The dropships landed in the mercenary position. Nearly four hundred Raiders poured out.

Jean walked out of one of the dropships. She was in her white armor. In this situation, every combatant was needed. A squad of reaper guards stood behind her.

“SCVs, construct bunkers at the entrances.” Jean pointed at the two ramps that lead up to the plateau. She brought almost all of the mineral storage from the Hyperion. They could quickly be turned into defensive structures. The dozen or so SCVs that came down with her immediately went into action.

“Men, check out the buildings and the siege tanks.” The Tal’darim killed all the mercenaries, but they left some of their buildings and vehicles as trophies. Those arrogant protoss never thought there would be another group of terran that would land on the planet, and this gave Jean a chance to turn those trophies into weapons.

Several marines who had experience with mech before jumped into the siege tanks and checked them out. Some SCVs inspected a few bunkers with the side facing the protoss cut open.

They quickly reported back. The efficiency of men in distress was astonishing.

“Sir, most of the siege tanks are useless, but three are still functional. The drivers are mincemeat, but if we can get someone inside and repair the fractures...”

Jean nodded and waved. The marine reporting backed off, and several marines got out of their armors and entered the vehicles. Seconds later the turrets of the tanks started turning toward the hostile direction.

One of the SCVs rolled up.

“Sir, most of the bunkers are still standing. We can repair them but it will take some minerals…”

“Grab whatever you need and get to work. We don’t have much time.” Jean hurried, and the SCV backed off and rushed into action.

Jean turned back to the reapers and silently switched to a communication channel to the entire army. She wanted everyone to hear what she was about to say. “Captain, turn off the engines of all the dropships. No one is going anywhere.” Her soft words were ice cold.

“Sir…” The reaper captain frowned. “It’s better if we give ourselves a way out. It’s safer...”

“Follow your orders, captain.” Jean pushed on. She had very little consideration of the safety of her or her men.

The reaper captain remained there for a few seconds. She could see the reapers resting their hands on their weapons. After all, they were more loyal to the captain that fought with them for countless battles than to a random girl who paid them. Unfortunately, Jean had her own devoted supporters as well. Around the reapers, the blue T helmet of the Warden marines shined.

Other Raider units stood by in confusion. Jean stood tall and looked at the large man in front of her with her beautiful eyes.

As the standoff continued, the reaper captain’s mind turned faster than the engine of the dropships. Carrying out the order would be risky. If they were to be overrun, every last one of the Raiders would be slaughtered with no chance of escape. However, unlike the common foot soldiers, the captain understood why Jean gave that order. Even if they could get on the dropships and get into the air, they would be chased down by the protoss fighters. The end would be the same.

In that case, why not cut off the chance of escape and make sure every single mercenary hold their ground until the very end? To a degree the reaper captain was really impressed by Jean’s decisiveness. The girl was an officer, but she had the guts to do things most mercenaries would hesitate to do. Putting himself in her shoes, the reaper captain knew he would have abandoned the Hyperion and escaped in one of those dropships armed with a warp drive.

As practically everyone in the field looked at him, the reaper captain knew this wasn’t the time to be impressed. He quickly considered his options. If he wanted to run, he could gun down Jean to create some chaos and hope he could get on one of the dropships and jump away before Tal’darim fighters chase him down. That wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was what he would do after that.

He has seen a small part of Jean and Viper’s operation against Orlan. After becoming the woman behind the curtain of Orlan’s, wait, Isaac’s mercenaries, Viper held quite the power in Deadman’s Port. She knew his face, and if he returned and Jean didn’t…the ghost assassin wouldn’t be too satisfied.

Finally, the captain made up his mind. Even apart from the principle of a mercenary to obey the person that pays him, his chances of survival was much larger if he obeyed Jean’s orders.

“Yes sir.”

Jean smiled warmly, and all the Warden units went to mind their own business. The rest of the Raiders returned to their positions as well. They had no idea how close they were to being part of a crossfire between mercenary reapers and Warden marines.

There was a reason Jean was risking making a squad of elite reapers her enemy. The pep talk she did would’ve had quite the effect on the original Raiders and perhaps the militias, but the mercenaries were different. They were too ruthless and too experienced to sacrifice their lives just because a girl said a few encouraging lines.

Right now they might do their jobs, but if things went wrong, then eventually some of the mercenaries would choose their own lives over either money or principle. Maybe it was just a few cowards first, but a few would quickly turn into dozens, and that would be turned to hundreds. The entire defensive position would be gone before Jean could blink.

If she wanted everyone to stand and fight with all their heart, she needed it to be their only choice. It would be fight or die. There would be no escape.

Somewhere in Jean’s mind, she could remember an ancient proverb that said “Be put in a place of death and you will live.” She didn’t know where that came from, but she knew that made sense, and that was exactly what she was doing.

As the reaper captain left, Jean checked her weapons again before hearing someone talking in the radio.

“Hey hot shot.” Jean didn’t even need to recognize the voice to know who it was. Tychus would usually call her by something much less polite. Horner called her lieutenant Turner. Raynor called her Jean. Only Swann would give her nicknames.

“A little busy here…” Jean was in no position to chat. She could already see Tal’darim ground forces assembling in a platform between their base and the terran compound.

“Trust me. You’re going to like this.” On the other end of the communication, Swann looked down on one of the computer screens. “I know you’re going to be in a terrible situation, and I know you’re going to need every piece of resource available to stop the Tal’darim. So I’m sending you a gift.”

The sound of running engines came in, and Jean looked up and saw half a dozen fresh dropships approaching. They quickly landed and unloaded 8 ARES. That wasn’t surprising. What was surprising is that they unloaded twenty or so sets of specialized gadgets.

“I present to you spare parts for auto, missile, and flamethrower turrets. Your SCVs can assemble them together and turn them into a part of your defenses.”

“Thanks, Swann. I owe you one.” As the SCVs went to the dropships and started putting the parts together at the entrances, Jean thanked Swann. The chief engineer wasn’t completely safe on the Hyperion either as there was a chance Tal’darim strike teams could land on the ship, but he still decided to send his personal mechanical guards to her. This would never have happened in the Dominion or the mercenary ranks, but she was a member of Raynor’s Raiders, and the Raiders helped their brothers and sisters in need even if it meant risking themselves.

“You’re welcome. If you need anything else, just ask.”

Meanwhile, on the other less peaceful side, Nyon was preparing for an attack.

“My master, we have arrived. Any terran vessel attempting to go through this place will be completely obliterated!” The captain of the phoenix squadron sent to keep the terran dropships from fleeing has arrived. Twelve phoenixes patrolled above the air of the compound just outside the range of ground to air weapons.

Jean brought all eleven vikings the Raiders had with her, but she had no intention of sending them out to clear the air. Phoenixes had much more agility, shield, armor, and firepower than vikings. At least several vikings were needed to take down a single phoenix. Eleven vikings against twelve phoenixes would end terribly for the terran. The female commander simply used the vikings as ground units.

“Maintain your position. If any terran ship gets in or out, you will be answering to me.” After doing his casual threat, Nyon turned to ascendant Falgal, commander of the ships. “Now, where’s my fleet?”

In space, the Tal’darim fleet was slowly approaching the terran battlecruiser. Four destroyers were slightly in front of the carriers, covering the capital ships from enemy fire. Four squad of phoenixes, 48 of these elite fighters, spread out. In small numbers their ion cannons could do very little against the heavy plating of the terran capital ship, but forty eight of them could easily swarm over the lone cruiser and rip it open piece by piece. Anti air laser batteries could barely touch them.

“My master, we are approaching the terran ship.” The female Tal’darim commander replied. Her armored neural cord swung from side to side as she spoke. “Wait, they are charging up their main cannon. Brace for impact!”

The Raiders have made a small fortune recently, and a large amount of that was spent on replenishing the ammunition and energy of their flagship. The ship’s energy was at maximum level, allowing it to use Yamato Cannon and defensive matrix multiple times. Its missile pods were fully loaded. The main warp drive was down, but the Hyperion had multiple smaller warp drivers used for short distance jumps. The capital ship was at its full might. Fully stocked, it was completely different from the rag tagged ship that was held back by a few corruptors on Agria.

Right now, the Yamato Cannon was being charged up. Tal’darim observers could spot destructive orange energy assembling in the tip of the ship.

“All power to shields!”

Within just a few seconds, the Yamato Cannon round flew toward the Tal’darim flank. It was aimed at one of the destroyers.

Yamato Cannon was powerful, but plasma shields, especially those of capital ships like carriers, were tough. Matt Horner knew it was better to heavily damage a support ship than to slightly weaken a capital ship.

The destroyer pilot sensed the approaching danger with his psionic power. Despite being just an insignificant part of the Death Fleet, he was actually an ascendant. A normal terran pilot would try to dodge the shot, but the Tal’darim pilot didn’t. Even if he was willing to lay down his honor and flee from danger, he wouldn’t be able to move something as large as the destroyer in time. Instead, he merely poured every piece of void energy he had into the shield generator.

The orange energy smashed into blue layer of shield and erupted into a ball of kenetic energy. The destroyer pilot screamed as he tried to maintain the plasma shield, which was growing dimmer by the seconds.

After two seconds, the Yamato Cannon round finally disappeared, and so did most of the ship’s shield.

The destroyer pilot fell back in his seat, exhausted but relaxed. He psionically scanned the ship and realized the shield generator was almost fried. Another shot like that and the destroyer would be gone.

Luckily, the terran wouldn’t live long enough to unload a second shot. The phoenixes were already close enough to open fire and the rest of the fleet wasn’t far behind either.

“Push on!” Falgal glanced at the unfortunate destroyer and didn’t do anything to comfort the ascendant that barely cheated death. She explicitly ordered and turned back to Nyon. “My master, our destroyers are making contact with the terran battlecruiser. Their puny technology will melt like ice...”

That was when the Hyperion suddenly blinked and disappeared.

“How did they jump?” One of the carrier pilots demanded angrily. “I thought those cloaked cowards disabled their warp drive!” Ascendants weren’t a fan of blood hunters, unless those blood hunters serve the ascendants. After all, most of the time blood hunters were used to eliminate inside enemies rather than outside ones.

“It’s a short term jump. They used one of the weaker warp drives.” It didn’t take Falgal long to understand the situation. “Phoenixes, spread out and scout the area. They can not be far. The moment they exit warp space is the moment we will strike.”

Before the agile fighters could even carry out the order, the Hyperion exited warp space a significant distance away from the Tal’darim Fleet.

“Open fire on designated target!” After brushing off the effect of the jump with pure experience, Horner quickly ordered. A small grin was on his face. He saw how the brutal Tal’darim were, but his ship wasn’t defenseless either. If the Tal’darim wanted to take their lives, they would need to do it the hard way. The Raiders weren’t going down without a fight.

The Yamato Cannon of the ship was loaded again. Only this time it wasn’t aimed at a random destroyer. Instead, the adjutant located the destroyer hit by the first Yamato Cannon and locked onto it. The Yamato Cannon was heading straight for it.

Once again the destroyer pilot sensed the imminent danger, but there was nothing he could do. He needed a set of coordinates and previous preparation to warp away, and he had neither. All he could do was give everything he had into the shield generator. A Daelaam protoss would’ve warped out of there via the emergency warping system already, but the Tal’darim saw these systems as the work of cowards. Perhaps a few top ascendants were equipped with it, but this ascendant wasn’t one of them.

The Yamato Cannon hit the destroyer, was held back for a few seconds by the plasma shield, but quickly broke through. The protoss vessel was engulfed in a wave of flame before perishing alone with the protoss inside.

Falgal slammed her fist into one of the control panels. It was more due to the shame of losing a support ship at a point of absolute advantage than due to losing one of her men. “Warriors of Amon, engage the terran ship! Let’s see how many jumps they have left!” She suddenly realized she was still connected to Nyon. “Sixth Ascendant,” she hesitated, as if too embarrassed to speak.

“What is it?” Nyon has been listening to what happened the entire time, and he quickly realized he wasn’t going to enjoy what he was about to hear.

“The terran have employed a rather...unorthodox tactic. It will take some time before we can take them out, but in the name of Amon, I promise we will bring it down!”

“You outnumber the terran 12 to 1. Oh, my apologies, 11 to 1. Even a fool couldn’t lose this battle.” Nyon smirked, annoyed at the promise. “You not only need to take down the battlecruiser, but you need to do it quickly. We don’t know how long it will be until their warp drives come online. The same trick can’t work twice. The terran are fools, but even the blood hunters can’t sneak upon on them twice.”

“Trust me, my master. I will accomplish my mission.”

“You better. My blood hunters are as good at hunting down Tal’darim as they are at disabling warp drives and executing prisoners.”

As the transmission ended, the look of obedience on Falgal’s face disappeared and was replaced by a frustrated groan. Yet the ascendant knew Nyon meant it. If she failed, the Sixth Ascendant wouldn’t hesitate to use her as a scapegoat.

The female Tal’darim turned her fear and frustration toward her underlings.

“All units push forward at maximum speed! Anyone who shies away from battle will know my wrath!”

“For Amon!”