Magistrate to Commander
Chapter 10: The Calm before the storm
"Get Boris in a cell, keep him gagged until Kerrigan's done, we can't risk him turning the Adjutant against us." I order as Boris is carried away.
The Magistrate's bodyguards leave with the soldiers taking Boris away, already talking about the changes. "You should get to the Command center in the manor." One of the soldiers insists, and I shake my head.
"Not until Kerrigan's done, the Adjutant could easily put me under house arrest or even kill me with the interior defences, until then I'll have to direct the defence effort in person." While I'd still inspect the defenses in person, being able to see the layout of the city and the positions of the men would make doing that infinitely easier.
And suddenly I find myself wishing I had access to the city's sensor grid, I'd be able to see what's going on all the way across Antiga Prime… as long as the grid remains undamaged and open that is. If Duke shuts off this Sensor grid as well, we will have words.
I hop back into my Goliath and walk it back into the dropship. "Aaila, we're heading for the Starport, maybe it's large enough for the Hyperion to dock and make this faster."
"Roger that."
"Monitor the Adjutant's communications." I tell the soldiers. "If it sends out a distress signal I want to be notified immediately."
"Yes sir!" And the vehicle bay closes.
"I'll need to refuel soon." Aaila alerts me.
"Then we're killing two birds with one stone, so long as the Adjutant doesn't try anything." So much is dependant on the Adjutant doing nothing instead of fighting us… Hurry Kerrigan.
"Uh, Max?" Aaila asks on the onboard comms.
"On my way." Already I'm hopping out of the Goliath and rushing for the ladder to the cockpit, I know a 'You need to see this' when I hear one. "What's up?" I settle down in the chair next to the pilot.
"It's a riot." She points to a camera pointed at the ground.
I'm left speechless, looking at the camera with bewilderment. "WHY!?"
"Can't really hear them from here, but the Antigan soldiers below might have a better clue."
"Land, I want to know what's going on."
"Yes sir." The dropship backs up and touches down behind a line of Antigan soldiers, none of them have their weapons aimed, but that can change in a moment's notice.
I storm out of the dropship. "What is going on here?" I demand.
"Sir, word of Boris's imprisonment has leaked and the people are furious." The closest officer tells me.
"There's the bastard who put us under martial law!" I can hear someone shout, and the bloodthirsty crowd surges against the wall of neosteel.
"How did word leak al- Nevermind, I know how." The Adjutant is already acting against us. "Do not fire at the civilians."
"You need to get out of here, we can hold them back for now." The officer urges me.
"Yes, no need to make your job any harder." The people are furious at me… what is the Adjutant telling them?
"Well?" Aaila asks as I sit down.
"They're rioting because they're under 'martial law' by a 'terrorist group'."
Aaila looks at me and leans backward in shock. "It's an evacuation, not martial law! Is there anything we can do?"
"Wait for Kerrigan, we'll have to deal until then."
The dropship lifts off the ground and we continue on our way, the starport is visible in the distance, and it's larger than the one I had at Mar Sara. "That's huge." I whistle.
"It's a bit small." Aaila admits.
"Small!?"
"I was a shuttle pilot on Tarsonis, remember? It has six starports that easily dwarf this one."
I've never laid eyes on the capitol, so I take her word for it. "It looks big enough for Battlecruisers."
"One or two, but that's stretching it."
The clouds part, and down comes the Hyperion. "Whoa." Neither of us were expecting Mengsk to bring the flagship planetside, the dropship stops as we watch.
Once it's low enough the Starport's docking clamps reach for the Hyperion, easing it into the sole spot large enough for it. An escort of wraiths decloak and enter the dropship, one of them is on fire.
"When he said he'd route as much as he could to the city, I wasn't expecting the Hyperion." I shake my head.
"People of Antiga Prime." Mengsk's voice can be heard on the speakers. "We are not your enemies, we've detected Zerg coming for the city and couldn't stand by, watching as-"
Suddenly the Adjutant's voice interrupts. "Medical assistance is requested for one: Sarah, Kerrigan, in the AI core." And my heart stops.
"Turn this ship around, Adjutant find a medic!"
"Medical staff has been informed." The Adjutant tells me.
"She'll be fine." Aaila tells reassuringly.
"I don't care, The Hyperion can wait until the stars burn out for all I care!"
"Okay, okay, sheesh." The ship turns around, and we miss the rest of the Hyperion docking. "Why were we heading for the Starport if we're just going to go back?" She sounds annoyed.
"I was going to organize the evacuation so it's not a chaotic mess like it was on Mar Sara, but that doesn't matter nearly as much as the welfare of my soldiers."
"Soldiers get shot all the time, you don't put things on hold for…" She stops, her mouth forming an O.
"What?" I ask gruffly.
"Nothing." She shakes her head quickly. "Nothing." She repeats.
I narrow my eyes, but say nothing. Her name's Sarah, I don't think she's ever told me her first name. My frown goes away as I continue to think, the dropship speeds up, as Aaila hides a sly smile.
The ramp isn't down all the way before I'm already marching off it. "Where is Lieutenant Kerrigan?" I demand the Adjutant.
"Medical ward, basement level one."
"Guide me, Andasar isn't Mar Sara City." And even then I didn't know the manor that well.
The front doors open, I'm greeted by saluting soldiers. I pay them no heed as the Adjutant guides me through my earpiece, having called the elevator before I rounded the corner.
"Transmission from Arcturus Mengsk."
I tap my foot as the elevator descends, and release a sigh. "Patch him through."
"Magistrate, I expect that you've located the stockpiles?"
"We ran into some problems with Antiga Prime's Magistrate, but nothing we couldn't handle. Adjutant do you have the location of the Stockpiled minerals and vespene?"
"Information not found." The Adjutant tells us.
"Looks like we're scouring the city." I let out a sigh. "I'll interrogate Boris and see if we can get a location." Looks like the Adjutant caught onto Kerrigan's infiltration.
"Hopefully Kerrigan will have better luck." Mengsk says disappointedly, and my heart sinks.
"Hopefully." I say, for a different reason.
"Transmission finished."
The doors open and I bolt out at a brisk pace, the Adjutant guiding me around the first basement level. Finally the doors open and I'm greeted by doctors and a ghost on a medical bed with an oxygen mask. "How is she?"
My sudden arrival startled the doctors, they quickly regain their composure as a quick scan of the room tells me where Sarah is, she's wearing an oxygen mask and bandages over her shoulder, and unconscious. "How is she?" I walk over.
"She took a few bullets to her shoulder and thigh, along with vespene poisoning." A doctor informs me.
"Will she live?"
"She's stable, but will never recover with vespene coating her lungs."
"Can you get it out?"
"It's slow, and getting increasingly difficult."
"Do what you can." I turn my attention to the unconscious ghost, unable to speak. "Can I stay?"
"As long as you don't touch anything."
"I can do that." I tap my earpiece to show the doctor. "Adjutant, I need squads scouring the city for the mineral and vespene stockpiles, and let me know when Boris wakes up."
"Yes, Magistrate."
I watch the heart rate monitor, and glance at X-rays of her lungs, which look normal to my untrained eye.
"Incoming Transmission."
"Patch it through."
"Hey Partner, I hope you have some anti air ready." Raynor's voice crackles to life in my earpiece.
"We just got access to the Adjutant, we'll have missile turrets up as soon as we locate the city's stockpiles, but until then we have some point defense turrets set up… Why?"
"We're bringing an angry, flying ball of suicidal Zerg."
"Oh Sh- Adjutant scramble as many wraiths as we can, we can't lose any transports." I stand up, but don't move away from Kerrigan.
"Routing wraith patrols to assist Captain James Raynor."
"Assistance is on the way." I tell the captain. "Thinking about it, Adjutant how's the sensor grid?"
"Sections eight and nine are down, section six subsections four and five are down, section five-"
"I get it, there's a massive gap in the network, what's the source of the damage?"
"Biological signatures detected closing in on sensor towers before going down."
The Zerg are settling down close enough to the towers to take them out in expansion, and know that they're aiding us. It's as if the Zerg aren't just mindless animals. "This isn't going to be easy with the hardware we have." Who knows what blueprints the adjutant had before the EMP, we'll have to deal. "I want Goliath kill teams clearing out the Scourge clouds harassing our transports."
"Factory fabrication matrix active, Goliath pilots notified."
"Specialize missiles for area of effect, and replace auto cannons with flak turrets."
"Requesting Alterations from lead Engineer."
I let out a sigh. "Let me know if anything happens, or if boris wakes up."
"I'm going to assume that the wraiths are your doing?" Raynor asks.
"They'll be able to distract the Scourges, but you've finished evacing already?"
"First two towns we found were infested, we came across a city being infested and we've been chased ever since." Raynor explains.
"Excuse me, infested?"
"The Zerg are infesting terrans, I don't think there's many people left on this planet."
"Adjutant how's the sensor grid around settlements?"
"Offline."
"You might be right captain." I let out a sigh, looking down at the ghost sadly. "Get what you can, bring them here, and make a sweep to see if anyone's left."
"Will do."
"Transmission finished." The Adjutant says and I mute my earpiece mic.
"I told you to be careful, ah who am I kidding, the Adjutant probably knew you were down there the moment you went into the maintenance corridor." I say with a heavy heart. "Wake up please… The Sons of Korhal need you." No response, too much to hope for.
I lean back in my seat, eyes on the ceiling as I think. I still owe you an explanation for my freakout, don't I? How do I put it into words for when you wake up?
With an explanation I suppose. Every decade a new Magistrate is voted into office, but it's not that simple, instead a pool of candidates are voted on and then trained personally under the previous magistrate, I was one of sixteen.
Three years after the pool has been selected there is a second vote to determine who's the most qualified for the job, if none of the potentials get the minimum number of votes then the previous Magistrate stays in office, if multiple get the minimum number of votes then they campaign for a year and it comes down to who gets the most votes out of the selected bunch, it's common to get two, rare to get three and unheard of to get four, and during all of this the people can still vote for the previous Magistrate but he's not allowed to campaign so he or she can focus on their job.
There are loopholes in this system, but nobody cares so long as it's within the law. The initial pool was sixteen, myself included.
I let out a sigh and shut my eyes tight. When it was announced that I was part of the pool of sixteen some friends of mine wanted to celebrate and I agreed, getting your foot into the office is something someone can only dream of and getting the votes necessary was stressful, and not something I did alone.
So we celebrated, like most potentials did in my position. I got so drunk that I blacked out, and when I woke up to a ghost and his squad of marines shaking me awake, telling me that we needed to move.
Terrified I followed the Ghost, turns out I was in the Tarsonis System, systems away from the Sara system. It's a felony for a training magistrate to leave the system they're running in and grounds for immediate termination.
I could have been executed on the spot.
Instead Tosh introduced himself and his team, and escorted me back to the Sara System, with body bags in tow. They didn't kill me, but they killed people… It doesn't take a Ghost to figure out who they used to be.
If you thought that was rough.
There is only one way to get rid of a potential, if the Magistrate deems them unfit for duty. And having a felony on record is more than enough reason, but he didn't do it, he didn't even add the felony to my record, something I fixed when I was voted up to be Magistrate.
I did my best to pay the people of Mar Sara back, community service until the election was over, if I failed the election I'd have kept with the community service until the max punishment time was served, which was a lifetime. Getting elected to Magistrate meant I'd be serving the people anyway, but I wasn't content with sitting in an office.
I'm jumping ahead.
It was a tie between me and one other magistrate, and during the campaign he continuously referenced my escapade to Tarsonis, when I pulled out of the runnings and resigned myself to picking up litter and repairing cattle fences. Technically the vote still had to happen and I couldn't pull my name out, only the magistrate could do that. I don't remember the name of the guy who I 'ran' against, but after I 'dropped' out he made so many promises to ensure his victory.
And then the big day came and I won by seven votes. It was a shaky first month, what with the other potentials complaining that a felon was elected in office and would constantly bring up the felony report I had put in upon being elected, demanding that there be a revote. But one by one they stopped, some had been busted for drug abuse, some left the system for one reason or another and couldn't continue pushing or else have that same felony should there be a revote, the rest… Stopped.
About a year later I was called in for Live Fire training, and the rest is history. I let out a sigh. "I'll come see you later, when we don't have the Zerg breathing down our necks, and maybe even share my story with you." I say with a weak smile, yet hopeful.
"Magistrate, there are other wounded here, would you like to see them?" A nurse asks me by the door.
…
"Sure, it's a good way to keep Morale up." I attempt to give the nurse the brightest smile I can.
My earpiece crackles. "Captain Raynor's transports have arrived and require repairs before leaving."
I turn on my mic. "Make sure they have everything, I'm surprised Mengsk hasn't said anything yet." I'm glad that I can act autonomously.
"Priority Alert, Zerg Biosignatures detected approaching the perimeter."
Showtime. "I'll have to reschedule, we're about to come under attack." Before anyone can say anything I'm rushing out the door, a hand clasped over the earpiece so I can hear it easier.
Large pieces of equipment are being moved through the manner. I round the corner and nearly bump into someone. "Mengsk?" I ask startled. "No, you're not Mengsk."
"I am a Mengsk." The officer tells me with some hesitation.
"His son?"
"...Correct, I am Valerian Mengsk." He holds a hand out and I gladly shake it.
"He never said he had a son, I owe your father a lot but right now we're about to come under seige.. We're running out of time." I tell the Mengsk.
"Is there anything I can do?" Valerian straightens his coat.
"How much do you know about our plans in the city?"
"Father has told me everything."
"Good, we still don't know where the Stockpiles are and the Adjutant wiped it's memory before we could jack it, our only lead is Boris Farmer… Get that information anyway you can."
"Where is he now?"
"In the holding cells if I were to guess, the Antigan soldiers know better than I do."
Valerian nods with purpose and turns. "Take me to the prisoner." he commands the soldier behind him.
"Pinkie?!" I let out a chuckle. "Glad to see that you've gotten someone easier to watch than me."
Kaleb grumbles, but ushers the Mengsk away.
"Good kid, eta?" I turn my attention back to my earpiece and continue my charge ahead.
"Thirty minutes from closest hive."
"They're already boxing us in." I mumble under my breath. "Keep a reserve back and mobilize the rest of the soldiers, we can't afford to let any Zerg into the city."
"Yes magistrate."
An idea strikes. "Any cameras near the perimeter active and transmitting to every civilian monitor, if they don't think they're in danger, we'll show them that they are." That should stop the rioting, hopefully. Today has not been a good day for the Sons of Korhal.
"Goliath Kill teams on the move."
"Keep them away from the warzone, their jobs are to keep the skies around the city clear." I think I'm lost. "Adjutant, I need to get to the command room."
"Arcturus Mengsk is already there."
"Doesn't change that I need access to the sensor net."
"Yes Magistrate." Now with the guidance of the Adjutant I can find my way around the complex. "Perimeter guard has engaged Zerg forces."
"Didn't take long." I mutter, pushing open the doors. And inside is not only Arcturus Mengsk, but also Edmund Duke.
Duke and I make eye contact. "Didn't take you long to rescue half the planet." I say dryly.
"Boy I'm lucky to be here, nobody said anything about infested terrans." Duke retorts hotly.
"Enough." Arcturus silences the both of us. "Asides from Captain Raynor, we have every living terran on Antiga prime ready for evacuation, right?" He looks at me.
"The people of Andasar are a bit riled up, but nothing that video footage of a Zerg skirmish won't fix." I reassure him.
Video footage of the riot from earlier shows up on the screen, and I hold firm. "For the people's sake, I hope so." Duke says and I narrow my eyes, unsure what he's talking about.
"Our priorities are to get the peaceful Antigan's onboard the Hyperion and then get on it ourselves." Mengsk cuts the tension with a knife. "In the meantime Duke I want you searching for the-"
"Boris Farmer has regained consciousness." The Adjutant cuts in.
"That'll make this easier, I already have someone set to interrogate him." I inform the generals.
"Regardless, Duke I want you searching the city for the stockpiles and load what we don't use onto the Hyperion."
"I'll lead the search personally."
"Dismissed general." Duke strides out of the room full of pride and purpose.
I still don't trust him. "Transports inbound followed by Scourge Clouds, routing Goliath kill teams."
"That would be the captain now."
Raynor appears on the screen. "There are hundreds of these clouds out here!"
"Pull back captain, we have everyone." Mengsk orders.
"Best news I've ever heard." And he disappears.
"Adjutant, get me visuals on one of these 'clouds'." Mengsk orders, and a blob of Zerg mass appears on the holo.
"Zerg bio signature comprised of hundreds of smaller signatures." The adjutant explains.
"How dangerous are these things?" Mengsk furrows his brow.
"A couple can take down a dropship easily, it took one to wreck my Goliath." I explain.
"They turned around." Duke notes, and sure enough they're leaving the sensor network.
"Confederate forces detected warping in."
"One thing to another."
"We could have been out of here by now." Duke says snarky.
"You are right, but it would be at the expense of innocent people, and that's not a sacrifice I'm willing to take, general." Mengsk shuts down the argument before it could begin. "The Zerg can keep the confederates busy while we make our escape, it's perfect." I can see the plan forming in the commander's head.
"Orders?" I ask, standing at attention.