“I will kill every last one of you…” The infested terran, surprisingly, spoke. His tentacled around moved in anger. Most infested terran lost the ability to speak, or even to think, when they were infested, but this one wasn’t just any infested terran.
After all, he wasn’t exactly from around here.
Normally Amanda would troll the monster around just because she could, but she had neither the time nor mood for this. She pressed a button, and a wave of electricity ran through the infested’s body and knocked him out. The cell door opened, and several marines walked in carefully. Their weapons were raised. The four ghosts that were still alive trained their guns at the knocked out infested as well. A normal infested terran was nothing. A single marine could kill it. But, once again, this infested wasn’t normal. He has been experimented on so many times that he was turned from a cannon fodder of the lowest rank to someone with a psionic power even ghosts feared.
Thankfully for the marines, the infested was truly down. The marines put him onto a small cart and tied all four of his limbs up. After that was done, they finally escorted him out of the cell.
“Take him back.” Amanda looked at her watch. It has already been fifteen minutes. “We need to move now. Double time!”
The route back to the shuttle went smoothly, but Amanda wasn’t too satisfied when she walked into the shuttle and found the place mostly empty apart from a couple pilots. The mercenaries were nowhere to be seen.
“Sir!” A Moebius marine said loudly. Fear was in his voice. “Sir, we have lost contact with the central command. I took the liberty to contact a couple friends. They lost contact with command as well.”
Amanda gulped. She didn’t know what exactly happened, but she had somewhat of a guess.
She was correct. On the other side, twenty immortals blasted open the last layer of door of the command center. Twenty legionnaires charged in. The sound of gunshots and screams went on for half a minute before completely dying down. Eighteen legionnaires walked out with blood on their shells.
With Admiral Henry dead and the Dominion defenses leaderless and collapsing, Jean ordered a full scale assault. Purifier units were warped in all around the battle station, ripping the disorganized terran forces to pieces.
“Sir, we need to lift off immediately!” The pilot of the shuttle said in a hurry as she saw a couple legionnaires appearing at the other end of the hangar. A squad of marines fired desperately, but they couldn’t even delay the inevitable.
Amanda groaned. Leaving now meant abandoning all the Moebius mercenaries and most of the research data, but if she stayed she would merely be adding herself to the list of losses. The protoss were simply unstoppable. The most she could do now was cut the losses.
“Lift off.”
“Yes sir.”
The door of the shuttle was sealed shut. A couple marines and marauders still firing in the hangar turned around in shock and called for the pilot to open the door and let them in, but the legionnaires were already on top of them. Cries for help were turned to desperate curses, which were then turned to dying screams.
Amanda didn’t bat an eye. She was too busy thinking about how she could explain what happened to Narud and maintain her position. After having a taste of power, there was no way she could go back to being nobody.
The shuttle’s cloaking field was turned on as it exited the hangar of the battle station. Specially designed for situations like this, the shuttle was the product of countless credits. Amanda had no doubt this ship could bring her to safety. Even basic detectors, like missile turrets and orbital scans, couldn’t locate it. Only the most advanced ravens and science vessels could catch its scent
But this time she was disappointed. The moment the shuttle left the Skygeirr Station, the net of observers has already scouted the shuttle.
Delta knew about it in just seconds.
The normal thing to do was to deploy a few fighters and gun it out of the sky, but Delta was careful. She connected to the observer closest to the shuttle for just a second and immediately recognized the fleeing ship wasn’t just any Dominion transport. Something as sophisticated as this escaping shuttle must be carrying something, or someone, important.
She passed down a silent order, and the arbiter that put the entire Dominion fleet in stasis started glowing. Suddenly, it disappeared into warp space.
“What happened?” Jean saw Delta’s action.
“I noticed a potentially valuable hostile vessel. Type two AIs can’t distinguish valuable targets from invaluable ones. I need to board the ship myself.”
“Understood.” Jean didn’t tell Delta to be careful or anything like she would to Viper. The Purifier war machine nodded as she was projected up into a beam of light.
“Get us out of here.” Inside the shuttle, Amanda ordered.
“Yes sir...wait a sec...what the…” Suddenly, a yellow protoss ship appeared right behind the shuttle. Its warpspace cannon fired a single shot, which accurately pierced the rear plating of the shuttle and landed on the warp drive. While the arbiter’s weapon wasn’t as deadly as the scouts’ antimatter torpedoes or the mirages’ ion cannons, it was much better for situations like this when they needed to disable the enemy vessel, not blast it to a million pieces.
An explosion told the passengers of the shuttle they won’t be going anywhere for a while.
“report on the damage…” Amanda said slowly, hoping for a miracle but knowing she was doomed.
“Sir, the warp drive is completely down.”
“Sir, the protoss are boarding our ship!” A crew member cried.
“How many?”
“One.”
“One?” Amanda rose her eyebrows before coming to a false realization. “These aliens are toying with us.” The shuttle still held dozens of elite marines and marauders. It even had four ghosts. It would take much more than a single protoss to take it down from the inside.
At this point the terran on the ship were doomed. They knew they were going to die, but after overcoming the initial fear, they realized the best, and only, thing they could do was bring down as many protoss to hell with them as possible.
Marines and marauders immediately converged toward the location the pilot sent them. Crew members desperately turned the guns of the shuttle toward the arbiter, hoping it could be their last hail mary. They were disappointed as the guns only created several insignificant ripples on the arbiter’s plasma shield.
As the crew members worked, no one saw the prisoner they kept inside the bridge, the infested terran, opening his eyes…
Dozens of elite troopers arrived at where the protoss light beam landed on. There, Delta was ready.
“Take it out! For mankind!” A marine cried as his gun sang. While Delta, with the look of a figure in full body armor, didn’t exactly match the image of a protoss zealot, it didn’t matter. They saw her emerge from the warp beam and she was definitely a foe.
A storm of bullets hit Delta’s plasma shield. They didn’t do much, and Delta had no intention of finding out how much her plasma shield could handle. Without even bending her knees, the mechanical parts on her legs propelled her into the air. Her body still in the air, she pointed her arms at two of the marines.
At first the marines frowned. That frown was turned to ultimate fear as the arms twisted and turned, and the human like limbs were replaced by two miniaturized particle disruptors.
Compared to the particle disruptors of stalkers, Delta’s ones were much smaller, but they were modified so they barely lost any firepower. Following two somewhat pleasing sound, both marines collapsed with large holes in their chest, almost ripping them into two.
As the marines and marauders raised their weapons, Delta has already landed in the middle of the terran crowd. A marauder, probably on drugs, charged toward her. Delta didn’t know what that man wanted to do against a race whose entire population was made up of expert swordsman in melee combat, and she didn’t care. Her right arm turned again, and the hand replaced the particle disruptors. A handle appeared in her arm.
She pressed a button, and a yellow plasma blade extended from the handle. Delta swung it. It cut through the marauder’s armor like it was hot butter.
A marine smacked his combat shield on Delta. She had her plasma shield intact, but Delta still actively reacted. She literally pressed her left arm on the layer of metal and pulled the trigger to the particle disruptor. The resulting projectile penetrated both the combat shield and the marine.
Suddenly, a psionic powered round hit her in the plasma shield. It was a snipe from a ghost. Delta didn’t see it coming, but thankfully her plasma shield was automatically activated.
The ghost reloaded her gun and took aim again, but she never had the opportunity to fire. Without any hint, Delta tossed her plasma blade out. The weapon, powered by Delta’s mechanical strength, cut across three marines before severing the ghost in half.
The terran fought bravely, but they simply weren’t enough. Delta mowed them down like they were sheep. As she beheaded another marauder, she found herself standing in front of one last marine.
Instead of blindly firing, the marine dropped his weapon. His helmet popped open, revealing a young face.
“Please…” The man knelt down and begged. “I surrender...ah!”
Delta lowered her particle disruptor and started walking toward the bridge.
Inside the bridge, Amanda gulped as the radio went dead silent. She realized how naive she was to think they could take the protoss to hell with them. If she came alone, she must be confident she could win.
The blast door was already sealed, but that merely delayed the inevitable.
Suddenly, one of the crew members coughed. At first Amanda didn’t think anything. They were about to die. Who cared about catching a cold? She realized something was off when she heard the man collapse.
A crew member close to the man that collapsed walked up to him and knelt down. Suddenly, he screamed in pain. A claw went through his chest and ripped his heart out.
Amanda watched in horror as the fallen crew member rise again. Only this time, he was no longer a terran.
He was a zerg.
“He’s infested!” Amanda screamed, but most of the armed forces inside the shuttle were dead at the hand of Delta.
One of the few marines that remained inside the bridge raised his weapon, but before he could pull the trigger, a round of green bio hit him in the side of his armor. Almost immediately, the armor hissed and started falling apart. The man’s eyes widened as he realized what happened, but it was too late. The corrosive bolt has already melted through his armor and was working on his flesh.
The man screamed as the smell of barbeque filled the bridge.
Amanda turned around and saw that the infested prisoner they were holding in the cell has already broken free. He must’ve somehow infested that crew member, and then he used the infested terran as a distraction to make his own escape. Amanda didn’t know how he got out exactly, but she guessed it no longer mattered.
“I told you I’ll kill you.”The infested terran, Admiral Alexi Stukov, hissed. His voice resonated from the psionic presence in his voice. “But I have something far better in mind. Death is bad. Infestation is worse.”
Two of the last marines desperately drew their weapon, and Stukov snapped his finger, and two corrosive bolts hit the marines and melted them as well. They never had a chance to fire, but even if they didn’t it wouldn’t matter. According to Amanda’s research, Stukov could kill at least dozens of fully armed marines in a frontal assault. It took much more than two gauss rifles to stop him.
Plus, so what if she could stop him? Amanda turned around and saw two plasma blades cutting through the blast door.
The woman signed. She was determined, but she was also desperate. There was simply nothing a woman like her could do.
Seeing the fear in Amanda’s eyes, Stukov waves his hand, and all the crew members, except for Amanda, collapsed and choked. Half a minute later, all of them rose again as zerg. Tentacles and carapace covered their bodies.
Stukov was reaching out to Amanda when the blast door was cut open, and Delta walked inside.
