Chapter Eleven

Supreme Commander Romanov

Hrimfaxi

Planet Char

0600 Hours Local

This was it! The complete and total elimination of the Zerg threat forever. The Hrimfaxi had only minutes ago submerged and was waiting to fire its Burst Missiles in case they were needed, as well as launching various fighter aircraft of its own for the mission. UCAV drones, each small, fast, and extremely manoeuvrable, they looked almost like manta rays with upturned wingtips. The UCAVs would launch along with General Granger's aircraft that would wait for the word to come in from Captain Barns that the bio-toxin that Dr. Thrax had produced was working as it should. I took my seat and opened up a holographic display of the combat area that came directly from the Arkbird.

Now, I could easily command the whole operation from the safety of the Hrimfaxi at depth because no Zerg could dive down to the depth where they would be able to attack us. And even if they COULD dive down to our depth, they would have to get through the giant Squids, Allied Attack Dolphins and escort submarines surrounding as I watched the live satellite feed, I saw the friendly Zerg Forces, who before the mission were told to 'evolve' so that on their backs, they had a large, bright pink 'V', advance on the Overmind's position. If reports were accurate, then this would be one nasty fight for the first few minutes before the toxin hit.

The Overmind's forces were now popping out of their hiding places now, each of them rapidly advancing on our forces. The two armies met, and it was almost like watching a movie that took place before the advent of firearms and cannons, how the two massive armies would run at each other in almost a gigantic wave. That was what it looked like, only infinitely larger because of the Zerg reliance of superior numbers. Now the battle had officially begun.

Veronica Barns

Near Primary Hive Cluster, Char

0610 Hours Local

As soon as the Ultralisks charged, I knew that anything smaller then them would be trampled to death in seconds. My forces were now blurs of motion, hacking at their counterparts in a wild frenzy, killing anything in the general area. However, despite my forces zeal, the Overmind's forces were no match for my troops because it had so many of them, and more were being hatched by the second. I HAD to hold this ground long enough for the bio-weapon to be deployed, so I kept fighting.

Some wild Zergling had came flying over to my position and right in mid-air, I shot it full of needle spines, and then I moved onto the next target. This one was another Hunter-Killer like myself. Getting into a battle position, I swung, and it attacked at the same time, in almost the exact same way. Our scythes locked together, as we both tried to knock the other off-balance and go in for the kill. Finally, I had an idea. It may have been technically cheating, but in a war, the only rule of combat is to survive.

I opened my chest cavity, and blasted my opponent with a shower of spines at point-blank range. it reared back, screeching in pain, and I took my shot yanking my scythes free with a screech that almost sounded like metal on metal, and stabbed the creature in the gut, or at least where it should have been, and then rotate my scythes 90 degrees before pulling it out and letting the Hunter-Killer fall to the ground, dead.

The Overmind, engaged at this, sent out its best unit: the Torrasque. Basically, a large, mutated Ultralisk that was nearly unstoppable to most bases. It came for me, and charged, going at its full speed of over 67 kilometres per hour. I burrowed just before it hit me, and as it was passing over me, obviously confused as to where I had disappeared to, I popped up and slashed at its hind legs. It roared in pain and shock, and then began to try and turn around, but because of its bulk, it couldn't do that very quickly.

I on the other hand had the advantage of speed and mobility on my side, although I knew that so much as one hit from those massive tusks that it used to attack, and I was done for. So, I did the first thing that popped into my mind: waiting for the right opportunity, I jumped and managed to land squarely on its back. Realising where I was after a few seconds, I started hacking away at its back hoping to break the spinal cord, or at least nail a large nerve cluster.

After what seemed like an eternity, I finally managed to stab its brain, and felt it gave one last massive shake before it died. I did my best to hop off the dead carcass, and I was about to go and attack the next of the Overmind's best units when something came over me. It almost felt as though I had suddenly entered a cold area of the planet, and as I looked down, I saw that my entire body seemed to be shifting! Not into a Lurker, but into something more powerful then even a Hunter-Killer.

Suddenly, tentacles of some kind burst out from my carapace and start to writhe in all directions while my Needle Spines started to grow and become even more powerful then before. My head frill started growing as well, becoming more and more like a weapon, sharpening at the edges to almost the same mono-molecular style as my scythes, but those were changing too. They weren't scythes anymore, but now full-blown swords, double bladed, and extremely flexible.

Something else burst out of my back, and I screamed in pain as they did so, but that pain quickly subsided. Chancing a quick look back, I saw that they were actually WINGS! Not the boney wing-like appendages Kerrigan had, but full, REAL almost bat-like wings that grew to a sizable length then stopped, and folded themselves to my sides.

I was also being covered in some kind of coating that made my carapace much more shiny, but I had a feeling that wasn't just water, or whatever Zerg perspire. It was toxic, I could tell as one Zergling rushed at me and then promptly dies as it bit into my hide. One final change hit, even worse then all those that had come before it. It felt as though my head was going to explode! Then came things I couldn't even BEGIN to understand. I could actually pinpoint Thrax's forces and I saw one of them holding the bio-weapon about to set it. I could almost 'see' into that soldier's mind: his days as a Freedom Fighter in Vietnam, his capture by the Soviet Union and finally the position in Dr. Thrax's division.

Reeling from this, I tried to push it aside, and fight, but it seemed that my tentacles had taken on a life of their own, grabbing anything that came near me and either simply crushing it, or using their sharp points, stab right through something and… well, I don't know what happened after that, but once the tentacle was clear, the unit it had just attached itself too was blown apart by some kind of internal bomb, and their in the bloody mess were two smaller versions of the Hydralisk that seemed to move at the speed that Zerglings moved and attacked at.

Then, without warning, the hordes of lesser Zerg units just seemed to fall over and die. Both mine and the Overmind's. Good, the bio-weapon must have been detonated successfully, now I could call in the air squadrons.

Captain Felix Graff

Primary Hive Cluster, Char

0630 Hours Local

All of the aces zoomed overhead in the sky, each of us dropping shitloads of bombs on anything unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast. With the remainder of the ground forces gone, we now focused on the remaining air power. I shot off four long-range missiles, and watched as each of those impacted on four different targets and each one of them died. They may have been the evolved Devourers, but it takes a pretty powerful life-form to survive a hit from something going at Mach 7+. Each of the other aces launched whatever they had in way of that, and more of the incoming enemy air power dies. Especially with Cipher and Pixy's lasers and Burst Missiles.

For this mission, I was flying an entirely new aircraft: the XFA-27. My quad missiles were coming in handy as there were simply too many enemies to hope for a clean-sweep with a normal aircraft. Combine that with the Long-Range missiles I had, as well as QAAM missiles, I could easily fight with relative ease, firing missiles off and not waiting for them to reload. Each aircraft was now modified in more or less the same way for this mission, but the XFA-27 excelled at this kind of fighting as it was this plane that had started it in the first place.

Pixy and Cipher went in now to attack the Zerg buildings with their weapons, and seconds later, the base had looked as though a nuclear bomb had hit it. The Burst missiles were spaced so close together that it looked as though the four explosions were instead a single mountainous one. The remaining Hatcheries were annihilated by repeated laser blasts that ripped them apart in seconds.

The Yellow Squadron was also having a bit of fun downing just about anything that got within their firing range, but two of them stood out from the rest: 'Bird Dog' Roy, and 'Tomboy' Nakano. Both of them were werewolves and each of them could now turn, climb, and fight at a limit almost as high as their aircraft's now. The two of them were having a bit of fun taking down the faster, lighter Scourge while the others took down the Mutalisks and Guardians. They didn't stand much of a chance though. With our superior pilots and skills, they never really had a chance to fight back.

Combine that with a new weapon that was now being used by the ground forces, essentially, an AA tank with the capabilities of an AEGIS Cruiser, the enemy fliers were downed as fast as they were picked up on radar. After a while more of fighting and shooting down bogies, the enemy finally seemed to run out of air power. There were occasional things where a rouge overlord tried to take off and escape, but we quickly shot them down.

"All right everyone," I said. "We have achieved near-total air superiority over the battlefield, you can send in the Dark Templars any time now."

The radio handler onboard the AWACS passed that signal onto Zeratul's forces, and they started to move onto the last target: the Overmind and it's Cerebrates. With only a handful of troops that managed to survive the virus, the forces were quickly overrun and they silent assassins made quick work out of the Zerg. We saw that the victory was a total one, and we all flew overhead of the ground forces, each singing our own national anthem. It was made even more glories by the fact that the sun was beginning to rise and the clouds, in one of their rare events parted illuminating the area with undiluted sunlight.

I pulled my plane into a barrel roll just for the sheer hell of it, and went back to base. Once we got back, we received a hell of a lot of praise from others who hadn't been in that fight, and once I got back to my quarters, I just flopped onto the bed and went to sleep.

Supreme Commander Romanov

Animorphs Universe

Office of the Commander

The Kremlin, Moscow

2312 Hours Local

After the most recent mission, I had went into the battlefield to retrieve something I had seen during the attack. After I dug it up, I found that it was another piece of the sword that I had already found two pieces of. This piece was long, and looked like it could have been the blade of it, but after testing it; I found that it wasn't sharp at all.

I would have to find the other pieces before I could do anything with this thing, but for now, I just left it in my personal safe. There was enormous power trapped within that though. Our reading had spiked out at around several megatons worth of energy when we took the readings and extrapolated them.

Another thing that had to be done after the battle was seeing to Veronica Barns. She had been trapped inside the body of a Hydralisk for a very long time, and now it was our job to put her back in her more or less human body. As for the Hydralisk, or what was left of it after those mutations, we'd let her keep it, but only if she maintained direct control over it at all times.

Once that was taken care of, we had bid our farewells, and departed the Starcraft Universe with several new pieces of new technology that were sure to give us a combat edge against the Yeerks, especially when we started to combine our own technology with theirs.

After filling out the profits and losses forms, I looked outside my window at Moscow and thought that our victory would be a total and FINAL one. The war to end all wars, in a sense.