Author's Note: All right everyone, the next chapter is here. This chapter is devoted to trying to develop Nova's character. In the SC universe, she does not remember anything about her past, nor does she care, which in turn basically makes her a Dominion slave. However after I played "Ghost of a Chance", it's pretty obvious there is still humanity in her, and it is my intention to bring that out.

As always please read and review, and let me know if you like the way I portrayed her or not.

Chapter 3

Warfield's Forward Base, Char

"What do you think of Valerian?" Jim asked. "He's certainly not like Arcturus, I'll give him that much, but there's still that Mengsk flare."

"Hard to say," the blond ghost replied. "The emperor himself knows how to block out thoughts from psychics, so it wouldn't surprise me one bit if his son can do the same. Still, the ability to block out thoughts from telepaths depends on the strength of the psychic, and most ghosts only have a psionic signature of 5 or 6. Anything above that is very rare, and mine is at 10, which is virtually unheard of."

"So you think if you tried probing the prince's mind you could determine if he's being truthful or not?"

"Probably, but it's likely I'd also end up frying his brain and leaving him in a permanently comatose state if I tried that hard, assuming he tries to resist it. Still, even if he's lying to you about everything, at least he's been straightforward about it, which was something you told me Mengsk never really did. I'd say for the time being to take his word unless he does something to prove otherwise."

Nova was right on that aspect, and it amazed Jim at times how quickly she earned his trust. After dealing with Tosh and his spectres on Avernus Station, he had been tempted to ask her to join his cause. When she gave him the specs for ghost training and parted ways, he had thought that was the end of the matter, or if the next time they meet, it'll involve bullets flying.

The timing for their next encounter, however, couldn't have been more perfect.

After obtaining the ghost specs, he turned his thoughts back to Mengsk, and getting the decrypted adjutant information from Orlan on Deadman's Port, only to be forced to compete in a resource race with him to win Mira Han's loyalty. What he hadn't expected on was that Nova had snuck onboard the Hyperion at that time to give Tosh's voodoo doll to him. She was still on the ship when the decrypted adjutant coughed up the intercepted transmissions regarding the fall of Tarsonis, which Jim had broadcasted throughout the Hyperion. Nova was outraged at Mengsk's tactic of total genocide of the Confederacy and revealed herself to Jim, claiming she had no intention of serving under a Dominion who's leader was willing to go any length just to feed his insatiable lust for power.

Much of Jim's crew were hesitant on trusting a Dominion ghost, insisting that Jim said it himself that all Dominion ghosts are nothing more than Mengsk's slaves, but he saw something different in Nova even before they fought side by side on Avernus station.

All the ghosts of the Dominion have Neural Inhibitors implanted in them, and that didn't surprise Jim. It was merely a way to ensure that Mengsk would always be in control, and that no ghost ever gave up vital Dominion secrets to his enemies, something Jim knew would be too long of a list to write down. However after Mengsk spent 4 years of using the media to kill his reputation, he had also expected just about everyone in the Dominion to shoot him on sight, something that Nova did not do.

It didn't take long for him to realize that when Nova contacted him about Tosh upon arriving at New Folsom, her Neural Inhibitor was not activated. This was something he hadn't expected. As far as he was concerned initially, she was just one of Mengsk's lackeys: extremely difficult to replace, but still expendable nonetheless. That she was allowed to keep her free will and offer her help to defeat Tosh by fighting along his side proved to Jim right then and there that Nova was different from the other Dominion ghosts he had previous encountered.

Upon fighting by her side, he quickly saw the similarities compared to when he and Kerrigan first fought side by side against Duke on Antiga Prime. Truth be told, she reminded him of Sarah in a lot of ways, though Nova seemed much more emotionally detached to others and far more focused on the mission at hand.

Still, she cooperated with him and his Raiders and brought down Tosh's spectre army, and Jim was thankful for her intentions to keep the Koprulu sector safe. She had frowned at the thought of him using mercenaries for his revolution, but admitted that in rough times, strange alliances are needed.

It didn't take long before the rest of the Raiders had their distrust waver. Nova had assisted him in the capture of the UNN Studios complex on Korhal, which sparked total riots across the Dominion worlds. Jim decided that was enough proof that Nova had severed her loyalties to the Dominion, and had Dr. Hanson remove the Neural Inhibitors in her so Mengsk couldn't take control of her ever again.

Nevertheless, Nova admitted she still had a long way to go before she could fully remember who she once was. The last thing she remembered before becoming one of Mengsk's slaves was a memory wipe that heavily suppressed all her memories of her previous life, and that this practice was standard protocol for all Dominion ghosts and was even used during the time of the Confederacy. Jim knew about the Dominion wanting to keep control over their ghosts, but he did not suspect Mengsk would turn all of them into drones.

Nova explained that Mengsk's idea of this came from back in the days of the Confederacy, when they only used psionic dampeners. Although still largely used today in the Dominion's ghost program to control their agents, the Confederate psionic dampeners were only designed to control those with a signature of 7 or lower. Anything above that signature meant risking the dampener being overloaded and a total loss of control, and that was what led to Kerrigan's defection from the Confederacy. Although Nova showed Jim that newer models were later designed by the Dominion, they still did not guarantee total control for ones with a signature as high as hers, and that was why the 2nd precaution of the memory swipe was necessary.

However, there was still a chance for all of them to remember who they once were. Nova explained that Mengsk forbade the usage of the memory swipe to erase their memories all together. This was done during the initial stages of the ghost program, but it ended up turning the Dominion ghosts into mindless shells, incapable of creativity on their own part and utterly incapable of independent thought, and that was simply unacceptable when they are on the battlefield. As such, Mengsk was forced compromise and only use the memory swipe to suppress memories, but his associates in the Ghost Program assured him that no ghost would have the willpower strong enough to overcome it.

Jim, however, had no intention of letting Nova live an empty life, and told her that once they're finished here on Char, he'll contact some of his Protoss allies and see if they can help her recover her memories. Of course, during the immediate aftermath, his primary concern remained with Sarah, and he was desperate to return to the Hyperion lab to see how she was doing.

"Jim, are you ok?" Nova asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"It's nothing, Nova. I'm just still trying to let things sink in after everything that's happened here."

"You're thinking about Kerrigan, Jim, and I don't need to read your mind to know you love her," the blond ghost insisted. "You already told me about what you and her had done while you fought on Mengsk's side, so it doesn't take a genius to know you've spent the last 4 years thinking about how to get her back, no matter how unlikely that may be."

"And what do you think of her?" Jim asked.

Nova sighed. "Kerrigan was a legend in the ghost program long before she even defected from the Confederacy. Only a few people knew the truth about her being the Queen of Blades during her time with the Zerg, though I didn't know Mengsk had abandoned her on Tarsonis until you told me."

"And her protest wasn't even an unreasonable one," Jim pointed out. "You heard the intercepted transmissions. Sarah didn't want a whole planet to be killed just so Mengsk could take his revenge against the Confederacy. You told me yourself in all the years you've spent in the Dominion, you've never once heard of genocide on such a scale."

"And I haven't. Still, she had always been my ultimate test of strength. The Confederacy may be long gone, but some of their legends still live, and she was among them, portrayed as the most psionically gifted Terran in history. In fact, during the time I fought under Mengsk, I had been told that I was his most gifted psychic that would later help him bring peace to the Koprulu sector. In reality I was merely used as a weapon to him, just one that wasn't as expendable."

"What does it have to do with Sarah?"

"After I had seen the similarities in facial appearances between Kerrigan and the Queen of Blades, Mengsk told me that my suspicions were correct. But he insisted that she was simply one of the casualties on Tarsonis, and that had she not been, she would have taken my place as his ultimate weapon."

"That's all Mengsk ever sees in anyone," Jim replied, placing his hand on Nova's shoulder. "Everything is just a stepping stone for more power. You deserved a chance at freedom a long time ago, and valued for your actions. Hell, just look at how many lives you saved when we assaulted the orbital platform! Warfield said clearing it with ground forces would result in a bloodbath, and you helped ensure we took only moderate casualties."

Nova looked down at the ground. "I know that, Jim. But it still doesn't change the fact that I spent much of my time training to surpass her. I know you treat the troops under your command much better than the Dominion ever did, but even you have priorities. And in times of war, you know certain lives have to be expended for the price of victory."

"You think just because Sarah is psionically stronger than you that I'd suddenly see you as some expendable asset? Nova, every soldier under my command I deem valuable because each of them have their individual lives."

"But Kerrigan is more than that. Even without this prophecy it's obvious she meant everything to you. Half the crew on the Hyperion told me you'd have paid any price to get her back to the way she was."

"That doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to see everyone else as expendable," the former Confederate Marshal replied, before holding up a dog tag. "See this, Nova? This belonged to a marine named Koiter. He was among the finest marines I had ever known in my Raiders, and his death hurt me deeply. I knew the casualties would be appalling in this invasion, but I always wanted to see every one of my Raiders make it out alive. That's the difference between the marines in my Raiders compared to those in the Dominion. Most of the marines under my command are clean, not a single prison sentence. On the other hand, more than 95 percent of the Dominion marines were once homicidal psychopaths. The only thing that's keeping them from going completely psycho and killing everything they see is the neural resocialization process."

"Don't you see the difference here?" Jim continued, "When it comes to homicidal psychopaths under Mengsk's rule, there's no shortage of them. That means they are barely more than cannon fodder, all to be sacrificed for the bigger picture. I would never sacrifice my troops like some expendable asset. Obviously some would become casualties, but I value each and every one of them. Your fear that I'd suddenly forget about you now that Kerrigan is back is misplaced. You will always have my respect, and that from the rest of the Raiders. You will never have to live an insignificant existence like you did back in the Dominion ever again."

Nova nodded slowly, all her years spent in the Dominion she was never once shown any compassion. Despite fighting alongside Raynor's Raiders for a couple of weeks now, the concept was still foreign to her. She realized she still had a long way to go to understand Jim's morals and principals, and that was something that could only be done via experience, not simply by probing his mind.

She was still somewhat afraid of what she might end up uncovering in her previous life if his Protoss buddies really could reverse the memory wipe, but Nova suddenly remembered when she fought by Jim's side on Meinhoff. During her time with the Dominion she had sincerely believed that infested terrans were nothing more than empty shells of a human body with a zerg mind, but the infestation on Meinhoff had somewhat changed her mind on that topic.

The infested terran marines didn't surprise her one bit. She had long since known the Zerg try to assimilate everything they conquer, so it would only be natural for them to assimilate terran technological knowledge. Therefore it wouldn't have required much effort for the Zerg to understand how to use a C-14 Impaler gauss rifle via an infested marine.

But it was the state of the infested refugees that surprised Nova. While most of them acted like mindless zombies, there were a few of them she saw that begged the Raiders to kill them as they came into bunker firing range. Thus it was possible that either they were dealing with a new generation of Zerg infestation, or the virus wasn't as powerful as she had been led to believe. Whichever case it was, she realized then that infested terrans still maintained a small degree of their humanity, though their free will was another matter entirely.

Since seeing what had happened on Meinhoff, Nova shared Jim's interest and curiosity in just what did the Zerg infestation really do to Kerrigan. To her, it seemed that Sarah maintained much of her free will, although deeply manipulated. But considering the fact that prior to her infestation all the infested terrans had no free will or humanity in them at all, Nova deeply wondered if some form of humanity was retained in Kerrigan's infestation. If so, whatever she had undergone during her time with the Zerg would be far worse than anything Nova could possibly imagine, let alone have experienced. For that matter, she knew she had to be strong when the time came to discovering her past. If Kerrigan can endure the pains she went through when she was the Queen of Blades, Nova's dark past should be a walk in the park in comparison.

That is, of course, assuming she really is human again. Like Jim, Nova too wanted to believe the Xel'Naga artifact had finally stripped Kerrigan of the murderous nature the infestation had given her, but like most of his crew, she understood that this had to be proven. Enough people had suffered at the hands of the Queen of Blades, and a physical appearance change alone wasn't enough to change Nova's mind, and Jim knew after bringing Sarah to the Hyperion lab that none of his crew will be convinced from that either.

"Come on, Nova," Jim said, gesturing upwards. Nova looked up to see another dropship descend from the sky. "It's time we get off this ash rock."

"You read my mind," Nova replied, as the dropship landed near them. "After experiencing what happened here, I'm almost going to be glad that you're turning your attention back to the revolution again."

"That might still have to be put on hold for a while longer," the commander replied, as the two of them began walking up the ramp. "We could have something far worse than Mengsk coming down the road. As long as the Dominion worlds remain distrustful of him, I've got a time window to focus my attentions elsewhere."

"You want to know more about this prophecy," Nova stated.

"Exactly. Every battle fought we need intelligence on the enemy, and this one is by far the most enigmatic yet. It doesn't appear anyone seems to know anything about this Dark Voice," Jim answered, as he and blond ghost sat down, before turning his head to the cockpit. "Pilot, get us out of here. I've seen enough Zerg to last me quite a while."

Jim reached over and grasped Nova's hand. "Nova, until you turned away from the Dominion you were their strongest and most lethal soldier, sent out on all kinds of assassination missions to hunt down their enemies. They valued you for your killing potential, but it also meant that you weren't just some expendable pawn to them. They had to have protected you in some aspect, and therefore it gave you some insight how the Dominion fights, as well as their military secrets. I promise, our revolution will turn back to Mengsk in time, and when that time comes, what you know will be invaluable in restoring freedom to the people."

"If you think we'll make it through this, I believe you," Nova said, gently squeezing Jim's hand. "Mengsk has to go, one way or another, and I'll keep fighting until that day comes."