Chapter Two: Screw the mission

Near crashed dropship T-34

Private first class John Shumaker hated his rank. Raynor had adopted the ranking system of the Confederate Marine Corps, who had adopted it from old Earth military ranking. His Pfc. status made him inferior to the officers, but he wanted to have the prestige of an officer like first lieutenant squad commander Adam Jones. And the privileges and pay too.

But now, as he saw the massive dropship he was just in go down in a mass of smoke and dust, with Zerg surrounding it, he knew fully well why he wasn't an officer: he was panicking under his robotic armor. He stared in horror as the dropship, limp and broken, went down in flames, and Zerglings climbing on its hull. He turned around to Jones.

"What the hell are we going to do now, huh? What the fuck do we do now?"

Jones was still locked in his gaze at the ship, ignoring Shumaker's wavering voice hidden behind curses, not reprimanding him for profanity. All those men...he thought. His first idea was to scratch the entire original mission and begin rescuing the troops trapped inside the ship, but how could he and the few men he had fight a horde of Zerg? He didn't even know if any one survived the wreck, though the pilots had done exceedingly well to level the ship before impact. His training hadn't let him deal with this! Hell, this was the first time he had done an airborne operation! What the hell did this had to happen to him? Immediately, he set the ICD to the frequency of the dropship's.

"T-34, T-34, do you hear me? Respond please." This time, the crackle of static was not heard. Just a long, dulling buzzing sound. The ship's crew was either dead or the communication device was broken. He tried his unit's frequency next.

"Zulu-1, Zulu-1, anyone else out there in the dropship, respond please." Jones noticed his own voice was wavering. He kept it steady. Before anyone he hoped on the dropship could respond, the other infantry squadron commander who had landed responded.

"Z-1A, this is Zulu-1B. Meet us at the trees by the Hive. There are Zerg units moving into your position," the voice belonged to Nacdle, still dead calm.

Trees? Jones wondered. He looked around, suddenly aware of his men around him and a clump of almost dead Protossian trees a click away. The roots of the odd trees were shriveled, because of the Creep sapping up the nutrients out of the soil. Clutching his gun, he motioned the rest of his squad to follow and began running, his thoughts running as well. What the hell was wrong? Why did this crap had to happen to him? Jesus, he had been on the damn planet for less than a goddamn hour, and now he was trapped.

He wanted to take the frustration out on the Spore colonies, but realized his own life was in danger as Zerglings began to approach. Sonuvabitch, those suckers look nasty.

Near Zerg Hive Cluster, Aiur

Nacdle was sitting on a tree's limb when his falcon eyes, still blurringly sharp after the ocular implants, when he saw the triangle-formation of Zerglings approaching Jones' squad. The idiots had just stood there, looking at the crash like it was unbelievable. So what? He thought. He had seen numerous crashes made by dropships before, some of them downed by a battlecruiser's batteries or by an antiaircraft gun. The five Zerglings were hardly a threat to the squadron of fifteen men, but they stared and ran from the approaching Zerg as if Death had come to grab them, like they didn't have anything to fight back with. The shock had already filtered through each marine's brains, enough to paralyze it from doing normal functions. He had seen better men before dying because all of their meticulous planning, all of the details picked out, all the scenarios run through wither as they realized that one scenario hadn't been thought of. And they paid for it with their lives.

Why can't these Terrans improvise like we can? Mentally, he sighed. A few more months of pretending, and then he would be sent home. And I would pray to all the gods to be sent home from this Sector.

Shaking off his daydreaming, he motioned to his two sharpshooters. Can't lose anymore men.

"Whack the Zerglings, boys?" His two privates nodded in the trees behind him, training their custom made scopes on top of their Impaler C-14s, waiting patiently. They, at least, had been disciplined, unlike the Sarians, as they scrambled wildly to the trees. And still, with all the mercenaries' experience with fighting Zerg, they despised men who fought only for money. Nacdle knew differently.

The lieutenant and four of his squadmen were the last to get out of the dropship unscathed, landing several kilometers from the crash site. His first instinct had been to immediately set up a rescue mission, but, like Jones, the absurdity of it struck him, trying to rescue one hundred men surrounded by hostile forces with only a third of a squadron. They had raced to the nearby trees, the only thing that could offer them protection against an attack or ambush.

Now, with nothing to do until Jones got here, Nacdle decided to file a complaint to Command.

A big complaint, he thought. This wasn't suppose to happen.

He set his comm. device frequency to headquarters. "HQ, this is Zulu-1 company, on positions H-5 and H-6; I've got a dropship down with numerous men still inside it. Repeat, dropship down. Should-" He listened to his ICD. He realized they weren't the only ones with their dropships crashing. Squadron commanders were screaming for air support so they could get the rest of their men off dropships, while others were trying to hold off Zerg on their positions, calling for reinforcements.

HQ has got enough on its mind for the present, he thought, switching off the comlink. He looked up in the skies, wondering where the air support was. They needed wraiths and those Protoss Scouts for hitting the Hive, and rescuing the men, where the hell were they?

The shrill scream of Zerglings being sniped by his men made him smile. Payback. He looked down below at the ten meter tall trees and saw members of the other squad frantically scrambling up the trees, their armor both a nuisance and a help. The newly issued CMC-400 armor did have some advantages, like better protection and more features than his squadron's armor, but mobility was a main problem. Nacdle's squadron were mercs who had modified armor, learned from experience fighting Zerg with the Feds and Dominion that agility was just as important as having heavy plates keeping the projectiles away. But Raynor's Raiders...he watched pitifully as one man's weight from his suit crack a branch of the tree, as he fell five meters, unhurt, but dazed.

"Lieutenant!"

"What is it, Jones?"

He turned around to see Jones looking at the dead Zerglings smoking their heads, dead from a few well-placed bullets.

"What the hell are we going to do?" Jones asked, still having trouble sitting on a tree branch, face frantic with worry.

For all his discipline, Jones, as Nacdle was concerned, was now a rhydon cub looking for his mother. His men and him were veterans against the Dominion and Feds, not the Zerg. They knew nothing about fighting Zerg. It was Nacdle's turn to sneer, but his features were masked by his helmet visor.

"Screw the mission. Get the rest of the men out."

"Sounds good to me. How many squad members do you have with you?"

"Five, including me."

There was a long pause Nacdle told Jones how many men he had. Twenty marines, Jones thought. Twenty marines a buttload of freaking Zerg! A hundred men still onboard. Son of a-

"Let's go rescue everyone before it's too late," Nacdle said.

They jumped off the trees.

On board crashed dropship T-34

Chief Warrant Officer Patrick O'toole wasn't feeling quiet right. His head hurt like a mother, and his bones seemed to be aching in every possible way. Looking around, he saw most were unlucky as him: dirty, scared, and shitting their pants. He was the third squadron commander out of eight, and one of the six still stuck inside the ship, and like the other men, starting to feel death close upon them.

O'toole was about to exit while T-34 was still in the air when he realized the uneven, juking rate it descended onto the Creep, while he caught a glimpse of bizarre Zerg structure they were about to impact directly on.

While he wasn't partial on landing anything Zerg, the rubbery, flat structure was one of the reasons of the cushioned, soft landing the ship had made. But all this didn't matter for a squadmember. Being too eager to jump, and before O'toole could restrain him, he leapt off.

If O'toole had jumped...well, I would end up like poor Pete over there, he thought, trying not to puke on himself again. When the ship landed on the Creep, it's ruined hull and tail converged straight onto Pete, who just completed his first successful airborne drop.

O'toole looked at his own image. His blue armor was already reeking and covered his own blood and vomit. His suit was already messy, and he hadn't already shot a frickin' Zerg! His legs were firmly implanted in the dropship's ruined bulk, the armor crushed by the metal where the dropship had crashed in hard, denting the dropship's hull enough to get O'toole's legs stuck. Cursing, he tried to get himself out, but ended up staring into the dead man's eyes.

Poor Pete, O'toole thought. Poor Pete. His brain repeated the phrase over and over, like a skipping recorder. It was driving O'toole insane.

The torso and head of his body were perfectly centered on the dropship hatch, demonstrating the skill the pilots of the ship had tried to level the impact-landing. The hatch was still opened, and the man's eyes were staring, signaling that he was dead. It was obvious, of course, but then again, no one likes the obvious, O'toole said to himself. The rest of his body was covered by the ship's massive one-thousand ton bulk.

Another squadron commander, one he didn't know, spoke up, voice magnified a thousand times by the cramped conditions inside the ship.

"Alright men, we've getting out of here." O'toole watched as the man pointed out of the narrow opening on top of the ship, where Zerglings were prancing around, trying to pry the ship open. It's only goddamn big enough to fit a goddamn rifle and a man's goddamn helmet. What the hell are they playing at? One man can't take on Zerglings with just a rifle halfway sticking out of the ship. The loading dock's sealed shut. What the hell are they playing at?

Another marine, perhaps too eager to obey orders, or eager to leave the shithole they were in, leapt up and fired a few rounds. The Zerglings fell silent. The man grinned.

"Looks like I've scared them off!" he said, giving particular emphasis on "I"

He stuck his head and rifle in the small opening on top, firing again. A wild, overjoyed screech came, and then a scream. Short, but torturous. Men who were on the same frequency on the ICD had the sound magnified a thousand times in their head, of a man's visor getting ripped to shreds, and then the skin on the face, and then muscle, bone...

All the way into the brain.

Every man in the ship could hear the sound. And then silence, as the body fell back first, accompanied by a mutilated and decapitated spherical object. The last thing that dropped inside was the other half of the rifle.

A metal bore sawn by Zergling claw.

The same man that was saying a Hail Mary before the ship crashed was praying for deliverance.

A scratchy noise came from his ICD, static filled with a familiar sound: Jones' voice, calling for anyone on the ship.

No one bothered to answer. None of the one hundred odd men cared if twenty men could get them free. They never would, with the Zerglings climbing onto the ship. Everyone hunkered down, waiting to see what would happen to them, silently collecting their own thoughts.

But O'toole's mind splintered in half, as the throbbing grew worse. A side that had been calmed down by years of psychotherapy and medication was slowly beginning to take over. A side that was crazy and violent. Inside his helmet, O'toole grinned happily, as slowly the insanity took in, surging through his mind.

A shrill scream ran out, almost as the creatures on top knew they had found prey. And that would be our most uninvited guests.

Above crashed dropship T-34

CF/A-17G wraith pilot Captain Skip Ander was one of the few wraith fighters left to provide air support to the ground troops on the Creep. The rest of the ships, along with the Protoss Scouts, were racing up to the atmosphere of the planet, where a massive battle between Zerg and Protoss and Terran forces was underway.

The Zerg flyers turned out in more numbers than expected, with at least fifty thousand targets, according to HQ. Fifty thousand Mutas' and Scourge! Plus the Overlords that accompanied them for logistical support. Even the Terran Confederacy, the most powerful government in the Koprulu Sector, had only a fraction of that number. Good thing we got those Scouts, Carriers, and battlecruisers with us, he thought. The fleet needed all the ships it could get to fight the Zerg.

He had wanted to go and fight with his squadron, but his commander refused. Someone needs to stay here to cover the ground troops, he said. Ander shook his head. Yeah right. I get to babysit these marines while you all get to have the fun, Ander retorted. His commander said nothing.

His squad, the Storks, were among the finest in his homeplanet of Umoja. They had been loaned to Raynor's Raiders by the Umoja Protectorate, who felt that Raynor could be both an ambassador to the Protoss and a friend to them. Umoja wanted an alliance and partnership with the Protoss, and since Jim was the man who led the best relations with the enigmatic race, they were inclined to help him.

Yeah, right. Jim cussed as much at the Protoss as he did with his own men, though the Protoss didn't understand him, as Ander looked over his cockpit window at the smoldering ruins of dropships and Zerg colonies.

Ander knew this plan was screwed from the beginning. It was just a badly-planned ambush all along, right from the start when he had been briefed on it. Land thousands of troops on the Zerg Overmind and its clusters was like trying to kill a hornet's nest with your hands.

The pilot did a panoramic view of the scene surrounding him, while frantically telling the communications officer on his comlink device to calm down.

"Hell HQ, cool off, will ya? One target at a time. What's the situation on the ground?"

"Forty-seven of the dropships have been shot down, that's the goddamn situation! I've got too many damn requests to get air cover on their position! All units are pinned down! We need more SARs missions. Pick a fucking target and go!"

Ander shut off his comlink. The man was going nuts! Then again, he had a right to be. A third of the dropships didn't get back to the fleet? He did some quick calculations in his head as he moved the control stick left and right, a habit that was hard to break. One hundred and forty-four dropships; one hundred and twenty troops in each; Seventeen thousand, two hundred and eighty troops all fricking trapped on the ground!

"Damn!" he shouted, making little echoes in his pressurized cockpit. His anger got the best of him. He put his bird into a steep dive, triggering his belly burst laser at a Sunken colony. Blood spewed up as bloody chunks of flesh flew into the air, making a smoldering wreckage of the building. He felt a slight shudder as two flak balls of biological mess hit the tail of his bird. Slowly he pulled up, not wanting to stall. Too many targets eh? I trim them down for you. A glint of metal suddenly caught Ander's eyes. Is that what I think it is?