Harbinger/9

Interrogation
Daniel practically fainted at the overwhelming response to the psi emitter.

The skies totally blackened over this part of Antiga and eclipsed the sun, as billions of Zerg of various shapes and sizes descended upon the overawed and hopelessly outnumbered defenders on the planet.

Dam*, thought Daniel instinctively. There's no way we're going to survive this, unless... I can find a way to use the psi emitter to repel them!

Daniel tried to concentrate, as the Red Wolves on board gawked at the seeming hell that the psi emitter's short period of activation had summoned planet-wide.

Daniel recalled the vibes of when the psi emitter had been activated, and strove to recreate a vibe, but with the opposite pattern...

The Zerg were inbound on the Delta Fleet forces, and were about to go straight past the unarmed dropship. Daniel tried to focus a bit more, trying to recreate an accurate counter-pattern. As soon as he decided that he had recorded a correct version of the signal into the psi emitter, he activated its broadcasting mechanism--

Just as the first wave of the massive Zerg swarm of flyers came by them.

The overwhelming force of repellance generated by the psi emitter drove away the nearest of the Zerg, creating a sphere through which no Zerg flyer seemed to be able to go through, nor willing to attack, but they were all rebuffed away from it, sometimes even knocked backward.

It also made Daniel sprint backward and crash into the side of the dropship, so strong was the sense of fear, terror, and pure aversion generated by the psi emitter. Daniel was practically pinned to the rear of the dropship for quite a while, as the Red Wolves looked at his cringing form with awe and apprehension.

The waves of Zerg now past them, Daniel ordered the mercenaries to turn off the psi emitter. The overpowering sense of aversion miraculously dissipated, and Daniel got back on his feet after a bit of effort. "All right, we did the best we could to save the Red Wolves still on the ground, but... we have to get away from this planet. Now. Set our course for Tarsonis," Daniel ordered, looking at the hundreds of other dropships rapidly escaping from the planet and the inevitable onslaught of Zerg, as all of the other dropships were aiming for Tarsonis...

Kerrigan and company are off to punish the Confederacy, he thought to himself. Such a turn of events... Daniel recalled the Confederacy's treatment of him in the past--excellent service. The Confederacy really had a reason of being so successful, besides its military might... It was an organization operating under a meritocracy, explaining his rapid rise from corporal to colonel... It had its sense of honor, and never engaged a foe with overwhelming numbers, like the Zerg were doing now... except against Korhal IV, Daniel remembered. But that action had its own, very good reason, by preventing many future uprisings... And besides, anyone who wanted to abandon the Sons of Korhal and its HQ on the lightly populated planet could have easily done so, considering the twenty-four day's prior notice the Confederacy gave...

And now the Confederacy would fall. And it probably isn't even the Confederacy's fault...

Looking once again at the display, Daniel realized that most of the billions of Zerg who had arrived had already left, and more were continuously leaving through the wormholes the Overmind had created. There was creep everywhere, even spreading into the cities, and the Zerg had decided to assault the cities directly... Why? Why had the Overmind broken its promise?

It must have been because some overreactive and very frightened soldier decided to open fire... Or because the alarmed commanders had decided to overturn my edict...

"Hello, hello??" Daniel rhetorically asked the Red Wolves. "Why are we still not using our gravitic drive?"

"Sir, part of the drive has been damaged by a stray Zerg attack. Our mechanic on board is currently busy repairing it, but we estimate it could take as many as fifteen hours to adequately repair given the technologies we have on board."

Daniel practically cursed at his bad luck, but decided to live with it.

The Zerg, meanwhile, were running rampant over the severely inadequate defenses posed by the Sons of Korhal cities...

I wonder if my friends managed to get off that rock in time... He looked at the tactical display, and of the hundreds of fleeing dropships, and stared at the computer screen for many more hours as the Zerg systematically overran the defenses with precision, before drifting off into sleep...

When Daniel woke back up, the Red Wolves told him that it had been only twelve and a half hours into the repairing cycle, and he sat back with a sigh as he set to work uploading the design plans and specifications of the psi emitter into a data disc. "Two and a half more hours to go," he muttered to himself.

Then he looked at the tactical display. The Zerg had greatly thinned in their ranks, realizing that the source of the psi had disappeared and that there was nothing further to be looking for. There were pulsing, growing structures all over the purple-brown, carpet-like creep, and there were still far too many of them for any individual force he knew the Confederates possessed to assault them directly any time soon... The Delta Fleet forces on the ground and in the air had been entirely obliterated, their horribly mutilated corpses must surely be decomposing, neglected by Terran and Zerg alike...

Daniel noted with surprise that he was already beginning to consider humans "Terrans".

Then, he zoomed out with the tactical display, using the scanner systems aboard the dropship (all telsats in orbit around Antiga were destroyed in the preemptive strike)...

And found an immense otherworldly fleet of some things clearly not organic, yet not human-made either... As if a third race had entered the fray...

Using the visual, he saw that these new ships, trimmed with gold-like metal and all sleek in beautiful geometric shapes, had practically surrounded the planet, and were gradually shifting to fill in the holes.