerrigan, and there is nothing you could do about it. Why should I uphold my end of the agreement?
Sarah felt a brief stab of panic, but she forced it out of her voice. "I will take poison if you try, you disgusting bug," she hissed. "I have a lullaby in my suit – complete brain death within seconds. I know you need me alive, so why don't you stop fraxing around and show me what I want to see?"
The cerebrate's amusement vanished. See what I see, insolent one. Kerrigan barely had time to blink before her mind was bombarded by images, slightly distorted as though seen through alien eyes.
Three battlecruisers, still emblazoned with the Sons of Korhal insgnia, hovered in place a thousand yards above the ruined Protoss base. A flood of Zerg spread out in a half circle around the ruins, just out of range.
Kerrigan watched a fleet of Dropships cruise down out of orbit and coast over the hastily erected barricades, disgorging companies of marines to reinforce her barricades, and picking up streams of panicked civilians.
An armored hoverbike shot out of a dropship and blasted towards the front lines. The man on the bike shouted orders all around him, then seemed to get into an argument with another man wearing powered armor. The marine, resplendent in a Major's rank markings, pressed a piece of paper into the biker's hand.
The biker's face could not be seen behind his armored faceplate, but he crumpled the paper and threw it to the metal surface of the space station. He shouted more orders, and the marines abandoned the barricade and fell back to the dropships. This man was the last man off the surface of New Gettysburg station, and before he disappeared, he scanned the ruined space station one last time, desperately searching for hope amidst the ashes. He didn't find it, and disappeared into the dropship as the flood of Zerg, no longer checked, surged forwards. Within minutes, the fleet disappeared into the blackness of space.
She was truly alone. Her men were safe, but there would be no rescue – Jim thought she was dead for sure. She looked back up at the cerebrate. If the Zerg thought the tears were unusual, it didn't make a comment.