A distant planet far from Char.

A lonely leviathan floated in the air. It was wounded. A large hole was ripped open in its lower belly, where a squad of Tal’darim destroyers once performed a suicidal charge against. Countless drones harvested minerals and delivered them to the leviathan, who transformed the resource to energy and attempted to heal itself.

It was a painfully slow process.

A distance away, out of the patrol ring of the zerg mutalisks, three modified terran vessels exited warp space. All of them were equipped with cloaking fields. The amount of resource needed to cloak small starships like vikings and dropships was ineffective most of the time, but this time, it wasn’t.

The first starship was a raven. The second was a viking. The third was a dropship.

The tiny squad was able to evade zerg detection via their small size and the expertise of the pilots. The viking and the raven remained in the air while the dropship landed on the planet below.

A Dominion ghost walked out. He was already cloaked.

At the same time, in the air, the cloaked raven enabled its advanced scanners. The ship’s sensors started scanning the planet. They was aimed to target psionic signatures of broodmothers. Perhaps Kerrigan’s personal brood could counter the raven’s abilities, but a distant brood with only a single leviathan didn’t have a chance against the peak of terran technology.

Upon locating the broodmother, the raven sent the location to the covert ghost, who sneaked forward. The raven helped him to evade spore crawlers and overseers, which weren’t high in number in the first place. After all, most of the spore crawlers and overseers were brought to the battlefield against the Tal’darim, and almost all of them were slaughtered.

Even apart from the detection, the brood itself was hit hard. The lack of mutalisks and corruptors was one of the reasons why the terran hit squad got to the planet so easily. Even on the ground, the broodmother only had a handful of roaches and hydralisks. Her brood was a small one in the first place, and she didn’t have much planetary defense to fall back on.

The ghost ran by a zergling before setting his eyes on the broodmother, who was dining on a bunch of minerals her underlings harvested.

Without a word, the ghost took out his gauss canister rifle, took aim at the broodmother, and pulled the trigger.

Piu.

The broodmother collapsed with a hole in her head. Once again, she was unprepared, and broodmothers weren’t built for combat. They were built to be commanders behind lines and lines of protection. Broodmothers like Zagara had the resource to arm themselves, this broodmother didn’t. The psionically powered round ended her life with ease.

Sensing the death of their overlord, the zerg units suddenly lost control. The zerg had a strange social structure. Most of the broods were directly loyal to their broodmothers, who were then ultimately loyal to Kerrigan. Even the Queen of Blades couldn’t put trillions of zerg under her control at the same time. But this time, with the broodmother gone, the common zerg units went feral. Without command, they followed their instincts and attacked everything in their sight, including other zerg units.

In the original history, after Kerrigan was turned back to human, her personal Swarm units, those she summoned to Char to protect her and survived the Keystone onslaught, went rogue as well and massacred each other. According to Kerrigan’s lieutenant Izsha, these zerg perished by the millions. Compared to that, what happened to this planet was just a piece of cake.

The ghost retreated as the brood went on a killing spree against itself. He retreated back into the dropship, which then lifted off and joined the raven and the viking. With the mission accomplished, the three starships warped away.

The viking was never put to use, but in reality, it carried a tactical nuclear missile inside. If the defenses were too much for the ghost, the viking would fire the nuke at the broodmother and kill her near instantly.

Normally a small brood like this wasn’t worth the time and resource, but the strike team wasn’t there for the brood itself. Instead, they were there for a much grander purpose.

Kerrigan’s response was quick, but it wasn’t quick enough.

Suddenly, the space platform the zerg just overwhelmed simply crumbled apart. A series of small explosions went off around the major supporting points, sending the entire platform into pieces.

Even worse, the artificial gravity system was gone as well. As mutated as the zerg were, they couldn’t move in a zero gravity zone like they do on the surface of a planet. All the zerg on the planet were sent flying around with no control over their body.

A few leviathans moved toward the platform and tried to save as many zerg as possible, but Kerrigan knew she couldn’t afford to waste her time on something as useless.

“Leave them! Warp back to Char now!”

It was too late.

Fleet after fleet warped in all around the Swarm. 250 white Umojan cruisers were on the top and the bottom. 650 red Dominion cruisers covered all four sides. Vikings and wraiths were projected out of the capital ships and formed clouds of white and red in between the battlecruisers.

Nine hundred terran battlecruisers surrounded fifteen leviathans.

Inside the Umojan bridge, seeing that the enemy has fallen into the trap, Jean gave the order to strike.

The whole thing was a setup. Kerrigan naturally thought Jean sent out her entire fleet to take out individual zerg broods. That was what Jean wanted her to think. Instead of mobilizing her entire fleet, she used Dominion covert ghost operatives and Umojan high tech vessels to perform surgical strikes on the zerg broods. To make things more believable, Jean ordered the strike teams to use methods like snipes and nukes that could instantly severe the connection between the broodmothers and Kerrigan. She even deployed countless patrols to keep the zerg overseers out, pretending like she wanted to hide the emptiness of the platform. Kerrigan was more likely to believe in something Jean tried to hide.

The plan worked. Placing herself in Kerrigan’s shoes, Jean concluded she would try to break out of the stalemate using this opportunity. The zerg couldn’t withstand the combined terran fleet, and Kerrigan wasn’t the type to sit back and pray for the best. She would no doubt launch an attack on the seemingly vulnerable platform to cripple the terran assault.

Truth to be told, Jean planned on leaving several thousand biological terran units on the platform. She never assumed Kerrigan to be a fool, and when she realized not a single terran unit on the platform was a real human being, she would turn and run. If Jean could sacrifice a couple thousand men and make Kerrigan believe this was anything but a trap, the Queen of Blades would no doubt attempt to fortify the conquered platform and use it as a staging area when the terran fleet comes back. If Jean could blow the platform up then, after Kerrigan moved all her orbital defenses and ground units on top, she could wipe out a significant portion of the Swarm.

Unfortunately, neither Warfield and Raynor was thrilled when Jean hinted of the idea, so the girl backed off. The Dominion FLeet and the Raiders were worth more than a portion of zerg orbital defenses.

Plus, the combined fleet has already sent out cloaked wraiths to monitor the zerg movement. When they tried to fall back, the fleets were called in.

The combined fleet cornered the Swarm. More importantly, the battle was taking place away from Char, which meant the zerg didn’t have support from orbital defenses. They couldn’t even retreat or flee. Plus, the terran didn’t have to fight on hostile ground, which would amplify terran casualties.

The advantage in numbers of the Swarm was crippled either. When a leviathan was shot down, it didn’t matter if there were one million zerg aboard or ten million.

“All units, proceed with the plan.” Warfield gave the command as well. The battle plan was delivered to the captains and commanders of each battlecruiser and other larger starships. Everyone knew what their job was.

The terran had both a superior firepower and a superior position. All the battlecruisers were turned to the side so the most number of laser batteries could open fire. In an instant, tens of thousands of rounds were launched at the Swarm. Orange laser batteries fell on the leviathans like rain.

The giant beasts screeched as their outer carapace were melted, but that was just the first wave, Within just a second, another wave of batteries arrived.

And then another.

Leviathans might be able to survive for a while, but the lighter zerg flyers shared no such luck. Corruptors, with their large bodies, couldn’t do much to take cover. Some tried to hide themselves behind leviathans, but even that didn’t work as the terran fleet surrounded the Swarm from all directions. Even if the corruptors could hide themselves behind a leviathan and survive the firepower from one direction, the rounds from the other three directions, and from the top and bottom, would set it aflame.

Mutalisks and scourges were smaller and more agile, but that wasn’t a good thing. Sure, they were fast, but what could their speed do when every piece of space within the twenty kilometer radius was covered by fire? They moved the fastest they could, only to run into death.

Overlords and overseers were even worse. At least corruptors and leviathans could attempt to return a couple spores at the terran, but these psionic command units were gunned down completely defenselessly. Once again, their speed did nothing to help.

Their demise stressed Kerrigan’s ability to control her Swarm. The Queen of Blades could directly control all the units in her personal fleet, but if she wanted them to do complex moves, it would take the overlords. With the overlords gone, the zerg movement turned much more clumsy.

“Push forward!” Kerrigan knew it was now or never. The terran command really surprised her. Deep down at the back of her head, she thought the terran would try to land on Char, establish a position, and use the Keystone on her and the Swarm. Deep down, she never considered the terran would try to settle the score in space with a clash between two fleets. The Keystone’s power was close to gone in space. It could still work, but normally battles in space were much quicker that battles on the ground. By the time the Keystone was fully charged, the battle would already be over. Plus, if the Keystone was mounted on a battlecruiser and the ship was destroyed, then the precious artifact might just be lost.

Which type of idiot would abandon her best weapon and engage into a fist fight with the Swarm?

In the original history, the Dominion Fleet was no match for the Swarm Fleet. This forced the terran to land on Char and try to hold the line. This time things were different. Thanks to Jean, the Swarm was weaker and the terran was stronger. Kerrigan, as cunning as she was, still had some trouble of transitioning from the most powerful being in the sector to someone under siege. It was reasonable. She had been invincible for four years. Even after the battle against the Tal’darim and seeing the terran might, she still subconsciously believed the terran would put the Keystone to use. Otherwise why would they go through all the trouble of putting it together?

But this time, the combined fleet was mostly directed by someone who didn’t enjoy relying on some ancient Xel’naga artifact. Jean knew what the artifact was capable of, but she still favored using the fleets to engage the Swarm.

Right now, the only chance of the Swarm was to engage the terran in close quarter combat. That way, the zerg units the leviathan held could attempt a boarding. There was no way the Swarm could win a shootout against the terran fleet, not in this situation.

The advantage of psionically controlled units was fully demonstrated. Leviathans charged forward despite all odds. The psionic network of the Swarm allowed the leviathans to form somewhat of a cube, protecting the vulnerable, smaller flyers in the center. This drastically reduced the casualties. Nearly all the laser fires were tanked by the leviathans.

“All fighters prepare for combat. Security forces, patrol the hull and prepare to repel enemy drop pods.” Warfield glanced at Jean. “Anything to add, Miss Cassidia?”

At first, when Thorn brought this adviser Cassidia into the ring of decision makers, Warfield wasn’t impressed. This wasn’t a place for junior officers to speak. He grew even more frustrated when he realized Jean was rather pretty. A part of him was afraid Jean got to where she was with her look, not her skills. If that was the case, listening to her would be a waste of precious time.

His opinion changed when Jean proposed the idea. He had to admit, the plan was outside the box. Everyone, terran and zerg, expected an assault on Char. Warfield, Raynor, and Thorn were already discussing where the landing areas should be. No one would expect something like this.

It wasn’t Warfield’s fault. This era was a time period when brute force was more important than tactics. A strong fleet could trump most of the secret plans. He was a good general, but mostly he was good at army control and positioning. He wasn’t known for playing into the mind of the enemy.

After that, he wasn’t shy from asking Jean for opinion, and Jean wasn’t shy from providing ideas.

“How many tactical nukes do we have?”

“1325. Why?”

That was a lot of nukes, but they weren’t that effective against the Swarm. Both spores and tentacles could stop the nuclear missiles before they reach their target, and even terran laser batteries might shoot them down. Usually, nuclear missiles were used against either civilian planets or enemies who had no aerial power. Plus, nukes weren’t that good in terms of single target damage, and it would take dozens of them to take down a single leviathan. The radiation of the nukes would be useless against the zerg.

Warfield didn’t think these nukes could change anything.

Jean thought differently.