Author's Note: Only 3 weeks ago I got the new PC components, and therefore the testing to make sure there's no defectiveness is still far from complete. But since Blizzard announced Heart of the Swarm's release date back in November, I decided to resume the updates to my fic, at least for now. I hope to maintain a steady update speed for a while, but I can't promise anything.

As always, it's recommended that you re-read the last 5 chapters or so because as with most of my chapters, they take place right where the last one leaves off.

In this chapter we'll return to the situation with Nova on Tarsonis, since she hadn't been heard from for a few chapters, which means it's been many weeks since you last read on her situation.

Chapter 65

Bel'Shir

General Madison listened to the situational report as one of his Dominion officers out in the field debriefed him. Although there have still not been any confrontation with the Tal'darim Protoss so far and thus no shots have been fired, it now looked as if confrontation would be near impossible to avoid.

The satellite that had been launched into high orbit that enabled the Command Center to conduct scanner sweeps had been blown out of the sky by Protoss ships. Reports from the BattleCruisers from high orbit over Bel'Shir have indicated that there were no signs of increased Tal'darim air activity, which seemed to suggest that the Protoss had believed that the satellite had been in high orbit since when the terrans had first touched down on the jungle moon, and that they merely forgot to destroy it when the terrans had evacuated Bel'Shir.

Nevertheless, Madison refused to take any chances. With the scanner sweep ability now gone, his forces could no longer detect Protoss Observers from long ranges, which meant that by the time they spot one of those robotic drones, it would have long since alerted the Tal'darim forces.

On the ground, the sound amplifiers for the springs were starting to fail in their intended actions as well. During the time Madison was gone, more and more Tal'darim Protoss had ventured near the water springs. This had forced the Dominion engineers to camouflage the amplifier devices as best they could with the jungle foliage. It had worked initially, but as the Protoss patrols in the water springs area had begun to increase, the engineers there had to remain on constant high alert.

Madison had already made plans to disassemble the amplifier devices and move them away from the water springs if the situation became too hectic, but such an action could not be accomplished in a matter of seconds. Yet sending marines there was not going to speed up the process. Virtually all the Dominion marines were mere grunts, they didn't have much skill beyond shooting up their enemies. The War Pigs he still had were slightly more intellectual, but it was still nothing compared to the technical knowledge by the Dominion engineers.

Only the Dominion officers had a slight chance of any useful assistance for them, but after their last battle with the Tal'darim, the Dominion officers too had been severely mauled. Only the upper echelon officers remained relatively safe, since their role was to command the troops from a distance, not from the front lines. More than 80 percent of the middle echelon officers were either killed or missing in action, and nearly 90 percent of the lower echelon officers suffered the same fate at the hands of the Tal'darim. Right now, the remaining marines, Reapers, and Marauders on the battlefield needed the leadership of those officers. They could ill afford to lose any more, regardless of rank.

With regards to the terrazine mining, the report proved slightly more promising. The remaining ghost agents had proven themselves to be successful at temporarily opening the Tal'darim altars, and the SCV pilots were becoming more efficient at harvesting the substance from it. By now, more than 250 canisters of terrazine had been collected. Although this is still considerably short from the 400 to 500 canisters that Mengsk had ordered his forces to obtain, it was nevertheless a remarkable success given the slender resources of both material and manpower at Madison's disposal.

The word regarding the dangers of the terrazine substance had been passed around rather quickly, and so far there have not been any instances where anyone had been exposed to the terrazine gas. Madison was relieved to hear that despite all the exhaustion and hardships his men were enduring, none of them had snapped and lost their heads yet.

Still, he had to know the locations of the Protoss Observers. Only that knowledge would keep his troops safe on the ground.

The BattleCruisers from high orbit could do nothing themselves, as they had no detector technology. Fortunately, some of the Dominion engineers on board proposed an alternative solution by using the Ravens.

Initially, Madison opposed this idea as while the Raven had detection technology, it couldn't cloak like the Protoss Observer could. Furthermore, compared to the other terran military aerospace craft, the Raven was relatively lightly armored, and could be easily shot down by Protoss Stalkers and Scouts. Furthermore, despite the limited Dominion intelligence on Protoss technology, it had been discovered that the detection ranges of the Raven and the Observer were relatively the same, which seemed to offer no advantage in the situation Madison was currently in.

Fortunately, the Dominion engineers were able to come up with a solution to this by removing the cloaking field generators from the Wraith fighters and installing them onto the Ravens. This was only a stop gap solution, however, as the Ravens were not designed to accommodate these generators. This meant that they could only operate on the battlefield for a short period of time, before being forced to return to the BattleCruiser hangars for engineering maintenance.

In addition, as Madison quickly pointed out, the Protoss Observers could remain cloaked indefinitely, whereas the cloaking generators on the terran spacecraft had a limited energy supply. This added even more drawbacks to the engineers' proposal.

Nevertheless, the general accepted. It wasn't the ideal solution that he had hoped for, but it was certainly better than nothing at all. If it worked, it could save the lives of everyone on the surface of Bel'Shir, including him. He remained frustrated at being denied reinforcements that he had requested to the emperor, which forced him and everyone under his command to make do with whatever they had at their disposal.

Many of his remaining officers shared the same frustration, and Madison promised them that if they all get out of this one alive, he would make appeals to the emperor about this. Every military operation depended on logistical support, and the general was not convinced that Mengsk would be so foolish as to believe the might of the Dominion military was so great that it could prevail even without the logistics.

Tarsonis City, Tarsonis

"What are you doing here, Nova?" Mal asked, as the blond ghost pulled herself to her feet. "I may not know the details on Dominion ghost missions, but Tarsonis just seems like too huge a stretch to me."

Before Nova had a chance to answer, the wall near them began to crumble. From the tiny holes and cracks, the two of them could see an Ultralisk roaring in anger, and charging again to try and smash through the barrier.

"They'll be plenty of time for talk later," Nova said, pulling on his arm. "We've got to get out of here now before the Zerg barge in and we become their latest chew toys."

Kelerchian nodded. "Follow me, Nova. I've got a jeep nearby."

As the two of them took off running, Nova watched from behind as the Ultralisk smashed the wall down. From behind in, dozens of Zerglings were scurrying around it, and moving as fast as their legs would carry them towards her and Mal.

Channeling her psionic powers, she hurled a piece of debris at one of them, but this only served to slow it down for a moment. The others quickened their pace, and Nova knew that the Zerg were aware that she was no longer armed. Technically she still was, but a single round in her Flak Pistol was going to do squat against that much Zerg.

Suddenly, she felt a weapon being slipped into her hand. She turned her head to see Mal had pulled his Slugthrower pistol out of the holster and was giving it to her.

"Now that you're the most impressive ghost terrans have ever known, I figured it's better for you to take the shot than me," he told her. "When the Zerg are after you, every shot has to count."

"I'm with you on that one," Nova agreed, as she whipped her body around to open up against the Zerglings. The Slugthrower wasn't nearly as powerful in comparison to the Flak Pistol. The rounds were not explosive and thus had considerably less stopping power. Nevertheless, as the crack shot she was, she was able to aim right where hurt the Zerg creatures the most, and this had caused several Zerglings to slow down considerably while their regenerative abilities kicked in to heal their wounds.

By now, Hydralisks and Roaches had also joined in the chase, but thankfully, the two of them were still out of range of their needle spine and acid spit attacks. However, Nova knew the two of them couldn't keep running forever. Unless Mal's vehicle was nearby, they would soon tire out.

"Mal, how much further is that jeep?" she asked desperately. "The Zerg are starting to catch up!"

"Right here," he said, as the two of them rounded the corner of a ruined building. Mal yanked the cover off, revealing a Stinger jeep underneath. "It's not the only vehicle I've got, but it's certainly the only one meant for combat. Problem was the Dominion boys were too damn shortsighted. It takes one person to drive and another to fire the mounted 35mm cannon, and they didn't factor that in."

"You get behind the wheel and get us the hell out of here," Nova replied, climbing onto the vehicle and getting behind the high explosive cannon.

Mal nodded as he entered, starting up the engine. From behind him, he could hear the clatter of spent bullet casings as Nova opened up with the mounted gun, and the sounds of screaming Zerg served as a testament to her deadly skills.

But as he looked from the side mirror, he saw that although the 35mm cannon was cutting the Roaches and Hydralisks apart, more of them simply took their place. Behind them, the massive Ultralisks were also approaching.

He hit the ignition button, and the engine roared to life.

"Floor it, Mal!" Nova shouted, as the Stinger jeep began to move away from the area.

However, this was easier said than done. With the whole city in ruins, many of the streets were filled with rubble. In those cases, the Stinger was unable to navigate through. Mal gritted his teeth in frustration as he was again and again forced to make detours, and this only led to direct run-ins with the Zerg pursuers.

Nova was doing her best to keep the Zerg off away from the Stinger, but there were simply too many. Eventually she just began to concentrate fire on the Hydralisks and Roaches, as the Ultralisks couldn't move as quickly.

"Just run the Zerglings over," she told him. "We're not going to be able to kill them all, not with so many of them in the streets."

Mal was horrified. "They're swarming into the city?"

"As of a few hours ago," Nova confirmed, as Mal continued to drive onwards through the streets.

The Dominion agent looked at her, confused, but decided that was something to ask later. Right now, it was much more important to escape from the Zerg.

Despite the constant need to find alternative routes due to all the rubble strewn streets, Nova could see that the Zerg numbers on the ground after them were slowly decreasing. The ones in the air, however, were another matter. As the two of them continued their drive, Mutalisk attacks began to increase in ferocity. Although their Glaive Wurm attacks were not as effective against the jeep's armor as she had thought, the fact remained that the Stinger was not meant to combat aerial targets. While some of the Mutalisks were shot down as they swooped in too low and got caught in the line of fire, most continued to rain fire down on them from high in the air.

At this point, one of the rubble barriers in front of them suddenly forced itself apart, as an Ultralisk emerged through it, roaring in rage.

"Hang on, Nova!" Mal shouted. "I'm taking a detour!" Before she could protest, he swerved the jeep towards one of the ruined buildings. Thanks to the jeep's armor, it was able to smash the wall down without any significant damage.

But as the blond ghost was about to breathe a sigh of relief, the Ultralisk burst into the building with them, as the nearby walls around it exploded, revealing more Ultralisks also taking up the pursuit.

"You call this a detour!" she screamed over the sounds of gunfire as she emptied every round she could from the 35mm cannon into the Zerg beasts. Many of them roared in pain, but none of them slowed down.

"I know what I'm doing!" he shouted back.

As the jeep drove deeper into the building, Mal aimed it towards an exit window, before turning his head around. "Nova! The support beams! Hit it!"

Realizing his plan, she emptied the 35mm explosive rounds into the poles, and most of them quickly crumbled and broke apart. The whole building began to tremble as its structural stability had been weakened. Mal stepped on the gas pedal, and the Stinger jeep smashed through the glass window and onto the streets once more.

The Ultralisks, on the other hand, weren't as lucky. Due to their slow speed, they were all crushed to death as the building toppled on top of them.

However as Nova turned her head around to look ahead, she suddenly saw the ground right in front of them began to bulge upwards.

"Nydus Worm inbound!" she shouted. "Mal, veer around it!"

As the Stinger turned, a second Nydus Worm suddenly surfaced, this time right in front of them. Its maw opened up, and Nova could see hues of green Zerg crawling out of it. She knew immediately what that meant.

"They're going to use Banelings!" she shouted. "We have to move!"

The Banelings poured out, and as the entire front and immediate flanks were surrounded by them, Nova knew that they had no choice but to abandon the vehicle. Staying in it meant certain death, and there was no way the Stinger's armor could withstand an explosion from that many Zerg.

"Jump for it!" she shouted, grabbing Mal by the collar and pulling him with her. As she leapt into the air, the Banelings exploded in a pile of volatile acids, and the Stinger disintegrated right before their eyes.

Nova and Mal hit the ground, both of them having the wind knocked out of them. Nova had trained through scenarios like this numerous times even before she graduated from the Ghost Academy, so she was able to quickly recover. Mal, however, was not as fortunate. He was not used to this kind of combat, and therefore remained on the ground due to fatigue.

Luckily for them, the explosion caused by the Banelings was larger than the Zerg had expected, as even the Nydus Worms were engulfed in the acids and were rapidly dissolving. This was a sign of relief, but it could only be temporary.

"Come on, Mal," Nova said, tugging at his arm and picking up his Slugthrower pistol lying on the ground. "We have to go. The Zerg will be here in a few minutes."

"We're almost to my place," Mal said weakly, slinging his arm around Nova, as she helped him walk. He looked around his surroundings, before nodded. "Yeah according to the surroundings, it's less than two blocks from here."

"Then that's where we're going," the blond ghost said, as the two of them walked through the ruined city. "We're losing the daylight. We have to find a place to hole up. Zerg attacks at night are even more terrifying than by day."

"My place is in camouflaged in strewn rubble," Mal told her. "We can stay there, the Zerg won't find it."

"You certain?" Nova asked, concerned for his safety.

"Trust me, I know," he reassured her. "Once we're there, we'll be left in relative peace and quiet. It'll give us some time to catch up on what happened to each other the last time you and I met."

Mercenary Base, Dead Man's Rock

As Sarah walked down the Dropship ramp with Franklin and his squad, they could see that the entire underground military complex was in a frenzy of activity. The Raiders were looking over maps and blueprints, while Warfield's troops were loading up supplies and ammo into transports and the marines were loading up their rifles, preparing for an imminent assault. All over the complex, mercenaries were scurrying about. Some were barking orders to accelerate the preparations, others were working as fast as they could on maintenance on the military vehicles to ensure that they wouldn't break down in the heat of battle.

By now, she was sure that everyone had heard Ridgeway's announcement, and him threatening to use the Apocalypse-class nuclear weapons on Deadman's Port and Paradise if the whereabouts of Mira Han aren't revealed to him in 72 hours. This was forcing the planning schedule off balance for cooperation between the Raiders and the mercenaries. Nevertheless, Kerrigan was impressed to see that so far, none of the mercenaries under Mira's command had any intention of betraying her. However, there was no guarantee that the same would be true for all the other mercenary organizations elsewhere on Dead Man's Rock.

A group of mercenary officers were already waiting for her at the planning table, and Sarah approached with Franklin and the others. She knew that in order to have any success of dealing with the Dominion forces here, an assault would have to take place on their base in no more than 36 hours from now. The red haired ghost could see that although the mercenaries were doing their best, their preparations were nevertheless being far too rushed. Yet cutting corners simply wasn't an option. Everyone knew that they only had one shot to defeat the Dominion here, so they had to make it count.

"I hope you have some good news for us," one of the officers said. "We heard you located the Dominion base's location, and that you managed to infiltrate their base and got back here without a scratch on you."

"I have," Kerrigan agreed. "Some of what I'm about to say isn't exactly going to favor you though."

Another officer snorted. "With the threat of a nuclear strike looming over our heads, I doubt there's anything you have to say that could be bad news, so let's have it already."

"The Dominion base is located in a place called the Toxic Slums. From what I heard, it's out in the middle of nowhere, where toxic and radioactive waste is dumped."

"That place is hazardous even to us," the mercenary officer admitted. "For the vast majority of the time, the only reason we even bother doing out there is because of the junkyard next to the dumping ground. Every now and then we could find armor from the rusted vehicle hulks that are still of use to us."

"No one on Dead Man's Rock had ever made any plans to build any settlements even near that place," another officer stated. "The place is so toxic that if a town sprung up there, the whole population would die from sickness and cancer literally overnight."

"Do you have any maps that show the details of the area?" Franklin asked.

The officer gestured to a mercenary marine nearby, and he produced a tray of data chips. One of the officers picked up one data chip and slid it into the computer on the conference table. "We usually don't keep maps of that location. Everyone on the planet has a pretty rough idea of where it is, the radiation and all that is a dead giveaway. Other than the occasional scavengers from both mercenaries and civilians, that place always served as a garbage dump for so long that very few could imagine it could ever be used for anything else. No one ever suspected that one day it would suddenly become the focal point of modern military activity."

"No one blames you for that, but the fact remains that the Dominion base is there," Sarah explained, pointing to the map on the screen.

"You were in there yourself," one of the mercenaries said. "What did you find out about their strengths and weaknesses?"

"Any chance of sneaking in there undetected again is no longer possible," the ghost operative answered. "I got lucky when I was there because the boys in there were too arrogant to believe that anyone would be foolish enough to attack their base. However by the time I got extracted, Dominion SCV pilots were in the process of constructing missile turrets, and ringing the whole base perimeter around with them. Ravens from the Starports were also beginning their patrols in the sectors were the missile turret concentration is the sparsest."

"So we have to blast our way inside," Franklin concluded.

"That's not going to be as easy as you think either," Kerrigan told him. "I overheard some of their comm chatter. Some of the Ore Loader trucks were given orders to raid the junkyard and bring with them all the scrap they could carry."

"What for? The Dominion have modern military equipment already!"

"It's not about using it for their equipment," Sarah explained. "They intend to use the scrape all the rusted components together to create artificial mounds. Once they do that, they will be able to strategically position them around the approaches to the base. That way, in the event someone decides to assault them, the mounds will form barriers which will force the attackers to seek alternate routes, and thus channeling them into killing zones."

"That can't stop air assaults though," a mercenary officer pointed out.

"The Dominion already thought of that. Despite the vast amounts of waste in the Toxic Slums, the fact remains that there are still countless numbers of sealed toxic and radioactive barrels there. Some of the Dominion marines were ordered to load a number of those barrels onto trucks, where they would then be drive to designated locations and opened. According to the Dominion comm chatter that I heard, they hope that the increased concentration of radiation and toxicity would drive away any mercenaries attacking the base very quickly."

The officer growled in frustration. "They aren't exactly wrong about that. Unlike the Dominion, we don't exactly have the high quality CMC Armor that would protect us from the waste exposure. We get exposed to too much of that for too long, we'll die from radiation poisoning."

"That's exactly what the Dominion troops in there are counting on, soldier," Franklin told him. "They think you'd value your lives too much, so if you choose to attack, you'll quickly back down because you'll see that the casualties would be too appalling for you to take."

"That's why I'd like for us to reach a consensus right now," Sarah spoke out. "Since right now it looks like everyone is getting ready for the assault, I propose that once the assault begins, we continue fighting until the Dominion base is destroyed. No exceptions to this, regardless of what changing circumstances occur on the battlefield or however many casualties any of us take. Once we begin, we don't stop until the job is done."

She could see the hesitation on some of the officers' faces. Not that she blamed them for any of it, though. The only way their casualties could be kept to a minimal was to rely heavily on the Raiders.

"What about the nuclear weapons?" Another officer asked. "Did you find anything on that?"

Kerrigan nodded. "You won't have to worry about an excess of those. I infiltrated the Dominion Command Center in the base. From what I got, Ridgeway only had three Apocalypse-class nuclear warheads to begin with. He already detonated one of them to send a message, just in case anyone said he didn't have the guts to set off a nuclear bomb."

"What about the remaining two?"

"As of this moment, they're both still in the Dominion base. According to the Dominion officers, the remaining warheads have been stored underground in some waste processing facility or something."

The officer rubbed his chin. "Over 70 years ago, an attempt had been made to try and reduce the sheer amount of toxic waste. A light industrial facility was built for just that purpose, but the people that built it were far too shortsighted. They had expected the amount of waste dumped there to eventually decrease, and instead the exact opposite happened. Within a matter of months, the people there were completely overwhelmed with work, and virtually nothing had been achieved."

"So the plan was scrapped?" Sarah asked.

"Exactly, but the facility was never destroyed, it merely fell into disrepair. However as it had been built underground, it didn't suffer as badly compared to everything built above the surface. Nothing in the facility should still be operational, but it certainly still had the potential to serve as an excellent storage place. The problem was that as it was in the middle of a toxic nightmare, no one ever had the nerve to even try to enter that place."

"It's the perfect location to hide the warheads then," Franklin commented. "Being underground, they'd be safe from both ground and aerial assaults." He shook his head, disgusted. "It means we can't just stay in the air and level the Dominion base that way. We have to go in on foot to deal with the nuclear weapons."

"That's exactly what they want us to do," Sarah said. "When I left the base, Dominion troops were beginning to fortify the facility entrance. They know we would make every attempt to get in there or seal it off to prevent the warheads from leaving the area, so speed will be crucial in our assault."

"There's only so much we can do," Franklin pointed out, looking at her. "We've only got a part of our military strength here on Dead Man's Rock. The vast majority of our forces are still rebuilding and assembling on Aiur."

"Yes, this was something we factored in as well," the officer said. "As we speak, Mira Han is sending the word out to as many mercenary groups all over the planet. She's trying to appeal to them for unity in dealing with the Dominion. Don't know if it'll succeed or not though. Something like this has never been done before."

Franklin nodded in understanding. "Well unfortunately we can't count on that alone. Everyone needs to accelerate the preparations for the assault. You mercenaries handle your parts, we'll handle ours."

"Eventually you're going to need to deal with the Dominion troops without my help," Sarah said to him. "Once we can breach the base perimeter I've got to get in that facility and disarm the warheads. If one of them detonates down there, it'll turn the whole area into a radioactive crater."

"Then let's hope Horner and Mira will be able to put aside their differences and work together on this one," another officer spoke up. "I doubt it's going to be easy, but we don't exactly have a choice here."

Mal's Hideout, Tarsonis City, Tarsonis

Mal punched in a code on the keypad, and the door slid open. Nova helped him inside, as he was still a little shaky after their encounter with that much Zerg. She felt another wave of guilt wash over her. Mal may have saved her life, but he was only getting older, whereas she still maintained her youth for the time being. During her days as a Dominion ghost she had seen her share of people who remained physically strong despite their age, but they represented a very small minority of the total population.

Regardless, both of them had gotten to Mal's place relatively unhurt, save for maybe a few scratches. He had been right about the fact that the Zerg would have difficulty in locating it. She found it hard to believe it was there herself until Mal had shown her.

The hideout was located in the middle of a collapsed building, with rubble strewn all around it. Given the devastation the Zerg had caused during their invasion of Tarsonis, it looked the same as everywhere else. Thus little effort was needed to camouflage the entrance given all the scenes of destruction around it.

It was the only thing that was above ground, too. The two of them had walked down a corridor that led underground, until they finally reached the main entrance. Now she was standing in the middle of his living room. It certainly wasn't luxurious, but then again she never really saw Mal as that type of person who preferred items of royalty nature or anything like that. There were no priceless paintings, valuable artworks, or anything like that, and the room as a whole was relatively dark.

It suddenly reminded her of her own character only a year ago, when she had been assigned to investigate the planet of Altara. She had been cold and ruthless back then, and preferred the dark as it reflected her own character.

After the short time she spent with the Raiders, Nova realized just how much she had changed, and just by looking around she could see that the living room somewhat reflected Kelerchian's character of soberness. In retrospect it wasn't too much different from Jim's quarters during the time she had spent aboard the Hyperion.

The blond ghost saw that she had an obligation to Mal in a very similar way that Sarah had to Jim. Despite being a shattered man when they had first met, Nova saw Jim's mood had considerably improved in the aftermath of the Char invasion. There was obviously still a long way to go, but most of the crew were glad to see he was finally on his way to recovery.

With Mal, although she couldn't quite understand the reasons behind his gloom and everything, she would do the same. Before joining up with the Raiders, he had been the man that she cared about more than anyone else. The ordeal with Cole Bennett and the Spectres in 2503 was a clear testament to that.

For that reason, she hoped the two of them could finally sit down and talk it out. Since the Spectres conflict, the two of them only worked together one last time in order to get the young girl Lila off of Altara and settled on Korhal. Nova personally wanted something better for the 12 year old girl, instead of ending up in the Ghost Program as she did. After that, she and Mal went their separate ways once more, where she had been assigned to more Dominion assassination missions.

"Next time I'll be sure to venture out with more firepower," Mal said, limping across the room.

"Are you going to be all right?" Nova asked, concerned.

"I'll be fine," he assured her. "Just give me a couple hours of rest and I'll be good as new. You should do the same, Nova." He pointed in finger in another direction. "There's a guest room right over there, and Zerg activity has always been minimal at night."

She was just about to object when Mal raised his hand to stop her. "You don't have to put on a show for me, I know you're also exhausted right now. Get some rest, and we can talk about it in the morning, all right?"

Nova nodded silently, before turning around and headed for the guest room. As the door closed behind her, she smiled silently. It was good to be among old friends once more.