Captain Kataran had responded to the distress signal made by a Captain Sania. He had done a fly-by checking for any threats to his ship, when he saw none he preceded to Captain Sania's position. While doing his fly-by he saw first hand the whole scale destruction of the Terran attack force. Burning hulks of APC's and tanks littered the desert floor, lying beside them was the hundreds of dead marines scattered across a ten kilometer area. Kataran saw with satisfaction the hundreds of carcass of the dead Zerg scum. He would have shed a tear like his co-pilot, years ago but he had grown too accustomed to humans getting slaughtered and his heart and brain had shut of the horrors of each tour of duty. He had learned years ago to separate his emotions when he was flying, that was the only way he had survived when so many other dropship pilots did not. He ran his gloved hand though his graying hair as he was making his untold hundredth combat landing, picking up god knew who ever the fuck had made it out of that gone to shit battle.
Captain Sania saw the drop ship coming and almost began to cry at the sight of his life coming back to him. The rest of his men rushed to meet the incoming dropships, over the hours between the issued distress signal, at least a hundred stranglers and a few goliaths made it towards Sania's position. When he did a final head count as his troops, which began his since he was the highest ranking officer, he noticed that Mayes and all his men had not returned. He knew that their job had been a success due to the explosions that could be heard from Mayes's position. All that was left of over three thousand men, four hundred tanks, one hundred goliaths and one hundred and fifty APC's was roughly one hundred and forty five men, no tanks, eight goliaths and zero APC's. Captain Sania turned around to look at the carnage around him and silently muttered to himself "We will be back you Zerg fuckers". With that said he boarded the ship, and sat down and promptly slept after being awake for the past thirty six hours.
Geoff Hurten had been losing money ever since the U.E.D had entered his system. He had been forced to run to his base hidden in a nearby asteroid field close to the planet Delvin, which was the farthest planet from the two suns in this system. He had been forced to run to this hidden base, when the U.E.D forces discovered his gun running operation and unlike the planetary police forces, the UED took action. Since their arrival they had disrupted all but two of his operations in this system.
He turned to face his new lieutenant Pial Decose and six foot six, broad shouldered ex-miner who was some where between his late thirties or early forties guessed Geoff. He had really never met the man until about an hour ago when. Geoff's pirates attacked and liberated this mining asteroid from Delvin's control, which had been using convict labor for its mining ops. Geoff had been ignoring the imposing giant behind him, not wanting to appear angry towards this hulking giant, Geoff had to reflect on what he was about to do, to get back at the UED for entering his system and destroying what had taken him years to build and he would never live to see it be rebuilt, now in his mid-sixties his life had been hard and he figured he would maybe live ten or so more years. He knew the UED had no right coming into this sector, he also knew that this so called Zerg threat was a hoax, one of his enemies had paid a UED general to help take him out, Geoff thought.
He knew how to get at the UED though, in all their wisdom they had not planned for an attack fleet to get past their outer ship yards and as such the inner planetary shipyards were less defended. That's why he needed the help of Pial. This man was the leader of a group of about thirty miners, who as far as Geoff knew would be perfect to board one of the shipyards and destroy as much as possible. How they planned to get near enough, they would have to simply fly in the ex-mining dropships and with so much traffic in the inner planetary system one or two dropships could fly unnoticed. Geoff turned around to face Pial. He spoke softly and slowly, but was very direct to the old miner "I want you to take your crew of men and simply fly right into the belly of the beast known as the UED fuckers. And I want you to board the shipyard orbiting Polust, which according to my information houses at least fifteen battlecruisers and that's all you need to know. Destroy as much as you can and haul ass, I want you alive, not because I like its cause I lost to many damn men taking this hunk of rock for my new recruits to go throwing their lives away. His words dripped with venom towards both Pial and the UED. You understand"?
"Yes I do sir, not too hard for me sir at all". Pial was happy to play the dumb giant for this little shit of man, who thought he was calling the shots, oh he would show him thought, Pial, my time will come. But right now he had to get his loyal men to pull off a really unlikely attack.
Pial looked around the cargo hold of the dropship, in the gloomy reddish light he could make out the faces of the men he had worked with for ten years. Pial had his doubts about pulling this off, not only because him and his men were limited in military training, but they would be fighting without battle armor and would be armed with Mon Cal's which was a assault rifle back in the day but now was severely out-dated, it could only hold eighty rounds per clip, the only upside to this outdated weapon was attached to its barrel lug it had a grenade launcher attachment, which was good to get though fully armoured marines. Pial knew his men could do the task assigned to them, they had surprise on their side and that the fact that the guard detail was wearing light armor and had more compact gauss rifles, meaning the Mon Cal's could puncture thought the armor and its slow rate of fire would be a hair slower then the UED's. To the left of Pial was an ex-confederate sniper who for on reason or another had ended up in prison, but Pial knew the man had the best shot out of this scratch company, Lenix was one of eight ex-military personal, which was the limit of military training, the others were hardened criminals most for murder or running drug operations, you were not sent to an asteroid for robbing an old lady thought Pial as he drifted off to sleep.
Pial woke suddenly and looked around; the dropship had not landed yet but had just de-accelerated preparing to land. Pial knew he had to lead the men, he chose his words carefully, "Men when this ramp drops sprint off and take up firing positions, do not I repeat do not stay on this ramp or you will die. Second if u kill a man you get his rifle and ammo and are required to ditch your old gun and ammo and spread it out amongst the rest of the men, our objective as you remember is to get control of the control room which is approximately three minute run from our landing bay. Ok men lets pay back these U.E.D bastereds". Just as he finished his speech, the ramp descended and Pial fired from his hip as he ran for cover, catching a marine in the throat. The rest of the marine detail dazed and stunned lost two before they fired back, taking out three miners who were the last ones to get off the dropship.
Pial was crouched behind a pile of crates; beside him were Fen, Garson, and Durel. Pial quickly loaded a grenade into his launcher, rose above the crates and was promptly shot at and forced to duck "On the count of three give me covering fire in all directions. Ok one, two three" All four miners rose simultaneously, guns blazing Pial quickly saw four marines taking cover behind some barrels, he took aim and fired. The result was a fiery explosion which consumed all the marines and forced the rest to retreat.
The miners quickly gathered up any UED weapons and proceeded on their way out of the hanger, towards the control center. They turned into a ten foot wide corridor with piles of crates lining the wall every five or so feet. The miners quickly needed to use cover as a heavy machine gun opened up at the end of the hall and cut down Fen and Goras. "Take out that gunner Lenix", yelled Pial. A minute later the gun stopped firing foolishly Durel ran out of cover, and with the gun reloaded he was shredded. Pial looked in horror at the bloody remains of one of his friends, and knew that they would have to advance or they would not capture their objective and the deaths of Fen and Durel would be for nothing. With a swift hand signal the order was given to advance, as the miners rose out of cover not only did the heavy gun fire but at least one squad of marines opened up as well. Four more miners were dead within ten seconds of breaking cover, yet they unit had not even moved. Pial jumped over his old cover and ran with is head down to the next set of crates, lobbing a grenade at what he hoped was the heavy machine gun, it went off followed by man screaming. He had hit them but how many were down, he would have to find out later, more of the miners followed Pial's lead and fired their grenades at the marine's position. Even though the heavy gun was still firing after the devastating volley of grenades the supporting fire had lessened. Pial stuck his head out of cover quickly getting a look at the enemy position, he guessed that there was about four to five marines still firing and the heavy gun was well protected, so that nothing short of a tank shell or a head on assault would take it out. Pial looked behind him at the remaining men he had with him, in his line of sight he could make out twelve men, he did some quick guessing and figured he had maybe eighteen men left alive including himself. Pial was still twenty meters from the gun position and the last man in the company was at least forty meters. Pial had one design left, him and his remaining men would have to charge the bunker head on, and they would have to do it in one go. With a few hand signals so every man saw it Pial's men rose out of cover, for many this would be their last time doing so and they charged the gun head on.
Meanwhile in the hanger the two pilots, checked their pistols and got up from their seats. They approached a cupboard located just behind the cockpit and removed from it two UED uniforms. The two men quickly changed into the disguises and they calmly went to the middle of the cargo bay inside their ship and picked up a long silvery container between themselves and proceeded to the reactor core of the station. The men were never questioned as they slowly made their way, even though the station was under attack the engineers and crew were told that it was a small rebel attack and to continue on as normal.
They two men knew they would not be stopped for they wore uniforms of highly ranked engineers and their answer for any questions was a team to prevent the core from being breached by outside sources and the container that they cared was shielding. They had reached the reactor core room at the same time that Pial launched his assault on the gun position, they put the container down and the taller one sat down on the container, while the bulkier man was pacing back and fourth in anticipation.
Pial leaped over the barrier and swung the stock of his gun into the head of an unsuspecting marine who crumpled to the floor, he swung around and fired point blank taking out the gunner and two more marines, two miners joined Pial and were fighting the last two marines behind him. Pial turned to face his injured enemy and with no mercy shot the boy in the head. With the marines killed, Pial finally got his hands on a Gauss rifle; he re-loaded and wiped the blood of the previous owners, off the gun.
His remaining men gathered around him all together he had fourteen fully functional and three wounded one so bad he could not walk and could only hold a pistol, he was shot promptly on the spot. Pial's team quickly sprinted the last twenty meters do the control room, they entered the room with guns a blazing taking out at least four crewmembers and two marines, before the UED fired back catching Garson in the shoulder and killing the man to the left of Garson. Pial ducked behind a control board as shots went overhead colliding with the wall. Pial rose spraying the adjacent control panel taking out the two crew hiding there; he reloaded and pivoted to his left, and sprayed the left corridor mowing down three marines running into the control room.
All around Pial the gun battle was winding down, when the far door on the right opened up a goliath and six fully armoured marines came out of the corridor firing as they walked mowing down rebel and UED alike. The few scattered rebels that survived the initial volley were in disarray and some broke cover trying to escape and were quickly taken out. Suddenly one marine fell to the ground dead with bullet holes in his visor then a second one fell and a third was wounded. Pial immediately knew that Lenix was still alive. Pial ran over to Lenix's position and beside Lenix was the radio operator. Pial looked around for alive rebels but there was none, plenty of dead but no one was alive. The three of them lay hugging the control panel, thinking about what ever men doomed to die think about. Pial quickly remembered his orders if he could not capture the control room, "Paul give me the radio". Paul turned and quickly shrugged off the radio pack. The man hit the floor again as another volley of bullets was released to the left of them. "This is Pial, we can not, I repeat can not reach our objective, release the Fat Man now. I repeat release the Fat Man now". Just as he finished talking a frustrated Goliath pilot took out their position with a rocket cremating all three of the men in an instant.
The bulkier man's head suddenly snapped up as his radio began to squawk in his pocket. He took it out and put it to his ear. His faced turned from serious to that of a martyr. He immediately undid the clasps of the container, when the man had the lid off any UED crew immediate saw what was inside and reached for their side arms. Both pilots reached for concealed guns as well, and both sides fired at the same time. The taller man took six bullets to the chest and died, the shorter man took one in the knee and two in the shoulder and his head was clipped. The man took out four UED before he was shot in the side of the neck, knowing that he was going to die anyway, the man dropped his rifle and crawled over to the container. He was hit three more times on his way, but he managed to reach inside and press the green button on the Fat Man device, as he did this a bullet passed though his head , the UED crew for their short remaining lives would swear that the short man died with a smile on his face. They had approximately eight seconds to celebrate their small victory, after that time elapsed Fat Man went off.
Admiral Zenith strode on to the command bridge of his flag ship "Show No Mercy". He had just woken up after a good nights sleep and had not had a chance to read the reports on fleet production, but from previous reports they had fully produced two battlecruisers, four frigates and three escorts. He looked across the solar system taking it all in. His fleet was positioned just above the Capital planet.
He was watching the shipyards constructing their ships, when suddenly a flash of light was seen where one of the ship yards had been floating above Polust. He stared in horror as the mighty ship yard was destroyed in front of his eyes; his mouth was gaping as he dropped his coffee mug and it shattered on the deck and shook the crew out of their stunned daze. Zenith knew immediately that the explosion was nuclear. He would punish those responsible and they would pay.
Well how was that I know that was kind of a long chapter, but I hope that you were not bored with this chap. Well if you want to read more great star craft stories read Space Station Crimson or read Band of Brothers which is an amazing story as well. Well thanks for all the reviews and don't for get to review this chapter.