On the bridge of the Hyperion Jim and Kate Raynor sit staring at the Daedulus which is displayed on the viewscreen. Joining them on the bridge is the remnants of the Daedulus’s crew. Sadly it is only a handful of people marines, firebats and engineers.
They had barely made it off the battlecruiser. Kate Raynor takes one last look at her ship.
“Arm the Yamato gun.” orders Raynor
“ Aye, captain” says the tactical officer working the console. “charging”
On the bow of the Hyperion the Yamato gun gathers power until it becomes a boiling sphere of energy.
“Fire!” says Raynor. On the viewscreen there’s a brilliant flash of light. The Yamato gun impacts the Daedulus destroying the ship and eradicating the Zerg that infest it.
“You ok?” asks Raynor, smiling.
“I’m fine” Kate says, smiling back. Even though she knows that Raynor is excited at being reunited with his sister she senses that he is preoccupied with something else. Kate is a telepath, that’s how she earned her commission as a ghost. She is still wearing her canister rifle in a holster on the back of her suit.
“You know, you don’t have to wear that here.” Raynor says suddenly
“What? Oh, yeah. I guess it became a habit on the Daedulus.”
“With everybody on our tail all the time, I have a feeling it’ll be a habit here too.”
Kate is exhausted. She hasn’t had a good meal or a night’s rest in well over two years.
She also never finished reading the novel “Bonfire of the Vanities”. The former crew exits the bridge and Kate decides to do the same. She takes the elevator down and arrives on the quarters deck. Kate heads towards her quarters. A-417 she tries to remember as she goes down the rows of quarters. She finds it and enters. Kate sits down and accesses the ship database looking for the novel. Her querying is interrupted when someone beeps her door. Kate walks over and presses the button to open the door. Praetor Artanis walks in.
“Greetings, I am Artanis.”
“You have no mouth.” Kate observes “You’re a telepathic species?”
“Yes, Protoss are quite psionicly powerful” Artanis says
“ Is that so?” Kate replies into Artanis’s head
Artanis finds this disconcerting. He isn’t used to humans communicating telepathically.
“H-how did you do that?” Artanis says
“I’m a ghost. We’re telepathic.” says Kate “Why did you come here?” she adds.
“My quarters are just above yours. I sensed a psionic presence down here. Apparently, it was you.”
“I’m flattered. Jim filled me in on the recent events. The fall of the confederacy, the rise
of the dominion and of course Kerrigans ascension.”
Artanis shudders slightly. Kate pours herself a drink. She drinks it down in one gulp. Artanis is still fascinated by the human fondness of alcohol. Noticeably calmer, she turns back to Artanis.
“Lunch?” she offers
“Sure” says Artanis, who seems to befriended the young ghost. They head to the mess hall. They arrive at the mess hall and both order something. Their lunch arrives and Artanis’s food is a strange blue liquid.
“What’s that?” asks Kate
“Since my people don’t have a mouth, we absorb food through our skin.” Artanis says
Kate watches as Artanis scoops up a handful. The liquid sinks through his skin. Kate looks around, she is impressed by so much cooperation among the species. Protoss sitting with humans. She observes a conversation between a human soldier and a Protoss warrior. It appears one-sided to her since she could only hear what the human was saying, they seem to be talking about baseball. Kate turns back to her food and scarfs it down like a ravenous Zergling. Artanis finishes his food.
“ Well, I should get back to tending the scouts” he says and he leaves for the hanger bays.
Kate finishes her meal and exits the mess hall. Before she exits the mess hall she passes near a Templar who is distracted by her presence. This Templar, Dexal senses something odd in Kate, as though someone was telepathically “scanning” her. He also senses that Kate is not aware of this presence. Dexal exits the mess hall.
Kate decides to visit Raynor. She heads up to the bridge but Raynor isn’t there.
“The captains in his office.” the helmsman informed her.
Kate heads into Raynor’s office and finds him flipping through soldier profiles. She recognizes the soldier profile as one of the dead soldiers. Now she knows what Raynor was preoccupied with. Those soldiers that died under his command.
“Jim?”
Raynor turns around.
“ Hey Kate”
“What are you doing?”
“Looking up the soldiers profile. Just seeing who should be informed of their deaths.”
“Anyone who doesn’t already know probably lives under Dominion rule. Couldn’t Mensk trace the transmission?”
“The Dominion fleet is already on our tail,” he says gesturing to tactical display that shows red blips converging on the center of the display, which shows a silhouette of the Hyperion. Raynor turns back to the profiles.
“You sure are diving deep,” Kate says suddenly “commendations, military history, personal assessments. Do you really need all that to know their friends and family?”
“I want an insight into their lives.”
“Why?”
“Oh, just seeing who died because of me.”
“They didn’t die because of you”
“Oh yeah? I shouldn’t have sent Joe back to look for Bobby. I should have known the Zerg would attack from above. And god knows I shouldn’t have tried to reason with an infested Terran!”
Kate falls silent. She has lost the happiness of being reunited with her brother and has adopted the anxiety of having to comfort him. Raynor turns back to the computer screen and taps on the controls. A new profile comes up.
“Do you know who this is? Jeffery Pasteure, he had just finished marine training. This was his first mission” Raynor sighed “ and it was his last.”
Kate is horrified at how her brother is blaming himself. But she can’t seem to convince him otherwise so she has to let him grieve on his own.
Back at Zeratul’s quarters, Zeratul has just finished hanging a picture on the wall which shows Adun leading the Dark Templar to safety. Someone beeps the door, Zeratul opens it. Dexal walks in.
“Prelate, I need to talk to you about something.” Dexal says suddenly
“What is it?” replies Zeratul
“It’s Captain Raynor’s sister. There is something wrong. I believe she doesn’t know yet but someone is telepathically scanning her.”
“Hmm, they must only be scanning the unconscious regions of her mind. Do you know who has been scanning her?”
“No, but I know it was a dark presence, not that of a Protoss. Should I inform her?”
“No! It is imperative that we not tell anyone especially Katherine Raynor. If she becomes aware of the presence, whoever’s scanning her, will stop and we will never know who it is. This is potentially dangerous we must find out who is scanning her.”
“Ok, sir.”
‘Sir’ is an unusual expression among Protoss. The mixed crew is obviously starting effect each other. Dexal has heard of a ghost who says “ En Taro Adun” when greeting a Protoss. Dexal heads out of Zeratul’s quarters and starts down the corridor. He reaches a window and looks out into the vastness of space. Suddenly, way out he sees something, something moving, something getting closer… a Scourge. It was heading strait for the Hyperion. Dexal can almost here its screeching. It gets closer and Dexal notices something. It is not only heading for the Hyperion. It is heading for the window that Dexal is standing at. General quarters sound but Dexal takes no notice. Dexal runs to another window and to his horror the Scourge changes course for the window he is now standing at. To his relief, a laser cannon fires and destroys the scourge. However, he is still shaken by the experience. The intercom squawks and he hears Raynor’s voice.
“ All hands, we’ve just experienced a minor Zerg attack. Nonetheless, we are going to stay on full alert. The Dominion force is approaching and we’re getting prepped for battle. Let’s batten down the hatches.”
Dexal heads for the elevator and is met by Kate who doesn’t know him. He steps onto the elevator and presses a button. He stands in the elevator nervous at Kate’s presence. His apprehension must show in his eyes because Kate says.
“Something wrong?”
Dexal looks at Kate. He is very nervous about accidentally revealing his knowledge of the scanners to her.
“No.” Dexal simply replies. He attempts to draw attention away from expression. “As I see it, it’s very hard for a human to read a Protoss expressions.”
Kate looks at him. Dexal feels like he has become transparent.
“I learned how to read your eyes.” says Kate still looking strangely at him. The elevator comes to a stop and Kate steps off. As the elevator continues Dexal wishes he had a mouth to exhale. That seems to be very soothing for humans.
Kate walks down the corridor and suddenly feels strange. She feels as though her psionic abilities are being analyzed. Somebody is seeing how active her telepathic abilities are. Her entropy is being sought by someone who wishes to harness it. They are seeking the potential of her psionic abilities. Kate concentrates trying to find out who is curious about her. She sees a planet. A volcanic and baron planet. Lava bursts forth from the planets crust. Creatures run to escape the firestorm. Kate would recognize those creatures anywhere they are Zerg. Kate concentrates harder to see the source of the presence. She sees organic structures. Her vision shifts and she sees a face, the face was human but scaly with glowing eyes. Kate’s vision was blurred.
“You ok?” a voice cuts through the vision. Kate’s concentration breaks and she stumbles. A Terran engineer pulls her upright.
“You ok?” he repeats
Kate just looks at him.
“I came here and ya were just starin’.” the engineer says with a slightly concerned face.
“I’m fine.” Kate says finally
“Whatever you say.” says the engineer continuing down the corridor. Kate attempts to use her telepathic abilities again but whoever was scanning her has stopped, probably to conceal their identity. But Kate already has a pretty good idea who it is. Kate turns around and is startled by Zeratul who suddenly becomes visible in front of her.
“ Sorry to startle you.” says Zeratul
Kate has to catch her breath. She brushes a strain of dark hair out her eyes and then puts her hands on her slender hips.
“I hate the dark templars ability to become invisible at will.” says Kate irritably
“Do ghosts not have the same ability?”
“Touché.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Have you been following me?”
“Yes, I needed to monitor you. One of the templars sensed something strange happening to you”
“ You knew that someone was probing my abilities?!”
“I could not tell you because if you knew the people scanning you would stop and we wouldn’t be able to find out who it was.”
Kate looks almost enraged at this. They allowed someone to probe her just for the sake of investigating it.
“I know you would like to be informed of anything anomalous we found about you.” Zeratul says “But have you found anything out.”
“Yes” says Kate still appearing annoyed “It is the Zerg”
Both of them fall silent. Even though the probing has stopped, they know that something is very wrong.
The tense moment is interrupted when the alarm suddenly sounds.
“All hands to battle stations!” the commodores voice squawks over the comm. Kate and Zeratul look at each other.
“We’ll deal with this later.” Kate says as they part ways.
