"What I'm saying is, no screenshots."
-.Praetor
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| Forging through the flames | | | Author: | | | IP: | 199.94.7XXXX | | Date: | 05/28/00 04:05 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 3, Max: 9, Min: 8
Lifetime Rating for Sharandar: 7.8750 |   | All of the following events were derived from (and slightly changed) for the following.
And here we are again, on the fields of Aiur, ready to do battle...
Accompanied by the crackling of energy, the Nexus warped in on the bleak northern fields, an island in the northwestern corner of the straits. With nothing more than a thought, the Protoss Executor sent the probes he had brought with him to work while the lights of Nexus blinked, signalling that more probes were being constructed. He would have to act swiftly.
The Swarm had landed a small contingent of forces to the southeast, on the opposite side of the archipelago that dotted the straits. With forces as sparse as they were, he had been entrusted to prevent the Zerg from attaining a foothold here without committing a large force.
The probes worked swiftly, opening warp rifts for the pylons that would anchor both the Protoss structures and the warriors themselves to the province. Not long afterward, an Assimilator to collect the necessary vespene gas, and two gateways, through which the warriors would come shifted through the warp gates.
The Executor was pacing nervously atop the Nexus, watching, waiting for the time to come when he could gather his brethren for battle. But, off to the east, he caught a glimpse of something coming, something airborne. His shimmering eyes narrowed; it was an overlord. He would have to press on sooner than expected.
With a mental command, he ordered a probe the open a new warp rift--this time, for a Cybernetics Core. The presumptuous Zerg would pay for their audacity.
The floating mass made its way over the pristine protoss structures, blotting out the sun above the nexus and havering there, waiting, like an omen. But the Executor knew what the Swarm did not.
A moment later, two Dragoons climbed through the gateways and immediately identified the threat. They did not need the thoughts of their Executor to tell them why they had been summoned here.
Their disruptor cannons rent the air, and the Overlord tried in vain to flee beyond the cliffs at the isle's edge, but it would not escape the Protoss this time. In a spectacular, flaming wreck, the burning husk crashed into the earth. But the Overlord had served its purpose, and its death was no doubt a minor setback to the Swarm forces across the straits.
A robotics facility slid through the warp gate, and soon afterward a shuttle had been constructed. The Executor had expressly asked for the warriors designed for a support role--the fallen Dragoons. It was upon them and the powerful machines of the robotics facilities that he would rely on for his victory--he neither trusted the fiery Zealots of the Templar caste nor had he many at his disposal. The Protoss were losing the war, and forces were scarce.
A shuttle lifted a single probe and a dragoon into the skies, and swiftly made its way across the dark waters of the straits to the east. He would flank the Zerg, if he could. The could not be allowed to gain control of the north.
As the shuttle made its way back, one of the giant wormlike mechanations known as reavers exited the robotics facility, and the executor smiled. Armed with two shuttles, his dragoons and this creation, he was finally in a position to assault his enemy. The shuttles landed and their holds swiftly filled.
An all-too-familiar sloshing sound filled the air as an observer in the south of the Executor's island reported a number of Zerg overlords landing in the open fields there. From there carapace came hordes of tiny beasts, less than half the size of a Protoss warrior. Zerglings. Hordes of them.
The Executor immediately recalled his shuttle, bu feared it would not be in time. Without the aid of the reaver, he knew that those little beasts would tear his base to rubble in moments. Another was being built, but would not be in time to stop the tiny beasts.
The shuttles returned, the overlords departed, and the zerglings did not move. Waiting, his forces aligned defensively, the executor could only wonder what they were waiting for. Taking advantage of the delay, he ordered the probe he had shuttled to the nearby island to the east to begin a new Nexus, and those at home to construct a pair of forges. More dragoons continued to pour through the gateways, now numbering three, and the second reaver slowly slinked out of the robotics facility. Those zergligngs would be no match for what was waiting for them. And still, they did not move.
"Engaging." The half-dead, mechanical voice of a Dragoon reached him in the nexus, and looking the the east, the Executor discovered a contingent of Terran infantry landing on his shores.
Terrans. The Executor's eyes gleamed. Though he could repel this assault, the very fact that a Terran commander was working with a host of Zerg told him that he would not be able to hold them off forever. As he suspected, the zergligns finally began loping north under the watchful eye of an observer while the Terrans began their attack from the east.
Gauss rifle fire tore into the shields of first the gateways, then the Dragoons who clambered toward the assailants. The shields wavered, then faltered entirely under the heavy fire, but a tiny blue ball shot past the defenders and into the ranks of the unsuspecting Terrans. The scarab exploded, leaving little more than a bloody mass behind. The Zergling forces fared no better. Their blood fed the grass of the fields before they even reached the Protoss base.
Nevertheless, the Executor was no fool--he would not be able to take a combined force of Terrans and Zerg once they were able to harness their farces and bring their strength to bear. He swiftly set up a network of photon cannons at his new mining colony to the east and contacted his brethren, on other battlefields across Aiur.
"I require...assistance." This was all the was necessary; the Protoss understood one another.
Diligent in his efforts, the Executor set up a third gateway and decided that he had best take the fight to his enemies before they brought a second, more powerful, combined attack to his isle.
Four Shuttles, filled to the brim with both of his reavers and dragoons, slid through the sky to the southwest. If he could cripple the Zerg brood, he could buy enough time for aid to arrive.
Sighting the putrid mass of flesh, the four shuttles let their cargo fall form the holds, the reavers landing with a massive thud and the dragoons bouncing nimbly on their four hydraulic legs. The shuttles sped homeward, and the assault force pressed on toward the enemy.
They met little resistance, pushing into the islnd with relative ease. Tiny zerglings were rent asunder by the mighty scarabs of the reavers and the disruptor cannons fired by the dragoons blasted the sides of the fleshy zerg structures. As the wormlike Ravers cut a trail through the creep, and their scarabs destroyed the harmless drones harvesting the minerals so desperately needed to fuel the swarm, all appeared lost for the Swarm. Nothing would stand in the path of the Protoss warriors. Soon, the twin lairs at the heart of the hive cluster fell under attack.
All too easy.
An explosion not far from the nexus brought the Executor back from his observations of the distant battle. A host of zerglings rampaged through the base, followed by the larger and more menacing hydralisks. The dragoons fires volleys of disruptor fire into the onrushing horde, to little effect. The retreated to the nexus, hoping to gain a moment of respite to regroup. But there was no question--they would be overwhelmed.
"I require assistance now," was the Executor's slightly more panicked appeal to his brethren.
To his suprise, he was answered. "Our tribe's warriors are already en route, Executor. Hold your ground."
The Zerg were tearing through the robotics facilities, and would soon reach the Nexus. His kin were nowhere in sight. With the four shuttles at his command, and knowning that his undetected mining base was still at full operation, the Executor ordered the evacuation.
Probes and Dragoons filled every shuttle to capacity, leaving only the executor, a pair of probes and four dragoons in the all but emtpy base, in the face of the onrushing Swarm. At the Executor's command, the shuttles departed.
Panicked cries reached him from the warriros baattling far from the base--Terran artillery had arrived to rescue the Zerg hive cluster from annihilation, and although one of the twin lairs had been eradicated, the other still stood, and would.
As Gauss rifle fire and shock cannon blasts tore into the shields of the remaining dragoons, the only one of the two reavers still functioning slinked forward. Its hull cracked, its shields gone, and only a single scarab left in its gigantic hull, it crept closer to the Terran forces as a dragoon beside it collapsed, its legs perforated. Blast after blast rained down on the Protss entrenched in the creep, and the reaver pushed on, its target in sight. Without feeling, the mechanical beast fired the last scarab from its scarred hull as a shock cannon blast rent the air. The reaver crumbled into the creep, but its final breath found its mark, destroying the Arclite tank and anything unfortunate enough to be nearby. The Zerg hive cluster was a wasteland, coated in debris and blood. But from that wasteland, a single larva crept near the bleeding lair, and that lone larva shaped itself into an egg.
Crushed, the Executor watched as his assault failed, and as his base was torn apart. It would not be long, now. He closed his eyes, awaiting his death. He had failed his people.
"For Adun!"
The Executor's eyes shot open. Psi blades flashed as warriors from shuttles not his own landed hard in the dirt and tore through the zerg ranks. Encouraged, his own dragoons pressed forward. Corsairs chased down the now defenseless overlords while on the ground, the Hydralisks fired spines into the warriors' shields, to no avail. The zealots' blades tore the swarm forces apart. The Swarm had been repelled and its hive cluster crippled, but they had done their damage--the majority of the Protoss base lay burning or toppled.
Even as he was breathing easier from his victory, a tell-tale blast sounded across the isle. The sound only made by the Terrans' shock cannon. The artillery had come, and there was precious little he had with which to battle it. Sending what dragoon he had out across the plain, the Executor watched.
To make matters worse, tank fire rained down upon his mining base and a fire team of terran troops had landed in the gap in the defenses, ripping into what little there was in the way of internal defense.
Rifle fire dotted the translucent blue field of the shields as the mechanized once-soldiers stormed the Terran firebase at the fringe of the burning base. They lumbered past the infantry, taking fire all the while, their aim simple. Volleys of blue energy bolts shot into the artillery, crushing the Terran siege tanks. But in doing so, the Dragoons had sacrificed themselves. They fell soon afterwards beneath the concentrated rifle fire.
There was nothing left. The Terrans had hunted him down, the Zerg had battered him. He could not stand against both.
"Executor, stand your ground. We will yet be victorious." Looking around, the Executor saw that he had no place to fall back to--all had been annihilated. His brethren may yet take these straits for theirs, but he would not be among them. It was too late.
As he heard the Terran troops battering at the Nexus doors, the old Executor willed his twin psi blades into existance. They would take him, but they would not find him easy prey.
A Battlreport/story by Sharandar |
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