Chapter 339 – The Pawn Promotes To Queen

December 15th, 2499

01:30 SCT

Wasteland Evacuation Zone

"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Lieutenant Kerrigan to any available Sons of Korhal unit. My shuttle was shot down at coordinates 142'5442N, 077'1782E. I am alive but under heavy fire from a large Zerg force and unable to break out. I need extraction ASAP. I say again, Mayday! Mayday! Mayday..." Sarah's emergency call crackled over the radio in the CAC, waking Aqua from her catnap in her office. 

"John! Wake up!" She said, lifting her head from his shoulder and shaking him. They were napping on her couch, a lull in the Zerg attacks giving them a few minutes of respite between evacuation waves.

He had arrived in the middle of the first wave of evacuations earlier, causing even more havoc with his new prisoners. After learning what happened at the installation, and a quick round of mind-reading questioning, she made sure they were on the next wave of transports out; the knowledge they possessed could be put to use for the Sons of Korhal, and it seemed to be part of the same program she and Sarah had been under ten years ago. 

She was pissed that he destroyed the data, but it was these new memories that were causing that issue; the DEN side of her understood why he did it, even without knowing what the outcome could be. And frankly, they had more immediate concerns right now.

"Hmm? Are we under attack again?" He mumbled as he stood, grabbed his sword from the wall, and then belted it back to his waist.

"No. Listen." She said, and a moment later Sarah's message repeated. 

"Damn it. That... that is on the other side of the bloody continent. What in the hell is she doing over there?" He said, walking out of the office over to the holomap.

"Another installation maybe? I haven't talked to anyone on a secure comms network to know more." She replied as she followed him. The area where the distress signal came from was clearly marked in yellow and was surrounded by a horde of red triangles indicating the Zerg. She had a sinking feeling about what would happen next.

"Lieutenant, this is Mengsk. Our forces are currently engaged in a holding action against the Zerg. We don't have enough reserves to break through their lines, let alone be effective against the forces at your location. Not without putting both our soldiers and the civilians at risk."

"Arcturus? What do you mean?"

"It means sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good. I would be putting tens of thousands of lives at risk by mounting a rescue operation, and I will not do that. I'm sorry, but you are one person, Kerrigan. You are on your own."

"Arcturus? Arcturus! Come in, come in. Anybody there? Any- ZZzzzt." Sarah's voice cut off. The distress signal disappeared a moment later, leaving a faded yellow mark on the map."

Aqua picked up the radio. "Sarah! Can you hear me! Sarah!" She shouted into the mic, but only received static as a response. She keyed it to the command frequency used by the Sons of Korhal. "You can't be serious, Mengsk! She is your right hand and second-in-command. She has been the backbone of most of our operations for the last decade, and helped thwart several assassination attempts on you in the process. She deserves better!"

"And for that effort, she will be missed, but I cannot allow my emotions to rule my decisions. You would do well to learn that lesson, Magistrate, since you will be the one taking her place. Now, I have a battle to attend to. Be ready; the next wave of dropships should be there in ten minutes. Mengsk out." The radio cut out before she could respond. 

"Me, the memories of that man's callousness just drive me up the wall. Fine, he doesn't have the people to send, but he didn't need to be so... cold about telling her reinforcements were not coming." She growled, tossing the mic back on its mount. That's when she noticed that the console in front of her was damp, and for some reason the map was blurry now. 

Am I... crying? That makes sense... she is... she is like a sister to me. Fuck this, fuck all of this.

"John... let's go. Let's go back to DEN. I don't want to deal with this anymore." She said, looking back up at the map at the faded yellow mark. A Vulture going full speed would take hours to get there from here. Even if she hijacked one of the dropships, they would probably be shot down before they got anywhere near her. 

The silence was deafening.

"John, say something. Please." She said, wiping her eyes with her sleeve and turned around. He was gone. "John? Where did you go?"

December 15th, 2499

02:22 SCT

Crash Site, Near Turtle Bay Research Facility B

*Click, Click, Click*

Sarah let out a sigh, stopped pulling the trigger and tossed the empty canister rifle to the side. She was out of ammo, out of energy, and out of time.

She glanced over the cliff, looking at the desolate wasteland below. She saw the remains of her shuttle burning several hundred feet below; the damage the Mutalisk did to it grounded her, then the ground forces finished it off mid-conversation with Arcturus. She had no idea whether he could send an extraction team, but she suspected he wouldn't. Her failure with the data retrieval might have tipped his scales to finally get rid of her permanently, just like the rest of the ghost team responsible for killing his family. 

Not that it would be easy to get me out of this place even if he were inclined to do so. It's writhing with Zerg. 

Thousands of Zerglings and Hydralisks roamed the plains below her, with many making their way up the narrow path she had been defending for the last thirty minutes or so. The Zerglings tried to climb the cliff face to reach her directly, but kept falling off. Their bodies blocking the path for the Hydralisk was probably the only reason she was still alive. 

She had tried to go a different direction, but kept getting forced back. Strange floating Zerg roamed the wasteland above the ground forces, looking like some demonic floating jellyfish. They didn't seem to have any means of attacking, but whenever she got near one, she felt psionic energy coming off it, and moments later Zerglings and Hydralisks attacked her despite her cloak. She narrowly avoided becoming a pincushion on more than one occasion.  

Through her thermal goggles, she could see the remnants of Turtle Bay in the distance; the town had been fully infested by these Zerg, and many strange, horrific-looking biological structures had risen among the bones of the Terran buildings. It was almost like they were building a base.

I think John was right... These Zerg... they’re building and expanding. They're clearly not the unthinking beasts we thought they were.  

*HISSSSSS!*

*Crrrr- Tick-tick Hrrrk*

She pulled her thermals off her head and tossed them aside as well. She didn't have much need for them, and she wanted to look at the sky one last time before the Zergs finished moving up the trail and killed her. The twin moons of Mar Sara were overhead, the reflected light bathing the land in an orangish-red glow. A stiff breeze whipped her hair around, and she had to pull that one troublesome lock out of her eyes again. 

She could see tiny flickers far above her, where she assumed the Sons of Korhal were engaging the Zerg in outer space. A flash from an explosion lit the sky behind her, this one much closer than the ones she had noticed earlier, making her wonder if they were actually trying to rescue her. A burning ship passed overhead as it plummeted toward the former town, followed by a veritable cloud of Mutalisk. 

“Well, boys, thanks for trying.” She muttered, feeling bad for the soldiers who just lost their lives in that fireball. Glancing back to the path, she saw her death coming for her. The Zerglings had finally figured out to just follow the path around and were screeching as they charged around the last bend by the dozens. She looked at the cliff behind her, debating for a moment which way she would prefer to go.

Would you rather I treat you like a delicate princess? I can if you want, but I doubt you would like it. You might be beautiful, Darlin', but you're not the princess type.

She laughed at that unbidden memory from earlier coming back just moments before she was about to die. “Heh, a long, peaceful drop with a sudden stop, or to go down fighting?” She mused, then turned back to the zerg, unsheathed her combat knife, and took a fighting stance.

Power arced across the blade as she fed her remaining psionic energy into the weapon. She wasn’t anywhere near as powerful as John in hand-to-hand combat, but she planned to take down as many of these bastards as she could before she checked out. “I ain’t no princess; I’m the bloody Queen. C’mon, then! If you want to taste my blood, you’ll first taste my blade!” 

Blue power arced from her eyes and across her body as she leapt towards the swarm. 

December 15th, 2499

02:25 SCT

Wasteland Evacuation Zone

“Are you okay, Missus Emily?” Bubba asked her for what seemed like the dozenth time in the last thirty minutes.

“Yes. I’m still okay. See?” She said, sliding her visor open so he could see she wasn’t using the stimpack. She was chewing on one of Johnny’s cigars, but it wasn’t lit. That was for after they pushed back this wave.  

She closed the visor and looked out of the bunker they were sheltering in with two militia members wearing Firebat suits. She had assumed command of the three bunkers on the Northwestern edge of the camp, as it was where this assault was the heaviest, and directed the militia's fire from here. She had placed another dozen marines on top of the concrete buildings on either side of the bunkers, creating a kill zone the Zerg needed to break through to reach the camp proper. And what a kill zone it was.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of bodies littered the gap, shredded by the hail of gunfire from the surrounding marines, with many charred corpses closer to the bunkers as the firebats did their work. It was such a one-sided beatdown that if they were a normal human army, they would have pulled back and reassessed their plan of attack. 

Not that they didn't take losses. The bunkers had all received damage, and the one next to hers was even on fire. The Militia on the buildings' roofs were exposed to the airborne assaults, the damn Mutalisks tossing acidic worms at the men that would explode a few moments after impact. The new armour upgrades this... terrorist had sent them had been critical in keeping them in the fight longer, but she still lost five men in the last round of fighting, as a few had been unluckily caught by a barrage of fire from a group of Hydralisks as well. Her numbers were finite, and the enemy seemed unending.

*FOOOSH! BOOM!" A pair of missiles from the turret behind her fired, exploding a moment later somewhere above her bunker. Fiery pieces of flesh rained down over the battlefield as another Mutalisk had been torn asunder.   

She stuck her rifle out of the gunhole and started firing at the next wave of approaching Zerg, ordering the Militia to focus fire on Hydralisks as they slowly crept into range. It was pure calamity again, and she... she loved every moment of this; it was like what she was meant to do.

A burst of laser fire strafed the gap a few minutes later as a trio of Wraith fighters did a pass over as the next wave of dropships landed on the concrete buildings and at other various locations around the camp; really anywhere they could fit the ships while under the cover of the turrets. 

"All forces, this is the Magistrate. Evacuations are at 75%. Once we have the majority of civilians off world, we will consolidate to the Northern part of the camp and tighten our defences." The Magistrate's voice came over the comms.

Emily was oddly impressed with the woman, having coordinated both their military defences and handled all the civilian issues as they cropped up. Not to mention the mech she drove when the fighting got intense; unlike most other bureaucratic staff officers she had dealt with in the past, this one didn't mind getting her hands dirty.  

"Now, I need to leave camp, but I will be back as soon as I can. I'm temporarily giving overall camp command to newly field-appointed Marshal Arnold Diaz, with tactical command being given to the newly field-promoted Captain Emily Swallow. Follow their lead, and they will get you and your families safely off this rock. Magistrate out."

"What?" She said, the cigar dropping out of her mouth.