I wish I knew the bunker was wired with explosives, but sometimes, ignorance is bliss. Hopefully this will all work out in my favor…

Two sayings I embodied as we freed Kerrigan. Turns out zergling teeth treat steel like a game of rock paper scissors, shredding Kerrigan’s chains like wet paper. Though there was no safe way to get the collar off her throat. Besides, I have more pressing concerns. Like the Juggernaut who is breathing down our necks.

One look at my internal sensors told me radiation inside the bunker was about 50 rem, light radiation poisoning after a minute of exposure. Death after twenty four hours. My helmet converted the alien unit automatically into values my tiny Earthling engineer brain could grasp or had a chance of being familiar with, one little perk of being brainwashed in a tube.

She needs radiation layers or she’ll die after a few minutes in the trench. But the way she was stored, puts us in a double bind without time. Three technicians and the heavy engineer pause their march, halting for a reason my tremorsense can’t identify. Thirty seconds, that’s all the time I dare risk.

“C’mere, take my hand.” I say, helping Kerrigan out of the cage, she is covered in disgusting ick, things I hastily smear off with assistance from the ration kit’s version of a wetwipe.

Even in space, washing your hands is important. Moreso than on earth. Since alien microbes that you have zero biological defenses against could liquify your insides until you pissed brain jelly. Kerrigan’s hands come first, wet wipes clean them off and I hand her one of the C-bars. Narrowly remaining calm as the juggernaut rolls closer. It’s moving slower now, probably took damage. A small miracle.

Opposite the Juggernaut’s trench, at a T junction, four technicians are trading shots with a Tulverian warband. Two fall and kick, limbs missing. Victims of Tulverian energy weapons. Despite their reptilian nature, Tulvarians are highly intelligent, well okay the average Tulvarian eats rocks for fiber so they’re idiots, but maybe the scientists are genetically engineered cause those quacks are as smart as the others are dumb. At least that’s the Singularity’s leading theory, since it would explain how they cooked up some of the finest energy weapons in the galaxy. Man portable and precise to a fault. Odd design track for plasma weaponry since the Tulverians generally don’t wear armor and precise plasma is the galaxy’s most logical answer to armor-

-A dozen of them are gunned down by two flechette pistols, falling still. I feel nothing as they fall quiescent. Without motion the tremorsense has nothing to see, causing bodies to vanish as they die. It must be shock. People just died and I couldn’t even feel recoil. Worse, I’m relieved that we have a few more seconds.

“Eh, fukit.” I say, already envious over dead Tulvarian plasma rifles.

One shot from those rifles is like a dragoon’s main cannon. Able to damage all armor and even good against enemy shielding. If we can get enough of them. I’ll start with one. Drooling over xeno tech is only fair turnabout, as the iguanas would be drooling over me if I died. Albeit for very different reasons.

Shall I fetch them? Asks the tunneling dogling.

“Whafths thith?” Kerrigan asks.

I almost ignore her question, too stunned by the zergling’s request. He is fifty feet into the walls, tunneling faster than I can walk. There is no line of sight nor any possible way I could have physically heard him. Yet I had.

Hive mind? Oh man, this’ll take some getting used to.

Yes. I think, mentally marking him as ling-ling2. A smile crosses my lips at the idiotic name. But why not. Ling1 is still bringing me ration packs -from a pile that was once taller than myself and is now only a foot tall- dropping one next to Kerrigan.

“What? Oh, its food. A gift for my friend.” I say, trying to butter up the bioweapon with chocolate.

In theory this is the best plan Sable Yurten has, although there are at least four variations of Singularity bioweapons that explode when given sweets. I cross my fingers, watching Kerrigan closely. She stares at it for a second, sniffs it, frowns. Then cocks her head to the side.

“It… doesn’th smell like meath.” She mutters.

Meat… She says the word like it’s nothing a common thing. But that little choice in diction confirms my worst fears. I refuse to dwell on it, forcing away the thought.

“Chocolate is a bean I think, and sugar comes from plants as well. If you don’t like it that’s fine, but give it a nibble.” I say pantomiming a wink at the girl. Kinda difficult considering I’m in full anti radiation gear and mask.

She cocks her head, not understanding the gesture. Probably grew up in a test tube of her own, with no understanding of the world or other people. At best she’ll end up a sociopath.

No, at best she’ll enjoy chocolate! I mentally correct, wiping her down.

I know there isn’t time. We need to stuff her into a suit and hide in the zergling tunnel. NOW!

Ling1 understands my desire and pushes some empty crates infront of the tunnel entrance so we won’t be discovered. Then starts digging as well. Still, it's a tight fit for Kerrigan and nearly unpassable for myself, I’ll have to ditch my chestplate. Dirt moves faster than any direwolf or dog could shift it. He’s stronger than any canine has a right to be. I try not to shudder. At this point it would only scare my fellow earthling.

Except the more gore I wipe off, the less human Kerrigan appears. Her bones aren’t human, they’re thicker and more prominent than a child’s ought to be, with extra ribs and actual claws protruding from oversized hands. Fangs –her teeth cannot be called anything else– bite into the chocolate bar. They bake those things to be tough, turning them into a thick taffy so it travels well and can survive reentry if supply ships get shot down. But it’s still full of everything a body craves. Kerrigan’s eyes light up at the taste, going speechless as she looks at the bar then to me. I smile. Kids love candybars, hell, adults love candybars! And this is space candy, for extra goodness. I think… A flicker of memory runs through my mind, it’s Jim aboard the tax ship, ‘recycle the fatties’.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Note to self, never look at the ingredient list. It’ll be safer–

–Movement trips tremorsense. Engineers are moving again, they’ve finished the Tulverians. It’s time to go. One hand grasps the first radiation layer I can find, ready to stuff my newest friend into it when a red river flows down Kerrigan’s cheek.

I freeze, ducking to see where the blood is coming from. But her face is all pinched together,

“Are you crying?”

Kids don’t cry when you give them chocolate! What did I do wrong? Sure she’s a bioweapon… I really hope she isn’t the kind of bioweapon that explodes when you feed it chocolate. That would be a bit too screwed up. Even for the Technomancy who view humans the way we view a computer’s ram chips. Not the whole completed stick, just the individual black squares that you’ve probably never thought about in your life. Nor considered their metabolic needs or if they got a little uncomfortable after playing too much candy crush.

“Kerrigan, say something, are you alright? Spit it out if it’s that awful!”

In way of response the ration bar disappears into her mouth.

“Sooo goooodth.” Mumbles Kerrigan, chomping her way through the entire bar.

It would be way cuter if her lower jaw didn’t split open, exposing a second row of teeth that sheer through the ‘chocolate’ brick like it’s jello. The juxtaposition of her bleeding eyes, rows of fangs, and smile makes my heart skip several beats.

This is the most pant-shittingly terrifying and kinda cute thing I’ve ever beheld. A cacophony of chaos that shorts out my brain for a minute. Thoughts of moments like this with my unborn sibling emerge. What if I have a little sister? Dreams percolate around my brain. Til the Juggernaut fires. Further away than the engineers, but coming at double speed. Four minutes, and I only have a flechette pistol. Kerrigan holds out her hand, asking for another.

“Oh, there are more, don’t eat them so fast or else you’ll make yourself sick. Here, eat this while I dress you, its-” I glance at the package, reading -meat puree no 12-.

Don’t read the ingredients. I remind myself.

“Actually, not sure what it is. Give it a try. While I… Look around. Actually, take this and hide in that tunnel. A big meanie is coming our way and he’ll put you back in that cage.”

“Okay apullllooo- aph- … Pawlo!” Stutters Kerrigan, her lisp absolutely butchering my name.

No sooner have I gotten her bloody legs into the rad layer does she spring out of it, claws tearing the fabric and darting through the bunker faster than a cloud, smiling broadly as she carries twenty pounds of rations in with her. Hopping into an empty crate with her purloined booty. Tail flicking as if eight year old children normally have three foot long stingers. Darker skin runs down her spine stretched over the vertebrae til termination near the exposed bone at the tip of her tail. All told, Kerrigan is a cute lil bioweapon. Designed to kill Singularity soldiers. Like me. I swallow. Unable to gun her down. Maybe she’s got mind control pheromones or something, I just can’t bring myself to pull the trigger.

Please be an earthling. I pray. Already knowing she isn’t human.

Three minutes until the Juggernaut reaches us. One until the technicians arrive. Despite that Kerrigan seems energized. Happy to be in a tunnel. But Ling1 found a weapon capable of destroying the Juggernaut.

I don’t exactly see through their eyes, yet Ling1 has sent me a picture. A sort of text message that automatically opens and begins playing a video within my mind’s eye. The entire bunker is lined with explosives. All waiting for a signal to detonate. Bricks of a Technomancy C4 equivalent are wired together in a sort of dead man’s firecracker. Defuse one and the others will be pop. A chain reaction of explosions guaranteed to turn the Juggernaut missiles into secondary and tertiary detonations. Twenty thousand pounds of fiery death.

Dozens of tripwires criss-cross the entrance and bunker. We should be dead.

“We gotta go.” I whisper, the sound amplified by my helmet’s speakers.

“Otay Pawlo.”

Without a way for me to trigger the explosives remotely we will all die. Tunnels do not protect from concussive waves or pressurized air, in fact, that might channel the explosion towards us.

“We REALLY have to go!”

I sweep her into my arms, barely managing to pick up the kid. Whatever lab cooked her up must have been on a heavy gravity world; a truckkun full of bricks weighs less than Kerrigan does. She’s like some awful practical joke involving metal mario. We ain’t going nowhere fast. My ankle screams in protest. I doubt it’s broken, but certainly sprained. We need transportation. If not for their spines I’d have Kerrigan ride a zerglinga.

“Crap…” I mutter aloud, looking from the tunnel entrance to the bunker’s mouth.

Between us and the door is a crate mountain. Another standard operational procedure, put anything that can take a bullet in a pile that obscures the front entrance. Later excavators will dig out the bunker on the sides so no amount of penetration will harm the contents within, but this is just a supply dump. Hastily dug with improvised tools. So used crates filled with dirt serve as ballistic armor. Transportation packaging piled thirty feet high. Electrical panels appear on the front of each, marking them as sensitive cargo. If you enter the wrong code or try to force them open, a booby trap will activate. The most common being an explosive, but more creative Technomancers have included viral loads, bioweaponry of a different nature. A pity really. The crates are heavy enough to be full of valuable gear, and the mountain is large enough that I know an antitank weapon is in there somewhere. But I can’t risk a detonation.

>Terran Apollo: Hey, I’m hoping you’re a super smart alien. Can you hack into Technomancy lockers?

>Praetorian Panoptes: Yes. but no. If they find out I was involved, it’ll be galactically bad news. And I need time. And we have to hope those systems aren’t temporally locked to Syrak’s surface.

>Terran Apollo: I’m going to die in the next two minutes. What happens to you if I die.

>Praetorian Panoptes: …

>Terran Apollo: Look, my bunker is wired with bombs, I need a vehicle, or armor or hell, anything! Help? News isn’t worse than death.

Ling1 and Kerrigan feel it before I do. Ground rumbling, and the high pressured pops of long range railguns. I swallow, knowing I’m screwed in a fight. Whomever cleared out this bunker did it well enough. No guns or usable munitions remain, only explosives and Juggernaut specific ammo.

>Praetorian Panoptes: I’ll see what we can do… Hang tight.

The words wrap themselves around my throat, the last thing I hear before four Technocracy armored suits jog into the bunker. Flechette pistols at the ready. One, the heavy engineer, stoops to defuse the bombs while the others halt, forming a defensive wall around their leader. That’ll buy a minute, maybe two. Maybe if we hide in the crates-

-A sensor ping bounces off my helmet, all four suits jerk in surprise.

Facing me.

Shit.