Olane noticed almost immediately when one of the carriers within her fleet was destroyed. The explosion of a cruiser several kilometers long was difficult to ignore. The image of thousands of interceptors exploding or crashing into the battlecruisers and carriers around them wasn’t easily missed either.

Nonetheless, she merely sat back in her seat.

“Supplicant, report on the situation inside the ship.”

“My master, all the terran boarding parties have been purged. The halls of your ship have been painted red by the blood of your enemies.” Beside Olane, the supplicant acting as Olane’s lieutenant answered. A sickening expression appeared on his face. “Shall we deliver the heads of the terran to you, my master?”

In most cases this was an exaggeration. In this case, it wasn’t.

Olane shook her head. “What is the status on our boarding parties?”

This time the supplicant’s expression was turned to what could be described as embarrassment. “Our warriors have encountered heavy resistance. Their losses are severe. The terran ships are packed with automated defenses. Only a few war prisms have gone past the terran batteries, and even they have been pinned down.”

The female ascendant started thinking. Suddenly, a wave of screams came from outside the bridge.

Outside, three EMP rounds smashed into the two photon cannons guarding the entrance to the bridge. A wave of blue energy washed over both structures and disabled them. These EMPs were specifically modified to take down protoss technology.

A supplicant zealot charged forward and was sniped down.

As the last defender fell, three spectres, all cloaked, charged into the bridge of the Tal’darim carrier.

Not all of the boarding parties were as successful as the ones on the destroyed carrier. In fact, in most cases, the mercenaries were simply straight up overwhelmed. This was the case for this carrier.

As the fleet commander, Olane’s supplicant army was the strongest. It was nothing compared to that of Nyon or that of Nuroka, but it was more than enough to deal with a couple dozen mercenaries. All the mercenaries were slaughtered. They fought until the end, but sometimes courage wasn’t enough.

The spectres had a different fate. Their mission was different from that of the mercenaries. The mercenaries were supposed to establish a secured position and wait for reinforcements, who should be arriving in larger numbers in dropships. The spectres were sent here to assassinate the Tal’darim pilots, therefore rendering the carriers nothing but a few targets.

The spectres could help the mercenaries as long as it didn’t affect their mission, but in this case when the squad of three spectres realized the mercenaries were hopeless, they simply abandoned them and advanced toward the bridge.

If they couldn’t take down the supplicant army, then they would rather take their chances with assassinating the fleet commander. The battle was not over yet.

The supplicant lieutenant drew his blades. One of the spectres fired a single shot at the supplicant. The zealot wasn’t weak either. With incredible agility he tilted his body and barely dodged the shot.

Facing the melee warrior, the spectre that fired the shot returned his rifle to behind his back and pulled out a plasma blade.

He ignited the weapon, which created a purple blade. The zealot slashed expertly, but the spectre was equally experienced in the art of blades. All three weapons clashed in midair.

As they fought, the other two spectres took aim at Olane and fired, but just before one of the spectres pulled the trigger, a red line suddenly appeared above his waist.

The man screamed as his upper body fell over. There wasn’t even any blood. The extreme heat of the psionic blade sealed the arteries. Unfortunately that didn’t keep the intestines from falling out.

It was a blood hunter. One of Olane’s private guards. As soon as the spectres entered the bridge they were focused on Olane and the lieutenant supplicant. The cloaked blood hunter was never spotted. This gave her a chance to strike down one of the spectres with the element of surprise.

The second spectre knew he didn’t have the time to turn around or dodge. Even if he did and dodged the blood hunter’s attack, he would be stuck with enemies on both sides. But the man didn’t cower or retreat. Instead, he pulled the trigger.

The bullet was stopped by Olane’s plasma shield. The next second the spectre’s head rolled off his neck.

Beside, the last spectre dodged one of the zealot’s blades. When he realized both his comrades were dead, he knew he was doomed as well. But the effect of the terrazine was showing on him. His mind didn’t held a single strand of fear. In fact, it was clouded by anger and hatred.

The spectre took out something from his pocket and pulled the trigger.

“Explosive!” The lieutenant supplicant was the closest to the spectre. He saw the terran just ignited the charger he carried. It was designed to blow up either the Khaydarin crystal that powered the ship or the bridge. No doubt, it was deadly.

In a split second, Olane acted. But instead of deflecting or shielding the explosive like a common combatant would, she turned to the supplicant zealot.

The warrior’s eyes widened. “My master…don’t...”

Olane didn’t wait for another word. She simply held her hand forward, and the supplicant was horrified to realize he was being pushed forward toward the explosive. His plasma shield was turned to maximum power, but he was well aware even with maximum shield power he couldn’t survive the blast.

Then again Olane never planned on the supplicant surviving.

The supplicant resisted, but with overwhelming psionic power Olane tossed the zealot onto the explosive the second before it went out.

The explosive ripped through the plasma shield of the zealot, but it was weakened in the process. What was left of the blast damaged a few parts of the bridge, but both Olane and the blood hunter survived.

As the dust settled, what was left of the zealot’s armor fell on the ground in a loud clang. A large black hole was in its center. The warrior inside was already gone. Olane didn’t even bother to look at that. As far as she could see, the lieutenant served his purpose.

“Deploy my supplicants onto…” She looked out the window of the bridge and pointed at one of the mercenary battlecruisers that belonged to Tosh. That cruiser did the worst job in keeping the war prisms away. A dozen war prisms were already in phasing mode around it, and fire could been seen from multiple compartments of the vessel. “to that ship.” Attacking that cruiser would result in the minimum losses and the maximum prize.

“As you wish, my master.” The blood hunter retreated into the shadows.

In the bridge of the battlecruiser that was gradually overwhelmed, dozens of crew members were giving it everything they could. Officers did their best to locate places where the Tal’darim were warping in and direct the security forces there, but the war prisms were slick. They were parked near positions where the only batteries that could reach there were destroyed. They could deploy armies of Tal’darim without having to worry about their own safety.

But one of the figures inside the bridge wasn’t like the others.

“Boss, more Tal’darim reinforcements are arriving on the ship. These mercenaries are fighting back, but they are not enough.” The spectre showed no sign of the bad news. If anything, he sounded thrilled.

“Everything is going according to the plan.”

On the other end, Tosh, who has returned to his flagship after helping with one of the carriers, sat back in his leather chair and grinned.

“How many Tal’darim are in the ship?”

“Over 500. Nearly half of them seems to be elite units. Supplicants.”

“Now ain’t that a pleasant surprise.”

“Perhaps, but the security forces are being taken down faster than we expected.” The spectre licked his lips. “I suggest we act now.”

Tosh nodded. “Do it.”

The spectre turned off the comm and exited cloak mode. He didn’t need to, but he wanted to.

“What did commander Tosh say?” Seeing the spectre, the captain of the battlecruiser walked up. “Did he agree for an evacuation? There’s no way we can hold the Tal’darim back any longer. We need to abandon ship.”

“Abandon ship, yes. Evacuate, no.” The spectre said quietly.

“What do you mean…” The captain asked in surprise. His battle instinct brought his hand to the holster on his belt, but the spectre was already in action.

A shade of purple appeared in the air, and the captain collapsed with half of his neck cut open.

“What the…” One of the security forces inside the bridge raised his rifle, but the spectre merely held his hand out, and the mercenary felt his armor gradually being crushed. He made out a short scream before his bones cracked and killed him instantly.

Unfortunately, due to the attack of the Tal’darim, most of the security forces were sent to battle elsewhere. The several marines aimed their rifles, but the spectre simply drew his own sniper rifle returned fire. Somehow he fired the sniper at a rate much faster than multiple gauss rifles. The marines didn’t stand a chance.

As the last marine fell, the spectre didn’t stop. The crew members were completely taken by surprise. Some went for their sidearms while others ran for the door. One of the officers even called for help through the comm, but before any reinforcing security forces could come the spectre has already secured the door and was gunning down the crew members like gunning down chickens.

It didn’t take him long to slaughter every single man and woman in the room. Blood and bodies turned the place into a slaughterhouse.

The only person alive in the bridge, the spectre walked to one of the control consoles, typed in a long series of security code, and pulled up an interface.

“Self-destruction sequence initiating.” Unlike in most movies, the self-destruction sequence didn’t come with a blaring alarm that told everyone on the ship to get the hell out of there. Rather, it should’ve sent out a notice to the radios of all the registered friendly units. Unfortunately for the mercenaries, the spectre disabled that function.

As the order was given, the spectre fired a few bullets at the console and destroyed it so the sequence couldn’t be halted. When that was done, he turned and walked out of the bridge. The mercenaries still fighting the Tal’darim were condemned to death, but he wasn’t.

There was an empty wraith waiting in the hanger of the ship.

As he closed out of the communication with the spectre operative, Tosh stood back up, ready to do another assassination.

All across the field the situation was getting worse and worse for the Tal’darim. Phoenixes and interceptors were exhausted. Countless war prisms were destroyed in midair. War prisms could create a force field and allowed units to warp in, but warping in requires time and some of the units were loaded into the war prisms themselves. When these transports die, the units within perish as well. As the war prisms were dying in the dozens, hundreds of Tal’darim warriors fell without doing any damage to the terran.

One of the carriers was taken down, thanks to Tosh. Olane’s flagship stood tall. However, on the other two carriers, the terran were gradually pushing through. The initial wave of drop pods have cleaned out a small piece of safe location. Photon cannons were destroyed and ground forces were pushed back. This opened up an opportunity for relatively slower and more fragile drop ships to approach.

These transports unloaded hundreds of mercenary reinforcements into the field. One of them even brought a pair of goliaths into the field. Siege tanks might rip open the hull of the ship and send protoss and terran alike into the vacuum of space, but the autocannons of goliaths had no such fear.

Tal’darim weren’t sitting duck either. They attacked dozens at a time, but every time the zealots charged they would be welcomed by an EMP round right in the center mass. Most of the zealots were immediately knocked off their feet. The marines and marauders used that opportunity to freely unleash their hail of bullets.

The few zealots that survived fell back and joined the next charge.

The supplicants of the lower ascendants simply weren’t enough. If Olane sent her larger, stronger supplicant forces and blood hunters to help her fellow pilots, the situation might be better, but the female ascendant smirked upon the idea of sacrificing her own units to help her comrades.

She would rather send them onto one of the terran battlecruisers than send them to help the other ascendants.

Suddenly, in the computer panel that acted as the communication relay between Horner, Tosh, and Jean, Horner called out.

“Tosh, one of your ships is been overwhelmed. I am moving the Hyperion closer to help.”

Tosh sat back down. “That’s a negative, captain. I have everything under control.”

Horner frowned. “That ship is being boarded. Its missile turrets and batteries are going quiet. I don’t know the exact condition but I’m fairly certain the Tal’darim are gaining control of the vessel. I apologize, but I fail to see how you have that under control.”

“Well,” Tosh opened his mouth to say something, but the next second the battlecruiser they were debating about exploded into a giant ball of flame.

The hundred or so mercenaries still fighting for their lives, along with the 600 or so Tal’darim combatants, including around 150 supplicants, were killed instantly.

“Like I said, I have everything under control.”