The night air was crisp and cool, but still retained some of the heat of the day. Rather than spend their whole duty shift sitting in the bunker, Privates Nokby and Smith, or Joe and Marty, as they called each other, decided to go outside. They could cover more area on a slow walk than sitting in one place anyway. Besides, this area had not seen any action since the last battle against the Zerg, which was five years ago now. Earth years, that is. It was about three and a half years on this planet.

The ground was the familiar dusty light brown of this desert world and rocky mountains rose up in the distance. The last color was fading from the sky as the second sun retreated behind the mountains. The first had set an hour ago. Perhaps a thousand feet away Joe saw a vulture bounding along over the terrain. Just about every vulture driver he had ever known was a carefree speed junky whose love of adrenaline was surpassed only by watching an unsuspecting enemy blow up on one of his expertly placed (or so he thought at least) spider mines.

Joe had been casually wandering away from the bunker out into the empty dry plains with his attention drifting from the land to the mountains to the vulture to the darkening sky. He now noticed that Marty was no longer with him. "Marty?" he called out, looking around.

"Aaaaaaaaaaah…"

"Marty?" Joe began running back toward the bunker, and then stopped short. A small puddle of blood soaked into the dirt and disappeared. "Shit!" Joe pressed the talk button on his radio. "Echo station to base," he said frantically. "Uh, something's out here. Something just killed Marty, but I didn't see anything."

"Say again Echo," came the calm reply.

"Something just killed Marty."

"What did?"

"I don't know. I didn't see anything, but now he's dead. We were a short distance from the bunker."

"Hang on Echo." A few moments later a string a blue sparkles made a swirl in the air.

"Hey, there's somebody here!" Marty yelled. He knew something was out there, but now he could see it. The fuzzy outline of a humanoid wearing a cape stood a short distance away. It looked like the figure was holding a long blade. "Intruder alert!" Marty ran a few yards closer to the figure, leveled his Gauss rifle and fired. He saw the shield impacts of the bullets and the figure took of running. It disappeared as the comsat scan faded. "It had a shield," he reported to base, "so I think it was a Protoss."

Mary ran back to the cover of the bunker and the missile turret beside it. Maybe staying put was the better idea after all. At least from here he would see the cloaked figure if it attacked again, but it seemed to be smart enough to avoid the detectors. He looked back out at the sky through the narrow opening in the bunker feeling alone and mostly helpless now. The next few minutes he spent in this way, looking up into space, still shaken by the death of his friend and his own near death, for the Protoss invader could just as easily have killed him too. He wondered why it didn't.

Two lights appeared in the sky and grew steadily bigger. At first Marty thought they were stars, but soon realized they weren't. He made out two oddly shaped ships that he had never seen before. It looked like they had three long sections extending back from the main structure. As they drew closer the missile launcher made visible what the two weird ships were hiding. A whole group of large ships appeared. The formation came to a halt, and then a moment later hordes of small robotic drones came out of them and flew straight for the missile turret, firing small blue energy bursts. Alarms went off all over the base and the turret began firing like crazy, although the multiple drones had it confused. Marty took aim and fired at one of the large ships, but he knew that he would barely scratch it.

A group of goliaths walked up and engaged the enemy formation, but they didn't last long. Marty ran from the bunker and all around him other missile turrets were exploding and bunkers were collapsing. With the outer defenses mostly destroyed, the cloud of drones went in and attacked the core buildings. The barracks and factory were already on fire and the SCVs were in a frenzy with some of them running for their lives after taking a hit and the others attempting without success to repair the burning structures. Not even the Zerg had decimated the base this fast. Not knowing what else to do, Marty turned and ran for the mountains. Ran and didn't look back, for he knew that soon there would be nothing to look back at except small piles of silver debris where the buildings had been.

"This is an outrage!" Admiral Wilson exclaimed in anger when she heard the news of the attack a few hours after it happened. "After signing the peace agreement now the decided to attack again? Get my Executor Phalas now!" After a few minutes the aide in her office was able to contact the Protoss command on Aiur.

"Yes, Admiral," the blue Protoss image on the screen began. "What can I do for you?"

"You've already done enough with your little stunt on Breki Seven."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you are talking about."

"At 2335 last night a group of Protoss carriers attacked our base on Breki Seven. Search teams this morning found only one survivor."

"I know nothing of this, believe me, but…"

"But?"

"There is a small but growing faction, a radical faction that believes the Protoss must rule the galaxy. We had taken steps to keep the out of government but they have found ways to get supplies through covert means. It has been rumored that they have a remote base that serves as a collecting place for their stolen and smuggled weaponry, but the base has not been found and some do not even believe it exists. I find it hard to believe that they would have a fleet such as you describe, but I personally lead an investigation to determine exactly what their strength is and eliminated the threat before they can do any further damage."

"Thank you, Executor. I should hate to think that the Protoss would violate the peace treaties now after keeping them for years."

There was little else she could do now diplomatically, but Admiral Wilson did not completely trust the executor. "Who is in command of the second fleet?" she asked the aide.

"That would be Vice Admiral Olson, ma'am," he answered.

"Send him to Breki. His orders are to find and destroy the Protoss who did this. He is free to whatever personnel and equipment he thinks he will need."

"Yes, ma'am, I'll tell him right away."

"Also have all the idle starports in this system get to work. I want battlecruisers, wraiths, valkyries and enough science vessels to give them detector coverage when not near a base with a comsat. Build as many supply depots as it takes. We just might need them, and by the time we know if we do or not it will be too late."