-12 hours before nuclear detonation-

Zazathur’s two creatures obey my order.

No freaking way can they hear me through the gasmask… That’s just not possible without my external speakers activated. Is this a telepathic link? If it is, then I’m like a hive mind’s stepchild. This needs testing.

I mentally order one to hold out its paw, like a golden retriever might be trained to shake. It does so, even lolling its tongue out the side of his mouth. Despite their fangs and spines and chitinous skin, they’re kinda cute. Like a mutated puppy. Although, you probably would get into trouble if you took them to the local dog park. In the same way you’d get in trouble for taking a velociraptor to a children’s petting zoo and calling it a friendly turkey.

“Do not harm me.” I order, trying to keep the nerves out of my voice.

Then I swallow, thinking of the next order. In sync, both creatures –they aren’t really zerglings– begin to wag their tails, proof positive of my total control.

>Human Apollo: They’re like dogs. I can control them with thoughts.

Even as I type, I'm looking at ‘Human Apollo’ and frowning, mentally changing it to fit our growing menagerie.

>Terran Apollo: :)

>Straingineer Zazathur: cheeky nerd

My nickname should set us apart, and I want to remind everyone of our final goal, not just that I won our racial coin toss.

Spread out, search this bunker, I’m looking for powered armor and portable guns uhm… Tell me if you find anything like that. I command, sending the two ‘zerglings’ into the bunker’s darkness, flashing their bone tails. Like a whip that ends in a bulbous stinger so similar to a scorpion’s.

Neither replies, and I instantly understand why. We’re linked, what they can see I am aware of. As if their senses are directly uploaded into my memory to access at my leisure.

“Hive minds are something else…” I mutter, shivering as we search.

I can see why we called them zerglings, they’re longer, lankier, probably nine feet long -if you count the tail stinger- and their spines rise above our chests.

Wait, I’m the only human body left.

My chest.

I frown, watching the not-zerglings hunt. They are purely quadrupeds, possessing no back arms or hooves or facial horns, so the term is factually wrong. But calling them spinosaurus puppies, extra stingy edition, doesn’t have the same ring as zergling. It’s inaccurate, but a shorthand that tells all three of myselves exactly what we’re talking about.

In the bunker’s total darkness they spread out, sniffing crates, missile racks, dirt, and moving slowly, feet staying low to the ground, almost shuffling forward. Sensory perception enters my mind, we’re linked together, not really seeing through each other’s eyes, but conscious of information only they can perceive. Somehow they’re able to detect miniscule movements through the earth, a sort of seismograph.

I paws to appreciate how absurdly awesome these boys are. Together we listen, half-seeing, half-hearing the artillery shells land near Juggernauts. One has been knocked out entirely, flipped upside down and blown in half. Daddy needs whatever weapon did that! So I activate my new helmet’s internal functions, leaving a GPS tag on that location for later investigation.

Then the radio kicks on. Making me jump out of my skin. I jerk the trigger to the needle pistol holding it down for a half second and sending fifty rounds into the ceiling.

One of the zerglings glanced back at me, as if to ask ‘what the hell?’.

“Sorry.” I hiss, ducking behind some crates for cover.

I don’t make it. A familiar voice halts me midstride. Unmistakable in the lonely darkness. Baz, the traitor, speaks in my com channel.

“Brave soldiers of the most cherished Singularity, today marks the last day Technocracy heathens shall pollute this world! Thanks to our reinforcements from Earth we are advancing on every front, forward! To VICTORY!” Says our Field Marshal.

I choke, dumbfounded.

Bazzhole was drafted too.

Except they made him a general, and not just any general, the Field marshal. The highest ranking military officer. What complete and total bullshit! Syrak-9 shouldn’t even have a Field Marshal! They command a billion soldiers, not a few thousand. Why promote him to a rank that shouldn’t exist? One frigate can carry a few thousand soldiers, even with multiple resupplies we can’t have more than ten thousand personnel on Syrak-9. A colonel should be our highest officer, why the hell do we have a Field Marshal?

“What the hell! That’s like running a lemonade stand on Tuesday and getting appointed as Secretary of Commerce Wednesday! How?! Why?!”

Distant impacts fade as the Juggernauts split up, six head back, wounded or empty. Repulsed by advancing Singularity forces, great news for them. Potentially fatal for me. At least one Juggernaut is heading for us. My heart thunders, but even that is picked up by the zerglings marking it as unique amongst our four heartbeats.

Four?

There are only three of us.

“Find the fourth!” I hiss, coiling my body around the flechette ‘pistol’. Calling this porker a pistol is something only a cyborg could do. While it has a smooth rear plate for unarmored humans to use, the thing is an awkward brick, meant to be carried and used one handed by power-armor encased Technocracy engineers as a weapon of last resort. Like a P90 SMG that’s made of stainless steel and twenty pounds heavier.

We don’t have time to search. Nor do we have time to run. Tremorsense paints a picture within my mind. The Juggernaut’s not alone. A support crew of four technicians are jogging across no man’s land to us, one is far heavier than the others. Boots carving ruts into the mud.

I pray he’s carrying wrenches and not a heavy weapon…

Except, what if he is carrying a rocket launcher? One tech is far easier to kill than the Juggernaut. My mind races, trying to decipher a battleplan. My micro-railgun can’t take out a Juggernaut, probably can’t even damage its sensors but technicians do not wear heavy armor. That is not their job and the Novan Technocracy does not waste resources making tools better at jobs they are not intended to perform. My flechettes won’t pierce armor, but twenty or so will certainly break through the transparent polymers used in their helmets.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Cool, twenty headshots. Frick. I need distractors and cover. No matter what, it all starts with the fourth heartbeat. Zerglings walk to the source, not needing light to find the beating heart. God, they would be a terrifying opponent to face. Able to hunt in pitch black.

>Straingineer Zazathur: You okay?

The chat message makes me jump, sending another burst of flechettes into the wall. One zergling looks at me, teeth barred, entirely unentertained by my game of peekaboo.

“Sorry!” I snap, unsure why I'm apologizing to the spiky killer.

>Terran Apollo: Yeah, smart doglings. Like, creepy smart. Idk if we’d love golden retrievers if they could read our minds like these boys do.

>Straingineer Zazathur: as if dogs arent already smarter than the terminally online

>Straingineer Zazathur: they get to live the NEET life

>Straingineer Zazathur: free food free rent and we literally fight over who gets to raise their babies

>Straingineer Zazathur: dogs are already smarter

They reach a quadruple sized crate that is sealed under some kind of foil. For lack of a better term its shrink wrapped in metal with the exterior shape maintained by round studs, like a square ribcage-

-Or a cage.

An airtight cage.

My looted Singularity helmet reminds me that I’ve only found human soldiers here. Earth conscripts. I sprint forward, pistol falling; shovel rising. One thrust rips into the vacuum sealing, unleashing a hiss as pressure equalizes.

“Rip open the cage!”

Both zerglings leap, their front paws tearing through the steel bars in two swipes. Steel rods shoot into the cage and bounce out towards me. Flaying steel faster than I can think. Another swipe and they could eviscerate the contents.

“Stop! Don’t hurt what’s inside!”

They obey, retreating a pace so I can assess the damage. Inside are a stack of human bodies. Some are white skinned turning blue around the orifices. Long dead. While others leak blood. Fresher… Scraping through the blood my shovel finds it spongy, or in other words, coagulated and at least a day old. Gasmask filters out any scents but Sage Yurten’s flash training was comprehensive, and I can infer the stench these corpses would exude from prior experiences. No wonder it was sealed.

Shovel connects with a steel bar thicker than my thumb. Probably an inch thick. seeing it bent beneath the dogling’s paws. Crap, that much strength could damage power armor! Warriors is the right name for these zerglings. Their claws tore through inch thick steel on the first pass. A hand touches my throat, activating the helmet’s external speakers.

“Hello, is anyone alive in there? Speak up or I’ll have to leave you behind. Juggernauts are incoming.”

Zergling hackles rise, and for an instant I wonder if they can launch those back spines. Probably not… But I’m sure Eugenic Hitlerina would approve of that improvement. Which gives me pause, not sure how I feel about having ‘Eugenic Hitlerina’ as my cheerleader. Or what the term means. Once upon a time the name might have evoked fear, overusage turned it generic and now is as terrifying as Baddy Mcbadface.

Crunching comes from inside the cage, chasing away dictators with gory squelches. Movement through the bodies. Tremorsense from the zerglings has somehow integrated completely into my own cognition. Together we triangulate the source, finding a heartbeat moving inside the pile. Like a giant birthday cake with a stripper inside, except way, WAY, grosser and hopefully with a different kind of happy ending…

I could really use a friend right now. Might keep me sane. I see a Singularity helmeted head bob up and down so I lunge forward fingers hook beneath steel, dragging them out of the heap. Head, arms, torso, pelvis and one leg come free. This body is stiff and totally cold. A zergling sniffs at the stump and before I realize what he intends, his jaw unhinges. Rows of teeth unfold and clamp onto exposed thigh, biting through skin, muscle and bone in a single chomp.

“Cmon!” I snap.

The zergling swallows, human femur snapping twice as the monster’s throat breaks down the meat. I nearly shit myself. The femur is a human’s largest and thickest bone, yet not-a-zergling snapped it twice. Ignorant to my thundering heart, the ling gets back on task. He darts forward and drags another corpse out of the cage. Or tries to. The corpse snags on something, probably the shredded bars but the zergling keeps pulling like a dog toy. It all happens so quickly, one second Spot the zergling is pulling, the next he is covered in blood, having ripped the body in half. A display that makes his eyes sparkle and stinger wag. He looks at me, expecting dog treats or some nonsense.

“Bro…” I mutter, unable to say anything that won’t insult my protector.

Silence is broken like a wishbone, the other creature dragging another body out and opening a hole in the pile of bodies. I blink. Dumbfounded at what I’m seeing. There is a girl, not a teen, a child. No way is she twelve years old. The little gremlin looks to be eight years old at most. More disturbingly, she’s nude. Thrice concerningly, she is sitting in a sort of craven pocket, as if someone blended all the corpses within reach of her. A manacle around her neck, two inches thick and three inches tall, totally encircling her spine while providing anchor points for a quartet of chains. Each of which is bolted to the cage’s floor.

Her purple eyes stare into mine, piercing the green lenses of my nightvision. She inhales deeply. Gasping for air. Pupils dilate as lungs fill with oxygen, restarting her aerobic functions. How is she still alive? The cage was sealed and stuffed full of bodies.

“What’s your name?” I say, lowering my pistol.

Sage’s training screams at me. Shrieking bloody murder about Technocracy experiments and traps. Any Singularity soldier would gun down this girl and wipe it from memory in a heartbeat. But I am not the flashtraining. There is a chance that this girl is an Earthling. A kidnapped child caught up in a galaxy of war. I push the training aside as if I don’t already know something is seriously wrong here. Cataclysmically wrong.

“Whaths a name?” Asks the girl, lisping slightly.

Her mouth moves strangely. I can’t place it but the sensation of ‘uncanny valley’ creeps up my spine. Something deeply unpleasant has been done to this child, if she even is a child. Maybe Sage is right. Maybe I should gun her down right here then detonate the explosives within this bunker. As if reading my mind, she slumps, glancing at both the zerglings. Side to side eye movements, in total darkness. Her purple irises contain vertical pupils, and for a brief instant her eyes reflect green light from my nightvision. This isn’t a girl, it’s a mutant, or a Technomancy bioweapon.

“A name is what we call people- uhm… What we call our friends.” I say, snapping her eyes back onto me. “Mine is Apollo Finley.”

One zergling steps towards me, shielding me. The Technomancy engineers made it into the trenches without getting blown apart. Damn, was really hoping the artillery bombardment would solve that problem. Guess we’re out of smart munitions… If Field Marshal Bazzhole deployed them at all. We’ve got a few moments before the engineers reach us. Worse, they’ve got power armor, even if I run now, I’ll die. I’m trapped. All thoughts of setting up an ambush with a fellow soldier vanish. This child can’t hold a gun, nor would I allow it.

My hand pats the nearest zergling.

Start digging! Dig a hole you and I can hide in. I order. It obeys, dashing towards a corner and excavating the dirt faster than I can think. One glance at the slashing paws keeps me from getting in the way. Those things are cutting through rocks as if they are snowballs, aint no way I am going near those.

Kerrigan blinks. Alien pupils narrow slightly, surprisingly they only appear half dilated in the total darkness. So well adapted to a cage. Can this girl even see in daylight?

“Are you my frien?” The girl asks.

“Sure I am. Can you tell me your name?” I spot a crate of Singularity rations in the corner, and silently order the other zergling to grab a few. I’m not really hungry, but I know there is a ‘c-bar’ in each ration box. No way is it actually chocolate, but it sure tastes good. He reaches the boxes and I mark them all as targets for teleportation. We’ll need food, and I don’t have time to neatly pack a backpack. The Juggernaut is only minutes away.

“I donfh ave a name.”

There it is, the reason behind the lisp. Her jaw looks human, but is split vertically through the chin. Like an anaconda’s. Complete with extra teeth that are all slightly angled rearwards. If that weren’t enough, they’re sharp, like the zerglings. This is a baby bioweapon. Ha, that reminds me of a similarly purple and equally violent girl-

“-Kerrigan.” I whisper, not meaning to say the curse aloud.

Unfortunately for us both, the girl child hears me.

“Ith at my name?” Asks Kerrigan.

Uhhhh… My immediate thought is, what the hell? NO! Don’t name a child after a fictional mass murdering queen. But then I hear the sound of a juggernaut volley. Twelve SCUD missiles rip through the air and three seconds later a deep rumble tells me they’ve landed. Missiles at close range mean enemies and allies are nearby. I don’t have much time. So again I make a snap decision and pray lady luck doesn’t bite me in the ass.

“Yes, your name is Kerrigan, and you’re my friend. Lets get you out of that cage…”