Chapter Five
Supreme Commander Romanov
Office of the Commander
Base Alpha, Shakuras
1757 Hours Local
After getting nothing from Veronica Barnes, I dismissed her, and told her to go back to her Carrier. She stood up, saluted, and left. Once she was gone, my aide placed a transmission into my office. The Arkbird was under attack, and the SOLG had been called in to help. It was doing a good job at blasting away the enemy forces, but they just kept coming.
I picked up the telephone connected to General Tao's office, and waited for him to answer it. When he did, I simply said: "I'm sending you coordinates. Fire."
"Yes Comrade, I understand."
A few seconds later, the nuclear missiles that Tao always had in his base blasted straight up as Ballistic missiles tend to do, and they soon disappeared from sight. It would only be a matter of seconds now before the missiles started to bombard the Zerg forces on the planet, and wipe them out. Especially considering that these missiles were MIRV (Multiple Independently-Targeting Reentry Vehicles); basically a nuclear missiles that broke off into, in this case, ten smaller nuclear missiles that destroy the target and surrounding area.
Nicky Hammond
100 Kilometres above Shakuras
Arkbird
1800 Hours Local
The nuclear missiles from the main base had come out of nowhere it seemed and nobody had even bothered to tell the rest of us. I ignored them, and focused on the swarming enemy fliers, and kept blasting them apart with the heavy laser cannon. The Remoras were doing their best, but we had lost two of them already to some Zerg strain that was almost the same size as they were, and almost as fast and manoeuvrable as they were. Our communications gear sent a message to the base and now, that message was being read. Apparently, they were Zerg Scourge; Flying suicide units that were easy to produce, and dealt a heavy blow to anything slower then a hypersonic fighter. I didn't even want to THINK about what they could do to us…
Disregarding that nervous feeling, I continued to attack the enemy forces, and then all of a sudden, they just stopped! The swarms of attacking enemy flies simply fell out of the sky as though somebody had pushed a button, the Scourge were blowing up in mid-flight as though trying to get a desperate attack off at us. After the enemy flies crashed onto the ground, I went back to the visual targeting device for the laser, and saw that the giant worm-like things were now dead, and several indistinct, blurry somethings were moving away from the carcasses.
In my mind, I heard: thank you for the diversion, Terran. You have helped us kill these foul monstrosities and keep our homeworld clean of the Zerg.
Uhh… thanks, I guess. Happy to help! I thought back, hoping they would get the message. Being a werewolf, I knew I had SOME telepathic abilities, but I preferred not to use them.
We stayed around to confirm the destruction of the Cerebrates, and after that was done, we headed for the relative safety of a higher orbit. I needed to Change somewhat soon, although I had long since learned how to do it in zero gravity. It was a bit weird to experience it the first time, but I got used to it.
Veronica Barnes
Base Alpha, Shakuras
1801 Hours Local
The pounding from the Overmind on control of my body just suddenly stopped, and my headache instantly relaxed. i had a few seconds to myself before I was suddenly without warning, stripped from my body, and shot across God-only-knows how many light-years until I got to some kind of planet that looked like it was an entire volcanic event, but what was on that planet other then volcanoes were Zerg. LOTS of Zerg. Maybe enough to call that their homeworld.
As suddenly as the vision came, it ended, and I was left on the cold steel deck of the Carrier gasping for air. Several nearby personnel helped me to my feet and I suddenly felt very weak. I refused going to medical for the simple reason that the doctors wouldn't know what to do with me. Technically, according to almost everybody military or otherwise, I was an entirely new life-form and while that may sound cold, it was simply a fact.
After recovering enough strength to tell my assistant the Mini-boss to take over the Carrier's aircraft launch, I managed to walk into my quarters and flop down onto my rack and fall asleep.
I was taken to that mysterious ash-world again. This time, it wasn't so fast that I couldn't see anything, and I could actually move around almost like a ghost. None of the Zerg even knew I was there, and often times, I walked right through some of them. I was about to walk through another Hydralisk, but I actually did the same thing I did with those drones when I first came out of my chrysalis. I seemed to take it over.
Not used to having only a tail for movement, I toppled over, and sort of squished a smaller Zerg of some kind. Propping myself on my arms—which were now some kind of scythe-like thing—I looked at the creature I landed on top of, and my brain instantly knew what it was: a Zergling, a smaller type of Zerg designed for fast, early attacks.
After learning how to balance myself on the new tail I had, I started trying to move, but I kept falling over because I wasn't used to this body just yet. Eventually, I found what seemed to work: slithering like a snake seemed to work fairly easily, and it was also pretty fast. Much faster then I'd be able to go if I was on foot.
After a while of scouting, I finally saw something that made my blood run cold. Kerrigan; the Queen of Blades herself. I tried to turn and run, but she was faster then I was and I was knocked down with tremendous force. Trying to figure out what was happening; I was suddenly picked up and thrown against a rock wall with enough force to make part of the Hydralisk's exoskeleton break.
I heard laughing echoing from her, and she said: "did you really think you could fool me in THAT Veronica? I'm infested, just like you and I can easily see you hiding in that minion's body. I may not be able to KILL you here, but I CAN make you wish you were dead."
I tried to squirm away, but she was once again too fast for me, and I felt more exoskeleton break under the strain of her ferocious blows. Screaming in pain, both with the Hydralisk's vocal cords, and mentally, I felt her start to use her psionic powers on me.