Chapter 3

Derk's POV

My name is Derk Treeton or also known as unit QI9872X. I am a ghost, the stealthiest of all the terran. I must be the most accurate, the best trained, the fastest, the swiftest, the bravest, the most dangerous, the most feared, the strongest, the best . . . and I am going on the easiest mission ever imaginable.

I am to go to this planet called Urthe with my friend and a marine squadron, for backup, to stop a zerg invasion before it even happens. Boring! I should be sent to fight on the front lines of Nartes instead, or perhaps Jinxsole.

"Hey, you ghosts ready? We're approaching land." Jenny said. She flew the banshee we were in and was our only flight out. The banshee looked like a helicopter with two propellers on the sides. It also had a cool cloaking device, kind of like our ghosts' cloaking. We normally rode in the Medivacs, which was the main terran land transport vessel, but being ghosts we get kinda lucky. I prefer banshees over Medivacs anytime. Evan the gigantic Hercules ships aren't as fun.

"Better ask her out, soon man. That Ben guy is startin' to hit on her, runnin' out of time." Tenny Yankprel, my best friend, said. Everyone in all of history knew that I had a crush on Jenny. It all started when I was first training as a ghost. Ben Richterson was a big muscular popular guy who operated a Thor, such a show off. It makes me real mad some times.

"Shut up Tenny. That's not any of your business." I said angrily as I swatted my hand over his head.

"Well it will be when I marry your sister." He said nudging me. "She really does have a talent of being a massage therapist."

"She is not. She's a medic!"

"Oh but it feels better then that. Remember when I got that cut from the spine crawler. It put a big gash on my back. I didn't think that neck could stretch that far."

"Well duh, they can stretch up to about thirty feet."

"None was worse than when Todd got nagged by the infester and—"

"Come on guys, hurry and get out! We don't have all day." Jenny said. I didn't notice we had stopped about ten feet above the ground, and the door was open. "We don't want to attract any attention."

Tenny went first and then I fallowed. Jenny flew the cloaked banshee away. I took a look around at my surroundings. There was a fairly big hill in front of us which seemed to be a path for a highway. We appeared to be in a grassland type of biome. Cars drove on by.

"Let's not cloak until we get closer to the road. We don't want to waist energy that we don't have time to regenerate. Hey we might not even have to cloak at all." Tenny said starting to walk toward a road that swung around the hill. There were continuous hills going in the right direction.

"Let's get this over with," I said following him. I liked our suits over any other I had worn. We wore tight black leather covered in orange rimmed platting, to protect us from anything. Our suits along with our psychic minds gave us many abilities. We could manipulate the matter around us so we could cloak without our uniforms were simply there to give us more energy and keep us invisible for longer. We were able to fire EMPs, disabling any kind of shields, which these species of Terrans didn't seem to have, and will easily reduce energy to zero. EMPs are very good against Protoss, because they're quite advanced in the leanings of psi. I like to call them Easily Massacres Protoss.

"Heh, what is the point of saving a planet so far behind in technology. These people don't even have hover vehicles yet." I said laughing, as we approached the highway.

"Oh please Derk, why ask what you already know. We can't let the Zerg continue to expand their brood. If we let them consume easily targeted planets, they will over whelm us easily."

"Huh, I know. I just don't know why we are wasting time here. Why send us more highly trained ghosts when they could have sent a handful of marines."

"I don't know. Let's just get this done and be over with it. So let's go get a ride."

"Wait we can't just wave our hands and hitch hike. By what our boss, General Plank, said these people here aren't familiar with people off their planet.

"You're right," Tenny cloaked so I physically turned my vision on my mask to activate a radar to detect friendly ghosts. He was holding up his big sniper gun and pointing at an approaching car. I cloaked to and then said—"

"Wait! Stop Plank said not to kil-" I said as a sniping pew went off, then a loud popping sound followed. Phew he shot the tire. The car slowed and then stopped in front of us. A fairly large man in a white shirt stepped out of the car, and looked around.

I could see the outline of Tenny sprint to the car. I caught on pretty fast. Knowing what he was doing I couldn't help but smile. We were jacking his car.

We yanked open the doors and jumped in. Immediately I pushed on the gas.

"Whoo!" I yelled, "So long sucker!"

"Yeah!" Tenny shouted.

"Score one for the ghosts, zero for the zerg."

"They better watch out, cause here we come."

"Hey do you have any music synched to your transmition?" I asked uncloaking, as did Tenny.

"Heck yeah I do." Tenny said, unhooking a rectangular device from his side plate. He threw it at me. I quickly waved my hand over the top of it. A hologram flared on. It showed a medic with a cowboy hat on and began to play country type of song. I rolled my eyes at the old type of music. Moving my hand across the hologram, it changed the song to a more techno beat, with a dancing elf. I smiled. I started to beat on the steering wheel.

"Ha that's more like it," I said, Tenny raised his hands in the air and did raise the roof. We were all rocking out and everything, having the music blast through the speakers of the car, but then I heard a whimper come from the back of the car. Oh no. I pushed my hand down on the device making the dancing elf disappear inside. The music stopped.

"Hey why'd yah do that?"

"The car came with a coupon for trouble."

"Huh?" Tenny said.

"Check the back" I said as we rounded the last of the mountain approach a town.

"Oh no!" Tenny said looking at me. "We got a pair of hitch hikers."

"I know," I growled turning my head to look at the small children in the back, still keeping an eye on the road. "Hey, you two better not give us any garbage or I will rip your throats out."

"Derk! That's not going to help!" Tenny snapped. "Hey kids. We are here to drop you off at your house. Where do you live?"

The moment Tenny let that out of his mouth the girl that looked about seven screamed at the top of her lungs. The little boy, about four, started to cry. I tried to think of what to do but then Tenny grabbed his transmission from me and turned on that stupid country song and started singing. His voice made me cringe. Tenny was not born to sing. I remained silent. The girl stopped screaming and smiled. The music helped intensify the moment.

After the song was over we asked them where they lived, again. They told us to round a corner up ahead. We had entered the town about five minutes ago so when Tenny was singing I drove around aimlessly. As we turned the corner the girl pointed to a house. We parked next to it and they went inside.

"This flat tire is bugging me. We can't go faster than five miles an hour. Let's just park it here." I said pulling up on the drive way, irritated at our circumstance. We got out and started walking down the street. "So where the crap do we go."

"Well this thing says—" He started to say but the young girls voice interrupted.

"See, Mommy! The people in the Halloween costumes. Invite them in for dinner. Invite 'em."

We stopped dead. Tenny looked at me and I looked back at him. I cussed.

"Excuse me." The women said. She approached us as we turned around. "Sorry me but did you steal our car?"

"Yes they did and it was awesome," the little girl said

"Hush, Alexandria. I'm calling the police."

"I'm sure the fat guy already has," Tenny said folding his arms. The women opened her mouth to say something but I interrupted her.

"Maybe another time," I said as I pointed a sterilizer out of my back pouch and shot her in the face. She fell back, having a quick seizure and then going limp.

"Derk! Was that necessary?!" Tenny yelled, as the girl screamed. "And where did you get that?!"

"Eh, I picked it up from some drunken guy at the bar, outside of sector Hex." I said looking down at the gun like stunning device. The girl's screams continued. Tenny quickly turned to her.

"It's okay little girl! Your mother is fine." Tenny said trying to calm her.

"Oh come on that's not going to calm her." I said, firing the stunning gun at her. She quickly vibrated and then fell paralyzed. Like her mother.

"Derk! If you don't stop shooting everyone you see, I will most certainly tell Mr. Plank!"

"Eh, let's just go." I said. cloaking "The faster we get this done the faster we can leave."

Police cars started rounding the corner. The fat guy was in one of them. So we continued on our way.

We followed the pinging indicator inside of our masks which led us to a school where "the hydralisk attack" happened. There were police men swarming all over. (Just like the zerg). We uncloaked and approached a police man.

"Excuse me sir, we're here to investigate the hydralisk appearance and need all your men to withdraw from the area. We do not want anyone getting infested because obviously your men are not equipped with the right shielding equipment to prevent being infested to the zerg swarm. An evacuation is indeed necessary." I said, putting my hands behind my back.

The man burst out laughing. "Oh really. Are you going to make us, Halloween boy?"

"We usually get our way," Tenny said "Now we were talking about an evacuation."

"No, you were. I have at least thirty men here and you expect me to evacuate. I think not."

"Now we don't want to get physical, but if you do not move your men, we will." I said

"Alright that's enough. Hey you three over there. Escort them out of here. Now." The police man said to a couple of other officers.

"Alright have it your way." Tenny said. We cloaked and shoved our way up to the front doors. We rammed through the two guards at the school doors and went inside. We could here the police man yelling orders, something about us entering without authorization.

"Alright let's call Jenny and have her bring the marines so they can take care of all these guys. By the looks of their weapons it looks like they will be useless verses their armor. We need to find that hydralisk." I said as we walked down the stairs into what looked like some kind of old fashion furnace room.

I walked in and looked around. Leaving Tenny at the doorway to call Jenny, I flipped on the light to my sniper gun. It beamed through the darkness. There was a power box on the side of the wall about five yards away from the door. I pulled the door open. There was a red lever, which was facing down, and a bunch of buttons. I repeatedly pushed the lever up and down . . . nothing. I pushed a couple buttons just for the heck of it but again nothing happened.

What a horrible way for operating electricity. And here I was thinking that we needed to update our expertise. Enough of this. There weren't many places to hide so it should be easy to find the hydralisk. I shined the light all around the room. Zilch. So I walked toward a round support for the building. There were about five of them that spread across the room, and a boiler in the back. I knew it was here somewhere, just waiting to strike. Like a snake, which is pretty much what it was. Except that it had a huge long trapezoid like head and to long arms extending from its shoulders. A flat out nightmare.

I approached the pillar readying my weapon. The twelve foot monster raged out from behind the support and raked its foot long claws across my chest. It bit down on my shoulder and grazed its blade claw across my back. Immense surges of pain, whelped through my entire body. The hydralisk hurdled me across the room. Tenny quickly looked up in astonishment as I fell in front of him moaning in pain.

I had lost my gun when he tossed me across the room. Tenny cloaked and through my mask, I could see him throw a reaper bomb that spread out others around it. Tenny lifted me up and took off out the door. An exploding blast rang through the air as I saw pieces of organs, intestines and other bits of zerg barrel through the door. It covered me and Tenny, even though we were half way up the stairs.

It was a good thing that we had our suits on. For if we didn't we would become infested and become Zerg in a day or two. All I could do was pray that no part of that zerg got on my skin where I was slashed by the hydralisk.

"Are you okay?" Tenny asked, he was not cloaked, entailing that he wanted to conserve energy. "I'm okay. Did you ask Jenny to bring a couple medics?" I asked while he put me on the ground.

"No but she's smart; probably will bring some anyway."

"They won't all fit in the banshee so they will obviously bring a transport ship.

"Duh," Tenny said. "This will really tick the Zerg off, so we'd better get some SCVs down here to build us some bunkers to secure the area. A barracks would help as well. Not so much a Command Center, because I don't see any minerals to mine anywhere."

"Well, now remember, we can collect other mass, and convert them into a substance that we could use as minerals." I reminded Tenny. "They won't be worth as much as pure minerals would be."

"Eh, I still think we can go off our funds from nearby planets." Tenny said. "Even though we will receive a short delay on everything we make."

"True," I said.

We had just begun to walk out the door when we realized we weren't cloaked. I gave a side glance to Tenny as all the police men, surrounded us.

"Put your hands in the air and no one will get hurt." One of the men said holding up his gun.

"How much energy does your suit have?" I mumbled to him.

"Not much. I could probably go for ten seconds if the energy goes by two percent of energy every second. So there for, I have precisely twenty percent energy."

"Hey stop talking!" one yelled. "Hands in the air! And no funny business. We're trained professionals."

"Mine's about the same." I said to Tenny. "On three. One . . . two—"

But that's when the police men tackled us. I was able to punch one off but another jumped on.

"Did you call for back up" I asked Tenny. But another booming voice cracked through the air.

"He sure did." I knew who it was right off the bat. It was Ben Richterson. Right then I really wished that I was killed by the Hydralisk. The gigantic machine flopped the men off us with its humongous tank like arm, guns. Good thing we were outside or he would have taken apart the school with us inside. "Heard you ghosts needed some help. We came as fast as we could."

Ben was sitting up in the tinny little window up at the top of the Thor. I could almost see him smirk. Pretty much saying: What a bad impression, Jenny's mine.

I knew that behind my mask that I was turning red, half way between anger and embarrassment.

All the police men stared in astonishment. They stepped a few steps back and a couple just flat out fainted, but I also noticed that it wasn't just Ben, there was a whole army behind him, Marines, Marauders, Siege tanks, Vikings gliding in the air, Vultures cruising around, a couple other thors, fire bats, even SCV's building bunkers, missile turrets, and a detector tower.

"Oh man there had better not be any changelings here. By the end of today they would have every bit of information needed to wipe us out. Those SCV's better darn well hurry. Anyways what'd you tell them?" I asked Tenny, raising an eyebrow.

"Well I simply told them that we would like to set up a camp in case any more Zerg are running around. I also said that it would be better scaring them off. If we can show them we're not an easy target, the critters will run like cowards. I guess I seamed to persuade our boss." Tenny said, shrugging and then walking up to the frightened policemen to explain as Jenny's banshee landed.

"Well that was a mouthful," I said, walking up to the banshee.