Nova Terra stalked through the verdant purple forest, crushing fallen leaves and blades of grass underneath her carbon fiber boots. Noon daylight leaking through the violent canopy speckled her hostile environment suit as she approached the edge of the forest to see her target.
A large neosteel fortress constructed in a clearing, guarded by marine patrols, and no doubt bristling with traps and sensors. Several guards, both in and out of power armor, were patrolling the grounds and around the area. She’d slipped past them earlier.
The 15 year old sent out a telepathic message. “I’m in position.”
Tosh’s voice sounded back inside her head. "Stay put, Nova. Lio’s hackin’ their detection. Once he’s done, Kath and I will draw their attention to the other side so you can break in.”
Nova sighed, displeased with the prospect of relying on her weird, hairless, and twitchy teammate to continue the mission. Her brow twitched in annoyance, “We already went over the plan earlier.”
“When be the last time you followed our plans?” Accused Tosh.
Nova didn’t respond. The blonde teen just waited behind the foliage, observing the enemy through the scope of her C-10 Canister Rifle.
While waiting, she allowed her mind to absently feel the weight and solid frame of her rifle. Sometimes, it still hadn’t fully sunk in how she got to this point in life.
Oh please, I can’t imagine myself firin’ a gun in anger.
Nova huffed hot air through her nose as she scrunched her face. Four minutes had now passed.
“Is Lio done yet?” asked Nova.
Kath’s voice answered, “Crap, he’s struggling to climb to their electronics.”
Tosh chimed in, “I’ll go assist him.”
Nova groaned, then scanned the fortress through her scopes again.
After a thorough sweep, she identified some of the detectors in use: Cameras fine-tuned and designed to pick up the lingering signature of a cloaked ghost. They rotated back and forth, scanning the clearing before the fortress walls as people walked in and out of a reinforced blast door.
“The clock’s tickin’. Screw it. I’m goin’ in.”
“Nova! Stay put!” ordered Tosh.
Nova had already activated her cloaking field and was climbing down the slope that led from the forest to the clearing, taking care to not tread on loose dirt that would surely reveal her steps.
“Start shooting, Kath!” said Nova.
Nova could sense some hesitation from Kath, but now that she was forcing them to make their move, she soon heard the alarm being raised and the guards now alert and looking for intruders, though some were headed away from her side of the structure.
Good, that meant they don’t actually know she’s here.
Once she got in sensor range, she dove behind the nearest rock, obscuring her from the detection camera’s sweep.
She didn’t dare peek out, lest she accidentally reveal her head. Having memorized the movements of the cameras, she bolted out of cover and slid to the next rock, then the next, until she released a sigh of relief as she pressed her back against a concrete wall, in the slim blindspot of the detection cameras.
Double-checking for the cameras’ field of vision, she scooted closer to the blast door.
Nova wracked her brain for a possible entry strategy. Opening the front door, even cloaked, would be too obvious if even one guard was keeping an eye on it.
She then spotted a vent. Perfect.
The ghost started prodding the area with her mind; the action causing the heartbeat in her brain to throb, but eventually she undid the fastenings and slipped inside the outer wall.
Once inside, she exited the vent into the hallways and started making her way to the target. Still cloaked, and with a modest amount of energy to spare, she easily passed alongside marines noisily thundering down the hallway. Silently, she reached the safe room housing her target.
All that stood in her way were 3 marines and a blast door.
‘Maybe I can kill shot them all in quick succession,’ she surmised.
She already sensed Tosh’s presence as he, cloaked as well, approached her. “Damn it, Nova! You be makin’ this harder for everyone.”
Nova didn’t have patience for this again. “Hey, we both made it here. Let’s just finish the mission. We’re running out of time!”
Fortunately, Tosh wasn’t going to dawdle any further. He silently raised his gun and picked his target alongside Nova.
In a synchronized attack, they headshotted two of the guard marines, before turning both of their rifles on the last remaining marine. The double burst of bullets was enough to take him down.
Tosh cautiously approached the door, and Nova could tell he was probing it with his mind.
“No traps. Get that door open, now! I’ll keep watch,” commanded Tosh.
Nova gently set her gun down and focused her mind on the blast door protecting the safe room. It groaned and bent slightly, but stubbornly the block of neosteel held firm, and already Nova could feel nails spiking into her skull. She held out both her hands, as if she were physically trying to rend the door with her fingers.
The lights flickered and popped from the sheer telekinetic energy Nova was trying to force into the door with her burgeoning power. Eventually the door snapped open under Nova’s will.
She was satisfied with the result, but now she felt like a truck was running over her skull as her vision blackened. It took all her remaining faculties to simply lean against the wall rather than fall over. Having spent her psionic energy, her suit battery alone could no longer sustain her cloaking.
“Crap…” hissed Nova. “I didn’t expect the door to -Ah!- be that strong.”
“We miscalculated the door this time. Stay out of sight now,” voiced Tosh aloud as he raised his rifle. “I’ll finish this.”
Squads of marines started pouring into the hallway where they stood.
“Fuck!” cried Nova, pushing herself to run past Tosh as he fired back and covered her retreat.
“Get the target and get out of here!” said Tosh. “Crud! There’s too many!.”
Nova blinked the darkness from her eyes and charged in the direction of her target.
She hadn’t taken more than a few running gaits before the world exploded around her. An explosion, triggered by a simple motion detector, knocked both Nova and Tosh to the ground, their bodies wracked with pain.
The teenage Nova laid on the floor as alarm claxons continued to hammer away at her head. She pulled her eyes open as their target, a man they were to assassinate, walked up to them with a look of wry disappointment.
He whistled, then said with a grimace, “Ooh boy. You’re gonna get a reaming for this one.” He knelt down. “Alright, come on trainee. Get up so you can get some water.”
It still takes a while to shake off the effects of a nonlethal stun explosion specifically designed for trainees, but at least she quickly regained her ability to get back up. “Damn it! I failed.”
Tosh helped her up, but she swiftly shrugged him off once they were both back on their feet and stomped past the marines she had earlier downed with nonlethal stun bullets.
-Secret Ghost Training Planet-
Nova and Tosh had regrouped with Kath Toom, their dark-skinned sniper, and Lio Traski, the sweaty, bald guy who was good with tech… and Nova was pretty sure that was all he was good for since all his other skills were mediocre at best.
They all stood together in front of the preceptor overseeing their training, and he was not pleased. “We are at war with the UED, and you four are supposed to be the best of the Dominion. We’re supposed to be sending you on light missions to support the war effort, but that won’t happen even if we wanted to send you right now. Tell me, trainees, what went wrong?”
Kath Toom thumbed to Nova, “Nova didn’t wait for us, forcing Tosh to rush in by himself so they both got overwhelmed. We were supposed to move in together.”
Nova was affronted. Wasn’t she the one who got in the furthest? “Lio was taking too long to do his part.”
Lio flushed and rubbed his pale bald head, sweating even harder under scrutiny. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Sorry.”
The preceptor sighed and calmed himself down before explaining. “There are three points I want to make. One: though you had to complete this specific mission in a time limit to pass, I want to personally advise you trainees to care more about operating with the utmost caution than throwing your lives away. You are all valuable assets that could swing the war in the Dominion’s favor.”
He continued. “Two: Though Nova’s powerful telekinesis and skills are impressive, you would most certainly be overrun by the guards and the number of obstacles you’d have to overcome. One door was too much for you, and you stumbled blindly into a trap. Meanwhile Kath and Lio were forced to idle uselessly outside the fortress, unable to enter.”
Nova did not miss the stink eyes Tosh and Kath both sent her. She simply frowned.
“Third: Speaking of doors. What’s the simplest way to get past a door?”
The trainees were all confused for a few seconds before Tosh answered. “You open it?”
“Correct,” said the preceptor. “You ghosts may be blessed with superhuman abilities, but you are not blunt instruments. The path of least resistance is usually the most sensible option."
Nova raised a brow. She was a ghost, wasn’t she? Sneak in, do freaky things with her mind, then get out. "Preceptor. May I ask what other alternatives we could have explored?"
-Next Morning, Canton Desert Outskirts-
Cantonian ships high in space tugged more ice asteroids and slung them to the planet’s surface at a shallow angle. Hot fire from atmospheric entry coated the meteors, near instantly evaporating the ice, leaving mineral chunks to scatter all over the desert in cataclysmic crashes that send shockwaves of blown sand in all directions.
The tug ships left to gather more asteroids for the eternal job of bringing both water and minerals to canton. Roving caravans of SCVs with their fusion cutters gathered the minerals into trucks to be sent to the factory cities.
“Hurry up!” said a truck driver on the radio. “The sandstorm’s getting worse. I don’t wanna be buried alive.”
Protected by plexiglass and the sturdy frame of her truck, the truck driver contented herself safe from the storm now thick enough to blur the silhouettes of SCVS and trucks, she could never notice the flying sands part mid-air by an invisible, human-sized object.
The driver’s truck door opened to the sandstorm.
“Ugh! Stupid door.” she reached for the handle.
Something grabbed her throat and mouth. She couldn’t scream. She wildly flailed her hands against what felt like invisible steel beams that grasped her face. She slipped to unconsciousness and was dragged out of the truck away from the convoy.
Tossed to the ground, stripped of her clothes, she was left to be buried in the sandstorm as a female ghost marched through the thick sand veil, the traces of her presence remaining unnoticed by the busy miners as the ghost entered the convoy’s rec trailer.
One quick trip to the bathroom later, a tall and muscular dark-skinned woman with straight, dark-brown hair emerged from the trailer in the desert cloth and dusty overalls of a miner.
“Damn,” she spoke through a bandana as she scanned the hellstorm that made it so easy for her to infiltrate the convoy. “This planet… it’s just like Mars, but with more gravity.”
Agent Corona carried a rucksack containing her hostile environment suit, then plucked out from the sand beside the trailer a case containing her C-10 sniper rifle, a pistol, knife, and some other tools. With bandana and goggles masking her face, she waved to the other miners as she entered the truck and drove away.
Corona with the stolen truck picked up two people at a UED rendezvous point, Sterling Bridger and a second ghost, Lith. With a secret cargo hidden inside the mineral hold, Corona drove the truck to New Wuhan.
“This is a bold move,” said Bridger, nervously twiddling his thumbs in the back seat. “If we are caught by the guards, we’ll be imprisoned, or worse.”
Lith, a dark-haired and pale woman, was busying herself with a data-pad. “I attempted to disable the Dominion’s missile turrets and sensors to no avail. Disabling just one would make them tighten security.”
Corona flexed her hands on the wheel. “So instead of sneaking our way through with cloaking… we hide in plain sight.”
Lith spoke clinically, emotionless, a product of her ghost training. “I was able to hack into their civilian records, an outdated system that wasn’t overhauled or replaced since the Confederacy’s fall. Easier to tamper with than Dominion firewalls. Once we reach the Great Bastion’s gate, we will pose as miners.”
She glanced at Corona, still facing her datapad with stiff lips. “I will leave the talking to you.”
Corona smirked.
On the road, they eventually spotted through the raging sandstorm other convoys with blinding fog lights to make their presence known in the sand veil. Corona merged their truck with the rest, and it wasn’t long before the giant black smokestacks and skyscrapers with spotlights and city luminance revealed itself.
Past the abandoned suburban homes, barbwire, bunkers, trenches, and siege tanks, they lined up at the gates of the Great Bastion. It was already lowered as guards scanned and processed the mineral convoys.
“Can they scan past our sealed container?” asked Bridger nervously.
“That’s why it’s a sealed container,” deadpanned Lith. “Relax. I know they can’t scan our secret package. I checked.”
Lith handed Corona three ID cards just as they entered a tented tunnel, protecting the Dominion gate guard and Corona lowering her window.
“Present your identification as we scan your vehicle.”
With her left arm resting over the window, Corona flashed their ID cards as other guards swept the truck with scanners.
Lith was totally calm, unlike Bridger sweating inside the duster meant to mask his scientist garb.
Corona raised a brow when she caught the guard staring at her arm. “Like what you see?” teased Corona.
“I just didn’t expect your arm to be jacked,” admitted the guard.
Corona pulled back her sleeve and flexed her bicep. “I work out,” she declared proudly.
“Nice, it’s just I’ve never seen a local with this much mass. Most Cantonians here are lean and skinny no matter how hard they work.”
Lith very subtly tilted her face away from the datapad to watch Corona. Bridger silently gulped in the back.
Corona still smiled. She locked eyes with the guard, flicked her left hand, and said, “I got good genes.”
“You got good genes,” repeated the guard.
“You want to grab lunch early.”
“I want to grab lunch early.”
“And we’re good to go.”
“You’re good…” the guard blinked before looking at the other guard, who simply gave him a thumbs-up after scanning every corner of the truck. “Yeah, you’re good. Move along now.”
“Thanks,” said Corona as their truck drove past the tent and through the gaping maw of the Bastion’s lowered neo-steel gate.
“I was told you were good at disguises,” deadpanned Lith as Corona pulled up her sleeves into her miners’ gloves.
“Give me a break,” moaned Corona. “General Falkenhausen gave me one night after they told us: ‘infiltrate New Wuhan’. I didn’t get to do as much research as I’d like.”
Lith narrowed her eyes, but nodded, “Yes, this is all quite sudden…”
They drove past the residential skyscrapers bustling with people.
“50 million people live in New Wuhan,” commented Corona as she weaved through traffic. “That’s a tenth of this planet’s population clustered into one area.”
“Is that supposed to be relevant?” complained Lith as she typed at her datapad.
Corona noted, “There’s a lot of people here.”
“It would make for a good, target-dense experiment,” added Bridger.
In a deep part of Corona’s stamped, shaped, and molded ghost mind, she felt put off by Bridger’s nonchalance at what they were going to do.
“Has your propensity to disguise as your targets compromised your training, Corona?” said Lith.
“No. General Hai and General Falkenhausen work for the interest of the UED and humanity.” Corona then looked at the rear-view mirror to Bridger. “How do you feel about this mission?”
The scientist seemed confused for a moment before smiling, contorting his features. “The sooner I do my part, the happier I’ll be.”
Corona looked away from the creepy egg-head, continuing to drive through the dense city even as the sandstorm buffeted the truck
Tosh looked around the cafeteria in the ghost academy hastily relocated from Korhal and reassembled on this classified planet. Not even they knew which planet they were currently standing on.
Tosh turned to Kath. “Where’d you reckon Nova be at now?”
It was just the two of them. Tosh didn’t ask about Lio since he usually went off on his own when he got really sweaty and twitchy. He was asking because Nova usually sat along at the cafeteria during this time.
Kath just shrugged as she chewed on her steak. “If she doesn't wanna be here, she’s not gonna be here.” She swallowed. “Let her do her lone wolf thing all by her lonesome. Old family chick thinks she’s better than us.”
Tosh frowned and just accepted the answer, thinking about how he was going to get the strongest ghost in this academy to cooperate at the very least.
-Delta’s Room-
“Sal-uh-ta-tee-ons?”
“It’s salutations,” corrected Nova sitting on the bed next to the window, having swiftly glanced at Delta Emblock’s computer screen.
“Oh,” said Delta, though the young auburn-haired teen only became slightly abashed this time, having gotten used to the routine they’ve established. “Sa-you-tash-uns. Thanks Nova.”
“Ain’t no thing,” responded Nova. She mentally scolded herself for letting her Old Family accent continue to slip strongly.
At least Delta wouldn’t think too much about it.
Delta smiled before continuing to read. “Salutations are greetings; it’s my fan-see way of saying hello—.” She sighed. “There’s so many hard words in this book… Why do they have to make language so difficult?”
Nova chuckled, remembering all the language and etiquette classes that engendered upon her a prodigious lexicon. “Don’t be discouraged. No one gets good at somethin’ without practice.”
“Except maybe you, Nova.” said Delta with a wry face.
Nova knew Delta enough to understand she didn’t mean any offense with that claim, but still Nova didn’t know how to appropriately respond to that.
Delta continued to read to herself, “Charlot-tee A. Cava-tica. Is that a last name? But just call me Charlot-tee.”
Nova felt most trainees here are either stupid or just didn’t care enough to take their psionic powers seriously. It drove her nuts to see the same banal crap in the Old Families repeated in teens who cared more for petty drama and little pleasures than their future responsibilities. Were all teenagers the same regardless of class?
Her team was much better, though Lio was screwed. It did help to be assigned to Tosh who had years of experience over her as a trainee. He taught her a lot, yes, but she felt that ultimately her team was holding her back. They insisted she work at their speed while she was ready to sprint to the next checkpoint.
It’s not something they or any of the trainees could help. They were literally born different.
“Almost all spiders are radder, I mean, rather nike-looking. I’m not as flashy as some, but I’ll do. I wish I could see you, Wilbur, as clear as you can see me.”
Delta Emblock was psi 7. It’s ok… but Nova honestly couldn’t see a cold, efficient assassin and psi-weapon in the 15-year she randomly stumbled trying to read a children’s book.
“Delta.”
Delta tore herself away from the children’s book she was intently concentrating on. “Yeah?”
Nova asked the question she already knew the answer to, but she wanted to talk this through for Delta, “What did you mean by ‘except me’?”
Delta gestured to Nova. “You know! You’re PSI 10! You can do teek and teep things some of us can never do no matter how hard we try,” she frowned, “like me.”
She didn’t feel frustrated or annoyed by the unlearned girl who admitted she felt useless or helpless.
Sentiments too familiar to Nova.
She didn’t flinch this time as she was busy observing Delta’s downcast expression. With little hesitation, she placed a hand on Delta’s shoulder. “There’s some things out of our control, Delta. Like how you were born practically in a factory, forced to work instead of going to school. Forces outside your control made you this way.”
Delta wasn’t encouraged, and she said, “Yeah. I’m the Psi 7 born in a factory, you’re the Psi 10 princess on Tarsonis.”
Nova wasn’t done. “I lost everything and everyone I cared about on Tarsonis—.”
Delta interrupted her. “Oh! I’m sorry—!”
“It’s the past,” reassured Nova, shelving the raw emotions she still felt. She wasn’t going to compare her trauma with Delta’s. “Anyway, there are things we can still control. You’re doin’ your darn best to read. Think about all the words you know already! The effort you put in now will make you as good as everyone else in this academy. Once you pass the literacy test, you’ll only get better and better from there.
Classic conversation trick: Redirect the topic of insecurity to something the person can feel proud about. Delta smiled, abashed. “Thanks Nova. You’re pretty good at this encouraging stuff.”
You’re a good gal, Nova.
Nova rubbed her neck. “I didn’t think I was. I guess I picked it up from a friend.”
“Do you know if she’s alive?”
Nova frowned, allowing the sadness to muster on the stoic face she constantly projected to other students. “She was on Tarsonis when the Zerg invaded. Most likely, not.”
-New Wuhan Urban Streets-
Lexi once again wore the red head scarf over her head, but now she had goggles and an extra bandana to protect her face from the sands that funneled furiously in-between the skyscrapers.
‘This planet is insane!’ thought Lexi as she trudged through inches of sand piling on the concrete sidewalk.
Leading the way was David who got them past the guards when he revealed his identity as a temple-fort monk. He too wore goggles, but allowed the sand to buffet his hair, not wanting to bother with head protection because: “Sand gets everywhere so it doesn’t matter.”
How his face didn’t get scratched red was beyond Lexi’s comprehension.
Soto, still in firebat armor, followed. A moving statue with sand grazing and caressing her bulky red-black armor.
As for Carnivek…
He walked behind them… in plain sight. Not even the blinding sands could conceal the protoss walking between Lexi and David from the eyes of the densely populated city.
There were curious glances, but no wide scale panic.
“Creepy robot.”
“What model is that?” asked a bystander.
Lexi pointed to Carnivek, who was masked so no one could see his face behind metal and red-glass eyes that could pass for optic components. Desert tarp wrapped around his neck and over his bandaged arm, and below his metal-encased body were his cybernetic legs exposed like black bone. His dagger-axe was heavily wrapped in cloth to conceal the object’s true purpose. He made every step in stiff, monotonous robotic motions.
“This is a custom-made guard bot,” said Lexi. “I wanted to say ‘fuck the protoss’ so I made a one into our manservant. Robot, say ‘howdy’.”
Carnivek slid his head to face the bystander, his whole body waving like a mechanical construct, then said, in a raspy, digitally altered voice. “Ḧ̸͈͎́͠͠ò̷̭͔̳̚w̶̧͕͒͘͜d̵̡̆ỳ̸̥.”
The bystander backed away. “Shit, dude!”
Carnivek then telepathically spoke to Lexi, in his normal, lower-pitched voice, “Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. A city populated with vermin. Yes.”
“Don’t go causin’ trouble. Please.”
The Tal’darim marched in stiff motions on his cybernetic legs. “You are fortunate I can change the way I project my psionic voice.”
“It makes for a convincing act alright.” said Lexi.
“It is so noisy. So many terrans broadcast their mundane, petty lives to the aether for me to hear. I still can not tune them all out. No.”
Lexi then called out. “Where’s the train station?” There were so many people moving in this sand-cursed city she was afraid of getting lost. Everything was so… black and orange. It was sickeningly oppressive.
David pointed, his hand sticking out of his shawl. “Just an hour’s walk away.”
Lexi sighed. She hated walking.
She gazed inside one of the restaurants, through the glass windows resisting the buffeting sands.
She’d only had breakfast this early morning back at the temple-fort, so she was feeling somewhat peckish for more food after surviving the desert. She enviously observed the people eating at the tables with scant food. They looked like families eating together.
Lexi had stopped walking to watch while David and Soto walked ahead, not noticing Lexi’s pause. It was Carnivek who stopped with her.
“What are you thinking? Terran?”
Lexi’s eyes flicked to Carnivek’s masked visage that hid his intent, so she only had his telepathic voice to work with.
If not for telepathic communication, Lexi wouldn’t have given him a meaningful response, but she did appreciate this sort of privacy. So she answered.
“I was just thinkin’.”
His talon tapped the concrete.
“About what?” he snapped.
“I’m sure you can read my mind already,” rebutted Lexi.
“I can feel your sadness, but not know why. No. Tell me or I will find out anyway.”
“You oughta respect my privacy,” she demanded, though she expected a mind probe at any moment.
It didn’t come, at least not yet. Carnivek stepped up beside her to look into the restaurant.
“Do you hunger?” he asked. Perhaps he was going to play along before attempting to read her mind.
“A little.”
“That is no cause for your… ‘melancholy’.”
“...”
“Why are you troubled?”
It was possible that Carnivek might pester her out of sheer boredom until she relented. So she decided to humor him now, maybe even unload this ache in her chest. “I remember when my mother would take me and my brother to eat at restaurants in New Busan; we used to live there.”
“So what? You are reminiscing?”
Lexi nodded. “It was a simpler time back then.”
“What of your sister?”
Lexi chuckled, “I even didn’t know she existed back then.”
“Interesting.”
Realizing she was holding another normal conversation with Carnivek, she casted her die. “Where are your parents?”
David ran up to them, “Hey! What’s the hold up?!”
Lexi sheepishly smiled at Carnivek, who gave her no indication he reacted to the question, “We oughta get a move on.”
They continued walking, but soon Lexi wanted to continue the conversation. Anything to distract her from the aching legs and the biting sand.
Carnivek suddenly froze, rose taller, and locked his head onto the street traffic.
Corona tensed. She could feel Lith’s apprehension as well.
“You felt that? Right?” asked Corona.
“Yes,” stated Lith.
“What happened?” asked Bridger.
What happened? For a split second they felt they were in mortal danger. Something was out there, it saw them. Someone knows about Corona and Lith at least.
“What do we do?” asked Corona telepathically.
“Stay on course,” answered Lith.
“We have no choice,” agreed Corona. “Focus on the mission…”
“Huh?” asked Lexi who turned to Carnivek. “What’s up?”
“Perhaps nothing noteworthy,” said Carnivek, who diminished his psionic presence after locking onto the psi-signature of two more psionic terrans.
‘Interesting… Yes.’
Corona, Lith, and Bridger eventually reached the industrial heart of the city. Giant foundries made the average terran seem like mice scurrying in the homes of giants, with great smokestacks so tall they spewed pillars of fire and smoke that couldn’t be blown by the sandstorm closer to the surface.
Even the sky above them was starting to be covered up by an increasingly dense web of pipes, conveyor belts, and catwalks.
They drove into a massive warehouse filled with random starship parts and several other mineral trucks left idle. The great garage door behind them closed shut, preventing sand from flying in as the lights were turned on.
“We need to hurry this up in case someone realized the city’s been infiltrated,” urged Corona.
Lith spoke. “I convinced the miners that the minerals would be requisitioned here by a foreman, as well as reserving this warehouse for our purposes.” She pointed to the trucks, “Adding ours, at least 300 units of minerals are available for your project.”
“Yes…!” enthused Bridger, rubbing his hands together. “I don’t want to wait any longer! Bring it out!”
Corona entered the back of their truck, opened the sealed container, and jumped away as the zerg drone hissed and moved to attack her with its hardened, crystalized pincers.
Bridger placed one finger on his temple and reached for the drone with his other finger. “Heed!”
The drone stopped and was docile, though Corona still kept her distance.
“Freaky…” whispered Corona.
“Hurry,” whispered Lith. “Corona and I will keep watch while you set up.”
“Gladly,” said Bridger with glee as he mentally ordered the drone to reenter the truck and bring out… a psi emitter.
Next the drone started piling minerals from the trucks in the center of the warehouse floor.
It wasn’t long before Corona pitched in, carrying huge chunks of minerals on her shoulder to add onto the pile.
“Ah, of course,” said Bridger. “As expected of a Martian with psionic augmentation.”
“I’m a Martian,” said Corona as her muscled arms supported the heavy blue crystals, using psionic energy to reinforce her body’s muscles. “Exercise is my religion.”
Lith watched the high windows and scanned the area until all the minerals were gathered in one spot.
“Now!” snarled Bridger with mad glee. “Grow!”
The drone scuttled over the mineral pile and began its rapid metamorphosis. From below the drone shot nets of wet tissue that concealed the luminous, blue crystals like soggy moss to be dissolved by acidic solutions on the inside. With more biomass being added to the drone, the mineral pile was now encased in a large and growing cocoon, dissolving into a disgusting fetus made of random, rapidly expanding tissue from within.
Lith narrowed her eyes at the cocoon, perhaps just as fascinated as Corona who watched wide-eyed with morbid rapture.
Corona sensed some workers approaching the warehouse. She ran to the window to spot them walking through the sandstorm towards them.
She focused on the workers, watching them intently.
‘Shit, did I leave my stove on?!’
‘I just went to the bathroom. I gotta go again?’
‘Wait, I think I left my lunch sitting. Some asshole’s going to take my dumplings!’
‘You know what? I’m not in the mood.’
To the psychic's satisfaction, the workers suddenly turned around and dispersed in random directions.
She remained wary though, half-expecting the Dominion to come searching for them after that unknown, chilling presence tipped them off.
-New Wuhan Central Train Hub-
Lexi and David sat in the crowded train station that sat in the outer ring of the industrial center. Soto and Carnivek merely stood in the center, Carnivek because he didn’t want to sit and Soto not being able to fit on the seats in her firebat suit.
It just occurred to Lexi that Soto would have stood out if not for the other various Dominion and Cantonian marines and firebats patrolling the city. Power armor was commonplace.
David spoke, interrupting their idle waiting. “Most of the trains are used to send weapons, vehicles, and other industrial products to New Busan. The next civilian train won’t arrive for several hours.”
Lexi sighed. “Guess we oughta wait,” she spoke, a little louder so Carnivek could hear her.
It was surprising to her when Carnivek didn’t bitch about another delay. Hell, it seemed like he wasn’t even paying attention to her. He was instead looking out the window
Lexi watched some children play some chasing game in the train station, tag was it? The little tykes weaved around the legs of the adults even in this crowd.
“David, ya ever wonder what’s in store for us after the war?” asked Lexi.
David hummed pensively in thought. He crossed his arms. “Where would we live after Tarsonis? I don’t see myself being a monk forever, but I don’t know where else to go.”
“What about Korhal?”
“A lot of people tried to go to Korhal. Whether the UED or the Dominion control it by the end of this war, it’ll be hard for any of us to migrate there.”
“If the Emperor remains in power, he might expand the cities there. It’s the capital.”
David nodded, “True. You’d need money to go there though.” He raised a brow to Lexi. “We’re using the treasure, right?’
Lexi cautiously looked to Carnivek, who was still staring intently out the window.
“After I reunite with my sister, I’ll figure out the money issue,” answered Lexi.
He sensed the three, not two as he initially assumed, psychic terrans in a warehouse containing something that was… familiar. As that strange creature he was sensing grew into something bigger and larger, he realized it was similar to the beasts he battled and underestimated in the desert.
‘Zerg? In the middle of this terran-infested city? Someone is scheming… Yes.’
If there was zerg, there was bound to be carnage. As for who would die…
Whatever may unfold might inconvenience them, but if it ever got too dangerous he could always grab the terran female and escape. He was curious. He wanted to see what transpired for the countless masses of terrans living their pathetic lives like insects in the dirt.
He gripped his wrapped weapon tightly. His wrapped dagger-axe lowered and nearly hit someone’s orbit bone had they not ducked away.
“What the fuck?...” said the passerby staring at the weird robot.
-UED Siege line-
“Mein General,” said von Falkenhausen as he stood beside Aurelius in the UED command center looking out to the city half-cloaked in stormwinds. “We've gathered additional reinforcements, but the army is not given the order to prepare for an immediate assault."
“That is the second time you mentioned this, General Falkenhausen,” said Aurelius as she repeatedly bounced the end of her dragon-stick in the opposite hand, waiting.
“It would be most wise to have our forces prepare before the operation for maximum performance. They are still in their barracks. No one is combat ready.”
“Do not move the army until we hear from the Dominion and the city.”
Von Falkenhausen bowed his head dutifully, “Ja, mein General.”
The sandstorm was growing ever louder, to the point it sounded like the storm itself was banging against the plexiglass windows.
Corona sat beside one of the windows near the ceiling, watching diligently. She thought back to when she felt something, something alive, being aware of her. It was unlike back in training when ghosts practiced detecting each other cloaked. It was like a fiery eyeball was watching from the void, a sword held by a taut string over her head.
The city wasn’t in a state of alarm, so was it just a weird fluke? But Lith felt it too.
She tried to distract herself from the paranoia by watching the weather.
‘Mars had storms like this sometimes too.’
“It is almost done!” shouted Bridger from below.
Corona looked down, no, straight ahead at the giant cocoon that now grew to her level.
It hatched, releasing foul and odorous purple mist as the hatchery emerged, flexing its muscles and rippling hard carapace still glistening with fluids.
“YES! IT LIVES!” shouted Bridger.
“Shush!” half-shouted, half-whispered Lith on the other side of the Warehouse.
“I’m absolutely chuffed! I wonder how long it would take for larva to hatch?” asked Bridger as he leaned down to look at what he thought was a birthing orifice for Larva.
A purple, pulsating moss was growing from the hatchery as its epicenter. The scientist watched it inch, quite rapidly, past his desert boots and attempted to slowly encase his foot before he tore it free and stepped on the creep again. “Most fascinating! Now we just gotta wait for the creep to spread…”
He activated the psi-emitter, broadcasting his mental command far, far away.
For a few minutes, nothing happened.
So it caught the two ghosts off guard when a fleshy zerg tendril burst out the creep-covered warehouse floor and started sucking the creep with instantly connected arteries until it became a cocoon similar to the hatchery’s.
“So that’s how a Nydus canal is established!” cheered Bridger.
His smile fell though, seeing Corona back away from the creep that climbed the walls and started blocking out light from the windows up high.
“Bollocks.” He called to the ghosts, as if finally noticing them, “We may have a problem.”
“The creep would give us away!” warned Corona.
“Corona!” said Lith. “The operation will start soon. Head to the eastern Bastion gate while I guard the nydus canal.
Corona approached a door encrusted in creep and had to rip it open to enter the stormy outdoors before closing it behind her.
Unfortunately, the creep was already crawling its way out the seams of the door, with the sandstorm only half-obscuring it in the winds. Indeed, the creep was starting to leak out the windows as well.
And so Corona took a nearby vulture bike and sped eastward.
BLARE.
“Lunch time! Take a break, everyone!” echoed the Chief Foreman’s voice throughout the city.
The first cantonian workers to exit their factories flinched from the ever intensifying sandstorm so strong even they weren’t accustomed to it. Nonetheless, they marched across the catwalks shaking from the battering sands, for some of them had to get food from other buildings or go to a different location for various purposes.
Of the few men and women choosing to brave the storm, none had yet to see the dark purple creep infesting that one large warehouse, its exterior black and dark as the surrounding environment, air, and land turned to clay-orange.
Lexi watched Carnivek twitch his talons and listened to his toes tap against the floor.
She could feel the tension building in the air. Something was happening, and he’s not telling her.
She stood up, walked to Carnivek, and asked with her voice, “What’s going on?”
-Dominion Command Center-
“What the hell is this planet?” said Warfield as he looked out the command center to the storm that made it impossible to see what was happening outside. “Are they dropping more meteors next to us?’
Benjamin checked a computer, “No, sir. This isn’t man-made. It’s a meteorological phenomena of a massive scale.”
“Any word from the Great Bastion?”
“We’re losing visual of the UED, but our scans show they haven’t moved.”
“Great…” groaned Warfield as he scratched his dry neck. “Another day on this damn ball of sand. It’s getting everywhere and irritating my skin.
“Sir… there’s more of them now.”
Warfield ceased his bitching to rush to Benjamin’s computer, focused and serious. “What are we looking at?”
Benjamin pointed to the satellite scan taken ten minutes ago. “This is the largest concentration of UED forces yet, I think those are even more marines, firebats, and goliaths.”
“Something’s wrong,” said Warfield. “Are they looking to attack us during this sandstorm?”
“It’s a possibility.”
Warfield looked up to his adjutant, which hung from the command center’s ceiling like a marionette strung with wires. “Adjutant, put the troops on the eastern wall on high alert!”
“Alerting Great Bastion units,” repeated the adjutant.
“Redeploy reserves there as well!”
“Mobilizing. Redeploying.”
“I think you try really hard too, Nova.”
Nova raised a brow, pleasantly surprised Delta noticed that about her. “Yeah, I do.”
“But you kinda seem… what’s the word?”
“I’m guessing, obsessed?”
Nova allowed herself to quickly teep the overall meaning of the word to Delta, so she quickly understood, “Yeah, obsessed. You’re so obsessed with your training. I don’t see that in a lot of the other trainees.”
Nova made it no secret how she saw her place in the academy. She was destined to be the best of the best by virtue of her Psi-index alone, and it was an expectation she had no desire to disappoint. The survival of the terran race can hinge on people gifted with powers like her, and after Tarsonis…
It was imperative not just to humanity as a whole, but to Nova herself, that she pushed herself to achieve utmost excellence with her gifts.
“So I was wondering… why do you push yourself so hard?” Delta asked Nova.
One worker tried to brave the sandstorm on his own, but he was quite literally pushing against the winds that quickly knocked him over.
Instead of hard concrete, he fell on something squishy. He gazed with confusion, then revulsion at the purple substance clinging to his dusty gloves. The desert-borne man scrambled back on his feet, feeling his boots step on moist ground. Moist ground.
He dumbly looked around to see the orange silt wash over purple obscuring what should be white concrete.
It was then he noticed, almost missed due to the obscured vision, what appeared to be a string of bodies on the ground.
“Hey!” he shouted through his mask. He stumbled toward the nearest body. “Are you alright?!”
He knelt down to get a closer look. He panicked when the purple substance was already halfway encasing the body, which he turned over.
“AH!” he fell again, ass to the purple moss, and scrambled away from the dead worker with a bullet through his eyes.
He looked up, seeing the silhouette of the warehouse in the storm.
It would have looked like a normal warehouse…. Except for the web of purple moss that wrapped over it.
No. It wasn’t moss.
He finally knew what exactly he was looking at.
But here?!
“Z-ZERG!”
He scrambled back from whence he came, to the neosteel foundry where all his other coworkers were leaving for lunch.
He repeated his frantic call as he ran past the work lines, his voice echoing throughout the vast building and off the vats of molten neosteel, over the humming din and clanking of heavy machinery.
“ZERG! ZERG AT THE GONGPO WAREHOUSE!”
The workers closest to him started chasing after him asking questions, but there was genuine panic and concern. It spread like lightning as other laborers looked out the window.
Past the glass, even through the storm, they could see the tendrils of creep covering the warehouse and spreading along the ground.
“Zerg!”
“The zerg are in the city!”
“Warn the Dominion!”
The city megaphones blared, an odd occurrence to the rest of the 50 million people of the city since lunch time wasn’t over.
The voice of the Chief Foreman, usually authoritative and stoic, was shaken and quivering, “People of New Wuhan! There are zerg in the city!”
Lith watched the worker run away, unable to spill his brains on the ground as she grappled with sand jamming her C-10 rifle.
“Now the city knows!” warned Lith.
“No matter,” said Bridger as the nydus canal exit finally hatched, revealing its gaping fleshy maw to the scientist. He cackled, “It is time!”
“People of New Wuhan! There are zerg in the city!’
No sooner had Lexi asked Carnivek what the hell was going on did all her tension explode upon hearing the loudspeakers. She felt the panic grip her heart before the people, once idle and lifeless in the train hub, erupted into frantic panic. People clamoring for the exit tripped over each other and the seats, while others tried to force themselves on trains; some of the cars weren’t even designed to carry people in any way.
David shot up to his feet. “Zerg?! Here?!”
Lexi’s voice shuddered, “No… Not… Not again!”
Carnivek hummed as the terrans ran around him. “This is going to be fun.”
Warfield’s command center was soon flooded with alarm.
Benjamin shouted, “General! There’s zerg in the city, in the Industrial District!”
A chill struck his spine like lightning. He grit his teeth and sprang to immediate action, barking orders. “Adjutant! Get us eyes on the source!”
“Tracing emergency call source epicenter. Accessing CCTV cameras.”
A huge screen showed multiple shots of people running panicked through the streets. The adjutant was busy sifting through multiple screens simultaneously until she picked one one possible source:
A dark warehouse silhouetted in the desert.
“Unable to access CCTV cameras inside the warehouse. Intercepting cellular photos of possible zerg activity.”
“Connect me to the megaphones!” ordered Warfield as he held a speaker mic to his mouth.
“Megaphone connection established.”
Warfield’s booming, authoritative voice nonetheless betrayed his urgency as the megaphones echoed, throughout the neosteel skyscrapers and factories, the general’s first command.
“LIGHTS ON! Aim it at the warehouse!”
Over the shouts of panic piercing the howling din, the sounds of industrial light switches clanged from the tallest towers, activating great fog lights. All were aimed at the dark warehouse.
Crawling over the creep-infested roof, a hydralisk roared at the light as zerglings flooded from the warehouse.
The Sunder Brood was here.
A/N: Sorry for the delay. I was caught up in the newfound and mounting responsibilities of my internship, as well as taking time to practice some other hobbies, like digital art! I’ve created a new and hopefully improved cover art for The Lady and the Forged, and I’d like to practice just being faster and more efficient with my writing and art.
Thanks for the chapter