"The Lady and the Forged"
Chapter 4
Hunger roused Lexi from her sleep, eliciting a weary groan from the young woman as she stretched uncomfortably on the hard gravel floor and unraveled the red burrito wrap she slept in.
The campfire had long died to black charcoal, but light did pour into the cave from a chilly desert sunrise.
Lexi shivered, knowing the chill would not last long once the sun had time to bake the land.
She hesitated to approach and wake Carnivek, his glowy eyes closed shut behind white lids. He was resting on his back, in full armor, atop the hard dirt. It must be quite uncomfortable unless he was used to sleeping without proper bedding.
Do protoss sleep on beds?
She sighed as the reality of the situation settled on her again. Just barely more than a day hardly gave her any time to accept the fact that she was traveling with a protoss. No one from home would ever believe her if she told them.
The black-haired woman glanced at the bracelet that remained stuck on her wrist. Its blood red crystal was inert and without light in the shadow of the cave.
"Anyone who asked her to help us died afterward. She is not our friend! She is the one who forced me to- to-... tell everyone about you and your mother."
Whoever the bracelet summoned upturned Lexi’s life, forever forcing her to put one foot each in separate lives.
"I don't know who the hell Rex is supposed to be. She hates us. My daddy… She set him up to die. I'm tellin' you, do not even think about callin' that monster here!"
Strange. Carnivek wasn’t female. But Lexi’s father said the Demon Rex to be female. Desiree was so sure in her belief that the Demon Rex was male instead.
Which one was it?
Questions festered in her head. Lexi didn’t know how much the protoss valued his sleep (or heck how long protoss even needed to sleep), but she wanted to make time before it got too hot. She was too hungry to go back to sleep anyway.
So she tiptoed closer, cautiously, her body tense as if expecting him to jolt awake to attack her at any second. Maybe if she thought hard enough he could hear the words ‘Wake up!’ playing in her head?
She hadn’t even gotten within two meters before a speartip stopped an inch from her nose. She yelped and was scrambling back on her butt as Carnivek glared.
“You almost took mah nose!” screamed Lexi, her drawl more pronounced.
Carnivek growled, “Then do not disturb my slumber again, monkey.”
His talons planted into the ground, allowing Carnivek to pull himself straight to a stand with his mechanical legs. He stretched his arms, cracked his neck, and tested his cybernetic limbs.
Carnivek growled groggily. He plucked a capsule from his armor and sprayed straight to his face a jet of the purple gas.
“What’s that?” asked Lexi, “Some sort of pick me up?”
Carnivek glanced at her and rumbled, “The Breath of Creation, Terrazine. It brings me closer to the void and my god, Amon.”
“So…,” said the doctor, “it’s some sort of psychedelic drug?” Was she traveling with an addict?!
“Save your thoughts, monkey. By the void, your hunger is distracting.” He unfurled her blanket. “Get on, we march again.”
Lexi crawled onto the makeshift sledge, once more having to endure the rough transit across dirt and gravel.
Well, she might as well make small talk.
“What’s Amon the god of?” she asked after they exited the cave. Her inner scientist was reluctant to think such deities existed out there in the darkness of space. But if the zerg and protoss appeared from the vast cosmos, why not all mighty gods?
“He is our god. The master of all Tal’darim and ruler of the universe.”
That seemed pretty generic to Lexi. Still… “Is he a good god?”
“Who am I to ask if a god is benevolent or malevolent? He is my god. I do not question this.”
Lexi prayed, no, hoped that such a god did not appear to smite the terrans to oblivion.
The sun reached its apex by the time Lexi and Carnivek entered a slot canyon network. Carnivek was the one who suggested it, since it would shield Lexi from the sun’s gaze. Indeed, the narrow passages had columns of light where sunlight was able to breach the towering cliff walls, and the wind channeling through them brought coolness through her dry hair, but the sands still stung against her sunburnt face.
Lexi finally felt it was time to broach the subject. “So… does anyone else know about this here bracelet?”
Carnivek stopped.
Lexi pushed herself off the cloth sledge. She felt a little nervous, like they were about to tread into a serious topic. “Why’d we stop?”
“Tell me, simian,” said Carnivek, “Do the Zerg burrow themselves into the earth?”
Dread gripped Lexi’s heart, and she felt her pacemaker spike and beep in alarm. “No! Is there Zerg nearby?”
Carnivek chuckled, warning Lexi that she was not going to like whatever came out of his mou- Whatever he’ll say. “Oh yes. We are surrounded in all directions.”
Lexi felt the overwhelming urge to start crying as she scooted closer to Carnivek and paranoidly watched every stone nook and dirt cranny around them. “You said you could sense Zerg!” she hissed.
“Of course I can,” he said while picking up the red cloth used to pull Lexi and reattaching it to his waist.
Lexi glared up at Carnivek, who slapped on his mask and stared intently down the path. “You… why?!” she harshly whispered, nearly screaming in his face. “Why would you take us to zerg grounds?!”
“Because I am Forged! You cower at the mere mention of zerg, but I will challenge their reputation and make them pay for wrecking my ship!” He stepped forward and ignited his bane scythe in a stance. “I will sharpen my blades on zerg bone!”
A large-dog sized zerg warrior popped from the ground ahead of Carnivek. Vicious red eyes pierced through the daylight shadows within the canyon. Chittering and snapping its jaws, the zergling then raised its pair of sickle claws and bared its needle sharp teeth in a shrill roar that echoed down the canyon.
Lexi fearfully peeked around Carnivek. “Oh my god! Oh my god! Kill it!”
The zergling charged straight for Carnivek, quickly closing the gap with its legs specifically evolved to run fast.
It lunged for Carnivek’s torso.
The little zerg spawn crashed off a red plasma shield with a clang. The warrior didn’t even flinch.
Bred for battle, such a head-on collision barely stunned the robust zergling before it charged again.
This time Carnivek raised a leg and stomped his metal talon down on the zergling’s head, stapling it to the dirt.
In a cloud of churned dust, the vicious beast thrashed and struggled but Carnivek had it firmly pinned until life left its crushed and bleeding cranium.
Lexi sighed with relief.
“Interesting…” said Carnivek. “A pathetic creatu-” He interrupted himself and began circling around, senses alert.
“Oh god, let’s just beat it!” begged Lexi. “We gotta scram!”
“Stay in your place. I will dispatch them. Yes!”
The earth trembled. The walls around them cracked open as zerglings tunneled into the canyon and surrounded them on both sides.
While Lexi was screaming in utter panic, Carnivek laughed in the face of the snarling and screeching swarms. “Fight me, Zerg!’
He braced his legs, which almost silently whirred as he flexed himself like a loaded spring, or the hammer of a gun cocked to fire.
In a flash of white and red lightning, he charged his blade straight through one of the zergling waves.
He ran.
He jumped.
He showered himself in boiling blood through the agile spins, slashes, and whirls of his bane blade that left charred halves of zerglings splattering on the ground.
With one side cleared, Carnivek stamped his taloned feet against the rough dirt as he slid into a brake.
“Yes!”
Not a second after he truly stopped his momentum did his talons grab the ground and slingshot him back toward Lexi running from the other wave of Zerglings.
Carnivek shouted a protoss cry, “Nar Shaddaa! Ha!”
He zipped by her so fast she spun and tripped from the draft he left in his wake
The zerglings couldn’t surround and pin Carnivek as he sliced and diced the next wave. Blood splattered the rocky cliff walls as ash covered body parts spilled over the dirt.
Carnivek stood triumphant over the bodies, darkened blood barely visible on his coal black armor. “That was easy! So soft! So fragile!”
Lexi grabbed Carnivek’s forearm and pulled, “This will attract the Swarm! Let’s go!”
The wall beside them shattered. Ghostly, crimson orbs. Skull-faced jaw with dense rows of haphazard fangs between wicked mandibles. Massive bony frills.
Airy, haunting snarl. Hell’s spawn heaving Earth’s air.
Lexi’s heart stopped as the hydralisk crashed through the rocks behind Carnivek and beared down on them. Its bony white scythe swung down on her.
She fell onto the dirt just as Carnivek caught the hydralisk’s right-arm blow with his metal dagger-axe, his bane scythe facing away from the hydralisk and looming perilously close to burning Lexi.
The protoss and the zerg were both locked in a heated pushing contest. Carnivek was noticeably straining to match the downward push of the hydralisk’s arm.
“It is strong!” exclaimed Carnivek pushing up against the creature’s jacked muscles.
The hydralisk roared at Carnivek before lowering its massive oversized head which split open at the sides, revealing grotesquely melded masses of tightly knit muscles that held wickedly edged spines in their grip.
Needle spines, 30cm in length, fired by fast-twitch muscles at near hypersonic speeds with enough force to penetrate neosteel hundreds of meters away.
All fired point-blank at Carnivek’s red plasma shield.
Dark spots burned into her eyes when Carnivek’s shield rippled in loud clangs before shattering.
Carnivek shielded his face with his arms against the spine barrage that scarred his black armor.
He dropped his scythe.
The tal'darim’s bane scythe deactivated just as the blade was about to incinerate Lexi’s leg. She backpedaled right before the hydralisks’ bone scythe embedded into the dirt where her foot was.
Carnivek escaped the rest of the barrage with an energized charge circling around to punch the hydralisk across its left cheek. A satisfying wet crunch echoed from the metal fist impacting carapace.
With the hydralisk mid-flinch, Carnivek scooped up his weapon and blazed his red scythe with a devastating swipe.
Carapace charred open. Muscles torn. A gaping canyon of burnt tissue marked the hydralisk from its neck to its right cheek where one of its mandibles used to be.
It was a devastating blow.
Any other animal would have fallen to the ground in agonizing pain.
One of the deadliest zerg strains to terrorize the sector swung back, chopping down with its left scythe.
Carnivek left himself wide open after his lethal strike. So all he could offer in defense was his left forearm.
For the first time, Lexi saw Carnivek’s black alien armor break clean off his white skin.
For the first time, Lexi saw his white skin bleed purple.
Carnivek retreated his bleeding left arm to his side before stabbing his weapon’s spear tip straight into the hydralisk’s now exposed right side, into the neck. He used this new purchase over the screaming hydralisk to shove it to the ground by the spear.
With both arms he pressed down his weapon into the flesh of the thrashing zerg beast, shrugging off glancing blows from its wildly swinging bone scythe.
Then he activated his bane scythe deep inside the hydralisk’s core, causing it to jolt stiff. He grabbed his scythe again and ripped the baneblade right from the hydralisk’s chest in a bursting blossom of blood and ashes.
Finally, the hydralisk was slain, in a battle that lasted no more than 10 seconds.
Lexi and Carnivek both quickly noticed more zerglings thundering from both directions in the canyon.
Carnivek glanced at his bleeding arm oozing purple ichor, then said, “Alright. I have had enough now.”
He bent down and scooped Lexi into a one-armed cradle with his injured left arm. Picking the direction they were heading toward, he charged at the zerglings thundering toward them, bane scythe flaring in his undamaged right arm.
Lexi was screaming in perpetual fear all while Carnivek jumped atop zerglings, slashing any that was about to catch up. He blitzed like a bolt of lightning through the zerglings, tearing through them like a high-powered fusion cutter through paper.
They were moving so fast Lexi couldn’t even see what was going on with her hair flopping everywhere, so she just focused on keeping her arms anchored around Carnivek’s neck so she wouldn’t fly from his hold at such high speed.
Through the waves of zerglings came a pack of hydralisks obstructing their path in the narrow canyon.
Carnivek growled. Instead of tackling the hydralisks head on, he started bouncing off the walls over the hydralisks, dodging a deadly crossfire of needle spines that dug deep into the rocks.
He saw that the canyon path he was fighting through simply led to an endless wave of zerg that straight up clogged the path in their writhing mass of muscle and carapace, some zerglings even climbing along the walls. The tight space was pouring in a crashing flood of angry alien bugs.
“How do we get out?!” cried Lexi.”
“Only way out is to rise,” answered Carnivek. “Hold tight!”
He jumped onto a cliff face, digging his powerful talons into the rocks that scraped and crumbled under the grip of his black-metal grip, sending pebbles crumbling to the surging swarm pooling below them.
Lexi flinched closer to Carnivek when a zergling leaped and snapped just out of reach of his waist cape.
With his anchoring he jumped to the otherside, then back again.
He wall-jumped between the two cliff faces, ascending higher and higher. His mechanical legs tirelessly sprang him up and up, narrowly dodging the spines crisscrossing his flight.
With a mighty push of his mechanical legs, he shot out the mouth of the canyon to the top.
Thankfully Lexi was too hungry to vomit after all the high speed running and jumping. She cracked her eyes open. “Are we safe yet—?”
Carnivek stood defiantly with a simpering Lexi in his arms. They had escaped the frying pan and landed onto the burning stove of a roaming pack of feral zerg that surrounded them from all sides.
A shuddering Lexi looked to Carnivek, hoping he could continue their daring escape. “Go!”
“This is ridiculous. I should not be running this much from a bunch of animals!”
“You can’t fight them!”
Carnivek pulled out a terrazine capsule and snapped it open. “Then I will make them flee before me with a Terror Pulse!”
He absorbed the purple gas through vents in his armor. His nerve cords began to thrash with psionic power.
Lexi felt the familiar pressure build, except this time she was in the epicenter.
She braced herself for the unpleasant terror episode as she heard and felt the bubbling tension burst.
Her hair fluttered widely as the psionic energy exploded around Carnivek, forcing her to shield her eyes from the rush of air.
She saw no dragoons. She cracked her eyes open, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Instead of scattering in fear, the zerglings and hydralisks charged them from miles around.
“Interesting…” said Carnivek.
He bolted with Lexi still in his left arm.
“WHY DIDN’T YOU SCARE THEM OFF?” screamed Lexi.
“I DID!”
“NO YOU AIN’T! I DIDN’T EVEN FEEL NOTHIN’!”
“WHY WOULD I USE IT ON YOU?”
“SO DID IT WORK?!”
Carnivek had to turn abruptly to dodge a volley of hydralisk spines from multiple directions. “NO. NOW SHUT UP!”
The Zerg were something else. Lexi reasoned their hive mind, even in a feral state, must be immune to psionic intimidation.
His mechanical legs kicked up a huge dust trail, but that paled in comparison to the dust storm of angry zerg thundering after them. Carnivek’s cybernetic speed was just barely enough to outrun the zerglings that bit at his heels as if they were shot full of crack.
Lexi hurriedly scanned their surroundings, looking for anything they could use to throw off the zerg.
Then she saw it, a familiar mountain range.
She pointed to the side. “Go there! That’s Sihang Temple-fort!”
Without wasting any time questioning, Carnivek snapped to the left. The zerg curved closer to them.
A huge shuriken shaped wurm… creature… thing, the size of a large car, bounced perilously close to the running Carnivek in a small explosion of glowing acid and screaming flesh.
“What?!” shouted Carnivek, who craned his head as a huge shadow passed over them. “What are those?!”
Lexi’s pacemaker might as well have given up on the spot when she spotted huge bat-winged Zerg fliers diving toward them, with their lower tails shooting more shurikens. “Mutalisks!”
“Zerg?!”
“Yes!”
Shuriken-shaped glaive wurms crashed ahead of Carnivek, missing their tiny high-speed target. However, some of the living projectiles bounced, and would have caught Carnivek if he didn’t nimbly dive, juke, and dash past this dance with death.
“They attack me with living creatures?” He ducked under another bouncing glaive wurm. “I can easily sense and dodge them.”
The slithering hydralisks fell behind, but Lexi saw the zerglings close in. “They’re gainin’ on us!”
“I can not run as fast while dodging!”
Lexi felt Carnivek stumble mid-run. For a brief moment, she feared they’d trip and fall to the zerg if Carnivek hadn’t regained his footing.
“My legs are running out of power!” warned Carnivek.
The zerglings continued to race up, two flanked close to Carnivek and prepared to intercept him.
“They are dead!” snapped Carnivek.
He suddenly threw a screaming Lexi into the air.
One zergling charged his right.
Carnivek jumped, spinning around to slash and bat away the offending zergling. Mid spin, he kicked away the second zergling. It braked across the grass before resuming its hot pursuit.
The protoss leaped up and caught a screaming Lexi in his arms.
She was still screaming when his foot crashed into the ground. Not a second was wasted as Carnivek kept his running momentum.
The rest of the Zerg were now closer, with Carnivek having lost some speed.
The mutalisks had no such constraints. They continued to strafe and fire their bouncing glaive wurms. Carnivek was dodging so much the stampeding swarm.
Lexi felt them slow, a nerve-wracking sensation with the feral swarm still chasing them. The ground was slowly elevating. Carnivek’s crunch against dirt gave way to the soft thudding of green grass.
He then added, “I sense terrans ahead!”
Lexi hoped her fellow terrans could deal with the Zerg. Right?
“Go!” she called.
A sentry puffed his cigarette while lounging on his chair in a cheap watchtower standing in the desert. God he hated lookout duty. This watchtower lacked any air conditioning or insulation from the heat, with only a tarp to shield him from the sun. He just relaxed with his eyes closed while listening to an old radio.
Warning beeps alerted him that something was coming, so he stirred himself from his idling and brought a binocular to his eyes.
A sharp gasp nearly had him choking on his cigarette. Coughing furiously, he wasted no time sliding down the watchtower with some keys in his hand.
-Sihang Temple Fort-
A man wearing simple gray robes, David Evans was cooking another batch of soup for the refugees clustering in the courtyard of the fortress grounds, with the main temple on his side and the reinforced neosteel wall on the other side of the courtyard.
Then everyone heard the alarms, with shouts that the zerg were rapidly approaching the area.
He dropped his soup ladle and ran to the barracks to suit up, all while shouting to the now panicking civilians, “Get inside!”
The civilians quickly flooded into the temple, an imposing neosteel fortress built to withstand airstrikes and bristling with built-in bunkers and turrets. Running against the flow of the people seeking shelter were other monks wearing gray robes rushing to the barracks to suit up or to the walls to man the guns.
David stopped next to a firebat, fully suited up in contrast to everyone else, who was absentmindedly stoking a campfire. “Soto, get to the perimeter! Kill any alien that moves in there!”
With the suit’s black light-shielding visor enclosed, Soto simply bobbed forward.
Carnivek sprinted past a cheap watch tower standing in the desert, from which a vulture, a high speed terran hoverbike, shortly sped away from and right past the fleeing duo.
The protoss tried to latch onto the vulture bike which was far speedier than his robotic legs, but missed as it zoomed ahead on frictionless levitation.
Soon, they heard the blaring of air-raid sirens coming from the temple-fort in the distance. A trail of missiles soared into eyesight before crashing against the mutalisks with deadly aim. They circled around and curved until they hit every target. Fiery explosions send the zerg fliers crashing around them.
“Good riddance!” shouted Carnivek, who could now focus on running in a straight line away from the zerglings.
Carnivek ran up the increasingly steeper hills until they spotted the vulture zooming across a steel suspension bridge.
Lexi pointed, “Carnivek, get across and cut that bridge!”
The soft thudding of grass gave way to the pounding of metal on metal and the dull ringing of steel cables shuddering from the protoss’ powerful footsteps. Then the bridge rattled violently as the zerglings funneled themselves across the bridge.
Carnivek put forth a final burst of speed to race to the end.
Four cables held up the bridge, two on each side.
He slashed the right upper cable.
Then the left upper cable.
The bridge’s deck wobbled near uncontrollably, causing some zerglings to fall to the deep, cavernous drop below.
Carnivek jumped to the end of the bridge, abruptly stopping his forward momentum with a solid grounding of his talons against the ground.
Lexi, still carrying the momentum from Carnivek’s mad dash to the end, fell out of his arms and uttered painful grunts as she rolled to a stop.
Carnivek wheeled around. In one fell sweep, he sliced off the bridge.
Dozens of zerglings fell howling with the bridge.
Three blood-crazed zerglings hopped off the falling end at the last second, soaring through the air straight for Carnivek.
Carnivek roared with rage as he slashed up the first zergling, but was left open for the other two zerglings to latch onto his upper body and pull him to the ground in a snarling pile of angry mauling.
Lexi watched with familiar horror as the protoss was forced on his back, unable to stand up again as the two zerglings clawed at his armor and bit for any weak spots in his neck.
One of the zerglings bit at his exposed, injured forearm.
Carnivek howled in agony.
His metal legs robotically planted his talons firm into the ground, giving him the leverage he needed to abruptly flip up on his feet. Swinging forward with both arms, he threw the zerglings, sending them screaming into the canyon.
Carnivek was hunched forward, looking tired and worn, but still stubbornly standing. He picked up his dagger-axe and Lexi again. “They are relentless…”
He ran ahead just as the zerglings climbed from the cavern they fell into and chased them once more.
Lexi could tell that Carnivek was running out of energy. The protoss that could march forever under a sweltering desert sun was slowing in his now sluggish movements. The warrior that could dash like lightning was now moving through molasses.
Nonetheless, he doggedly jumped up the growing rock slopes and ascended the heights. It was getting cooler, more humid. Beautiful mountain flowers were trampled underfoot by Carnivek and the zerg alike. As Carnivek ran up the heights, he left in his wake a growing trail of vibrant petals, pollen, and leaves to be scattered by the winds.
Climbing over one last slope, a magnificent terran fortress amidst the leafy forest that grew in the mountains. A mighty bulwark of dark neosteel standing with the green and so large in the distance it was obscured by fog.
Carnivek noticed that this was where the fields of flowers ended. The Earth here was churned up by craters, metal debris, and blackened, destroyed zerg carcasses.
Lexi instructed, “Jump over the barbed wire!”
Carnivek sprinted past the bomb craters and dead zerg as the very much alive zergling horde pursued in a growing flood. Once closer to the neosteel barbed wire barrier as tall as a marine and so densely packed a dog could not slip through, Carnivek kicked off his feet in a mighty leap.
Flying through the air, they could see the whole maze of barbed wire that stretched for half a mile.
“Woah!” shouted Lexi as they dropped and about to crash straight into barbed wire.
Carnivek mustered his plasma shield, which by now had regenerated over the chase. His spherical defense parted the razor-sharp neosteel entrapment so his feet could plant safely on sparse rocky dirt.
However, the barbed wire neosteel barrier flexed back and nearly covered entirely Carnivek’s shield, which held together as the wire’s razor edges scratched the barrier.
“What is this, monkey?” asked Carnivek.
“Barbed wire,” said Lexi, who slipped back onto her shaky feet.
They both turned to see past the red, glassy view that the zerglings had crashed into the first barbed wire barrier. They snarled and snapped at the neosteel wires, causing their softer insides to ooze blood over the metal. However the razors did nothing against even zergling carapace, so the result was the zerglings unharmed but entrapped.
However, more zerglings were pushing against the dense barrier, causing it to push towards them. With enough zerglings dogpiling the snaring wires, they could just overwhelm it.
Carnivek wasted no time cutting apart the barbed wire surrounding them with his bane scythe.
“Wait!” called Lexi. “You have to watch your step, there are spider mines in this maze.”
“Spider mines?” questioned a squinting Carnivek. “Another terran defense?”
“High explosive little buggers that’ll chase you. I doubt even you can outrun them.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“They’re everywhere.”
Carnivek glared at the empty maze pathways where Lexi claimed contained spider mines. “I can not sense them. Robotic defenses I presume. How do we get past it?”
“The spider mines won’t recognize us as friendlies so we gotta watch for those little stakes.”
She pointed to barely noticeable toothpick sized stakes embedded in the dirt.
“That’s in case some refugee wanders onto the maze. Follow the path without the sticks.”
Carnivek didn’t acknowledge her and was already rushing along the empty path, this time Lexi could run after him. They were able to get away from the zergling horde as they already pushed past the second layer of barbed wire.
This caused some spider mines to activate. Little metal discs with a single red optic sensor popped out of the ground on four little legs before scurrying like roaches towards the zerglings.
Such tiny robots unleashed devastated explosions, killing hundreds of zerglings along the barrier in flying chunks and gibbed flesh.
It also had the side effect of blowing the barbed wire everywhere, entangling zerglings who previously avoided the barriers.
Carnivek took Lexi in his arms to shield them again from flying barbed wire, which was unable to ensnare them.
“Oh no,” said Lexi. “Hurry! Before they fire the cannons!”
They heard the distant thundering of arclight shock cannons from the temple fort.
Carnivek could sense the dread from Lexi. That told him whatever was coming would be very, very devastating.
The protoss and terran rushed along the maze.
A low whistling could be heard.
Then.
Carnivek shielded Lexi again.
Explosions many magnitudes greater than the spider mines rocked the earth around them, sending dirt, zerg bits, and barbed wire hurling around them.
Carnivek’s shield flashed erratically as shrapnel and wires battered against it.
“What power!” he exclaimed. “This is the power of your weaponry?!”
A shock cannon blast erupted close by. The shockwave cut through the air, smashing apart Carnivek’s shield and sending him flying off Lexi, who was protected from much of the blast.
“Carnivek!” she shouted, pulling her over her head the red head-cloth that flapped and slapped her skin under the maelstrom of explosive energies.
The black-armored protoss bounced painfully along the ground until he was thrown into barbed wire.
His metal legs were quickly entangled. Razors slid and scraped around his black armor and entangled around his head and neck.
“This is… diabolical!
He managed to get one foot into the ground, locking his talons firmly so he could attempt to force himself out.
“RAUGH!”
Those razors sliced and bit into the albino’s exposed left forearm. Every slight movement carved the neosteel deeper into his hide. He was left desperately pulling with his still armored right arm and trying to crush and snip the barbed wire to no avail with his feet. His waist cape was snagged and pulled in every direction.
Every movement he made rattled the neosteel.
“Shit. Shit!” cried Lexi. The shock cannon barrage had thankfully stopped, so she approached Carnivek and stared warily at the barbed wire that now completely covered him.
She tried to pull at part of the barbed wire without the razors, only to yelp and retract her bleeding hand upon discovering that the entire wire was razor edged.
“I can’t get you outta there!” said Lexi.
She heard the raucous barking of gauss rifles. Marines from the temple fort have descended past the wall to the bomb-blasted defensive perimeter to mow down any zerglings still kicking in the barbed wire.
“My weapon!” hissed Carnivek. “Where is my scythe?!”
Fire invaded Lexi’s view.
A firebat, an armored assault trooper, was shooting burning streams of combusto-plasma fuel from dual arm-mounted flamethrowers connected to two large canisters from the back of the firebat’s suit. The streams of perdition soared over the barbed wire to splash over the zerglings, who screamed and howled as the flaming liquids seeped through their armor to cook the animals alive.
Lexi had no idea if the firebat would shoot her, intentional or not. Cooking to death in napalm was a huge nope.
But towards the firebat, she saw Carnivek’s dagger-axe.
She ran for the weapon and picked, no, pulled the heavy metal weapon along the dirt, wincing as her cut hand burned on contact. She grunted and heaved until she reached Carnivek.
“Give it to me!” growled Carnivek, reaching for her with his right hand.
She pulled his dagger-axe into Carnivek’s hand. He had his scythe again and activated it, but still found himself unable to get a good angle to free himself. The weapon’s long pole shaft was blocked by the barbed wire.
“Let me use it!” said Lexi. It was heavy as hell, but Carnivek wasn’t doing any better.
“You can not channel the void energies to sustain the blade!” corrected Carnivek.
Some zerglings broke in close to them and charged.
Fortunately, the zerglings were charred to thrashing black masses by a quick jet of perdition flame.
Unfortunately, the firebat who shot those flames noticed them and approached with stiff movements, their round visor completely masking the person within.
Carnivek finally managed to reach an angle to start cutting the barbed wire with his scythe.
He quickly noticed the firebat approaching them. He desperately thrashed, pushing his powerful legs against the ground trying to shove the wires off him in a single effort. He collapsed back to square one.
“I will not die to fire!” he gasped. The brustling metal intensified with his struggle.
The firebat’s heavy neosteel boot crunched over fallen wire, another step over the blackened corpse of a zergling with a crackle.
Lexi watched Carnivek continuously struggle to free himself.
The firebat raised their perdition flamethrowers.
She ran up to the firebat, shouting and waving, “Wait! Don’t shoot!”
The firebat briefly stopped to glance at Lexi.
They must have noticed her, but then they continued marching toward Carnivek with robotic focus, with both arm-mounted flamethrowers softly coughing embers, ready to discharge the white-hot liquids that would melt Carnivek to the bone.
Lexi threw herself between Carnivek and the firebat, forcing the latter to stop in front of Lexi.
It didn’t take fire to make Lexi sweat buckets as she stood in front of the flamethrower nozzles, but she stood her ground. “You can’t kill him! Please help us!”
Lexi wished she could see the firebat’s face behind the visor; to know what transpired in the firebat’s mind as they stood like a machine that’s lost power or input and was frozen stiff.
“Soto. Soto, that’s a girl in front of you! Get her out of there!”
The firebat, Soto as Lexi heard from the comms leaking from the suit, lowered their flamethrowers and roughly grabbed Lexi’s wrist, the one with the black metal and red gem bracelet.
“Wait!” said Lexi who tried to stop them, but her small body couldn’t possibly fight power armor servos. “You have to help him!”
She pointed to Carnivek, but Soto ignored her as the firebat pulled Lexi away from the carnage around them.
Looking back, Lexi saw Carnivek finally cut himself free from the barbed wire. He painfully detached the razors around his left forearm, wrenched out a snagged foot, and growled with seething displeasure when tore his waist cape free, ripping tears into the silky, crimson textile.
He quickly glanced back at Lexi being dragged away by the firebat, who briefly turned to observe the protoss’ power before facing forward again, stoic and uncaring.
Instead of returning for her, the bleeding and wounded Carnivek grabbed his dagger-axe and bolted away.
‘Was that it?’ wondered Lexi as the marines continue to clean up the zerg invaders. ‘Is he gone now?’
She felt the adrenaline leave her exhausted, dehydrated body. Her vision darkened.
She fell to her knees, for which the firebat released their grip on her wrist and waited. Lexi just needed a breather.
It wasn’t working. Lexi felt the darkness overwhelm her as she rested her dizzying head on the soft, cool grass. The loud sounds of combat failed to stave her fall to unconsciousness.
-Outskirts of New Wuhan-
UED siege tank batteries were parked in rows that curved miles away from the city suburbs, Dominion trenches, and counter-battery siege tanks. Both sides were out of mutual artillery range, a tense standoff.
General Aurelius knew this. She observed the build up of UED and Dominion forces at this key industrial city, which was perhaps the most densely populated city on Canton.
She brushed a brown-haired bang from her temple and readjusted her peaked cap. “This will not do,” she said to General von Falkenhausen.
General Alexander von Falkenhausen was a tall man with blonde hair and blue eyes of a collected face stern with Prussian discipline. “There are no more isolated Dominion targets to attack, mein general,” he replied.
General Major Zacharias Hai, out of his marine suit, was sitting slumped on a stool nearby with a bottle of baijiu in hand. He turned a lazy gaze to von Falkenhausen. “We waited too long, so we lost the window of opportunity to assault the city with the forces we have now. Even a slim chance of winning would result in a pyrrhic victory.”
Aurelius frowned at Zacharias sitting on the stool. “Yes. There is, however, the issue of the temple forts.”
Zacharias squinted at Aurelius. “What makes them so special?” he slurred.
Aurelius explained, “This planet has a curious economic system. They tow asteroids from elsewhere in the Canton solar system.”
Zacharias raised a brow, “So that’s why this planet is pock marked with huge craters?”
“The cantonians bring ice asteroids in their bid to terraform the planet’s humidity, and they’ve been doing this for centuries which is why there’s some moisture on this dirt ball. With those asteroids come the most valuable resource of all: minerals.”
Aurelius continued, “The planet’s equator is undesirable for settlement, it’s too hot. That’s where most of the destructive asteroid crashes were directed.”
“Unfortunate that the zerg control the mineral rich equator,” lamented Falkenhausen.
“The Cantonians still crash asteroids away from the equator. These monks mine those artificial mineral fields. This is unacceptable. I want you and Falkenhausen to assault one of their temple-forts close to New Wuhan: Sihang. Obliterate them and take control of the surrounding mineral fields.”
“Though,” said von Falkenhausen. “The fortress is a convenient buffer against the Zerg. Seizing it would force us to deal with the zerg more directly.”
“Sharp as ever, Alex,” said Aurelius. Then she smirked, “Dugalle is assaulting Char. He and Stukov are primed and ready to take control of the Overmind. Once that happens…,” she looked at the towering metal skyscrapers and industrial smokestacks of New Wuhan. “... we’ll control this planet all to ourselves.”
“Yes, general,” replied von Falkenhausen.
Zacharias chuckled madly to himself, as if he just heard the funniest joke in the galaxy. He stood up and sauntered toward Aurelius. “So you’re looking for more nails to hammer, is that it? Same old routine. You plan a big strategy. Falkenhausen gets the tactics. And I…”
He planted his hand on her shoulder.
‘...do your dirty work.”
Aurelius grabbed Zacharias’ collar and firmly brought them face-to-face. “Careful brother. This custom suit costs more than your yearly supply of booze.”
Zacharias glared back and muttered, “I wonder where you got the money to buy your own fancy clothes, sister.”
Aurelius spoke through her teeth, “Our parents’ wish was for us to cooperate in life. We will work together as we’ve always done, but so long as I hold the rank you will follow my orders. With your sobriety, I warn you: Never ever question me in front of our subordinates.”
“Then what are your orders, general?”
“You’re that sloshed? I already gave my mandate to you and Falkenhausen.” Aurelius held up a stim-needle. “Take your medicine so you can see straight. Scout the temple fort, then relay it to Falkenhausen.”
Falkenhausen was silently standing to the side, and nodded impassively to the sibling exchange, “Do it promptly, Major General.”
Zacharias glanced at von Falkenhausen, then shot one last glare at Aurelius before grabbing the stim and walking away.
He shot the needle straight into his shoulder with routine precision.
-End Chapter 4-
Author’s Note:
Initially I planned for Lexi to suffer from massive dehydration so that she slips into a catatonic state and Carnivek has to carry her to the temple fort. He’d fight a firebat… and that’s it. Problem is that not only was it quite underwhelming, it would highly complicate Carnivek’s effort to protect Lexi from any danger they came across before reaching safety.
I figured that readers wouldn’t be too keen on watching Lexi starve when we got feral zerg. Everyone loves to read about zerg, so I couldn’t deny that from everyone.
Carnivek probably could have handled the situation better if he wasn’t so cock-sure he could single-handedly defeat entire zerg broods by himself. Not to mention he had one hand tied behind his back making sure Lexi wouldn’t die, and he’s overall a pretty careless and reckless character at times.
Also his [Terror Pulse] ability doesn’t work on zerg. I reasoned that even if zerg were capable of fear, their psionic hivemind even in a feral, leaderless state makes [Terror Pulse] ineffective. In fact, it would actually enrage them specifically to attack Carnivek.
