Starcraft Co. 9- Defense
This was the first mission where Starcraft Co. forces had to hold out against wave after wave of invaders. You have a base, but ironically, the command center has been destroyed and you lack the resources to build another. Its more about conserving resources, repairing, and avoiding attrition. Don't worry, a proper base will be coming... in a few missions.
Until then, the Zerg had been dangerous in the way a wildfire was dangerous. They spread, consumed and killed, but nobody had seen evidence that the outbreaks appearing across Terran space were being directed toward any larger objective. The zerglings in Varga's basement had attacked whatever was nearby. The infestations aboard the Horizons Beyond had nested wherever food and shelter were available. The ultralisks on Ardea had behaved like enormous invasive predators. Even the unprecedented swarm at Cressida had appeared more interested in feeding from the orbital city's power infrastructure than accomplishing anything strategically meaningful. The UIC's classified investigation had revealed that someone was breeding and experimenting on Zerg, but that was human strategy imposed upon animals. The Zerg themselves remained creatures following instincts they barely seemed to understand. Then they attacked Kestral Battery.
The installation occupied a barren plateau on a UIC perimeter world that had been strategically important enough to fortify and peaceful enough to neglect. Kestral's enormous energy complex supplied the primary power for the orbital defense network protecting the planet. Take the battery offline and the defense platforms above would retain emergency power for a time, but their heavy weapons, shields and long-range detection systems would rapidly degrade. Anyone wanting to attack the planet would therefore have an obvious first target. Unfortunately, the UIC garrison assigned to defend it existed more impressively in procurement reports than reality. Years without a serious attack had hollowed the base out. Personnel had been reassigned without replacement. Equipment disappeared into warehouses or onto black markets. Maintenance schedules became suggestions. Funds allocated for defensive expansion somehow produced neither defensive expansion nor funds. The Zerg had found it anyway. They had not wandered into Kestral. They had attacked it repeatedly. Wave after wave had come from the wasteland beyond the installation, withdrawing or dying before another arrived hours later. The garrison had already lost its command center, several barracks and most of its heavy equipment. The surviving SCVs could repair existing structures, but the destruction of the command center had taken the logistical systems and resource stockpiles required to construct replacements. The base was consuming ammunition faster than supply transports could safely land it. Intelligence estimated that another two or three serious attacks would finish the garrison.
The call to StarCraft Co. contained no negotiation. A UIC colonel appeared on the commander's screen and said, “We need you at Kestral immediately.” The commander asked what the government was offering. “Whatever it costs.” There was no time to argue over numbers. StarCraft Co. loaded two elite infantry teams aboard transports, added every weapon and crate of ammunition they could fit, and launched. They landed north of the main installation because the southern approaches were already contested. The first surprise came almost immediately. A secondary UIC supply post appeared on their tactical map less than five kilometers from the landing zone, but nobody at Kestral had mentioned it. The reason became obvious when StarCraft Co. reached the compound. Its long-range communications array had been destroyed during the opening attacks, leaving the personnel there isolated from the rest of the battlefield. Several marines remained alive alongside a handful of Goliath combat walkers, all of them waiting for orders that hadn't come. The officer commanding the post initially demanded to know under whose authority a private military company was giving instructions to UIC personnel. The commander forwarded the emergency authorization from planetary command. That ended the discussion. Ten minutes later, StarCraft Co. had acquired reinforcements.
They reached Kestral just as the next wave arrived. Zerglings came first, pouring across the southern approaches in a mass large enough to look almost liquid from the bunker cameras. Hydralisks followed behind them, stopping beyond the first defensive line to launch spines into firing ports and exposed infantry. The defenders barely had time to recognize the arriving StarCraft Co. transports before the mercenaries joined the line. Marines filled damaged bunkers. Goliaths moved between defensive positions and began firing over them. StarCraft Co.'s elite infantry established overlapping fields of fire across the approaches while medics dragged wounded government troops away from the firing line. The attack lasted nineteen minutes. When it ended, hundreds of Zerg corpses covered the ground outside the installation. Kestral was still standing. Barely. The commander toured the defenses immediately afterward and discovered exactly how bad the situation was. Two bunkers had partially collapsed. Another had no functioning ventilation system. Ammunition stores were dangerously low. Automated turrets existed on the base schematic but had apparently never been installed. The surviving SCVs could repair damage, but without the command center there was no practical way to rebuild the base. So they stopped thinking about rebuilding it. They fortified what remained.
The SCVs reinforced damaged bunkers with whatever metal could be stripped from destroyed structures. Wrecked vehicles became barricades. Engineers dismantled sections of the ruined command center and welded the armor plating onto firing positions. Narrow approaches between buildings were deliberately obstructed to funnel zerglings into kill zones. Marines drove metal stakes into the ground and stretched industrial cable between them at heights intended to catch charging creatures. Fuel from destroyed vehicles was transferred into drums and buried along likely attack routes. Explosives intended for demolition work became command-detonated mines. Ammunition caches were distributed throughout the base so a destroyed storage building could not eliminate their entire supply. The commander imposed one rule on every defensive plan: nothing depended on stopping the Zerg. Anything strong enough to physically stop an ultralisk did not exist at Kestral. The defenses were designed to slow, divide and redirect. Every second a zergling spent climbing over wreckage was another second a marine could shoot it. Every hydralisk forced into a narrow approach became a target for three bunkers instead of one. Every obstacle existed to buy seconds.
They received forty-seven minutes before the next attack. This wave came from two directions. Zerglings hit the western perimeter while hydralisks approached from the south. The defenders allowed the zerglings through the first barricade before detonating buried fuel behind them. Fire severed the leading creatures from the rest of the swarm. Goliaths and marines destroyed the trapped group while the remaining Zerg tried forcing their way around the burning ground. On the southern line, StarCraft Co. snipers and heavy rifle teams concentrated on hydralisks as soon as they entered range. The attack collapsed before reaching the bunkers. The third wave came before repairs were finished. Then the fourth. The Zerg never attacked exactly the same way twice. That bothered the commander. One wave sent hydralisks first, forcing the defenders into cover before zerglings charged. Another divided around the main barricades and attacked the eastern maintenance sector that had previously seen little fighting. When the defenders shifted Goliaths east, the next attack concentrated on the west. The behavior wasn't brilliant. It didn't need to be. Something was testing them.
By nightfall, mutalisks appeared. The first group came low over the southern ridge while zerglings attacked the perimeter. The Goliaths immediately redirected their weapons skyward, leaving the ground troops without their heaviest support. That seemed intentional too. Mutalisks swept across the base, their glaive wurms ricocheting between clustered defenders. One pass killed four marines and wounded seven. StarCraft Co. responded by spreading infantry positions farther apart and relocating the Goliaths so no single ground attack could pin all of them simultaneously. The next mutalisk wave encountered overlapping missile fire before reaching the bunkers. Nobody slept for more than twenty minutes at a time. The SCVs became as important as the soldiers. The instant an attack ended, they moved onto the battlefield. Armor was welded. Bunker walls were patched. Firing ports were rebuilt. Wreckage was dragged into new barricades. Several SCVs worked while medics were still collecting casualties around them. One crew repaired the same bunker four times in eleven hours. The men started calling it Lazarus.
The next morning, the ground began shaking. The commander knew what that meant before reconnaissance confirmed it. Ultralisks. Three accompanied the next wave. The soldiers who had fought on Ardea understood exactly what was coming. Everyone else learned quickly. The first ultralisk hit an outer barricade and went through it without noticeably slowing. The second struck a bunker. Its kaiser blades penetrated the reinforced wall and ripped half the structure open. Marines escaped through the rear while Goliaths concentrated fire on the creature's legs. The third charged directly through a minefield. Two explosions tore chunks from its underside. It kept coming. StarCraft Co. used the same principle that had worked on Ardea. Nobody tried to stand against them. Positions abandoned the moment an ultralisk committed to attacking them. Goliaths and marines fired from the flanks, concentrating on joints while the creatures chased retreating targets. The problem was everything around them. Zerglings followed in the ultralisks' wake. Hydralisks fired between them. Mutalisks swept overhead whenever the Goliaths became occupied. The first ultralisk died twenty meters inside the perimeter. The second reached the ruined command center before concentrated fire shattered one of its forelegs. The third killed eleven people before it went down. Kestral held.
Another attack came six hours later. Then another. The battlefield surrounding the base became unrecognizable. Zerg corpses accumulated in heaps until SCVs had to push them aside to restore fields of fire. The air smelled of burned flesh, propellant and industrial coolant. Rifles failed from continuous use. Marines took weapons from the dead. Medics stopped distinguishing between StarCraft Co. personnel and government troops because there was no longer any practical reason to. The commander watched the numbers decline. Every attack cost the Zerg hundreds. Every attack cost Kestral people it could not replace. Eventually reconnaissance detected something different: movement across the entire southern horizon.
The final wave was enormous. Hundreds of zerglings formed the bulk of it, spreading across the wasteland around clusters of hydralisks. Several ultralisks moved at the front. Mutalisks circled overhead. There were enough organisms that the tactical computer stopped trying to display individual contacts and replaced them with a single red mass. Nobody needed to be told that Kestral could not survive a direct engagement, so the commander ordered everyone to abandon the outer perimeter. The defenders withdrew into the installation's inner structures. SCVs completed the last preparations and retreated with them. The Zerg advanced without resistance. That was the point. The outer approaches had been transformed during the previous hours. Every remaining demolition charge had been buried there. Fuel drums sat beneath wreckage. Damaged ammunition that could no longer be safely fired had been packed into improvised explosive caches. Mines overlapped with mines.
The ultralisks entered first. The commander waited. Zerglings flooded behind them. Hydralisks reached the perimeter. Still he waited. One government officer finally asked whether the detonators had failed. “Not yet.” More Zerg entered. The red mass filled the outer base. “Now.” Kestral disappeared behind fire. The first explosions triggered the second line of charges. Those detonated fuel stores. Burning wreckage ignited ammunition caches. Mines erupted beneath the swarm. One ultralisk vanished inside an explosion powerful enough to throw pieces of its armor across the installation. Another staggered forward missing half a leg. Hundreds of zerglings died in seconds.
The survivors kept coming. Every remaining weapon at Kestral opened fire. The wounded ultralisk reached the inner barricade and smashed through it. Goliaths fired until their autocannons glowed. Marines poured rounds into the breach. Hydralisk spines struck the bunkers like artillery. Mutalisks dove through missile fire and attacked the defenders from above. Lazarus finally died. An ultralisk struck the bunker broadside and collapsed the entire front wall. The marines inside kept firing through the opening until zerglings reached them. The defensive line folded inward. One position fell, then another. The commander committed the reserve. There were barely enough people left to call it one. They counterattacked through the maintenance yard, retaking a firing position that had been overrun minutes earlier. Medics carried rifles. Wounded marines fired from the ground. An SCV with a damaged manipulator arm charged a hydralisk and crushed it against a wall.
The last ultralisk reached the power installation. Every Goliath still functioning turned toward it. Missiles and autocannon fire struck the creature from three directions. It continued forward. Marines joined in. One leg failed. It dragged itself onward. The commander ordered the explosives beneath the access road detonated. The ground disappeared beneath the ultralisk. It fell into the crater. The defenders fired downward until it stopped moving. Then they turned around. There were still zerglings inside the base. The fighting became close and ugly. Squads no longer existed in any meaningful sense. Whoever remained alive formed groups around whatever weapons still worked. Marines cleared buildings room by room. Goliaths stomped through courtyards firing at anything moving. The last mutalisk was killed by a missile from a Goliath whose other weapon system had already been destroyed.
Eventually the gunfire became sporadic, then stopped. The Zerg were dead. For nearly ten minutes, nobody moved beyond what was necessary to treat the wounded. The commander began counting. Fewer than half of StarCraft Co.'s deployed personnel remained combat capable. Some of the missing were wounded. Many weren't. Of the UIC troops who had occupied Kestral when the attacks began, fewer than one in four were still alive. Two Goliaths remained operational. Most of the bunkers were destroyed. The base's command center was already gone. Nearly everything else was burning. But the power installation was intact. The orbital defense network remained online. They had held.
Then a sentry reported movement. Six contacts. Everyone still capable of carrying a weapon took a position. Six hydralisks emerged from the smoke. There were no zerglings with them. No mutalisks. No ultralisks. Just six hydralisks walking toward the ruined base. A few soldiers laughed. After what they had just survived, six hydralisks seemed almost insulting.
The first one fired. A marine's chest exploded. The spine crossed the distance faster than anyone expected. “COVER!” The second volley struck the barricades. These weren't normal hydralisks. They moved faster. Much faster. Their carapaces were thicker and darker, layered in ways the veterans had never seen. Gauss rounds struck them and shattered pieces of armor without penetrating deeply enough to stop them. Their spines hit with velocities that turned cover designed to withstand ordinary hydralisk fire into shrapnel. The defenders concentrated on one. It went down, then stood back up. Wounds were closing across its body. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE THINGS?” Nobody knew.
The six creatures spread out. That was worse. Hydralisks normally attacked with aggression and crude coordination. These used cover. One fired while another repositioned. Two deliberately targeted a Goliath's damaged leg until the machine collapsed, then shifted fire toward the crew escaping it. The exhausted defenders suddenly found themselves in another battle, and people started dying again. One creature reached the interior of the base and killed three wounded marines before a medic emptied an entire magazine into its head at point-blank range. Another absorbed concentrated fire from seven rifles and continued advancing until a Goliath autocannon tore it nearly in half. Four remained, then three. The defenders learned. Head shots worked better. Destroying limbs worked better. Overwhelming damage worked best. One hydralisk took a grenade beneath its body and lost both legs on one side. It continued firing from the ground until a marine walked around the barricade and emptied his rifle into its skull.
Two remained. They almost reached the power station. The last Goliath stopped one. The other killed its pilot. Rourke's surviving infantry surrounded the final creature from three directions. It fired at one group. The others fired back. Its wounds began closing. They kept shooting. Armor broke. Tissue ruptured. The creature tried to retreat. That was something else nobody had ever seen. Mercer followed. The hydralisk turned and fired. A round struck Mercer in the shoulder and spun him around. Rourke's squad opened fire. The creature collapsed. They didn't stop when it stopped moving, when its head came apart, or until there was almost nothing left to regenerate.
Silence returned to Kestral. This time it stayed. One of the surviving government marines eventually walked toward the corpse. He nudged it with his boot and looked at the other five scattered across the ruins. “Hunter killers,” he muttered. Someone nearby heard him. The name stuck.
The UIC response fleet arrived fourteen hours later. It found a battlefield. Thousands of Zerg corpses surrounded the installation. The base itself looked almost indistinguishable from them. Fires still burned among collapsed structures. SCVs crawled through the ruins searching for survivors. Medics had converted the remains of a supply warehouse into a field hospital. The power installation was still operating. The UIC investigators were less interested in the thousands of dead Zerg than they were in six particular corpses. The commander watched them seal the remains inside biological containment units. “You've seen these before?” he asked. The intelligence officer from the clandestine briefing looked at him. “No.” That answer worried the commander more than yes would have.
The attack on Kestral changed the UIC's assessment of the crisis overnight. Zerg had not wandered onto the planet. They had identified a strategically significant target and attacked it repeatedly. They had varied their tactics. They had escalated when earlier attacks failed. Then, after the main swarm was destroyed, six organisms unlike anything previously documented had arrived. Someone—or something—was directing them. The UIC no longer treated StarCraft Co. as merely a preferred contractor. The retainer they offered was unprecedented. StarCraft Co. would receive guaranteed funding sufficient to maintain and expand its forces regardless of individual contracts. In return, the UIC received priority access to the company for operations related to the expanding Zerg crisis. The agreement included procurement privileges, access to restricted military technology and intelligence sharing that would previously have been unthinkable for a private organization.
The commander signed. Then the UIC handed him the target list. It was thick. Colonies. Research facilities. Missing ships. Suspected nests. Pirate stations dealing in biological material. Unexplained attacks. Coordinates where reconnaissance had simply stopped returning. The commander turned page after page. Kestral had answered one question. The Zerg outbreaks weren't random anymore. Unfortunately, it had replaced that question with a much worse one.
Who was giving the orders?