I wish I owned DBZ, but I don't. I own DVD's and tapes, but it just isn't the same. I also don't own the right to Starcraft or any of the music pieces you see selected, just copies of merchandise, such a shame. The artists that created them are geniuses and we all must bow to them.
Chapter 49: Minor Delays
My nightmares continued with increased intensity over the next few days. Even if they were just dreams, they had been based on actual events and possibly future events. A lot of them now comprised the Overmind winning and sending all of my friends against me, forcing me to kill them. There were dreams about the opposite when I had been infested, hunting down the others with unrivaled fury. I cried myself to sleep a few times during the night, rarely coming from my room except for some sparring and food detail. I managed to keep focused on my objective during the day, but the depression I had developed didn't make me the friendliest Saiyan to be around. I was moping around the hallways one such day when I sensed something strange and hostile that snapped me back to reality. At first I thought it was coming from Auir, as we weren't that far away now. It was more local than that, on the ship. I narrowed it down to the point where I felt it moving towards me. I quickly turned invisible and leaned against the wall when I sensed it getting closer. I wasn't scared of it by any means, but I wanted to know who and what it was before jumping to conclusions. The figure emerged from the curve of the hallway, passing by me quickly. I recognized it to be Kline, one of Raynor's officers. He seemed to be carrying a remote of some sort as he strode unknowingly past me. He also had what I recognized to be a data pad that these humans used a lot. I followed him in stealth, the hostile feel of his low ki just didn't seem right. He headed for the shuttle bay from what I could tell, with pretty much no one around. He pressed a button for transmission while I barely managed to slip through the door when it closed.
"Permission to transfer back over to the Hyperion. I've got the landing co'ordinances for you, Captain Raynor!" Kline said. Landing? Oh we must be getting really close now, I still can't sense any big energy levels though.
"Confirmed Sergeant, we'll lock on the tractor beam as soon as your shuttle leaves the bay," I heard Raynor say over the com. Kline sat in a driver's seat in the shuttle while I stood out of the way against the wall, still not visible. I scanned his energy again, still sensing that strange signal coming from him. He wasn't powerful by any means, but this hostile emotion I kept picking up was more than enough to be considered threatening. I thought about revealing myself now and plainly asking what he was up to, but anything he would say would just be denial if there were something going on. I stayed still, remaining focused as he drove the small shuttle out of the docking bay. The shimmering Tractor beam came on right away, pulling us to the Hyperion despite moving in hyperspace. Must be a strong tractor beam. I noticed another had come on, this time from the Norad Three, probably assisting in guiding it around. We were guided into the Hyperion's shuttle bay within a few minutes. Kline exited, and I quickly followed him from the shadows. He went to a more run down part of the ship, close to where my room was before it blew up. I quickly sensed five more life forms ahead of him, waiting I suppose. I sent out more Psi energy to cover my presence further. When I did this, Kline looked back in the hallway, directly at my position. He didn't see me, but I got the feeling that he sensed me for a moment. Wait a sec, these humans can't detect Psi energy…unless, I paused for a moment, watching his reactions without movement. He seemed to shrug off whatever gut feeling had just hit him and move on. I now noticed a greener tint to his skin, one that I knew wasn't there before. I trailed him once again as we approached the five new life forms. He entered an older looking conference room and I slipped in just as the door shut.
I quickly readjusted my energy field once inside the dark room, noting very few lights. I looked around to see the five life forms I detected. All of them were human, but all of them also had that same hostile feeling coming from them.
"Is it done?" one of them asked.
"Yes, we must proceed with the operation as soon as possible. Our master's orders stand!" Kline said.
"We should infect Raynor as well, he is a most cunning adversary that would serve our lord well!" another suggested. What the hell is this, what master are they talking about? I kept silent though, listening in without dropping my energy field.
"No, Captain Raynor will go down with the ship as planned. As valuable as he may be, our master has no need for him," Kline said in distaste.
"When shall we commence the operation?" the first one said again.
"Ten minutes. I will go to the bridge to hook up the remote to the transmitter, that way we can use the Norad's own communication system to trigger the overload on their ship's engines! You will come with me to help take care of Raynor; he may not go quietly as we all know. The rest of you spread out on the ship and kill anyone you come across. With none of the Saiyans or Protoss on board, you should have no problems in carrying out your mission!" Kline ordered.
"What of the young Saiyan that can breathe in space?" the first one asked again.
"His presence does present a problem, however our master expects him to get to Auir where he has a surprise waiting for him. He wants all of the others killed here in space, by any means necessary! Blowing them out into space with the hyper drive explosion of the Norad is the best option as conventional means are ineffective!" Kline said with a cold voice.
I heard something in his voice now, something like a gargle when one is swishing hot salt water in their throat. Everyone's low ki signal became a bit scattered, and in that instant I knew. Oh great, they were on Char long enough to be infested somehow. No one must have known, so it must be one of those Broodlings. Kerrigan had shown me a vision of what these nasty things could do. There were two ways that they could be transmitted. First, the Broodlings could start off as tiny Zerg parasites, like a mosquito. They could land and bite some sort of living being and infect them with Zerg DNA. This would create a much larger bug inside the victim's chest. The actual parasite would then die off nearby the victim. The victim would then be open to control by the Overmind or Cerebrate, whoever was in charge I suppose. The often-human victim would be able to do all kinds of spying or stealth work and appear somewhat normal. Kind of like infestation, but without all of the Zerg attachments or the suicidal mindset. If discovered, the actual creature could burst out of the chest, killing the victim, and attack the former comrades. The other way a Broodling was transmitted was through a flying Zerg queen. It wasn't a ruler by any means, that's just what they called it. It could send out the parasites or drop a pair of full-grown Broodlings on an unsuspecting person or vehicle, making the pilots defenseless inside of say…a tank. The Broodlings themselves were the size of a small dog, but they could chew through just about anything.
After Kline and another minion left the room, I stayed and watched the other four. They were loading up on marine machine guns, seemingly ready to take the ship by force. Damn, I've got to stop these guys right now, otherwise I'm going to lose more of my friends.
"I don't understand why we can't simply target the Norad with the weapons of this ship when they aren't looking, it seems easier," one of the minions said.
"Maybe so, but the explosion is a better cover. Besides this ship isn't in good shape to handle a battle in case something went wrong. One of those Saiyans could blow it up pretty easily right now. Blowing it up from a distance will work to our advantage. Even if the initial explosion doesn't kill them all, it will disable the Norad. Then we can use this ship's weaponry," another explained.
"What do you think the master has in mind for the Saiyan child?" a different one asked now.
"Unknown, we were only given our orders, these human bodies are forfeit anyway. It doesn't matter as long as we complete our mission! Live for the Swarm!"
"Live for the Swarm!" the entire set of four said in unison with fists raised. I decided that I should make my appearance now.
"Your master has a surprise coming to him as well. It's your carcasses after I pile you all into a tiny little package!" I growled loudly, revealing myself while activating my Psi sword.
"It's the child. How did he get in here?" one minion shouted.
"I don't know, I never detected him come aboard!" another said in shock. Thanks to Zeratul's training. I phased out just as the four of them fired their machine guns at me. In just under two seconds I had stabbed each of them through the chest, killing them instantly. I stopped moving once at the door, sighing as it opened for me. As soon as I stepped into the doorway, I sensed the dead bodies convulsing a bit. I turned to see them all bursting open with very small bug like Zerg squirming out of them. Disgusting, I thought as the blood spewed everywhere with an organ or two. Four two-foot long bugs came running at me, but I sliced them all apart when they arrived with minimal movement. I took off running, heading for the nearest elevator shaft with my sword in hand. I had to get to the bridge and stop this now.
I found the closest lift and got inside, "Deck Two!" It soared upwards until getting to the desired level. I streaked out again, flying through the hallways quickly to get to the bridge before Kline did. I cursed slightly when I saw that I was on the far end of the deck, and Kline had probably taken a shorter route.
Interlude 49.1: Hyperion
"Sergeant, you sure took your time getting me those landing locations," Raynor said with a slight frown as Kline and his assistant strolled in.
"Complications," Kline said smugly while signaling with one finger. His assistant opened fire on everyone except Raynor, killing all five of them quickly.
"What the hell is this?" Raynor asked reaching for his pistol.
"Dear Captain, it is fate, and we cannot allow your friends to intervene with our Master's plans!" Kline said as his assistant checked on everyone to make sure they were down, grabbing Raynor's side arm in the process.
"Your Master? Who the hell is that?" Raynor shouted.
"The Overmind of course," Kline said, his skin turning a deeper shade of green.
"You're infested aren't you, how in the hell did we not see it?" Raynor asked, astonished.
"There are other ways to infest a being than simply taking them into the fold, you will not see that day however," Kline said as he plugged his remote into the communication system.
"What the hell are you doing?" Raynor asked now, keeping his hands up since there was a gun at his back.
"Tapping into your system and activating the overload command on the Norad's hyper drive. Your Saiyan friends are not going to make it to Auir, nor is anyone else now!" Kline said as he patched into the system.
"They can just teleport over with their special powers and use this ship," Raynor said with a grin.
"Oh, we're blowing this one up to, no one is going to Auir. Our master's orders, including ourselves!" Kline said, pressing several buttons.
"What, your mission is suicide?" Raynor said in shock.
"Correct, that is our purpose as it always has been. You humans are wonderful agents for the Overmind to use against the Protoss as well as yourselves, and so obedient once given an order with promise of rewards! A great flaw in your race I must say," Kline continued. He punched a few more buttons before waving off his assistant to take Raynor to another compartment of the deck.
"You won't get away with this!" Raynor boasted.
"We already have!" Kline said. As they left the bridge, Kline cut the engines by hitting the first button on his remote pad. The ship dropped out of Hyperspace right away, but with no explosion, just as Kline planned. He was to get the Norad to come back into range and ask to assist, then he could transmit the detonation sequence over their communication lines, otherwise he would be too far out of range. A display screen blipped on with Artanis at the helm of the Norad, asking what was wrong.
"It seems that our hyper drive has suffered a power failure," Kline lied as he started to punch in the sequence.
"Swing around and turn back to the Hyperion, prepare to extract repair teams!" Artanis ordered as the Norad slowed down to a crawl. Kline waited patiently for the large ship to get closer.
-
As I was running to the bridge, I caught sight of Raynor being led away at gunpoint. I stopped for a moment when he saw me, ready to go help him. His captor did not see me, and he waved me by as he mouthed the word "bridge." I nodded and sped off, reaching the door to the bridge quickly. It opened just as Kline was staring at the screen, telling Artanis that he would be standing by to receive a repair team. I had felt the ship slow down to a stop, but I never sensed any sort of explosion, so Kline's plan must have had a minimum range needed for a signal.
"Stop where you are!" I shouted at him, raising my sword and sending a warning ki blast at his feet.
"Verto? How did you get over there?" Artanis asked from the viewer.
"Back away from the panel right now, or I will turn you into a pile of ashes!" I warned, stepping closer.
"You're too late boy, I've already keyed in the sequence to both ships, you've only got five minutes until your friends are killed!" Kline said with a laugh as he did indeed back away. A loud alarm blared from both ships with a deep crimson color flashing from the ceiling lights.
"He's set the engines to overload and blow up both ships. We have to shut them off, can you get Gohan to teleport over here!" I asked as I looked to see what was wrong on the display screen. Artanis nodded, seeing that they had problems of their own to take care of. I turned back to Kline, but only saw a door closing. I growled slightly, I'll get him later! After a few moments, Gohan teleported onto the bridge, looking quite surprised.
"How'd you know he was going to do this?" he asked.
"One of those gut feelings again, you mind trying to figure this out and shut it off before we're all in trouble!" I suggested.
"I'll see what I can do," he said, sitting down at the keyboard and typing quickly.
"Gohan, the remote detonator's codes can't be broken from here, you will have to shut off the destruct sequence for both ships from the Hyperion!" Artanis said over the viewer.
"No pressure," I said with a grin.
"Yeah I guess, go hunt down that Kline guy, I'll take care of this!" he said, punching in all kinds of codes and commands.
"Ten-four," I said as I ran for the door he had left at. It didn't open right away even as I punched it lightly.
"He must have jammed the doors," Gohan said as he continued his work. I punched the door a little more than harshly, barely getting a dent as a result.
"Probably reinforced, these ships are made of some tough metal!" Gohan said.
"No problem," I said, stabbing forward with my sword and slowly cut a hole in it large enough for me to crawl through.
"Okay, I've isolated the Norad's power systems and found the problem, canceling now!" he said, as I was about halfway through the door cutting process. Artanis confirmed that the destruct command on the Norad had been deactivated.
"Now for this one. Oh great, the systems are different, this is gonna take awhile!" he groaned.
"We don't have awhile!" I shouted back at him, as I was about two thirds through.
"I know I know, hey Artanis, move the Norad out of the range of the explosion from the Hyperion. I can teleport back with Verto should we fail at getting this shut off! You have three and a half minutes!" Gohan ordered. Artanis complied with a good luck call before cutting the transmission. Gohan punched a few more buttons before slamming his fist against the console, leaving more than just a dent.
"Damnit, it's no use. Come on bro, the only way to shut this off is in the engineering area. We should just get off the ship and let him go down with it!" Gohan suggested as I punched out the hole I had made.
"Why is that, you shut off the other one from here?" I asked.
"It's the way it was transmitted, from two different places. Here and the engineering section of this ship, so there must be two different controllers! It's possible one of his accomplices set it to blow down there!" Gohan said as he ripped apart the first one. I scanned ahead in the corridor, Kline was far ahead of me, soon I lost track of him.
"Only problem is that Raynor is still alive on this ship, and there may be some other infested beings here. That and Kline may be able to use the other one on the Norad, we have to find him and stop him here!" I said crawling through the hole.
"Go to Deck eighteen, section six, that's Engineering. You should be able to discontinue the command from the main computer panel there! If there's a problem, just raise your power level and I'll teleport to you and we'll get out of here! I'll find Raynor! Be careful!" Gohan shouted to me as I ran into the hallway.
-
I followed the stench of Kline's infested body down to the eighteenth deck, engineering section six. The halls were dark with flashing red with only my blue Psi sword giving any other color. I was down to one and a half minutes on the countdown, something the computer was nice enough to continue giving me. I spotted another hostile human in front of me, looking out for any intruders with a machine gun. I didn't even let him see me before ki blasting him into dust, Broodling and all. I scanned around for any more Zerg-like tissues that they now possessed, not picking any up. I came into the main chamber, seeing all kinds of alarms and lighting flashing around the engine core, which was running wild with blue energy bouncing around in its chamber. I rushed up to the control panel, hitting the cancel destruct command as was displayed. The sequence shut down and I saw the temperature display start to back down as the lighting switched back to a normal white.
"Whew," I said. All of a sudden the warbled computer voice came back to life just as the red lights did, the engine core was building up to detonation again.
"What the hell?" I asked. I glanced at the display, seeing that the cancel option was no longer there.
"Looking for this?" I heard behind me. I knew it was Kline before I even turned around. He stood in the doorway with a small remote in his hands.
"This ship is going to blow, and its explosion should be enough to disable the Norad long enough for my master to take over Auir before you can get there! It's not an effective contingency plan, but its better than nothing!" he mused in the doorway.
"Not if I can help it, give me that remote!" I warned, shooting a ki blast at his feet.
"Your threats are so amusing, come any closer and I hit the button, blowing you out into space along with everyone left on this ship! And the Norad isn't far enough away to avoid any of it. So either you wait another minute, or you trigger all of your friend's deaths right now!" Kline warned back. I stood still, watching his fingers twitch.
"You'll be dead before you can press the button. I can guarantee that!" I said as I focused in on his arm and hand muscles.
"I don't think so, even you aren't that fast!" he boasted.
"I wouldn't bet on that," I warned, ready to blast his arm off at a moment's notice. All of a sudden a loud barrage of machine gun fire lit up the room, and Kline's upper arm filled with bullet holes before falling off with the remote in his hand, cluttering safely on the ground. Kline turned and backed up, revealing Raynor in the doorway with his machine gun. The assistant of Kline's was nowhere to be found.
"Where is," Kline began, holding his blood soaked shoulder without the arm.
"Dead, he made the mistake of turning his back on a fellow marine," Raynor said, firing again into the chest cavity of Kline.
"Curse you!" Kline gasped as he spit up blood.
"I should have done this when I first met you, traitorous bastard!" Raynor growled as he emptied his clip into all of Kline, who plummeted to the ground. He looked like a pincushion with so many bullets going through him. Raynor picked up the remote and shut it off, killing the destruct commands. I heard Kline laughing with his dying breath. We both walked up carefully as he cackled on the brink of death.
"It doesn't matter what you do, my master always wins. You can run, you can hide, you can fight, but it doesn't matter! He will consume you all or see you burnt to ashes at his feet! The Overmind is eternal and will be forever! Nothing you do can change that!" Kline said as he laughed crazily. Raynor took out his side arm and pumped one shot into Kline's head, finishing the job.
"I don't know about you, but I was getting sick of his laughing," he said as he put his sidearm back into its holster.
I gave him a smirk, "Yeah, it was a little annoying." We were walking away when I heard the sound of cracking ribs coming from Kline.
"What the hell?" Raynor asked as he shot at the creature emerging. The bullets did little as the large bug came crawling towards us, but my sword pierced it easily like a spear when I threw it. It vanished quickly, but the Broodling was down for good as the wound in its head remained after my energy faded.
"I choose to fight," I said to the dead Broodling, hoping its far-away master had heard it.
-
"Damnit! Kline's run up of power drained most of the power cells, we don't have enough to use the hyper drive!" Raynor said as he ran a diagnostic. Gohan and I were assisting him in looking around the ship for other infested beings, but there was none.
"Is there any way to charge them up without taking any power off of the Norad?" I asked, wondering if this was going to be like the Protoss building I recharged back on earth.
"Not here, there are only a few planets in this sector that have power cells, never mind to recharge them. Most if not all of them are now owned by the Dominion!" Raynor said in a panicked voice.
"I guess we're all going out on the Norad then," Gohan said. Raynor seemed reluctant to leave his ship, saying how it was his "baby" and what not. Raynor picked up the remote detonator as Gohan prepared to teleport us back to the Norad, saying that he would not leave his ship out here for some random pirates to pick it up. As soon as we were back to the Norad Three and at a safe distance away, he blew it up with the remote.
"Goodbye baby, you were a good ship to me," Raynor said on the bridge, almost a tear or two in his eyes. Vegeta pulled me aside once back to the ship wanting to know details on how I knew what was going on.
"Just a gut feeling," I said to him as I had to Gohan.
"Whatever," he grumbled as he walked off.
"We're back on course, but I want you Saiyans to sweep the ship for any possible infested agents, and I will have a few of our operatives to help in screening their blood for any sort of thing as well," Artanis suggested. Gohan and Bardock nodded to this, splitting up with a couple of Protoss with blood screeners of some kind.
"You really prevented a possible disaster today, my young friend, our greatest ancestors would be proud to shine their light upon your courage!" Artanis commended me.
"Save the thanks until we're done with this war, I don't think things are going to be this easy from now on," I said with a cautious frown.
"Indeed," he said as we looked at the moving stars on the view screen.