In her leviathan, Kerrigan psionically controlled a roach and vomited on a zealot and watched as the warrior was melted by the acid. Just because she could kill hundreds of zealots in one strike didn’t mean it wasn’t fun to play the fighting game from the point of view of a roach. Sometimes the slower method was more interesting than the faster one.
“My queen, a terran battlecruiser just exited warp space.” A queen reported. In the zerg command structure, Kerrigan controlled the broodmothers, who, with the help of the overlords, controlled the basic units. This was because even with the help of overlords Kerrigan couldn’t connect to the millions of zerg units. This was a bit different in her personal brood, which was much smaller. Still, it wouldn’t be ideal for Kerrigan to be constantly linked to tens of thousands of zerg units. Thus came the queens. Queen were similar with broodmothers both in term of look and function. When the Queen of Blades’ attention was attracted by something else, the queens took care of the basic events of the brood, including blockading the planet and sending out patrols.
That was unfortunate because the queens weren’t present during the Brood War. In fact, all the queens in the swarm were fresh creation of Kerrigan after the Brood War. That was why the queen didn’t recognize The Hyperion. She knew from her implanted memory that the ship was a terran battlecruiser, but that was it.
It was a critical mistake.
Kerrigan didn’t even raise an eyebrow as she gave out a random order and returned her attention back to the extremely realistic RPG game. “Send a few corruptors and take it out.” She didn’t know who the ship was or why it was here, and she didn’t want to know. She could recognize the ship in a single second if she bothered spending a few seconds to connect with an overlord close to the ship, but her arrogance cost the queen a lot.
Two corruptors and twenty mutalisks flew toward The Hyperion. They were enough to take down a normal battlecruiser, but this one wasn’t normal.
In The Hyperion bridge, Horner glanced down on his clock.
“It’s been over ten minutes. I don’t think they’ll be coming.” Unlike the past circumstances, the captain wasn’t exactly with Jean on this one.
Suddenly, a deck officer spoke up.
“Sir, zerg units incoming!”
“How many?”
“Two corruptors and twenty mutalisks.”
Horner didn’t feel surprised. If the swarm allowed a ship of a hostile race around their target planet for over ten minutes, they wouldn’t have conquered half the sector. “We can take care of them, but more will follow.” He looked at Raynor once again. “Sir?”
Raynor didn’t answer but instead looked at Jean. The girl gave him a confident nod.
“Ready the weapons.”
Horner was still doubtful, but good soldiers follow orders, and so do good captains.
The zerg were spread out. Two larger corruptors led the charge. The mutalisks covered the side.
“Ready the Yamato Cannon. Caliber it to the necessary firepower.” Horner spoke slowly and patiently.
The tip of The Hyperion started glowing as the fusion core within the ship started concentrating all its power into the most powerful weapon on the ship. Now that The Hyperion was fully charged, all of its functions were online. A few corruptors that could’ve forced the ship to flee back on Agria were no longer much of a threat.
When the power reached a certain amount, the Yamato Cannon fired. A ball of orange energy, just the size needed to kill the corruptors but wouldn’t lead to much waste, left the ship and smashed into one of the corruptors.
The corruptor was immediately engulfed in flames. Every single part of its body was fired into every direction possible. When the explosion cleared, the unfortunate corruptor was nowhere to be seen.
The other corruptor ignored the death of its comrade, but it couldn’t ignore the second round of Yamato Cannon. The slower power of the blast meant a shorter time needed to recharge.
When both corruptors were down, the queen in command realized something was wrong. The Yamato Cannon of a normal battlecruiser could kill an elite corruptor, but it would take longer to charge than what The Hyperion took.
This wasn’t just some random battlecruiser.
Still commanding the mutalisks, the queen crawled to Kerrigan’s chamber once again.
“My queen?” Her head was bowed down with a mixture of respect and fear.
“What?” Kerrigan was sitting on a seat made up of zerg organisms. She was already breaking through the Tal’darim defenses. The survivors were been taken out one by one. What she did before, overrunning the enemy forces by either betrayals or an overwhelming army, was nowhere as fun as what she was doing. As she moved the units around, it was as if she was playing a computer game.
“The terran battlecruiser took out both of our corruptors within seconds. They are not normal.” The queen didn’t want to disrupt the fun Kerrigan was having, but she had no choice.
Kerrigan frowned as she pulled her attention away from the roaches. “What?” Without a further answer from the queen, she connected with the closest mutalisks in the field.
What she saw wasn’t exactly satisfying.
Two third of the mutalisks were gone. The rest were circling around the much more advanced battlecruiser. Occasionally a few glave wurms would be projected at the Hyperion, but all of them were useless against the meters of armor.
“The Hyperion! Raynor!” The Queen of Blades growled. “What is he doing here?” Ever since the Brood War and her betrayal, Raynor left Char and her behind. Despite the confusion, she gave an order and thousands of mutalisks and scourges left the leviathans and went for the battlecruiser. She spared Raynor before because she was in a good mood, but that good mood was nowhere to be seen when he kept on poking his stupid head into her business.
Suddenly, almost as soon as the zerg flyers departed, a mutalisk patrolling an area between Monlyth and the Hyperion reported of sightings of enemies.
“Now what?” The queen said with annoyance, but still she didn’t truly understand the situation.
Switching to the memory of that mutalisk, she saw five war prisms leaving the forest planet and heading for the Hyperion.
No doubt, one of them carried the object she desired so much.
Usually, Kerrigan wouldn’t make such an amateur mistake, but this time she was made arrogant by the countless successes she experienced. After defeating the Tal’darim fleet, she thought she was safe and the battle was already done. If she was still the Queen of Blades in the Brood War, she would’ve sent out half the mutalisks available and patrolled the skies of the entire planet. That way the war prisms wouldn’t even make it off the ground of the planet before being gunned down. Now, because of her carelessness, her flyers were sitting in the halls of her leviathan while their enemies fled in safety.
Four years of peace dulled her mind. It would take a while for her to return to who she was.
Kerrigan smashed onto the handle of her seat. The zerg organism that consisted of her entire seat exploded into a ball of purple, lifeless waste.
As if feeling the wrath of their queen, almost every single mutalisk, scourge, and corruptor left the leviathans and charged at the position of the Hyperion. Every queen in the twenty one leviathans started making calculations about the coordinates of the Hyperion. It wouldn’t take long for a jump to be online. Once the leviathans were next to the battlecruisers, the end would be near.
But no matter how fast the zerg were, they were always too slow.
The war prisms were armed with gravitic drives that made them even faster than the mutalisks. The five of them darted past the approaching mutalisks and went for the Hyperion. There were more than enough mutalisks to crush the war prisms, but the power levels didn’t matter if the mutalisks couldn’t engage their enemies in the first place.
The queens immediately took action. The path of travel of the war prisms was predicted, and a group of mutalisks was sent to intercept the war prisms from the opposite side.
Seeing the incoming mutalisks, all five war prisms turned their shield generators to maximum power. Their phase blasters weren’t even firing so all the power could be distributed to the shields.
The swarm units and the Tal’darim units smashed into each other. As soon as they made contact, the mutalisks did everything they could to punch through their targets, whether it was with their glaive wurms or their bodies. Three war prisms exploded and the two survivors lost their shields and were wounded. Only two mutalisks fell. The losses were favoring the zerg, but the queens in command knew their mission was lost.
They simply didn’t have the numbers. This was a rare thing to be said of the swarm.
The mutalisks turned back around. They were quick, but the war prisms were quicker. As the zerg were still trying to make a U turn, the war prisms simply kept on going, leaving their pursuers behind.
More zerg were dispatched to the field, but they would never make it in time.
Seeing the two Tal’darim transports, Horner immediately passed down a series of orders.
Kerrigan dispatched all her forces to deal with the Hyperion, but corruptors were too slow. Even the faster units needed a while to get into position. Only the scourges and the mutalisks that were in the leviathan the closest to where the Hyperion was reached their target in time.
For the past minute the Hyperion has been silently taking the punishment from the zerg. After all, their attacks weren’t enough to do critical damage. But when the transports arrived, Horner knew it was time to act.
“Activate the defensive matrix!”
A layer of green protective shield covered the entire ship.
“All thrusters to maximum power! Target, forward!”
The Hyperion charged toward the flock of mutalisks and scourges in front of them. The zerg fought back against the enemy countless times larger with no fear. Scourges smashed into the battlecruiser and exploded when they hit the defensive matrix. Glave wurms were swung out, only to be deflected as well.
The Hyperion shook heavily. Energy was quickly drained as the power of the matrix was constantly tested, but it was worth it. The green layer of force field held strong and bought the Raiders precious time..
As the Hyperion got close enough, the air to air laser batteries equipped started firing. Orange energy blasts hit the mutalisks in close quarter. Some fell, but others stood and fought.
If there were still mutalisks present when the war prisms arrived, the artifact might be endangered, so Horner took countermeasures.
“Activate missile pod A!” With another order from Horner, a gate on the Hyperion opened. Thirty small missiles flew outside the ship, dragging a trail of smoke behind. Each one of them was locked onto one of the mutalisks. The mutalisks flew and dodged, but the missiles quickly caught up to them. As all the mutalisks that survived exploded into balls of flames, the path of the war prism was suddenly clear.
Suddenly, as all the enemies were gone and the hanger door of the Hyperion was opened for its alien guests, the two war prisms turned and moved toward another direction away from the Hyperion. After all, the only thing keeping them from warping away was gone, at least for now. The Hyperion cleared away all the enemies that were close enough to matter, and the war prisms were armed with warp drives. Instead of giving the terran thieves the piece of artifact like promised, the war prisms could easily return to Slayn.
The order Dyges gave was to give the terran the artifact if the only other option was giving the zerg that, but wouldn’t it be much better to return the artifact to the Tal’darim? The AI of the war prism immediately made the decision.
Just before the war prisms could disappear, two missiles smashed into them.
Instead of exploding like the missiles from the missile pod, these ones sent a surge of electromagnetic pulse through the war prism, disabling everything. That included the warp drive. In just seconds both transports were fully disabled. The AIs, weapons, and shields went offline.
Without any resistance, the Hyperion moved to beside the transports and brought both in with a tractor beam.
Inside the bridge, Horner looked at Raynor and Tychus, who was still recovering from fear after the event.
If the Tal’darim transport fled with the xel’naga artifact, then everything the Raiders did would be for nothing. They would’ve spent countless energy and made an incredibly powerful enemy with no reward. That would be a terrible trade.
Fortunately, Horner was an experienced captain, and he was prepared for the possibility of the Tal’darim double crossing them. A total of five EMPs ready to be fired at a moment’s notice was the proof. When Horner realized the prisms were going the wrong direction, he acted without hesitation.
Suddenly, a gigantic creature appeared next to The Hyperion. The terran capital ship was nothing compared to the leviathan. It was as if all the leviathan needed was move one step forward, and the Hyperion would pop like a bubble.
Twenty tentacles extended out of the side of the leviathan. All the spore crawler and spore cannons of the ship started unloading on the ship. The green shield that survived the mutalisks shook drastically like never before. The spore cannons shook the matrix with their sheer impact, and the spore crawlers used their numbers to do damage.j
Horner acted without even asking Raynor. There was no time for this. “Activate warp drive to assigned coordinates now!” A set of designated coordinates was loaded into the computer of the ship so a jump could be done as quickly as possible.
The warp drive in the Hyperion started to turn, but for the moment the ship was still here.
Sitting on her renewed throne, Kerrigan’s eyes widened. She felt something she never felt before. It was the feeling of knowing luck was the only thing that could decide the outcome of the event. As powerful as she was, there was nothing she could do to help. Fortunately, today luck might be on her side.
In the bridge, Raynor’s eyes also went wide. Tychus’ metal fist was held tight. Horner was struggling to remain calm as if the captain faltered, so would the crew members, but a drop of sweat on his forehead told another story. Jean’ eyes were still ice cold as she stared at the computer screens.
The next second all the tentacles and projectiles went through where the ship was.
