GUNNERY SERGEANT ANDRE MADRID watched the vidscreen in shocked disbelief. His companions, huddled together like children caught in the path of an oncoming storm, looked to him for assurance. He had none to give. As the satellite images flooded the small, static-filled screen, he was struck by the grim certainty that neither he nor the young cadets under his command would survive the coming ordeal.
Madrid watched as the satellite tracked two impossibly huge Protoss warships descending from high orbit. Sealed within a reinforced shelter beneath the surface of the planet Chau Sara, Madrid wondered if the colonial fleet orbiting the planet had offered any real resistance to the alien vessels. He looked about the room and saw the terrified cadets clutching anxiously at their unfired Gauss rifles. Stifling a panicked giggle, he briefly visualized the absurd notion of the cadets tossing pebbles at a landslide.
Warning klaxons shattered the stillness as the ships reached striking distance from the planet. Emergency floodlights bathed the shelter in an aphotic crimson haze. Madrid saw first one, then two bright flashes emanate from the belly of the first ship. They all watched in horror as enormous bolts of azure fire rained from the sky. The cadets began to scream, curse, and pray to whatever awaited them in the hereafter. Madrid held his breath behind gritted teeth and felt the first tremors of the firestorm.
A pure white light filled the vidscreen and then gradually subsided to a burning vortex of flame. The fireball, which seemed to reach clear to the roof of the sky, spread itself over the vast desert, consuming everything in its path. The reinforced paristeel walls of the room shuddered as the Protoss vessels continued to rain their devastation upon the planet.
Memories of the stories from his mother’s tattered old Bible raced through Madrid’s mind as he pictured the horrific imagery of the final judgment of Armageddon. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to believe that this wanton destruction was a prophesied act of God. It was an act of sheer will; a cold, calculated display by the vile, soulless Protoss.
The brightness of the vidscreen forced him to squint as he watched the fireball thunder toward the shelter. The cadets’ panic reached a fevered pitch as shock waves ripped through the shuddering room. Above the furor of the seismic assault, he could hear anguished screams of pure terror.
Madrid woke with a start.
As he sat trying to calm the pounding of his heart, he could still hear the screams echoing in his ears. He got up from his bunk and walked out of the barracks into the cold morning air. Shakily, he dug his fingers into a slightly crumpled pack of Rebel Reds and pulled out a cigarette. Cupping the open flame of his lighter, he took a drag off the harsh smoke and wandered aimlessly across the compound.
It had been nearly three weeks since the mysterious Protoss had appeared and burned the unsuspecting world of Chau Sara. Miraculously, Madrid had survived. Thanks to the signal of his personal emergency transceiver, he and a handful of others were found under the shelter’s ruins by a nearby Confederate medevac team. He remembered looking down and marveling at the devastation that stretched across the burning horizon as the dropship carried him away from the planet.
For the past two weeks, Madrid had tried to lose himself in the monotony of his duties in a new unit stationed on the planet Mar Sara. He watched as the sun rose over the rocky landscape that was a stark contrast to the rolling green plains of his former home—plains that were now as desolate as the terrain he surveyed all around him.
He took a final drag off his cigarette and crushed it under his boot. As a marine, he had seen his share of the horrors of war. That was the life of a marine. But the Protoss attack on Chau Sara had shown him a new kind of horror—a horror he could barely comprehend. Fleeting images of the friends and family he had lost on Chau Sara drifted through his mind.
The sudden wail of sirens broke the early morning calm, snapping Madrid out of his haze. Marines appeared everywhere, running to their stations with their tac-gear and weapons in tow. He sprinted back to his barracks. As always, his power suit was left nearly assembled with his Gauss rifle right beside it. He was locked in and geared up in less than a minute. After a ritual check to confirm that his rifle was loaded, he dashed out toward one of the defensive bunkers that encircled the compound.
As he stepped down into the bunker, the other marines inside were concentrating on the horizon, scanning for any sign of hostile forces. The bunker was little more than a pre-fab paristeel box sunk into the ground. Big enough for a handful of marines and a few supplies, a combat bunker was designed to take massive punishment while the marines inside could fire on everything around it in relative safety. Some of the marines called them battlefield coffins, but as far as Madrid was concerned they were better than crouching behind a rock. He took his place next to the others and turned his attention to the landscape outside.
The auto-response missile turrets in the distance began firing before Madrid could see their targets. Hundreds of deadly missiles filled the sky, disappearing into fiery explosions just over the horizon. Feeling his heart skip a beat, he pushed the small button on the side of his helmet that lowered his sight visor. As the darkened visor closed over his face, small holographic projections and status displays appeared before his eyes. Switching the visor to infrared mode, Madrid could see the landscape broken into pixelated patches of reds and blues. To his horror, he saw that the dim haze on the horizon was composed of hundreds of spindly flying creatures approaching the camp at high speed.
The creatures sped toward the missile turrets. Hundreds of the twisted flyers swooped down, spewing flames from their open jaws. Even as the missiles blasted dozens of creatures from the sky, many of the turrets exploded under the assault of the alien swarm.
Madrid’s com unit blared in his ear. “Fire Base Chimera, this is recon patrol zero-nine,” the voice shouted. “Advancing force is negative for Protoss profile. Repeat—advancing force is not Protoss. We are receiving heavy fire from unclassified hostiles. Please advise.”
A second transmission cut in: “All units, this is Command Bravo. Unclassified life forms confirmed,” a smooth, detached voice reported. “Stand to repel attack. Life forms confirmed hostile.”
“They got that part right,” one of the marines growled as another turret exploded in the distance. Everyone kept focused on the advancing aliens, peering through thick smoke as thousands of horrible creatures scrambled madly toward the base. These ground units were different from the flyers, but just as deadly. They surged over the remaining turrets, destroying them with devastating volleys of razor-spines.
Madrid had become so mesmerized by the chaos in the distance that he almost missed the fact that a group of aliens closing on the bunker had come within firing range. With fangs bared, a mob of leathery, catlike creatures rushed towards the electrified wire surrounding the base. As the first line was blasted apart, another wave rushed in. Pulling his rifle to the left, Madrid fired into a writhing mass of aliens. Mutilated bodies began piling up around the base’s perimeter. For every creature that fell, it seemed two more rushed in to take its place.
A group of snakelike aliens lurched forward and showered the bunker with hundreds of deadly razor-spines. Many of the spines rained in through multiple gunports, and Madrid felt the body of a marine drop next to him. With a defiant roar, a marine equipped with Firebat combat armor opened up with his twin flamethrowers. Concentrated napalm enveloped the frenzied creatures, and dozens of them fell to the ground in burning heaps.
The bunker began to shudder violently as the flyers attacked it from above. Massive cracks appeared in the paristeel roof as it began to collapse. Lost in the heat of battle, Madrid was startled when the Firebat grabbed his shoulder.