Fires raged across the landscape. Twisted bits of metal and piles of corpses, both human and zerg, lay scattered. Fighting had gone on for days now, and nothing was left here.

Nothing but the dead.

I forced my eyes open and tried to focus on my screen. I had gotten very little sleep for three days. The zerg launched random attacks almost constantly against both of my bases, and it was impossible to sleep when I knew my soldiers might be dying anytime I turned my back. At least we had killed a lot of mutas during these attacks, I thought gloomily.

I straightened, suddenly furious at myself. I could not let this go on. While I hunkered down inside my base building fortifications, the Zerg had free rein in the rest of the area. If they had moved quickly, I might be a dead man, and the rest of my forces with me. I only hoped there was enough time to correct my error.

The human commander finally appeared to have realized the precariousness of his situation. Well, it would have been too much to hope that he was a TOTAL fool. Still, it was unlikely that whatever small army he had managed to collect could break through the blockading force keeping him penned in his bases. The Cerebrate shifted comfortably inside its new Hive.

Let them come. The Swarm would crush them, as it crushed all who stood in it’s way.

                                                        •      •      •

"Behind you!"

The marine ducked to the side as a zergling lunged at his back and shot the beast as it spun to face him. "Thanks, Sarge!"

Sergeant Radcliffe cast a swift glance around the battle. His squad had been ordered to engage a massive blocking force of hydralisks and lurkers in front of their encampments. He could see it was a lost cause. His soldiers were charging bravely forwards and dying at an appalling rate. More than a dozen marines already lay dead, less then two minutes into the battle, and now the monsters were advancing towards the base! He raised his comm to his mouth.

"Mayday, Mayday! We need backup! There’s too many of ‘em!"

A thousand yards behind the dying marines, eighteen siege tanks sat motionless. Captain Darrell stood behind his gunner, watching the display tensely, listening to the distress call, and said nothing. The gunner gave him a questioning look.

"Sir? Permission to open fire?"

"Denied."

"But sir, they’re dying out there! We can’t do nothing!"

"Hold your fire, Corporal. That’s an order."

Radcliffe staggered backwards, firing madly as his last few soldiers fell.

"Help! HELP!"

The gunner began to sight on the nearest hydralisk.

"Corporal, I gave you an order. Hold your fire."

"We have to help them!"

Darrell drew his pistol and pressed it to the back of the gunners head. "I said, HOLD YOUR FIRE."

Radcliffe and his two surviving soldiers turned and ran, and the ravening zerg behind poured after them in a wave of spines and claws. Unwittingly, they were charging directly towards Darrels tanks. Radcliffes eyes widened as he saw the huge cannons rotate towards him.

"GET DOWN!!!"

Darrel watched the range indicator on the furthest zerg hydralisk flash downward. As it reached 1200 yards, he slammed his hand down on the squad comm. "NOW! OPEN FIRE!"

The zerg had just spotted their danger and begun to backpedal when all eighteen tanks fired at once. Their shots merged and grew into one great explosion, a gigantic blast that seemed to shake the planet on its axis. A wall of flame rose to meet the fleeing Zerg like Armageddon itself, and when the smoke cleared nothing but a few zerglings was left alive.

The tanks thundered forward in tandem with a squad of goliaths, cleaning up the stray zerglings as they went. I smiled as they rolled out towards the nearest resource deposit, with hoverbikes going ahead to scout. This war might be turning around.

                                                       •      •      •

The Cerebrate was stunned momentarily. Almost two thirds of its warriors had been slaughtered in an instant! It pondered this new change.

Obviously, an army of that size and power was a considerable threat to the Hive Cluster. Any attack along the ground against that force was almost certainly doomed to failure, and at this time the Cerebrate had a mostly ground army. It simply did not have enough flyers to destroy the walkers guarding the deadly tanks. Therefore, it needed to buy time to hatch additional, stronger warriors. A delaying attack seemed the only option.

But not necessarily an attack on the terran army. Six overlords opened their ventral sacs to allow twenty-four hydralisks to board, and moved towards the momentarily lightly defended terran camp.

                                                        •      •      •

Even though I had braced myself for just this, I could barely believe what my scouts were telling me.

Every resource deposit had been colonized by the Zerg. Almost the entire area was covered by creep. Wonderful. I took a deep breath and scanned down the rest of the transmission.

Well, not all bad. Some of the clusters were quite new, and had barely begun mining, so I would still be able to get a big shot in the arm if I could take and hold one or more of the areas. Also, the containment force seemed to have been the majority of the Zerg warriors. So far, my scouts had seen nothing but small patrols of zerglings.

I frowned at that last. True, I had just destroyed a large force mainly composed of hydralisks. But still, there should be more then I was seeing, shouldn’t there?

Klaxons blared suddenly. I jerked around to look at the screen that displayed the status of my main base, and stared in horror as a group of zerg overlords began disgorging hydralisk after hydralisk just beside my all-important factories. I whirled towards the comm. "Darrel! Radcliffe! Raphael! Get back here NOW! Emergency!" I turned back to the base display, and my heart sank as I saw the first factory crumple under the assault. The few defending troops were putting up a brave fight, but they had no chance. My only hope was that Darrels tanks would arrive in time to prevent catastrophe.

The base was in chaos. Hydralisks ripped down buildings and slaughtered any in their path with contemptuous ease. Soon there would be nothing left of my production capacity. Darrel arrived at this moment, just as a group of hydras broke through the choke defenses and began rampaging toward the second base. All were destroyed in a few seconds, and the few left in the main base fled back into the overlords and flew away. But the damage had been done, and I was forced to bring my attack force back to cover my bases while I rebuilt.

                                                       •      •      •

If the Cerebrate had a mouth, it would have smiled. The attack had been perfectly successful in both of its objectives. Three of the human production facilities had fallen, and the threatening attack force had been diverted, giving the Cerebrate enough time to complete mutation of the final, most powerful Strains genomes. Now the Earthlings would feel the true power of the Swarm! The Cerebrate exulted in its might as Larvae cocooned themselves and began to grow to massive size. It could feel the dark fury beginning to emanate from the creatures forming inside.

YES. RAGE, MY CHILDREN. YOUR ANGER WILL SERVE US WELL. SOON YOU WILL BE LOOSED. SOON YOU SHALL FULFILL YOUR PURPOSE, TO THE UTTER DESTRUCTION OF THE ENEMIES OF THE SWARM. SOON . . .

The infantile ultralisks spasmed as the Cerebrate touched their minds, and tusks sprouted from their jaws. The transformation was almost complete, and when it was, the Cerebrate would cleanse this world of the human taint.

The Cerebrate twitched restlessly, deep within in its hive. Soon its work upon this world would be complete, and then it could rest. Once the humans were eliminated.

Soon.