Currently, I just moved the maw into a system that a planet which I already cleared, to check on my latest experiment.

I had watched old episodes of star trek, the one with the sentient gas cloud. Well, I was wondering if I could fill the space with my psionic microbe, and if I was to create something this stupid as a sentient gas cloud, I wanted it to be useful. So whenever a ship enters inside of it mass it would psionic hold it down like a car stuck in a mud pit. It would slowly digest whatever it had caught.

It sadly had some of the biggest flaws, it would turn feral the moment I would stop looking at it, it could not move once deployed. And I could not use them to further increase my own power.

It was sentient and somewhat intelligent, I needed to bribe them with food for them to act like I wanted them to. This one was a variant tailored to be a planet prison type.

It had sent me a telepathic message telling me about his prey and wanted to see if it was worth something to me.

Since it was the fleet that miss Stukov was in, it had value.

The trade was easy since it would communicate it desire and what he thinks the value of his catch and I would tell him yes or no. And every time it was specially made food made specifically for them, even my Broodmother could produce it, as it will be their job to manage them after all.

Since I was pleasantly satisfied, I gave him extra.

I released my cute little minions to capture the ship in good condition. But first I needed to scramble their communication and FTL, don’t want them to run and ruin my surprise plan I had.

One of the overseers reported that the there was a ground team. As I looked with his eyes I saw Miss Stukov.

Well, I send them a retrieval force to collect her.

My first troop to hit the ground came down hard. It was a new variant breed of Scourge, the Rodling, designed larger and heavier for the sole purpose of being my space to ground munitions of a different project but they could be used individually.

When I created them, I had in mind the opening scene in call of duty ghosts. The Odin station used kinetic bombardment. The idea behind this type of weapon was ridiculously simple, something heavy dropped from somewhere high will cause damage to whatever received on its head.

It have been shown in the video game as a twenty-foot-long by one-foot wide tungsten rod, dropped from orbit hit like a fucking nuke. And hiding in a bunker will not help if hit by those, those rods came fast enough that they can penetrating in the earth very deep.

My little Rodling were neither as heavy nor as fast. But I had numbers if I wanted something dead from space I could make them rain on his heads and since they were living, self-guided.

I sent only three in controlled fall to hit the dropship.

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Sasha pov

Sasha saw something falling from orbit at absurd speed. And then the world seemed to have ended as a shock wave hit her and the marine. The sound was as if a thousand bomb had detonated near her.

One of the marines struggling to stand up after being knocked back by the shock wave shouted.

(Marine) We got incoming.

Sasha rose up and looked at the sky, it was covered in aliens looking beasts. After taking a few seconds to center herself. She soon realized that the site of the orbital drop was the dropship location.

(Sasha) Men defensive formation, find cover. Whatever those things are just hit the dropship we are not going home soon.

Sasha barely had time to interact with the marine over the course of their mission and she didn’t know what kind of men they were. But she had read the art of war by Sun Tzu, “When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.”

It meant that most if not all soldiers in an army care for his life and when one of them is stuck in a desperate situation, they will have the flight or fight reflex. If they could not run away it only leaves the fight response. And desperate men are a lot more dangerous than a regular one so if they cannot see a way to live another day, well the only option was to kill whatever in this situation. The saying that the most dangerous animal is a cornered one is also true for human beings.

Right now the ships were gone, the alien was dropping troop all around them and then proceeded to form an encirclement.

The only option was to sell her life as hard as she could.

Her equipment, one pistol, three magazines of bullets on her belt, a non standard issue grenade in a back pocket and a nasty combat knife. As for armor well looking at the situation she wished to had power armor. She was only wearing an officer set of ballistic armor, which cover almost all her body while leaving her movement unhinged while offering a reasonable protection against a bullet.

She took notice of her surrounding and order her marine to enter a building. Inside of it, she found out it was a school judging by the desk scattered around.

She went to the second floor of this place to gather the most of her marine.

(Sasha) Barricade this staircase.

(marines) Yes Mam

The desperate marine did all their could do moving furniture to block access to the stairs and to create some cover.

What followed was brutal as they came into range of their weapons both sides opened fire. Zergling came charging running like a really hungry hell hound, Hydralisk launching spines, Roach making themselves as large and threatening as possible, Overseer flying over the battle sending instructions to each Zerg. And a Queen variant prototype tailored to be a frontline commander during ground operations.

Sasha and her marine took a bloody beating, bullets only causing some damage on Zergling, roach would ignore anything but that bullet from larger caliber and Hydralisk had a strong enough hide to make bullet bounce off.

Sasha cover in sweat, with small cuts over her body from glancing shot. Her armor was useless and gave minimal protection to the Hydralisk spine, not mentioning roach acid nor the Zergling claw.

She soon realized that whatever those things were, they wanted prisoners. That good and absolutely bad. The good part she gets to live longer, the bad she did not want to know what alien could do to them. Eat them like some bad sci-fi or those absurd stories where they wanted their resource and technology.

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MC pov

- Ah powaaa !!! Eh ?, it weird since how can a zerg get sick? When my immune system can eat anthrax-like yesterday leftover?

Oh well, let look at the ground capture mission. Seem like Sasha is still standing, she looks like shit though. Oh, the queen is approaching bad move, look like she had pride not inherently bad but can cause stupids thing to happen. Let see what happen, OK she is standing in front of her force monologuing …. Ok back to the drawing board, hell Sasha is looking at her with the WTF look.

Oh, seem to have it enough.

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Sasha POV

What the hell ?, is that alien monologuing in front of me even though I am still armed?. But she seems to be well important enough to monologue. Not even listening to that thing, if I was to die here it would be in my term. With that, I took my grenade in my left hand, charge up to the creature and punch it with my right hand. It gave me a very human expression of outrage with her mouth open wide and large, those were very pointy teeth she had. And then my left hand I punched straight into its throat, the jaw closed on my arm with teeth and fang piercing my skin and muscle.

For a moment the pain was incredible, having her own arm eaten was not something she will recommend. But her stoic, stubborn, Russian pride make she refused to let out a scream nor any expression of pain betray her.

Then the grenade detonated, the explosive charge, not a particularly powerful one but was still enough to shatter the queen skull and sending Sasha flying.

Sasha was sent colliding with a wall, bone cracked on the impact. She was feeling pain all over her body, well almost all her body, she was pretty sure she was missing an arm even without looking at it. Ribs were broken, organ likes lungs were damaged or perforated. Her face on her left side was covert in burn and had pieces of the Queen skull stuck in her face, she rose up on her feet, took her knife in her last remaining hand and spoke.

(Sasha) In mother Russia, this is a flesh wound.

She spat blood and charged the zerg force. Her every step cause her pain and suffering but none of it matter. She had lost everything that matter in her life so might as well go knee-deep in enemy's corpses.

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MC POV

What the heck she made out of ? she gutted four Hydralisks and seven Zerglings with a knife before passing out of blood loss. And I call bullshit on that Mother Russia nonsense. I already feel the pain she is, from the HEV those bone shard introduced in her blood flow. I had to take over control of the virus to stabilize her, she had extensive injuries all over, it was a medical jigsaw puzzle, the type doctor would only take a look and declare the time of death. While I could resurrect her with infestation, it caused some defect in her mind, she could be an entirely different person waking up.

With all her problem I needed to dedicate myself to salvage her. That cause another set of problem, the UED fleet had detonated missiles and some of thier ship warp drive clearing a path for the biggest of they ship to be able to flee.

Well fuck it I had several leviathans with scores of behemoths ready to be sent to the directorate. Each force had a Broodmother who had to spend a large part of they life playing war game between each other, mind you zerg war game were 100% lethal. I had perfected the essence transfer of the old Overmind to save the memory and knowledge of commander unit.

I had already located Alpha, Beta and Gamma site. The Alpha sites are what needs to be destroyed fast, like planet dedicated to the productions of military assets, orbital shipyard, mustering ground for thier fleet etc. The Beta sites were interesting targets well know lab with research station, food production center and resource collecting site. Gamma sites were civilians population center, larges concentrated human population ready to be exposed to the Hypert Evolution Virus.

It would seem that the war had just begun in honest. I wonder how well my force is good in a space battle, well I will soon see how well my new ship size Zergs is doing in the first engagement.