The female marine watched in horror as a giant ball of red energy flew across the sky, barely missed the bunker she was in, and landed on one of the goliaths. The goliath pilot didn’t even manage to scream before being melted.

“What the f**k! Where did that come from?” A mercenary marine yelled through the comm while pulling down the trigger of his gun with the strength of his entire arm. Zealots and slayers could be gunned down, but how was he supposed to use his gauss rifle to take down something that was shooting from a position he couldn’t even see?

“What in the bloody hell!” Beside Jean, the reaper captain’s jaw hung wide open. His men weren’t different either. “How are we supposed to take that thing down?”

Unlike the common soldiers, he was beside Jean and could see the image of the shooter from a scanner. That didn’t help in any way shape or form, though, as the reaper captain knew there was nothing they could do against the giant walker that was practically shooting from behind the entire Tal’darim army. All Raider ground units were held back by the Tal’darim. Jean could send the vikings out, but they wouldn’t last five minutes against the phoenixes. Even siege tanks couldn’t hit that far.

Unfortunately, the man knew he had no choice but to stand and fight. Even if he could get in one of the dropships and lift off in safety, he would be gunned down in the air. There was nothing he could do but look at Jean and hope she had a plan.

“Sir?” Frustrated, the man looked at Jean and suddenly felt slightly calmer.

This was where Jean’s poker face came into effect. Even in such a desperate occasion, her eyes were still as peaceful as ever. She wasn’t sweating. Her hands weren’t shaking. She was just sitting there like she had everything under control. Whether or not she really had a card to play was a different story, but as long as she looked like she was confident, her men would feel that as well.

Instead of answering the reaper captain’s question, Jean grabbed onto the radio.

“SCV, report.”

“The device is fully functional, sir.”

“Good. You see that giant piece of Tal’darim walker over there?”

“Yes sir.”

“Take it out.”

In the middle of the terran base was a Drakken Laser Drill. It worked by firing a giant laser beam at the target capable of melting down almost anything. It was brought here by the first group of mercenaries to take down the door of the Xel’naga temple. When Jean found it, slightly damaged but repairable, she realized if this drill could go through the enhanced door of a Xel’naga temple, it could surely work against protoss units.

Unfortunately, there was a reason the drill wasn’t used to arm the entire Dominion fleet and the terran weren’t going around killing everyone with their mining devices. Apart from the massive energy consumption, it was difficult to aim the device and make sure it accurate lands on the intended target. This meant if the operator tried to use it on a zealot, it would likely miss. When the mercenaries were attacked, one of them tried to use the drill. The fact that all the mercenaries were dead explained what happened.

But this was no longer a problem against fifty meters tall wrathwalkers. The orange laser beam came out of the drill, went across from above the entire Tal’darim army, and hit the wrathwalker that took out the goliath.

A thick layer of red plasma shield appeared in front of the walker. Something as precious as the wrathwalkers was surely well protected. Unfortunately, the laser beam was continuous. The plasma shield held for now, but its energy was quickly depleting.

“Fall back now!” Nyon realized he made a mistake. At this point if he pushed forward with the wrathwalkers he might still break through the defenses, but he would likely lose one, two, or all three of these striders. It would be a painful blow and suffering this type of loss just because he was impatient was nothing short of foolish.

He had the terran surrounded. It was just a matter of time before the final victory. Why would he risk the safety of three precious war machines when he could place common zealots and slayers in danger? The three wrathwalkers were ten times more valuable than the ground forces in the field.

The three wrathwalkers retreated as quickly as they could. The Tal’darim foot soldiers didn’t even realize that happened. The ascendants saw it and understood Nyon’s thinking, but none of them said anything. As long as they could keep their supplicant warriors in safety, the ordinary zealots and slayers were easily replaceable. The Tal’darim population was around fifteen million, and almost all of them were combatants. As long as the ascendants could take the terran from this field and maintain their glory, there would constantly be fresh Tal’darim joining them.

When the wrathwalkers were forced back, Jean ordered the drill to be turned on the Tal’darim mass. It didn’t work as well on zealots and slayers, but it was better than nothing. Plasma shields and bodies melted. Even the toughest zealot couldn’t survive a few seconds under the laser beam. The Tal’darim casualty was sharply increasing.

Unfortunately, so was the Raider casualty. Under the tireless charge of the Tal’darim, the first line of bunkers have already fallen on both sides. Out of the two hundred or so units in those bunkers, over half of them were dead. The rest retreated to the second line of bunkers, constructed by SCVs as quickly as they could, and joined the rest of the Raiders in a final stand.

But, seeing the casualties, Jean wasn’t worried. Instead, she was looking down on a timer.

In space, the Hyperion exited warp space once again and fired another round of orange blast at one of the destroyers.

“I shall be one...with Amon!” A ball of flame ended the pilot’s scream.

Falgal growled and smashed her fists against each other. That was already the third destroyer down. The losses were adding up. More importantly, if, after so much trouble and so many losses, the terran vessel still got away, then her authority would be crushed. She would be a weakling who held an overwhelming fleet, lost three ships, and still failed to destroy the enemy. She would lose her control of the fleet, at best. She shuttered to think of the worst situation.

She knew she needed to change her tactics.

“All Tal’darim ships, spread out! Cover every inch of the planet’s parameter and destroy any terran you see!” The terran were only able to survive because the Tal’darim capital ships didn’t have the speed chase them down. If she could put her ships in a sufficient position, the terran would have nowhere to jump to.

The Tal’darim pilots obeyed. The other three carriers and five destroyers deviated from the original course while Falgal drove her capital ship after the Hyperion.

That was what Horner was waiting for.

“Reload Yamato Cannon! Prepare defensive matrix. All laser batteries standby to fire.” One carrier was less than four carriers and five destroyers. If he could abuse this temporal weakness and take down one of the carriers, it would be a heavy blow to their firepower. This wasn’t a game and Horner didn’t know the carrier after him was the Tal’darim Fleet commander, but he did know carriers were few and precious. Take one down and the Tal’darim would surely think twice about coming after him.

Falgal noticed the Hyperion stopping and readying for battle, but she wasn’t shaken. Instead, she was smirking.

She has been fighting for hundreds of years. She fought all three races before. There was no way she would make the mistake of underestimating her enemy and charge head-on into the enemy and be taken out, leaving her ships leaderless.

Inside the hull of her ship was a hundred supplicant zealots loyal to her and her alone. Her carrier was capable of projecting a power field onto any enemy ship over a short distance. A part of the reason why she sent the carriers and destroyers away was because she wanted the Hyperion to stop running and even actively come to her, and she could only do that if she made the terran commander feel like he could win this engagement.

As soon as the Hyperion try to take her out, she would bring her ship forward and send small Tal’darim strike teams inside the terran vessel. There was no way those terran thieves could stand up against Tal’darim elite in such close quarter combat.

The hunter would be the hunted.

But, really, who is the real hunter?

Turned out Nyon wasn’t the hunter. Jean wasn’t the hunter. Horner wasn’t the hunter. And certainly, Falgal wasn’t the hunter.

“Captain, massive amount of warp signals detected! They appear to be...zerg.”

Raynor groaned. “Kerrigan!”

A distance away from Xil high orbit, twenty leviathans appeared out of thin air. Their purple armor showed their allegiance toward the swarm while their toughened armor and enhanced tentacles showed their faction as the Queen of Blades’ personal fleet.

Inside her throne room, Kerrigan smirked victoriously.

She has set her eyes on the artifact pieces a while ago. The fraction on Monlyth was taken away from her because of her carelessness and arrogance, but she swore she wouldn’t let that happen again.

The second least defended artifact fragment was the one on Xil, but even so it was under the protection of a sizeable Tal’darim fleet. She could deal with the fleet, but the fearless Tal’darim would definitely buy enough time for the artifact to be transported away.

Once behind the full protection of the Death Fleet, even Kerrigan couldn’t reach the fragment with ease.

Kerrigan knew she needed to do this carefully. Instead of blindly charging in, she put her fleet on hold and deployed a web of overseers around Xil. The original plan was to gather as much information on the planet as possible so she could hopefully discover a weakness in the Tal’darim defenses and abuse it to her advantage.

Unfortunately, there was no crack in the Tal’darim defenses...until the Raiders came.

Kerrigan didn’t think of anything when the first group of mercenaries came in and were massacred. Against the zerg fleet of twenty leviathans and the Tal’darim fleet of twelve capital and support ships, the hundred or so mercenaries with a squad of vikings was hardly a game changer. However, she started to pay more attention when Raynor’s Raiders got into the fray.

Kerrigan knew what her former lover was capable of. The man didn’t live through everything he went through by being stupid.

Just like she expected, the Hyperion was able to drag the Tal’darim ships around. With perfect control, the Hyperion was even able to take down three destroyers. Kerrigan had to admit she was impressed.

She was even more impressed when the Tal’darim commander decided to spread her fleet across the skies. It was a deadly mistake. Maybe the Tal’darim commander had her reasons, but it was a mistake nonetheless.

Kerrigan jumped on the opportunity immediately.

Twenty leviathans immediately went into action. Nine ships could hold them off for quite a while, but the fleet was spread thin. A single carrier and a single destroyer were the closest to the newly appeared Swarm fleet while the rest of the fleet were a distance away. The two ships, stranded, were immediately under fire.

Leviathan tentacles smashed into the plasma shield of both the destroyer and the carrier. Dozens of hits were done in just a few seconds, and it didn’t take long before the destroyer’s shield generator fell. When the shield was gone, the tentacles ripped the vessel to pieces.

The carrier was beaten down as well, but its shield was much stronger. Countless ripples originated from the points where the tentacles hit the shield and were spread across the blue layer of safety.

The pilot sent out his interceptors and turned the shield generator to maximum power before finally turning to the comm.

“Ascendant Falgal, what is your command?”

Falgal knew it wasn’t her decision to make. “All ships converge on the swarm. Ascendant Nyon, are you seeing this?”

On the ground, Nyon wanted to kill something, but he was well aware of when he could unleash his anger and when he couldn’t. This was one of the times he needed to remain calm.

“Hold off the Swarm as long as possible. Buy me time to bring the artifact out of here even if it means your total destruction!” Knowing Falgal would obey, Nyon left the comm without waiting for a response.

“My master.” A supplicant blood hunter walked up. “What is your will?”

“Assemble my supplicant army and warp them onto my ship. You, lead a squad of your warriors into the temple and retrieve the artifact.” The artifact fragment was sealed inside the temple. Its xel’naga nature meant it couldn’t be warped away directly. A team was required to bring it out of the temple, onto the ship, and then the ship could warp the artifact away.

“Yes, my master.” Neither Nyon nor the blood hunter mentioned what would happen to the ordinary zealots and slayers. They were replaceable. Giving their lives buying time for the blood hunters to retrieve the artifact was their only duty.

As the blood hunter left, Nyon thought about it for a while before sending a message to all the ascendants. There were dozens of ascendants still in the army. Each and every one of them was a powerful psionic master and had a small group of elite warriors under their command. All of them have pledged their allegiance to Nyon. Letting them perish as well would be a painful loss. They were still useful, so Nyon was willing to give them a path to survival.

As time passed, the Tal’darim forces besieging the terran lines backed off. They regrouped under a low level ascendant. They were beaten back and took heavy losses, and every one of them could see the swarm of zerg in the air, but their spirit was unwavering.

As they replenished their shields and ignited their bane blades, they had no idea their fate was already sealed.