“My master, the terran have launched drop pods at us!” The supplicant said with absolute awe. It was a known fact that terran forces, without fire support, were no match for protoss zealots and ascendants. It would be a massacre.

Outside, the five battlecruisers suddenly launched a dozen missiles at the four carriers. All the missiles hit the carriers and exploded when they made contact with the plasma shield. Instead of exploding into a ball of flames, the missiles launched a wave of blue energy across the entire vessel.

The plasma shields immediately started crumbling. These electromagnetic missiles were designed to take down terran and protoss mechanical units. Three EMP missiles per carrier wasn’t enough to disable the ships themselves, but they were enough to break a hole through the plasma shields.

The EMP missiles were followed by fifty or so drop pods. Each pod carried around ten infantry units. They were spread out across all four ships. A few of the interceptors and phoenixes tried to pull back and wipe out the defenseless drop pods, but the vikings and wraiths used the chance to push forward. Trying their best to retreat, a large portion of the protoss fighters were destroyed by the missiles and torpedoes. The rest smashed into a web of computer-guided laser batteries.

The four destroyers still present could only helplessly watch. Their anti-armored destruction beams were practically useless against the agile and relatively small drop pods.

Only a few pods were destroyed en route. The rest smashed into the hull of the carriers. All the Tal’darim aboard could feel the ground shaking.

“Ready the supplicants. Locate the terran boarding parties and kill them all.”

Once again, Olane wasn’t worried. She was slightly taken back by the almost perfect collaboration by the terran battlecruisers, fighters, and boarding parties, but she also believed in the power of her supplicants. Each and every one of them has fought in countless battles. They might be insignificant when being bombarded by a wave of siege tanks, but in the hallway of the carriers they were practically invincible. Their plasma shields would be impenetrable by gauss rifles while their bane blades could chop the terran marines to pieces.

“My master, should we call for reinforcements from Bel’Shir? The terran are not attacking the planet surface.”

Olane smirked as she sensed foreign presence inside the carrier. “Yes, we will make use of the warriors on the planet, but we will not be sending them here.” She turned to the supplicant. “Send out all our war prisms toward the terran battlecruisers and enter phasing mode. When they are in place, warp our warriors into the terran ships.”

“The terran are trying to take us out from the inside. We will do the same to them.”

---

At one of the landing sites, a squad of ten mercenary marines jumped out.

“Sir, we have gone off course!” A man reported with a hint of fear in his voice.

“Damn it! Enter battle positions! Go go go!” The captain yelled through the team comm. He was well aware of how dangerous this mission was, and he knew how bad the situation was. He would’ve refused this mission, but after Tosh brutally tortured and executed his mercenary commander, along with twenty officers and soldiers who stood against him, he decided fighting the Tal’darim was a better choice.

The marines secured the halls with their rifles, but the next second one of the mercenaries saw something from one end of the hall.

Ten figures. Red blade. Pale face. Red eyes.

“Tal’darim!”

“Damn it! Shoot them! Shoot them!” The captain ordered loudly as he turned around. All ten marines opened fire. The rhythmic sound of gauss rifles brought a sense of security to the heart of the mercenaries.

But that sense of security was nowhere to be seen when the first zealot continued moving forward. Bullets whizzed by, hit the shield, and were evaporated. The Tal’darim warrior simply smirked and moved forward.

The marine captain took a step back but kept on firing. He was scared as hell, but his experience told him his only chance out was by killing all the Tal’darim aboard.

As if annoyed by the continuous resistance, or as if pushed forward by his fellow supplicants who were tired of him getting all the battle, the supplicant zealot charged forward in a beam of energy. One second he was standing there, taking the gauss bullets like it was nothing. The next second he was in front of one of the mercenaries.

His blade went inside the man’s chest. The marine’s combat shield melted like hot butter.

“Ahhhh!” The man screamed at the top of his lung. His rifle fell on the ground next to him. He knew he needed to pull back and avoid further damage. If he could do that, he might live long enough to be healed by a medic.

But his mind was overwhelmed by one thing. Pain. The endless, excruciating pain washed over every inch of his skin and extracted another sharp scream from his mouth.

As if satisfied by the man’s misery, the zealot sliced his blade sideways, and immediately the marine was reduced to two pieces of blood-soaked flesh.

The mercenary captain groaned. He hesitated for a second before taking out something from the storage space of his armor. He slammed it into the line of Tal’darim. The CMC armor sent the weapon right into the center of the protoss.

“Fire in the hole!”

The marines knelt down on the ground and put their shields between themselves and the zealots.

An explosion came from the other side of the shields. The shredder grenade the marine captain throw ripped the supplicant zealots apart. Only a few were killed instantly, but every zealot lost his shield and was knocked off balance.

The marines rose up again and opened fire. After four more dead marines, they were able to slaughter all the zealots in the hallway.

The marine captain took a deep breath. That was just ten zealots, and there were likely hundreds of Tal’darim on this vessel, but he didn’t have time to think about that. The explosive he deployed was a grenade he paid half his credits for, and that was the only one. He couldn’t imagine how he and his team could survive the mission.

But, looking around at the five dead bodies and four battered marines, he knew he needed to cheer these men up. “Get back on your feet, boys…”

Suddenly, he froze. A line of red appeared on his neck.

The four marines looked at each other in confusion.

And then the marine captain’s head fell off.

The four marines scrambled to grab their weapons, but they quickly realized there was no enemy to be seen.

“Where did that come from?” A marine looked around. The next second a crimson blade pierced his chest from the back and came out in the front.

The marines screamed and fired blindly, but it was no use. One final slice ended all three marines left.

An entire drop pod of Tosh’s mercenaries, slaughtered.

Above the bodies of the marines, a blood hunter smirked and walked away.

“Terran weaklings....”

---

Luckily, not all the drop pods were knocked off course, surrounded, and massacred. Three drop pods landed at almost the same location. Thirty or so mercenary marines, marauders, and reapers streamed out.

Two zealots were already in place, but before they could do anything two psionically powered bullets came out of nowhere and punched through their shields and went through their skull.

The two elite zealots collapsed almost simultaneously as two spectres reloaded their AGR-14 rifles.

“Forward! Let these heretics feel the wrath of Amon!” Reinforcements quickly arrived, but the terran were already in place. A supplicant zealot screamed before being melted in a storm of gauss rounds.

The ascendant commanding this carrier glanced at the internal scanners and went back to the battle in space. The boarding parties were in plentiful numbers, but he was more focused on commanding his ship against the terran fleet. If the Tal’darim could destroy all the terran vessels, the boarding parties would be stuck on the ship and slaughtered.

Suddenly, he heard a pained groan at the door leading into the bridge. He turned around and realized the supplicant zealot that stood guard was nowhere to be seen.

He looked down and saw a piece of armor on the ground. A pair of bane blade generators rested on the floor.

The ascendant cursed and sent all his void energy to his plasma shields, but it was too late. A single psionically powered round went through the thin air and hit his shield, breaking it almost instantly. One side was prepared. The other was in a hurry. It was hardly a fair fight.

But the shield delayed the round for a few seconds, and with incredible battle experience and psionic talent the ascendant dodged his head to the side, barely missing death.

Straightening his head, the ascendant grinned and ignited his weapons. The sniper round dragged a trail of blood across the ascendant’s face, but that only made the warrior more bloodthirsty. He scanned across the bridge with his void energy, trying to locate the covert assassin.

“Cloaking is the weapon of the weak. Come out and face me, coward.” As he looked around, the ascendant provoked. A part of him knew no cloaked assassin would be prompted to come out into the open by a few words, which was why he was so surprised when a tall, dark figure emerged from the shadows.

His surprise aside, the ascendant acted without speaking a single word. A mind blast he has been preparing for ever since he dodged the gauss rifle was thrown onto Tosh without a second of hesitation.

Tosh imploded without any resistance, but the ascendant’s eyes widened. The explosion didn’t cause a single drop of blood. Instead, it scattered a wave of psionic energy across the bridge.

A gun barrel was rested on the back of the ascendant’s neck. The Tal’darim didn’t sense anything, but the ice cold sensation told him he was in a deadly situation.

“Death comes to all…” The Ascendant screamed and turned around. His blades lit.

A gunshot pierced the bridge.

---

As the ascendant was assassinated, the carrier he previously controlled was disabled. The ship itself lost its ability to fire its destruction beam and the ability to maneuver. The interceptors, controlled by minimized AIs, were still functional, but that changed when Tosh exploded several EMP bombs in the ship’s bridge and crashed all the computers.

Meanwhile, with the help of the second wave of boarding parties and the spectres, the mercenaries have cleared out all the supplicants on the ship. It didn’t take long to plant explosives all across the ship.

When every terran was evacuated from the carrier, the explosives were detonated.

One down. Three more to go.

Inside the Hyperion, the crew members cheered. Even Horner grinned. Suddenly, he turned around and saw a wave of red signals approaching through the scanners.

“Sir, scanners indicate Tal’darim vessels incoming. They identify as war prisms.”

“Damn it.“ Raynor, who was resting inside the bridge, saw the scanners as well. “Tese war prisms can transport entire armies of Tal’darim into our ships in just minutes. We can’t pull back and we don’t have the firepower to take down all the prisms.”

“Then we need to hold them off inside our ships.” Horner concluded.

“Fine. Leave that to me. Just make sure our ships will be the last ones intact.” Raynor ordered before shutting his helmet. An order was passed down through the comm, and the hundreds of Raiders inside the ship started moving. They weren’t sent out as boarding parties as they were too precious, and this made it much easier for the Raiders to hold their line.

All across the board the Tal’darim were launching a counterattack. While terran drop pods were hitting Tal’darim carriers, Tal’darim war prisms were boarding terran battlecruisers. Spectres and blood hunters were deployed to assassinate the captains of opposing ships. Fighters dotted around the capital ships, who were doing their best to bombard the enemy vessels. Laser batteries and photon cannons did their best to turn the enemy transports into metal graves of the troops they carried.

It was a mess.