One by one our rifles deplete their last reserves. Emurine and Wormface swap pulsers for Singularity blasters but it's not enough. The Collective is out in force, fully intent on earning their moniker of ‘Endless’. Someone borrows my flechette pistol, firing bursts of five shots into oncoming lings. Creatures drop with each burst.
Without a controlling mind the beast act like fearless wolves, death is not a concept they are allowed to know, nor are they wise enough to tunnel beneath our feet. Nor to gather their strength and assault us all at once. It’s an oncoming horde that meanders across our world.
My heart thunders, terrified that we are fighting for our lives. Yet half my brain revels in the combat. Is this how my marines felt during the ‘All In’ mission? When endless hordes of lings streamed into layered lines of tanks and bunkers. I’ve slain scores of lings now and still they come. As if their only meaning in life is to be slain by me, waltzing into our plasma fire.
Thousands of feet set the earth a rumble and still we fight on. Flechettes mingle with pulsers running dry moments before the pulsers die. All magazines empty with only Spiderman’s rifle recharging. He picks each shot carefully, deliberately firing only when each shot will slay multiple lings.
Barker cartwheels backwards, faceplanting into mud before crawling back to the entrance and ducking behind a line of crates, shovel at the ready. Prepared to die for us. If I wasn’t scared shitless, the gesture would be downright sexy. But all I can feel is the thrum of my solarium reactor, moving electrons or quarks into my pulser’s chamber. My arm is broken but attached, so I pick my shots carefully, waiting until the lings funnel into the bunker’s mouth. What once was a thirty foot wide hole has been tightened down to ten feet with two -mostly symmetrical- pyramids of dirt filled crates on either side.
I toss the reaper explosives from my bandolier, draining every munition we have. Yet the explosions only bring more lings.
“Shit, guess this is it.” I whisper, glancing around me once.
>Terran Apollo: Hey, if I die, take care of Kerrigan for me.
>Praetorian Panoptes: I will.
>Praetorian Panoptes: But don’t you dare give up!
>Terran Apollo: I won’t. Got my pistol and knife ready.
The promise is hollow, a human pistol lacks the velocity of the flechettes, and the terminal ballistics of their needles that bend and blend flesh. Nor can I use it with the suit’s targeting systems. In short, I’m already fucked.
A helmet slips open, visor rising. Loud in the silence of onrushing lings. Spiderman freezes, going totally still. As do Barker, Emurine, and wormface. Light fills the bunker from behind me, emitting from the top of crate mountain.
Kerrigan’s eyes are glowing, like a purple black light, crates luminesce, as does spilt zergling blood. My ammo counter turns over to 1 and I fire a shot, coring three frozen spinolings. The collateral damage does not stem from my skill, no it comes from the sudden stillness. As a unified collective the spinolings turn tail and flee. They’re falling back, deciding whatever lives within this bunker isn’t worth fighting over. Yet they halt just beyond our vision, digging into the earth or sneaking back.
Lurking on the edges of our periphery, devouring the corpses of their fallen bretheren. Other bioforms wiggle their way through the dirt, emerging from trench walls only to be savaged by waiting lings.
“What the Hell?” I whisper.
“It’s the link. When Shipmind and the other Matriarchs died they lost control. Seems like our cousins are nothing but animals now.” Answers Wormface.
“Why aren’t you guys affected then?”
The sergeant smacks Barker, ordering him to recharge our rifles.
“Our Matriarch is wisest off all. She foresaw this eventually and granted us greater autonomy so we could better serve our Queens. Though we feel a great emptiness. As if, I’m not sure. As if something that has always been connected to you is suddenly gone, like both arms being severed in an instant. It feels- well, I hate the sensation.” Wormface mutters.
I try to sit up and find my chest on fire. Agony pounds me into the crates. My damn lung still has a bullet in it. I grit my teeth, passing my rifle off to Emurine.
“Ack, keep watch.”
“Yes sir.” He answers, exchanging the singularity laser rifle for my solarium pulser.
Kerrigan is there in an instant looming over my prone form.
“You alright?”
“I’ll live, This will take surgery to clean out. Ah,” I take a moment to breathe slowly, leaning to one side so my opposite lung can inflate more. It seems to help. “Help me up, those troopers are my best bet at medical treatment.”
Her frown is loud enough for me to hear through two faceplates, but a second later her armored hands pick me up, placing me on my feet.
“You pwamised not two leave me.” Whispers Kerrigan, a hint of her old lisp creeping back into her speech.
My hand pats her shoulder, our faceplates clink together.
“I’ll be fine. This is totally survivable, a flesh wound.” I lie, hoping its the truth. “Keep those lings away from us so we can recover.” I whisper, tight beaming the request to Kerrigan alone.
She nods and heads for the entrance, helping break open supply crates and refill them with dirt then stacking the improvised sandbags in front of Barker. Spinolings retreat from the trench, driven back by her presence leaving me to wonder just what Kerrigan has become. Certainly psionic and clearly altered to be a bioweapon, but what kind of monstrosity eludes me.
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“No, she is Kerrigan, my friend. Don’t overthink it.” I whisper walking past Barker’s earthworks.
He’s building a formation I don’t recognize, but whatever sim city he has going is working well enough. Small gaps are left between the crates, not large enough for our boots to slip into yet wide enough that spinolings could lose their footing. While also building tall enough to inconvenience their movement without inhibiting our firing lanes. The sight reminds me of walling off ramps with Terran supply depots, a critical tactic that one was expected to master quickly or forever be damned to the anals of bronze league.
The Singularity troopers are huddled together, one gasmask watching the entrance rifle up and ready. Three of their number are wounded and being treated by their officer, a man I recognize as a corporal. He’s got their packs open and strewn across three empty crates, a bad sign. No one has a dedicated medkit. Nor a medic to use it. And I need a fully trained surgeon.
“Hey doc, I got wounded not too long ago. Once you finish with them can you take a look?”
He didn’t bother looking up. “Got morphine and two sticks of biofoam. Damn bugs hit our medic. Nanite injector is probably still on his arm. If they haven’t eaten it.” Said the corporal, injecting the last of his biofoam into the soldier.
A smile crosses my face. These assholes were lucky enough to have a medic!
“Let’s go get it then. You and me.”
“Are you stupid?” He snaps, leaping to his feet.
In a second his energy pistol appear, muzzle punching my helmet.
‘Do not shoot.’ I mentally order, knowing Spiderman and Emurine already have their weapons trained on the corporal.
A fact he seems to miss. He rips the magazine out of his pistol waving it in front of my face.
“Ten shots! I have ten fucking shots left! You think we can fight our way through–”
My arm tentacles snatch the powercel out of his hands, warping it away to Alaea. The sudden loss of his only bullets silences the man, but I can hear his growing fury.
“Got something for ya.” I say, warping one of our spare pulse rifles into my hand. “Only one magazine, should be good for sixty shots. Tulverian plasma rifle, it’a probably a little heavy and the wrong length of pull-”
“Lets get that god damn medic!” Snaps the man. Already heading for the door.
“Wait, sound off on ammo.”
“Half charged,” Says Emurine.
“Bout the same.” Says Spiderman.
“Got two cells.” Answers a trooper, handing the second one to a fellow trooper.
“Boss, if we wait five minutes our ammo supply will double.” Advises Wormface. I know he’s right.
“Hey Spiderman, you got a visual on the medic’s body?”
“Yessir. Medic went down and is buried under a half dozen lings. Shot em myself sir.”
That’s perfect. We’ll just need to run through a ling infested trench… I step atop the barricade, allowing passive scanners to assess the trench. Three hundred corpses lay in piles with eighty two spinolings devouring the bodies. Without a hive mind to keep them in check they’re fulfilling base needs. Food, water, or blood apparently, and then shelter. As I watch four of them work together to drag a corpse out of the trench, heading off to nest in some underground burrow.
“We’ve got more than eighty two shots-”
A suit of shitbrown Technocracy armor waddles in front of me, stoping an inch away from my own armor.
“Pfina. No.” Says Kerrigan, her visor sliding open.
Corporal gasmask and the other troopers tense, hands tightening around their guns. They know she is a bioweapon, one who can end all of us. But the flashtraining holds and they maintain their disposition. Possibly because they understand she is the only thing keeping the hounds at bay.
“You pwamised not twwo weave me.” Whispers Kerrigan, somehow managing to pout despite the split mandible. She’s grown several inches since I last saw her, now appearing as a twelve year old girl, slender, but with hints of adult features across her face. Especially the glowing purple orbs that had become her eyes.
“Spiderman, blast anything that tries to eat the medic.”
“Yessir.”
Outside the sun was beginning to set, red waves flowed across the irradiated atmosphere of Syrak, distorted by cancerous particles. My eyes flutter shut, tuning out the world and focusing only on the tremorsense. Somehow I can tap into the sixth sense, with booster nodes from each of the mutantmarines. Mutmarines? Mutrines?
More than fifty spinolings have burrowed into the walls and ground around us, lying in wait to ambush anyone who dares leave the bunker. Kerrigan is righter than she’ll ever know. Or maybe she senses the trap.
“Okay Kerrigan, Im’ open to solutions.”
The corporal whirls on us, about to protest. After all, his soldiers need those supplies more than I do. I forestall his questions with a raised hand, adding, “Didn’t see the ambush til kerrigan pointed it out. We can’t go out there yet.”
The pistol’s power cell appears in my hand, and I offer it to the man as a sort of weaponized olive branch. Shoulders slump in defeat, and he takes it. Knowing his friends will die.
>Terran Thena: Hey, I’ve got a bullet in my lung, and three wounded humans. Any healing or solutions?
>Executrix Alaea: You’ve got my nanintes, they’ll eventually patch the wound and heal it. Just don’t get shot again.
>Matriarch Hygieia: i gave you zerg cells
>Matriarch Hygieia: recovery will take time
>Matriarch Hygieia: how much do you like those humans?
I wince, wondering if those two factors are how I’ve survived being shot in the lung and realize I should have died a third time on this world. Kerrigan is right, no more chances.
>Terran Thena: They’re probably earthlings, so no we can’t dissolve them into biomass.
>Matriarch Hygieia: not what i meant
>Matriarch Hygieia: my only biopool cant fit a person
>Matriarch Hygieia: but a symbiote could work
Symbiote? Thoughts of turning the gasmask wearing humans into Venom enhanced superheroes tickles my thoughts.
>Terran Thena: Symbiote like Venom and Spiderman?
>Matriarch Hygieia: Symbiote like Goauld.
A shudder runs up my spine. That kind of symbiote would implant itself within the humans, heal them, and then take control of their bodies. Worse, they would be entirely conscious of its actions. Able to see what their body said, what it did, taste the food it ate, hear their voice speak to their loved ones. All without being able to move.
>Terran Thena: hell no.
>Matriarch Hygieia: no choice
>Matriarch Hygieia: no biomass
>Matriarch Hygieia: no pool
>Matriarch Hygieia: no other options from me
>Terran Thena: I said no. We aren’t mind controlling fellow earthlings
>Matriarch Hygieia: cant reengineer them today
>Matriarch Hygieia: might be possible later
>Matriarch Hygieia: live today
>Matriarch Hygieia: free tomorrow
>Matriarch Hygieia: best i can do