Nova walked into the bridge of her ship, slightly frustrated.

The ghost knew she should be satisfied. It was a clean mission. The objective was captured. Dominion losses were acceptable. But for some reason she had a bad feeling about this. There was definitely something fishy.

But where could this bad feeling possibly originate from?

She was in warp space. Her elite battlecruiser was escorted by two entire Dominion fleets. She was heading for Korhal, the capital of the Terran Dominion and one of the most heavily defended planet across the sector. What could possibly go wrong?

If the threat didn’t come from outside, it must be from within. Jean was secured. She was searched from top to bottom and everything on her was stripped off. She was unarmed and the only thing on her was a shirt. A single marine could overpower her. Nova knew she might be a threat if she could get her hands on a computer terminal, but could she? If the sentries let an armed noncombatant slit right away under their noses, they might as well commit suicide. Even the weakest Dominion recruit could accomplish that job, much less Dominion Special Forces.

“Double the patrols and do a full scan of the ship.” She ordered, just in case. The officers, as confused as they were, complied.

Nova was good, but she made a mistake, and that was assuming Jean had nothing on her.

But then again blaming Nova for this would simply be unfair, After all, the object Jean had on her wasn’t exactly from around here.

With the hands restrained behind her back, Jean ran her finger across the surface of her watch. After a few experiments, she realized she was the only one that could see or feel her watch. For whatever reason, the Supreme One used some sort of technology Jean couldn’t understand to not only shield the watch from hostile eyes but also touches.

She tapped the watch gently, and inside her mind she immediately sensed what was inside.

One of the elite marines behind Jean saw the girl’s movement, but she didn’t realize anything. As far as she could see, Jean was just rubbing her fingers on her wrist.

The price of that misunderstanding was unbelievable.

One second Jean’s hand was empty. The next second she was holding an EMP grenade. Its clip was pulled off in advanced. After some experiment, Jean knew time didn’t really flow inside her watch. If she pulled the pin off a grenade and put it into her watch, it would be on the edge of exploding when it was taken out. This allowed Jean to take the Dominion soldiers completely by surprise.

Jean’s hands were tied and she couldn’t throw the grenade out, but she didn’t need to.

The EMP grenade exploded in Jean’s hands. The pulse didn’t do anything to Jean, but it swept through the entire cell.

Elite marines and marauders groaned. Their modified armors were somewhat resistant to the EMP pulses, but terran technology simply wasn’t enough to make the CMC armors completely immune. Even protoss couldn’t say they were completely immune to EMPs.

Ghosts were forced out of cloak mode. These elite warriors clutched onto their heads and stumbled slightly. Their armors weren’t as heavy as those of marines, but the EMP washed away their psionic energy, rendering them as weak as an ordinary human being. Usually they could see the EMP grenade before it exploded and dodge away from its range of effect, but inside this small cell...

“Sir, we need reinforcements now! The prisoner is doing something...damn it!” One of the guards screamed into the radio, but the comm simply hissed.

Realizing the guards weren’t down immediately, Jean tapped her watch again, and another EMP grenade appeared.

After three more EMP pulses, all the guards finally collapsed. Their human bodies couldn’t withstand the weight of the armors.

A plasma blade appeared in Jean’s hand, and she immediately cut open the shackles. Its technology made sure the shackles fell like hot butter while her hands, just inches away, were untouched.

One of the Spec Ops ghost survived through the waves of EMP with astonishing willpower. With shaking arms, he raised his gauss rifle and took aim at Jean. He was ready to kill, but the next second a two man tall warbot appeared in front of him. He fired a single shot, and the sniper round capable of punching a hole through Jean’s skull bounced off the warbot’s armor. C-10 sniper rifles, especially when they were armed with normal bullets, were designed to take down personnel, not mech.

Ghosts could specialized shells, like EMP rounds, for a situation like this. If they needed to, they could also slice the warbots apart with their psi blades or simply crush them with their mind, but this ghost didn’t have the chance to use any of those. He could only watch as the eradicator’s cannon rip through his body.

All the guards in the cell were down, but Jean knew she didn’t have even a second to waste. Dominion forces weren’t stupid. There were multiple security cameras inside the ship. She fried them, not that it mattered. Plus, the fact that they lost contact with the guards was enough to send Dominion Special Forces troops charging here.

Jean took some time to shoot all the guards in the head, repeatedly. After she was done, she looked around the room to make sure all the cameras fell during the EMP rampage.

When Jean made that confirmation, she tapped on her watch once more, and a piece of CMC armor of a Dominion marine covered every inch of her skin. The watch allowed Jean to make the things she stored inside appear anywhere within a certain proximity. The area around Jean was within that proximity.

Alarms blared throughout the halls, and Jean opened the door of the cell and walked out.

Two elite marines were at the door. Their gauss rifles were trained at the door, ready to start blasting, but they didn’t fire when they saw Jean. The girl’s red armor fooled them. Jean’s CMC armor was that of a normal marine and the sentries were Special Forces elite marines, but it wasn’t exactly an easy difference to spot in a brief glance. As far as the marines knew, the prisoner was in a shirt. That was it. There was no way she could hide a CMC armor on her.

“What happened inside? Your comm is down.” One of the elite marines asked. Despite knowing Jean was probably a friend, his weapons was still facing her.

Jean didn’t answer. Instead, she collapsed on the ground and whispered something. The marine that asked the question frowned. Jean wasn’t talking in the radio, and he couldn’t hear what she said through the blaring alarm and the layer of armor. He knelt down beside Jean and opened his helmet.

“What did you say?”

Instead of words, the marine received a plasma blade to the chest.

Ghosts and zealots used psionic blades. These blades were the peak melee weapons, capable of cutting through practically anything. However, they needed psionic input from their users to work.

Jean didn’t fulfill that requirement, so she went to the next best option. In order to allow non-psychic combatants to have a chance in melee, terran scientists created plasma blades. They could be activated with the press of a button. Although they were slightly less effective than psionic blades, they were perfect for people like Jean. They were relatively expensive and rare, and Jean managed to purchase one through the connections of Isaac’s mercenaries.

The second guard was taken by surprise, but he acted quickly. Unfortunately, Jean was quicker. Almost as soon as the plasma blade went through the first marine’s neck, Jean turned the blade, almost beheading the guard, and launched herself forward. A single gauss bullet grazed by her shoulder armor before she pushed the rifle up toward the ceiling with one arm and jammed the blade into the second marine’s helmet with the other.

The headless marine collapsed. Most of his bullets hit the ceiling.

A few more marines came in from the other end of the hallway. With a blank face, Jean took out a shredder grenade and tossed it into the middle of the crowd of reinforcements. As the grenade hit the ground, Jean knelt down and hid herself behind a combat shield of one of the fallen elite marines.

An explosion was followed by the sound of shrapnel hitting the piece of metal.

Still with a blank face, Jean stood back up and took out her pistol. One hand holding onto the shield and the other holding the firearm, Jean walked forward.

Seven elite marines were charging down the halls when Jean suddenly dropped an instrument of death at their feet. Almost all of them were caught by surprise, and Jean viciously held the grenade there for a second before throwing it out so it could go off as soon as it landed at its destination. The marines had half a second to react, and that wasn’t nearly enough.

Three men were killed instantly. A man lost a leg. The other lost an arm. The third’s helmet was shattered. The fourth was knocked off his feet, but there was no obvious injury on him.

Not that it mattered as Jean put a bullet into each of their skulls.

Not wasting another second at the bodies on the floor, Jean ran deeper into the ship.

“Someone, report now! What is going on?” Nova demanded loudly.

All around her crew members were in a hurry. They were elite, but they were also human beings. They thought they were in a completely safe environment.

They were wrong, and it surprised them.

“Sir, we have lost contact with the prisoner cell. I can’t reach the sentries outside the cell.”

Nova wasted no time with swearing or pointing fingers. “Contact the closest patrol squad and order them to investigate. Sound the alarm.”

“Yes sir.”

Just seconds later, the sound of an explosion and a series of gunshots through the radio sent the entire bridge into a dead silence. As the shots died down, the fate of the seven men patrol squad was obvious.

Nova wasn’t demoralized by the casualties.

“Order security forces to converge on the prison cell. Surround it but do not engage. Send out squads to lock down the entire ship! Whoever is behind this will not get what they came here for.”

“Yes sir!”

“Check all the cameras. I want to know what is going on inside my ship!”

A crew member started typing.

“Sir, the cameras in the cell are down. I’m accessing the hallway cameras now.”

One of the computer screens changed and projected twelve separate smaller screens. Each of them was playing the content of one of the cameras in the hallways near the prison cell. Nova suddenly frowned and pointed at one of the cameras.

The officer enhanced that window.

Inside the image, a marine slaughtered a patrol squad.

“Who is this?” Nova frowned. She couldn’t see Jean’s face through the girl’s helmet.

“Don’t know, but he came out of the cell. He’s not one of us.” The officer stated the obvious.

Nova growled in slight frustration and loaded her rifle. “Squad one, come with me.” She walked out of the bridge. Two Spec Ops ghosts and twenty elite marines followed her.

The ghost reached the cell. A ring of Special Forces was around the door, but they didn’t attack. That was about to change.

“Sir, security cameras can’t find the rogue marine. He must’ve slipped past the cameras.”

Nova tapped her earpiece as the reinforcements behind her joined their brothers in a defensive formation. “And the prisoner?”

“She has not been spotted. Maybe she’s the one inside the marine armor?”

“Impossible. There’s no way she can get a CMC armor. We searched her. She wasn’t carrying any grenade either. There’s a mole on this ship.” Nova concluded. “If Jean didn’t escape, she must be still inside the cell. I don’t know why she’s doing that, but I’ll find out soon.”

Nova turned to her men and made a signal, and two elite marines kicked open the door of the cell with their combat shields up. The men immediately charged inside, expecting heavy resistance and ready to kill.

They quickly realized the cell was empty.

“All clear.” One of the marines said, putting his shield aside. His enhanced visor was armed with a scanner capable of detecting cloaked units. Not a single soul other than them was in the room.

Nova walked in as well, but just as she entered her psionic energy screamed a warning. Sweat came down from the ghost’s back.

Without a second of hesitation, Nova turned around and jumped out of the room. A layer of psionic shield was formed between herself and the cell.

The next second an explosion tore the cell, along with the dozen elite marines inside, to pieces.

The two Spec Ops ghosts did a similar thing as they moved outside the cell ASAP. They were somewhat wounded by the blast, but they lived.

The rest of the strike team weren’t so lucky. Enhanced armors were ripped open. Human bodies were evaporated. It was a bloodbath.

Nova groaned and pulled out a piece of shrapnel that got past her shield and smashed into her shoulder. She dropped the piece of metal, which hit the ground and made a loud sound, but Nova wasn’t bothered by her wound. Instead, she merely tapped her earpiece once again and made contact with the officer in command in the bridge.

“We’ve been ambushed. The prisoner has got away. Search through the security cameras again and contact all security squads within the ship. Sweep the entire ship and flush them out.”

She waited for a few seconds and frowned when she failed to hear a response. “Officer? Come in! Officer!”

The channel was blank.

Nova’s eyes widened as she realized what was really going on. Ignoring the pain in her shoulder, she started running down the hall.

The two ghosts exchanged a look before following her.