Science vessel Columbus
The remains of floor-mounted auto-turrets littered the halls as Shadowguard agents Eli and Umi advanced ahead of the Raiders' group. The trail of destruction Nico and her minions left made it easy for the Terrans to track the Zerg force's movements, as well as for the Raiders to help keep their distance.
For the most part, it had been mainly gun turrets that ambushed Nico and her forces. A rotating flame turret that activated when they reached an intersection surprised them briefly, but the roaches easily ignored the fire and were quick to dispatch of its source. Everything seemed to be going smoothly.
Except, however, for the fact that they have not spotted a single member of the vessel's security force since the first skirmish on the upper level, nor even an inkling of the Protoss since setting foot on the vessel. There was still that faint presence she felt, but it only served to remind her that they were somewhere on the ship. Had they been a little closer, she might be able to pinpoint their location down to a specific area, but so far it seems like the Protoss were content with waiting. Possibly slinking about on the ship, far enough to not expose themselves to her, but close enough to be able to track her movements.
'Let's see...' She had the plans of the Columbus mostly committed to memory...or at least the parts covering the route she chose. Ahead of her was...
The marines awaited behind the tables of the mess hall, tipped sideways to serve as makeshift barriers. They wouldn't completely stop a hydralisk's needle spine, but would absorb a roach's acid saliva, and the former would lose kinetic energy penetrating the tables to ensure that the marines' ballistic-alloy combat shields, a recent addition that they picked up from the ship's tech bay, would be able to handle the spines. The 30mm bonded carbide shields, mounted on their shoulder guards to ensure that both hands were still free, were lightweight, and, from battlefield reports, were surprisingly capable of absorbing attacks that would have otherwise been instantly lethal to most marines. Every bit of protection was necessary to ensure that they would not lose a single man until their last stand.
Of course, the marines would not be directly exposing themselves to the enemy. Turrets - more like the ones fabricated and deployed by Ravens and not the built-in defenses on the ship - were scattered at several points in front of the marine positions, hiding behind tables as well for further protection.
Once again, the tense silence was broken by the sound of acid dissolving the metal door, and the roaches quickly emerged and formed a tight arc as they advanced, affording the less armored hydralisks and the Princess of Blades protection from the hail of bullets that was sure to come.
Come it did, when the turrets in front detected the advancing Zerg. Once targets were identified, the turrets and marines rapidly poured continuous fire at the center of mass of their targets, but all it managed to accomplish at best was to make dents in the roaches' carapace. The roaches were able to get in range, and their acid saliva made short work of the turrets and the tables they hid behind. Meanwhile, the hydralisks were also able to get within accurate attacking range of the entrenched marines, and they unleashed their own volleys. As the marines had hoped, the tables didn't do much to stop the hydralisks' spines, but did sufficiently slow them down for their shields to effectively hold against them. Through it all, the marines continued to attack, this time directing their fire at the seemingly exposed heads of the hydralisks sticking up from behind the line of roaches.
Standard combat doctrine published in the Dominion Marine Corps Field Manual was for marines to aim for a hydralisk's head, since it was the obvious target for every other Zerg and the fact that it also seemed to be a hydralisk's center of mass. However, field experience told a much different story, proven once again here as bullets were either flattened by the thick carapace plates covering the hydralisk's head, or buried themselves in too shallowly to cause major damage. They weren't as thick as a roach's armored shells - and the rest of the hydralisk's body was a different story - but, as one marine detailed in a rough "revision" of the field manual: "Shoot 'em in the chest, idiots."
Of course, the roaches were in front to specifically protect against this. Slowly, the Zerg phalanx pushed closer towards the marines and the rest of the turrets.
"Alright, boys, time to fall back again!" the squad leader called, and the marines retreated to the door, still facing the Zerg and continuing to fire as they did.
"Not so fast!" Nico jumped over her minions and towards the retreating Terran force, while crossing her arms to shield her head from the incoming fire she attracted with her action. Bullets grazed her as she descended, but none would make any lasting injury as she hit the ground and pursued the marines.
"Come on!" the leader urged, and the squad made it behind the door leading out of the mess hall, but the door was closing a little too slowly for their liking. One of the marines went back in to hold off the Princess of Blades while the door closed.
"You'll have to get through me first, you freak!" the marine taunted, shooting at her as he drew her away from the closing door. Nico managed to close the gap and engaged with her wings, but the marine was surprisingly fast on his feet despite the heavy combat suit and shield, and he rolled sideways to dodge the attack and extended his rifle's bayonet to retaliate. Nico managed to dodge the jabs and fought back with a relentless assault from her wings. They made contact with the shield and easily punctured it, and the marine was forced to detach it as Nico's wings tore it apart. Not giving any pause, she then attacked with her razor-sharp claws this time, swiping them rapidly at the marine. The marine used his rifle to block, but the attacks swept it out of his hands, and the only weapons he had left were his fists.
However, the first punch he threw was also his last, as Nico intercepted and gripped the marine's arm and used both her strength and the momentum to lift the marine directly over her head, before slamming him down back with near-lethal force. A deep stab from her wing through the marine's chest finished the job.
But the marine's sacrifice served its purpose, as the door had long been shut during the melee. The roaches were already making short work of the door, however, and once it was open, Nico did another count of her forces. No fatalities this time, only wounds on the hydralisks and roaches (which the latter could recover from in little time). The Zerg were the ones who drew blood in this engagement, and they were eager to spill more. When the door opened, Nico led the charge this time, destroying every turret along her path while her minions tried to catch up.
In the mess hall, the Raiders and the Shadowguard team surveyed the recent battlefield. It was obvious that a fight had taken place, and the Zerg won cleanly: unlike earlier, there were no Zerg casualties around, and plenty of Terran ones: mostly the auto-turrets, but also a single marine. The Shadowguards' visors already showed that he was well and truly dead, but Honoka and Kotori went over to him regardless. However, not even the best medical equipment in the sector would be able to reverse brain death or reconstruct a ravaged heart, and they arrived too late for this one. With a deep sigh, Honoka opened the marine's visor and closed his eyes. Kotori then retrieved the dogtag around his neck before closing the visor again. It was a practice they picked up from Raynor himself, who collected as many of his fallen men's tags after every battle, at least when possible, and marking their graves with their tags and rifles.
But the rest of the ritual would have to wait. They had their mission to accomplish. The Raiders continued following Nico's trail, but before that, one of the marines retrieved the fallen's rifle and handed it to their medics. It had a scratch from what they could only assume to be claws on it, but it was still functional.
"Just in case, I guess," he said, before rejoining his squad.
Honoka and Kotori looked at each other. Both of them were trained in operating firearms and were decent shots with a Gauss rifle, but their purpose as medics wasn't to fight. Regardless, Honoka took the rifle and slung it onto her back, and the two medics caught up with their squadmates. If they can't make a grave, then a small monument would do.
'Nico is moving faster this time,' Umi reported. Their visors revealed the presence of the Zerg force close by, but not Nico's. Moreover, they weren't moving in an organized formation this time.
'They want to finish this in a hurry,' Eli supposed. 'Which might be the right course of action they should take in this case.' The ship's security force had managed to setup their ambushes due to her cautious pace, but it seems like she's picked that up and adjusted her actions accordingly. She could take down the turrets in their path with ease, and simply wait for her minions to catch up before engaging in another skirmish.
'If a reckless one.' The hydralisks were certainly fast, but Nico was faster. And they didn't need to talk about the sluggishness of the roaches off of creep. It did, however, give Eli an idea, which Umi picked up almost instantly. 'Don't tell me...'
'We can do a little damage on our own, right? And we would be able to evade retaliation while doing so.'
'The circumstances do permit such a tactic.' Nico's forces were committing a classic mistake in military strategy: her forces were strung out, and exposed to attack in their rush to regroup.
"...of course, in her mind, this would be a sound strategy, as they would not expect any surprise attacks from the rear or their flanks." The ship commander, of course, constantly kept track of the movements of both the Zerg and the Raiders, and was able to tell what was up. This he relayed to his guests. "However, the two Shadowguards behind her force present an external variable which she couldn't possibly account for, and judging from their movements, they're planning to do exactly what I think they would do."
Without the aid of a specialized detector Zerg or their Princess of Blades, the roaches were completely unaware of the cloaked operatives right on their backs. Eli and Umi were easily able to keep pace, and were close to point blank range when they stopped and set up their rifles. With their straightforward path, it was easy to take aim at the roaches as they took steady aim at specific points on their targets, where the carapace was thinner.
The antipersonnel rounds flew straight and true, piercing through the targeted roaches' "soft" spots and tearing through the actually soft flesh underneath. Two roaches were stopped in their tracks, and the rest of the pack stopped and turned to their fallen kin, snarling as they looked around for whoever killed the two, but this only gave easier shots for the invisible snipers. Eli and Umi each let off another well-placed shot directly aimed at the roaches' heads, sending two more to their deaths. This served to agitate them even further, and they started to throw around attacks in an attempt to somehow hit their hidden attackers, until they turned around and resumed their previous action.
'It seems like Nico commanded them to ignore us,' Eli observed.
'So it seems,' Umi agreed. 'However, we can still reduce their numbers.' The Shadowguards were on the move once again to catch up with their targets, and spotted them again at a hallway intersection. The roaches went straight ahead, and the two snipers were taking aim when...
'Urubu in the way!' Eli immediately held her fire when a flock of urubu, strange featherless birds native to Protoss worlds, ran out from the left and scattered wildly. Eli and Umi had to move to the side to avoid getting overrun by the panicking birds, and when the creatures passed, the roaches were long gone.
'Honoka, Kotori, heads-up: urubu coming your way.'
'Ahh, we can hear them from here, Eli-chan...' Honoka thought, as she and her squadmates also started to step aside to let the poor things pass. "What were those birds doing here?"
"Ah...it would take a long time to round them up again..." the commander observed. He hoped that those simple-minded creatures would stay away from the docking bay. He and his crew spent several months across several planets acquiring those, and they weren't even done with their studies on them.
"Back to the task at hand," Maki interrupted. "She's not as completely careless as we'd hoped."
The commander nodded. "She activated the doors of the specimen pens when she sensed that her roaches were under attack, knowing fully that they would pass by that area on their way to the teleporter, and that the specimens would run amok and distract the attackers."
"She is learning quite quickly," Nozomi noted.
"And that's what makes her even more dangerous." He and the Protoss looked back to the security feed around the teleporter pad, where Nico had just finished off the last of the auto turrets defending it. In her wake lay yet another dead marine who stood against her in another futile attempt to delay her speedy advance, and the injuries she inflicted on this one showed her impatience: the marine wasn't able to detach the shield and so lost nearly the arm it was connected to when Nico forcibly tore it off, and there was a bloodstained hole directly on his visor.
Her hydralisks then caught up with her moments later, and her roaches soon afterwards. With her once again taking the lead, the Zerg entered the teleporter and stepped into the next area.
Later on, the Raiders, led by the Shadowguards - 'The Umojans being involved with the revolution was expected, but lending their prized special operations agents to these rebel groups?' the commander noted with some amazement - arrived at the teleporter pad as well, and the covert agents were the first to enter once more. Before the marines followed, they waited for their medics as they took the fallen marine's tag and rifle - an inspection was unnecessary since a single glance at the ravaged marine's corpse told everything they needed to know.
"It's almost time," Nozomi said. "We should make ready for the coming battle, Maki, Rin, Hanayo." The three nodded. Their showdown with the Princess of Blades was at hand, and they had to be ready to stop her. Here and now, before she achieves her goal and become an even bigger threat to the entire sector. The Protoss took a direct route from the bridge to the supercomputer room, accessible only to the highest-ranking officers on the ship, along with whoever they permit.
"Sergeant, forget about delaying the Princess of Blades," the commander ordered as the Protoss left the bridge. "It's become a futile effort. Let the turrets deal with her along the way, but your squad is to head back to the designated rally point, as quickly as possible."
Several levels below, the marine squad leader breathed a sigh of relief. His belief about the commander actually having common sense was further validated. "Aye aye, sir," he replied. He looked to his men, who were still resting up after the frantic sprint they made to put some distance between them and their pursuer. "Alright, the commander's ordered us to run like hell back to the rally point, so let's get moving."
The marines made it to the next teleporter pad without further incident. Along the way, they reached their armory and quickly restocked on ammunition. They also grabbed a few heavy weapons that they could haul comfortably with them.
Fortunately for them, Nico couldn't exactly pry open most of the doors on her own without having to spend much of her time and strength, and thus had to wait for her roaches to catch up. The previous ambush by foes they couldn't detect - 'Possibly those Dark Templar,' Nico surmised, 'aiming to reduce their numbers even further to ensure that the odds were comfortably on their side when the final battle came.' - hurt her overall strength even more, but her hydralisks were still in good shape, and nothing else happened after that ambush. As tempted as she was to wait for it to happen again and make her own ambush on the Protoss intruders, she couldn't afford to lose time when her easier opponents were still running scared.
She was tempted to call for reinforcements, but the Swarm was still busy down on the planet, and she figured that they were more needed there than here. She still thought she had enough for the battle ahead.
After losing the roaches earlier, Eli and Umi decided to pull back a little and revert to their usual roles as forward scouts for their squad. They were certain that Nico was somehow involved in releasing those urubu, and if they repeated their actions earlier, Nico herself might personally respond and engage them, and there was no telling how they would fare against her. It was safer to stick to their established plan.
Once again, the trail of destruction told them where Nico had gone. This time, there were no friendly casualties in their way, but also no signs of a battle. It seemed like everyone involved wanted the final confrontation to come without further delay, and the Raiders picked up their pace.
A/N: Alright, a bit of a slow burn this time. The pace'll quicken again after this engagement, but the next chapter should be the last for this.