Had a lot of fun writing this chapter, hope you enjoy reading it as much. One thing, though, that I'd really like feedback on is the use of street names, which I made up or cribbed from random San Francisco Bay Area cities on Google Maps. I decided to use them because I thought it helped me visualize the strategic situation, and hope that they'll do the same for you. But I worry that they may either simply not make sense, end up being inconsistent, or perhaps unnecessarily limiting. Please, tell me what you think. Also, I've just barely introduced a new Zerg unit in this chapter, the impaler. When I started writing this chapter, I realized I had a bit of a problem. I had (mostly accidentally) written roaches as quite a bit weaker than they are in the game, and so I needed a much tougher Zerg unit to counter Diamondbacks (short of ultralisks), which I've made a little more powerful than they are in the campaign. I wanted to use WoL lurkers, since they've got the right health, armor, and speed, but the wrong attack, obviously. And so I looked into HoS, and found that there's going to be an evolution of the lurker called the impaler, which I decided to make the Zerg's standard main battle tank type unit. As to the things I stole from other works, Michelle 'Mike' Ryan comes straight from Honor Harrington, and addressing female officers as 'sir' I got from the Tour of the Merrimack series, as well as a certain nickname. And yes, I replaced the rockets on Banshees with railguns, because I like railguns.
"Sir, we've got a problem."
"Got a lot of problems, Mr. Lorne, not the least of which are the Zerg. Care to be more specific?" Captain Alec Hackett tried not to snap.
"Yes, sir. Approximately seventy unidentified contacts just appeared on the outskirts of the system."
"IFF?"
"A veritable shit-ton but….one of them is definitely Umojan. And one is similar to one of the dozen or so IFFs we have on file for Raynor's Hyperion."
"That is a problem." He turned to face his communications officer, saying, "Mr. Jamison, get me Admiral Ryan."
"Yes, sir," the young officer said, hammering on his keyboard. A moment later, Admiral Michelle Ryan's middle-aged appeared on the screen at Hackett's station. "Admiral. Looks like the other shoe just dropped."
"Indeed. I've already got the fleet moving to intercept, but you and your escorts are closest to them, so I'd suggest you withdraw a bit, just in case they decide to start sprinting."
"With respect, sir, I'd like do some recon, get a better idea of their composition."
"You're not a fighter pilot anymore, Alec. You're driving around that big fat bus, and if you bring it too close to them, you won't be able to get away. And then I've got a flaming wreck to deal with. Just thinking about the paperwork makes me cringe."
"Your concern is touching, Mike."
"I try. And that's 'sir' to you. Send one of your escorts."
"You're no fun, sir."
"No. But if being fun means we lose this fight, I'd say it's a small price."
"Can't argue with that. I'll send Harker and the Poitiers, if you've no objection."
"None. Report back as soon as you have something."
"Yes, sir. Not as if we didn't have enough to deal with, now this."
"Don't tell me you didn't know these were the end times for the Dominion."
"Well, of course I did, but I had hoped it wouldn't end all at once."
"You thought they'd obligingly come at us one at a time?"
"No, I guess I didn't actually think they would, but I hoped."
"You're far too romantic for your rank, Alec."
"Maybe you're not romantic enough."
Captain Lauren Hastings was having a very bad day. She had already lost three of her choppers and pilots, and then she and her remaining fliers had been waved off an airfield about three minutes before it was completely overrun, and now that she was back on the ground she was exhausted and keyed up at the same time. She lay on a cot just inside the door of the airfield's pilot barracks, trying to snatch twenty minutes of sleep before she and the rest of Falcon squadron had to go back up. She stared at the heavy door leading out to what had been an enormous parking lot, through which she heard the low, thunderous rumble of shock cannons, the rapid, the thrumming of VTOL engines, the percussive whining of gauss rifle fire, the stomping of ultralisks, the shrieking of mutalisks, the screams of the dying. Her attempts to rest were not helped by the presence of about a hundred full body bags, piled into a makeshift pyramid, in the area that used to be the barracks' common area. Forcing her eyes closed, her thumb unconsciously flicked against the cap of the small bottle she gripped in her left hand, containing the amphetamines she had needed to remain effective over the last forty hours of solid combat flying, a reminder that she'd need to take even more in a few minutes, for what she was told would be her last sortie for two days. She doubted she'd get even eight hours off.
Just as she managed to relax slightly, the door swung inward, pushed by a burly arm belonging to her squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jonas Hallander, who said, quietly, "Sorry Laurie. Time to go."
"Fuck," she breathed, hauling herself into a sitting position and smoothing her red hair back, "Okay. I'm coming."
"I wish I could ground you, but I need everyone I've got right now. Got reinforcements coming in again tomorrow, so you'll have some time off then."
"I know. I know I have to go back up. But," she said, managing a small smile, "I've been pushing my luck a little, lately. Don't know if I'll come back down from this one in one piece."
"You will. You're one of the best. So pop a few more of those heinous things, and you'll be up on a hospital ship getting your stomach pumped before you know it."
"Oh, that sounds like a fun way to spend my down time," she said, standing and chuckling quietly.
"Well, you're no good to our great and wise emperor if you die of amphetamine poisoning," he said, smirking annoyingly.
"You really know how to make a girl feel valuable, Colonel."
"Just doing my part."
"I know. Thanks," she said, uncapping the bottle and shaking out two pills, which she dry-swallowed.
"You're getting good at that."
"Doubt that bodes well."
"No. Probably not."
By the time she had settled into the cockpit of her Banshee, the drugs had kicked in and Hastings was starting to feel like she might just pull this off. She ran through her recently-changed pre-flight check, finding that her engines, guns, and the pair of rapid-fire anti-armor railguns, stripped off the corpses of Diamondback MBTs, which had replaced the Backlash rocket pods as Falcon squadron's primary armament, due to a lack of rockets and an abundance of dead tanks. The gunship's cloaking generator, however, had been knocked out about a month ago and had never been fixed, so she skipped over that step in her check. She had plenty of fuel, a full magazine of cannon shells, and three hundred rounds for each of the railguns, while her navigation, target and objective data had successfully updated. "Falcon 2-2, 2-5, report readiness," Hastings pinged to the two remaining copters in her flight.
"2-6, this is 2-2, finished preflight, everything green, except for the cloak, of course," Lieutenant Cassidy responded.
"2-6, 2-5, same here, but my cloak's actually working," said 1st. Lieutenant Connor Harris.
"Excellent. Spin 'em up, boys," she said, engaging her engines as she did so. "Falcon 6, this is 2-6, finished preflight, everything green, flight reports the same; good to go."
"Copy that, 2-6. Squadron reports green. Prepare for takeoff," Hallander said, after receiving affirmative pings from each of the other helicopters, with the conspicuous absence of Falcons 2-1, 2-3, and 2-4, whose broken aircraft littered the shattered city.
"Roger," she said, the downdraft from her turbofans increasing exponentially as she fed power to the engines, forcing the copter's eight tons of steel and ordinance to float a few inches off the smoothed tarmac.
"All right boys and girls, let's get this over with. Tower's cleared our takeoff and egress vectors; full power," and the twenty-one remaining gunships of Falcon squadron flung themselves into the air. "Good. You all have your targets, so stick with your flight leaders and take 'em out. Good hunting," Hallander said, as the three flights streaked off in three different directions.
"So, where we going first, Laurie?" Cassidy asked over the flight comm.
"The 7th Armored is counterattacking up Imperial Boulevard, downtown, trying to link up with the 1st Marines out of the Korhal Stock Exchange, hopefully catching a big chunk of the local brood in a pocket. They need support."
"Hope they get more than just three Banshees," Harris said.
"All of Gargoyle's giving support with us, with Punisher and half of Checkmate on the marine side."
"Well, that's something."
"Had better be enough; we don't close off this bulge, we'll probably lose most of our Augustgrad airfields."
"Then let's make sure that doesn't happen," Cassidy said
"Agreed."
Five minutes later, Hastings' flight and Gargoyle squadron were hovering below the tops of the high-rises lining the exceptionally wide Imperial Boulevard, receiving streams of data from the spy satellites in orbit. "Looks like eight thousand 'lings, eight hundred hydras, five hundred roaches, a hundred impalers, twenty ultras, a queen, and a few infestors for good measure down there, probably three times that number between us and the 1st Marines, ten times that in the pocket we hope to create," Colonel Thomas Cartwright, commander of Gargoyle squadron and of the 9th Close Air Support Wing, said over their task force channel.
"How many air breeds?" Hastings asked
"Unknown. They're in their nests, satellites can't see them. Got a squad of Vikings on standby, not to mention the Goliaths on the ground, so hopefully we won't have to worry too much."
"I always worry, sir."
"Give you ulcers."
"A risk I'm willing to take."
"Then I wish you luck…Uh, getting a message from General Karlsen. His troops are starting their push in one minute. Take your flight to the east, you'll support 4th Battalion on that flank."
"Yes, sir," she said, as her Banshees strafed their way across the block, at the end of which was massed about a hundred Diamondback gunships and a thousand power armored infantry, preparing to break out onto Fulton Street, running parallel to Imperial Boulevard. Another three Banshees moved the opposite direction, toward Newcomen Avenue, where a similar flank force massed.
About two miles north of Hastings was the 1st Marine division, deployed variously around the KSE, at the extreme eastern flank of which Oswald Barnes and Bandit company were swiftly running out of ammo. "Captain, how much longer do we have to hold here? Because this position is quickly becoming untenable," their position being the intersection of Newcomen and Arden, the street running in front of the four-block bulk of the KSE.
"How perceptive," Wallace Baird said, gazing out at an ocean of carapace over his HUD sights, against which four understrength Marine companies were having to hold. "We have to hold out until General Riker is ready to start the attack towards 7th Armored."
"Did the general say how long that would take?"
"Colonel Kojima told me it would take ten minutes fifteen minutes ago."
"Awesome. What are we waiting on?" he said, firing a burst of tungsten spikes that caved in a roach's turtle-like carapace from the third floor of building that had been violently deprived of its top floor, overlooking 12th Battalion's main defensive position.
"Banshees. Checkmate squadron got ambushed on their way here, needed some emergency repairs," Baird said, firing a volley of rifle grenades over the low, hastily constructed wall he sheltered behind, near 12th Battalion's right flank.
"Shouldn't we just go without them?"
"The Banshees we were supposed to have were already the bare minimum."
"What about naval support?"
"All dried up. Don't know for sure, but I heard Raynor's fleet and his Umojan buddies showed up. If that's true, then I'd say they're a little preoccupied."
"And just when we thought things couldn't get any worse."
"Things can always get worse, you know that better than I."
"Don't remind me," Ozzy said, as he failed to avoid completely a flurry of hydralisk spikes, losing the front half of his left pauldron in the process.
Slamming his second-to-last magazine of gauss spikes into his modified rifle, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a burst of gauss fire, which crippled a group of roaches about to leap over the wall sheltering Rocket company, on the battalion's left flank. Ozzy whipped around, targeting the area through his scope, but he saw nothing except a single gauss spike with a smiley face drawn on it, standing up on its end precisely where Ozzy had seen the fire come from. He opened his comm back to Baird and asked, "Cap, you know if we've got any Scout Sniper teams around here? Maybe using gauss rifles for some reason? And maybe with an annoying sense of humor?"
"Like yours?"
"A little," Ozzy replied
Baird chuckled as he reloaded his grenade launcher and said, "No. General Riker recalled them all, having them hunt down infestors."
Before he could ask any more questions, the intersection of Arden and Mack, one block to the east of 12th Battalion, exploded in a small volcano of rubble, pulverized masonry, twisted steel and shattered glass as four ultralisks attempted to turn onto Arden, mid-charge. As the urban rockslide subsided, the ultras managed to alter their course, heading straight for 4th Battalion's exposed flank, as their defensive position was oriented towards the south, where they expected 7th Armored to come from. "I don't think that trick's gonna work twice, if you were wondering," Ozzy said over his comm as he turned his rifle on the things that were probably going to slaughter his company.
"Funny," Baird said, as Joker, Bandit, and Nomad companies frantically attempted a fighting retreat, with Aztec company fighting a hasty rearguard against the smaller breeds from the south. A voice cut in over battalion comms, "12th Battalion, no support is forthcoming, but I've been ordered to hold this position. It's been an honor," Lieutenant Colonel Toyoza Kojima said, as the ultras closed to within 400 meters of the battalion's retreating back. "It might be worth a shot, though," Baird said, holding down the trigger on his rifle, sending dozens of ineffectual shots shattering on the ultra's carapace.
"Too fast," Ozzy said, trying and failing to target the ultra's eyes as they came within 200 meters. "Been fun," Ozzy appended, not even attempting to retreat from his position.
"You're a bastard."
"I love you, too, Cap." The ultras were within a hundred meters, shrugging off thousands of gauss rounds and dozens of Punisher grenades. Just as they came within seventy-five meters of destroying the building from which Ozzy and his section fired, a massive flood of adrenaline poured into his bloodstream, giving him the perception that time had virtually stopped. In that unreal moment, a shape came rocketing around a corner, just fifty meters behind 12th's battalion's soon-to-be-pulverized position, followed a half second later by nineteen more.
And then another voice, a half-crazed scream, cut across their battalion comms: "FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY, HIT LIKE A FREIGHT TRAIN! ORACLE COMPANY, FIRE FIRE FIRE!"
From inside the lead Diamondback gunship, Oracle 6, Captain Jacob 'Crash' Coleman, screamed until his vocal cords seized in pain, while his gunner, laughing maniacally, mashed down the triggers on the tank's twin-linked railguns, sending thirty one-kilogram slugs slashing into the lead ultralisk's head at 15,000 m/s. The massive, two-hundred ton animal simply imploded, hit by similar bursts from a dozen other pairs of railguns. Approaching the fleeing battalion, Oracle company boosted themselves ten meters into the air, sailing over the 12th to place themselves between the Terrans and the three other ultralisks, slamming into their huge, trunk-like legs, tripping them on the hovertanks' bulk. The tanks that didn't impact the ultras whipped around, pouring rail fire into them point-blank from all directions, while the vehicles that had tripped the ultras boosted out from underneath the monsters' crushing weight, their frontal armor showing huge impact dents. Thirty seconds after Oracle company appeared, all that remained of the ultras was a small river of blood and liquefied organs.
Atop his building, Oswald Barnes lay quite still, twitching slightly, as his chest heaved inside his armor, laughing uncontrollably. A minute later, gasping for air, he noticed that every one of his comm channels was choked with the same relieved, ridiculous laughter that had gripped Ozzy. "12th, apparently I was wrong about the support," Kojima said over the battalion comm, the sheer, ludicrous understatement not helping his battalion get ahold of themselves.
"Not really, Colonel," came a voice over the same channel, which Ozzy eventually identified as the screamer, "I'm here against orders. Hope you don't mind if I ask you to put in a good word at my court martial."
"Not at all, Captain-."
"Coleman, Jacob. But you can call me 'Crash,' or, if you're boring, Oracle 6. And, in that case, my company is at your disposal until the MPs come for me."
"Still have a flank to secure."
"My pleasure," he responded, as the other half of his armored company, composed entirely of the massive Marauder suits, began fanning out, supporting 12th Battalion platoons, finally able to stand again, in clearing the buildings surrounding the intersection, and in establishing additional nanocrete defensive lines to the east and south. Just as they were finishing, a pair of white-painted dropships flew into the intersection, their powerful speakers blaring, "This is the Provost-General. Oracle 6, surrender yourself and your company immediately for confinement and charging. Comply immediately or you will be fired upon." Their many gun turrets trained, pointedly, onto Oracle's D-backs.
A cacophony of voices sounded below, as 12th Battalion vocalized their less-than-favorable opinion of the white helmets, raising their own gauss rifles and Punisher grenade launchers. For his part, Ozzy sighted the cockpit of the lead d-ship, as he prepared to try to hail it to express his own displeasure. He stopped when he noticed that the ships had been forcibly patched into 12th's battalion channel, allowing everyone to hear Colonel Kojima as he shouted, "Hey, assholes! If you want them, you'll have to go through the 12th. And last time I checked, we've got more than enough firepower to turn you both into flaming wrecks. So why don't you pricks fuck off back to whatever gaping asshole shat you out, and we'll all surrender for court-martial when the Zerg aren't trying to eat our faces. Or, better yet, let actual soldiers use those d-ships for something that might help win this war."
"Colonel Kojima, stand down imm-"
"You have twenty seconds to comply."
"Stand down, Colonel."
"Fifteen. Hey, Barnes, fire a warning shot."
"Roger," Ozzy said, firing a single round, which shattered the lead dropship's windshield.
"Next one goes through your number two engine. Five."
"This isn't over, Colonel," the Provost commander said, as his aircraft lazily, reluctantly turned to go.
"Thank God for that. Wouldn't want things to get boring. Now fuck off," Kojima finished, booting the Provost ships from their battalion comms, as a cheer went up from all five assembled companies. "Shut up, all of you," he said, curtly, all business once again. "All of you need to understand that what just happened was mutiny. You know what that means, and how serious it could be for all of us. I won't say it can never happen again, because I wouldn't put it past Dominion High Command to pull even worse stunts than that, but you do need to understand. Sound off by companies."
After the five companies had signaled their understanding, Baird opened a private channel to Ozzy, saying, "Mutiny. I just hope I survive so I can tell my father."
"Oh, yes, you the rebellious Old Family black sheep, very original."
"It never ends with you, does it?"
"Ain't dead yet. But yeah…mutiny. It was fun."
"Do it again?"