——3 POV——

It took a week for Kerrigan to emerge from her chrysalis.

During that time Slyria had cleared the hybrid offensive brutally and began to plan the counter-offensive.

The hybrids did manage to get a foothold on the surface of the Maw, but being so outnumbered they didn’t last long.

The moment they began to settle themselves on the surface, thousands of « door » open releasing scores of zerg unit and soon followed by thousands of rodling falling from the sky.

For a hybrid, the power to defend against bombardment was instinctual, simply rotate a large sphere of low levels of psi energy around themselves and any object coming from outside of this sphere would deviate from its intended targets intended target.

The hybrid body could easily tank explosions as long they neither get direct hit or stupidly strong.

The zerg way of dealing with this was the traditional zerg mass attack, simply have more of stuff trying to kill them that the defenders aren’t able to deal with. To make it simple, rodling were raining on the hybrid and were making flight correction once they learned about the flight deviation sphere.

After the first dozen direct hit on hybrid, they got scared and jumped into the nearest hole, only to find an uncomfortable number of baneling who just wanted attention, just like cats.

Kerrigan emerged from her cocoon a day after the last hybrid melted. She assumed control over the swarm after a show of power between her and Slyria.

She soon found out the zerg did not call her « my Queen » anymore but the impostor. Feeling threatened by this change, she tried to speak with her old inner circle.

She was let say surprised when she saw them. Each of them had a new appearance and loyalty. The creature that was supposed to be Zagara was a beautiful woman on top of a giant slug, she even had jewelry and makeup. Dekara had grown larger and was far more evolved. Izsha was transformed into a far more beautiful woman that she was before her original infestation, looking at her lower half the slug/ centipede hybrid she once possessed was replaced by something snake-like and her upper half was a human body (with functioning arms) to describe her has a zerg equivalent to the naga of mythology would be accurate.

Izsha feeling Kerrigan confusion on their new appearance chose to inform Kerrigan that the Overmind decided to modify their appearance and ability to better fit their role.

For example, she was the template used to create a new breed, to act as advisor and ambassador. To facilitate this role she and all her metaphorically children had all the appearance pleasing to the eye of their target.

As for the attitude her former minions, the Overmind had taken steps in issuing the loyalty of the swarm and as long they could feel his presence in the hive mind she would never be the true ruler, but since she was responsible for his silence they would accompany her till they receive different orders.

Kerrigan tried to argue the Overmind was dead only to be informed that all zerg organisms could still feel the Overmind, just out of reach, but they all knew as long as there was still a zerg living, the Overmind would never truly die.

Much later, Kerrigan returned to the Overmind throne rooms.

There she spent time thinking about her situation, and she decided to make the most out of it.

She needed the swarm for her revenge, and while they were reluctant to follow her order to the letter, they would move in the same direction, drawing them in the direction of the Koprulu sector would be easy.

——-MC POV——-

After what felt like centuries, the taint was spreading.

The chains that were binding me were still as strong as the days I was confined here, The floor and wall not as much.

My soul was pulling on the chains, in particular, one of the chains that were binding my right arms.

As I pulled the wall where the chain was connected but also was covered in the taint, the wall was weakened from the taint, crumbled. The chains now loose dissipated in a mote of energy. The place where the chain and the connected now stood a hole, barely bigger than a child's hand.

From it, I felt my mind reconnecting to the hive mind and with it, information and energy came along.

The connection was of poor quality but existed, it would be similar to someone used to the highest possible internet speed all of its life and then changed to the worse one they could find, taking ages to use the most basic internet search.

As for the energy I received it was the equivalent of a single worth of zergling, a far cry to the absurd amount I was used to. So I did the sensible thing with invest it all in enlarging the hole.

After a couple of minutes of a relentless attack, it looked like there was no new damage to the hole.

After a look I spoke aloud to mostly myself « this will take a while ».

Looking away from the hole I looked at the little girl and the bookshelf. Using my little amount of energy I grabbed one of the books with telekinesis.

It was a diary retelling the life history of Kerrigan, a depressing read to be honest. She had a happy childhood until her power manifested, after that, it was a just like the universe was proving how shitty she can get for years.

Oh, there were some good things but like a certain author who wrote a certain books series, every good thing ended up dying or betraying her, until Raynor.

Speaking of that cowboy there was a portrait of him drawn in the middle page like a certain magazine, I honestly hoped to never look at that page again.

I used my telekinesis to replace it where I took it, its feel right somehow.

Now let look at the kid, while I did order the death of plenty of children when invading a world, I never took pleasure in doing so, and what I was about to do would not either.

I bit my lip to draw blood again, but instead of letting it hit the ground I floated that single drop of blood on the kid.

The results were rather volatile. That drop upon making contact with the skin of the kid opened the door for the full presence of the entire hive mind trying to connect with me.

It hurt a lot.

Imagine having the worse hangover with few thousand death metal group having unlimited pyrotechnics budget trying to outdo each other, right next to you.

Being the Overmind, I was kinda used to having a lot of background noise in my mind. Hell one of the unofficial duty of the many command breeds is to flitter most of it. I really don’t need to know the taste of an infested dog licking his ball so this kind of information don't pass his overlord who keeping him connected to the swarm.

And what I received was from every single one Zerg, from humble larva to the mighty Maw sending full sensory information, what they were thinking and their memories.

It was like a human getting hit with a national library and having all information carved in his mind.

Speaking off books there a lot of new ones here.

But there was a thing I didn’t notice, a single faint scratch on the lynchpin.

———3 POV——-

Kerrigan who was exploring her new flagship, the living world the Maw. Had discovering the various experiments and the infested city on her way.

She was honestly surprised seeing so many « sane » infested and various focus. Scientists, Engineer, and many barely infested civilians.

After some question, she had learned that the leader of the infested took a large number of infested people and went to the planet named Tarsonis, the old Confederate capital planet.

They took with them the totality of the Directorate remaining warship and other large transport capable of doing the journey. While most who stay behind would help the transition of remaining human being infested in Directorate.

She left soon after looking into the archives as of why she didn’t know about this. But she stopped midway and began screaming while putting both hands on her skull.

The Overmind had just removed one of his shackles, so Kerrigan was experimenting the worse pain conceivable. A piece of her soul had broken.

Soon after a torrent of information began to pass through her mind, some were important strategic information like fleet placement, number, status of broods, to the insignificant like a debate on creep flavoring and how bad it tasted and how to improve the taste, only to be interrupted by Abathur informing them that they were not supposed to “eat” the creep, just standing on it would transfer the necessary nutrient for the most optimal efficiency.

But she stopped trying to make sense of the flood of information few seconds after it started, she could not process the huge amount of information passing in her head.

All of this occurred in a matter of nanoseconds from Kerrigan perspectives. It continued until she passed out.

Later during that day Abathur had sent one of his breeds to take a look at Kerrigan, she was curled up in fetal position unconscious.

—-In the maw control center—

Slyria stood up as she had received instructions from her overmind.

The first series of instructions were heavily corrupted and incomprehensible. She did not understand what was expected of her, and she had to ask the Overmind to clarify.

Normally she wouldn’t even dare thinking asking the Overmind to repeat itself much less demand for more information, but what she received an order was like someone ordered you to do hundreds of things at the same time.

After careful deliberations, Looking for the appropriate word she politely asked the Overmind to repeat that.

She felt the Overmind facepalming himself and then received quite simple one-word order.

Attack

This simple order was given to every single zerg organisms inside of the hive mind.

Which caused no end of trouble with the less sapient unit since they assumed their target was the thing right in front of them.

This spectacular example of miscommunication was rectified by a hastily and confusing information package on the Koprulu sector.

The command breeds quickly figured out that they had to attack the Koprulu sector and began to rein in the lesser breeds from their frenzied states.

——Sasha infested fleets——

On the command deck of the flagship of the fleet.

Sasha was grinning as she just received the attack order send from the Overmind.

She had left the Overmind fleets before Kerrigan arrived and had been ordered to secure Tarsonis as primarily base for the infested.

She had, of course, some personal objectives, namely finding her husband, yelling at him for hours because he forgot to call, tell him that their children were dead and rekindle their relationship on figuring how to properly torture a Xel'Naga.

And of course, she had to secure her position inside of the swarm. By winning battles and securing resources.

Before leaving, she had reviewed all the information the Zerg had on the different factions in the sector. Doing so she had learned the existence of Deadman port, a heaven of mercenaries and pirates.

The thing with mercenaries is that they fight for money or to save their own life.

For the right amount of wealth, they would gather whatever she needed. And after consulting with Reigel there was numerous species in the Koprulu sector she would need to gather, partly to show her usefulness of the infested to the Overmind and secondary form ties with the mercenaries.

She also needed to spread propaganda, the Moderator would take care of that. They would spread the ideas that if they willing join the swarm they would have to never fear them ever again and still held their sanity, also looking for a discontent of the Dominion people, if that still not work then mentions of the health care package would take care of that.

Sasha was not alone with personal objectives to accomplish, Nova had finally finished her metamorphosis.

Sasha had never meet Nova before her transformation, but she could see something was wrong with her.

Nova was let say borderline fanatical towards the Overmind, and the same could be said to the other ghosts that had accompanied her.

Nova plans were to spread the glory of her new god to the rest of the psionic populations, at gunpoint if necessary.

But for the moment she put all of those concern away since, ... well, they were arriving.

———Dominion salvage Crew POV——-

Tarsonis, the old Confederate capital world, a giant city that once covered the totality of the planet.

Right now the remains of feral zerg broods litter it’s street, infesting every hole and forgotten places.

There was only one reason as for why the dominion, criminals, and rebel would ever want to get close to this death traps.

Loot

The confederate had accumulated an obscene amount of riches over the centuries of its existence and when the zerg attacked, they left it all behind as they tried to flee.

Tale of scavenger coming to this world and came back with luxurious items or information on an old family resources cache made them filthy rich.

Now the Dominion had issues order saying that everything in this world belonged to them and anyone caught bringing stuff out of this world would be sent to prison.

Not that matters much anymore since all the safe « zones » had been picked clean for a while, the only remaining zones that had valuable were the areas where the feral Zerg decided to live.

And this was my job, The Shades Vultures was a Dominions force specialized in salvaging everything not bolted.

The group was composed of the lowest of society, homeless, drug addict, petty theft and the unwanted that were conscripted in the army in order to clean the inner worlds of their presence.

They were not equipped with anything fancy and most of their equipment was the old stuff that other group had no more use for.

But the vultures were never expected to win a war of any kind. They were sent to Dangerous location and old warzone to bring back anything valuable to Mensgk.

Their general target was not hives clusters with a leader or organized group like the Raider but feral animals acting out of instinct and disorganized mobs, that could be eliminated in their hole and then moving to the next.

Today I and the rest of the crew would hit one of the city centers.

A couple of months ago they had found an old adjutant near this location and the brass panicked for some reason. Well considering that Raynor Raiders had launched a train robbery like some old cowboy movies, they might had a reason to be panicked.

Probably that Unn special that aired 2 weeks later.

Oh well, not my concern anyway, what is the chance of discovering a second shitstorm so close to the last?

—-Dominion Ship in orbit——

One of radar operator was bored at his post, and all honesty looking at the same screen for hours every day would bore anyone.

There was a sensor net all around Tarsonis making almost impossible to get in or off the world without receiving an alert.

There was off course plenty old confederate monitoring station around the system, it did used to be their capital world.

And one of those stations just sent an alert, a zerg signal was detected on the edge of the system.

Seeing a zerg signals in a system with a feral brood is pretty common, what was surprising was its location. Most of the space-faring Zerg were hanging around either destroyed station or asteroid. And those locations could be tracked.

Finding one that was far from any remotely known location was rare but not unheard off, generally, it meant that a group of Viking or wraith would be dispatched. While it may seem like a waste of resources, anyone who had ever fought the swarm knows how dangerous they could get if left unchecked, this is why that they use « training exercise » to try to control the local population until they are ready to clear a gathering spot.

A couple of overseers floating at the edge of the system would make a good first experience for the newbie.

So they launched Viking wings, a lot of rookies with few veterans.

In any other situation it would be a waste of resources and fuel but with the Zerg then better safe than sorry.

A simple inner system jumps from a battleship, and they flew on an interception course.

The rookie would go in firing range and launch a volley of missiles if he missed the vet would cover him and eliminate the target, and then he gets to play the drills' sergeant from hell with the rookie.

What they got was the infested fleets warping on top of them right after they killed the overseers.