Eve of Destruction

With the queen and several technicians onboard the once-downed battleship, Major Rocksun, Private Hudson, Eve and I headed towards the Zerg colony. Hudson was in the Vulture while I manned the Goliath. Eve was riding shotgun in Rocksun’s siege tank and would continue to do so until we got to the point where we needed her invisible on foot. That’s not a bad trick turning invisible like that. I think her armor is what allows her to cloak. She has a cloak cloak.

“What are you laughing at?” I heard Hudson’s voice crackling over the radio.

“Ah nothing,” I replied. “Just thinking about something.”

“Keep the chatter down, boys,” Rocksun reprimanded. “We are getting close to the first target.”

We came to a short, rocky cliff and I was amazed at the sight that was before me. Scattered across the terrain were several bizarre structures. Many of them looked unique and all were pulsing slightly as if they were alive. I reminded myself that they actually were a living organism. The ground between all the structures was covered in a jelly-like substance which seemed to connect everything.

“There it is,” said Eve as she pulled herself out of the tank. “That purple stuff along the ground is called the creep. It connects the entire colony together. It won’t hurt you, though. What you want to look out for is that.”

I looked over and saw some sort of thing surrounded by the creep. It was pulsing like the other structures, but it appeared to have some sort of tentacle on it as well.

“Sunken colony,” Eve stated. “There’ll be many of them out there. They’re designed to protect the colony from attack. There are spore colonies in the creep, too, but they’re only useful against air units. We don’t need to worry about those.”

“After the first nuke detonates, we move in to destroy anything still moving,” Rocksun added. “Take out any of those tentacles first, then any creatures, then any of the structures still standing.”

“Got it,” I replied.

“No problem,” Hudson asserted.

“All right,” Eve cloaked herself and vanished from sight. “Here goes nothing.”

“Be careful,” Rocksun cautioned her.

“Always,” Eve replied then invisibly made her way to the colony.

“Missile number 1 is ready for launch,” Technician Lombarr announced over the radio. “Waiting for the signal.”

Shortly, our scopes detected the laser beam hitting one of the structures.

“Nuclear missile launched,” an automatic warning sounded over our comm systems.

“Incoming!” Rocksun yelled after a few minutes. “There it is.”

Eve disengaged the targeting laser and retreated to a safer distance. We shielded our eyes as the nuclear blast produced an enormous flash. After what seemed an eternity, I looked up and saw the mushroom cloud dissipating high in the sky.

“Looks like I got a lot of them with that blast,” Eve reported over the comm. “It’s safe to move in and clean up the area.”

“Toasty,” Hudson sneered from his hovercycle. “Let’s go stomp them bugs!”

We moved down closer to the colony and worked our way through all of the remaining Zerg. Most were already severely wounded. They did not put up much of a fight. From there, we moved on to the structures and hit those with our cannons and grenades. They didn’t last long, either.

“That was easy enough,” I said. “I don’t suppose it’ll stay this easy the whole way, will it?”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Eve replied. “Now they know we’re here.”

“Let ‘em come, man,” Hudson said defiantly. “Game over for them.”

“Think we got enough nukes to take them all out?” I asked.

“We’ll see,” Rocksun answered.

We pressed forward to our next objective.

“Remember what you said about telling me your first name?” Eve asked Rocksun.

“Yes.”

“I’m holding you to that.”