Starcraft

A Note from the Author...

I apologize for leaving such a massive gap between this installment and the last, but between some of my last works and planning the rest of this series I've been quite busy. This one is a bit longer than my previous ones, though it allowed me to add a few scenes that I feel augment the storyline. I'll also add that I have changed the series outline above now that the story has gotten into more of the core ideas and won't be too much of a spoiler. Please enjoy and as always, leave some comments.




Blood of Heroes




Contamination




“Damage report!” Orion shouted as he struggled to regain his composure.
Coughing and cries were the only responses he received, prompting him to unglue his eyes from the bright light that had replaced the UED space station. He stared behind him at the techs that were moving, and the few that were not. Orion quickly opened a COM link from his chair beside him.
“Medical, get assistance up to the bridge to evacuate the wounded immediately!”
A voice on the other end of the link acknowledged the order, before one of the techs on the bridge spoke up.
“Sir, decks three through five are reporting hull breaches! None of the others have updated their status!”
“Seal the breached sections of the ship, and get me a more detailed report!” Orion ordered. “Hayden? Hayden!”
The Vice Admiral was laying ten feet from Orion, and was not moving.
“Shit!” the Admiral cried. “Jonathan!”
Orion stood shakily from his chair and moved over to his friend and second in command, luckily discovering that he was breathing.
“Get some God damn medics up here!”
A further inspection of Hayden led the Admiral to identify a large gash on his forehead, and a similar smeared pattern of blood on the console just above his unmoving body.
“Father!” James cried from the back of the bridge, before moving quickly over to Orion. “Are you hurt?”
“I’ll be fine,” he responded coldly, before adding: “And I am still your superior officer, Captain, and will be addressed as such!”
A slightly shocked look crossed James’ face at that moment, though he rapidly tucked it away and replied.
“Yes, sir.”
The doors in the back of the bridge suddenly slid open, and six medics entered the room fully equipped with their gear.
“Medic!” Orion cried as he stood from Hayden’s side. One quickly moved towards him, and Orion continued: “The Vice Admiral’s been knocked unconscious—get him down to medical immediately, and give him priority over the other wounded!”
The medic acknowledged the order and quickly beckoned for one of the others to assist in lifting Hayden off of the floor. At this point Orion quickly remembered the crisis that they were still neck-deep in the middle of.
“Sir!” Sergeant Mathew Adams—the tech who had previously given Orion the damage report—interrupted. “All decks have checked in and are sealing all hull breaches! All twenty three ships have also checked in—most are in a similar condition to us, though one has been massively damaged!”
“Can it move? Orion asked nervously.
“No, sir—all maneuvering capabilities are no longer functional.”
Orion swore loudly, before he glanced out at the brilliant dying light, before noticing movement.
“What is the status of the UED fleet?”
“They’ve sustained tremendous casualties—counting only twenty four vessels still in existence and many of those are incapacitated. Seventeen are currently moving…and they’re targeting us!”
Orion moved up to a screen on the nearest console and watched a magnified view of the damaged, yet mobile and operational UED armada as some ships raised their shields.
“What is the Dominion’s weapon status!?” Orion questioned.
There was a pause as Sergeant Adams depressed multiple keys in front of him, before freezing.
“Jesus, fourteen ships are reporting critically damaged weapon systems.”
The Dominion now had superior numbers, though that fact was rendered useless by the outmatching weaponry now pitted against them seventeen to seven.
“I want an immediate report on every ship’s warp drive capabilities!”
Orion was running frighteningly short on options, and things still weren’t all making sense. There was no possible way for the UED to realize how badly damaged the Dominion fleet was and yet their seventeen battleships were attempting to engage twenty-one vessels of matching firepower and strength.
“All seven vessels still capable of firing are to begin targeting, and order the remaining fourteen ships to begin taking up firing positions!”
“Sir?” asked James.
“We have got to buy ourselves time and the only way to do that is by making them think we can still out-match them in firepower,” Orion responded.



“There’s not enough time!” cried Private Willy Jameson.
No response followed his plea, and the chances of it being heard above the roaring noise were minute anyway. Red lights and alarms were blaring all around the two men as soldiers and personnel rushed around them, many swearing at the two men’s occupation of a vast majority of the hallway. Corporal Horace Madison was beside him, and was presently sealing his space suit.
“If we drop to subspace with a gash like that in the hull the entire ship is put at risk—I can seal the damn thing in three minutes!” he shouted.
The Private was silent to that remark, allowing Madison to give him a final glance before stepping into the pressurization chamber.
“Hurry!”
The sound of Jameson’s final comment barely made it through the pressure doors as they sealed shut. Madison gripped the welder in his right hand even tighter before he hit the button beside him on the wall. The rush of air out of the chamber ripped him from his position and into the small cargo bay. His free hand managed to latch onto a crate before his body was sucked through the torn hull now eight feet from him. Once the last of the atmosphere from the pressurization chamber had exited the ship his body dropped back down to the floor, and he rapidly moved to the opening. The jagged tear was nearly half his height and equally as wide.
Madison’s eyes traced the angle of the opening to a large slab of seared, jagged metal that had impaled itself into the floor twenty feet behind him. His brief examination of it from his position made it difficult to tell whether it was part of the space station itself or one of the ships caught inside the blast. At this point its origin was of little consequence to him; its mark in the hull demanded his attention. Madison twisted around, hoping that the crate he had moved into the cargo bay earlier was still there. He rushed to the back of the room and picked out the crate that he believed was the right one. Smashing it open as best he could, he managed to create an opening large enough to fit one of the thick metal slabs through.
Jameson stared unwaveringly at the flashing light on the ceiling above the pressurization door. Looking at it for six minutes had left a lasting imprint in his field of vision. The only thing more frightening than why Madison had not yet returned was why the ship hadn’t made a jump to subspace yet.
The light suddenly switched off, and Jameson’s heart skipped a beat as he turned his head back to the pressurization door. There was a sudden jolt as the ship shook violently, throwing him forward into the door. His head slammed into it forcefully, making him curse before regaining his footing. He hit the buttons on the keypad next to the door and rushed into the chamber, rubbing the newly formed gash on his forehead. He checked once more on a panel beside him to ensure that the room had regained its atmosphere before he opened the next door. To his relief he wasn’t sucked out of the chamber; his eyes instead met the sloppy welding job that had sealed the hull breach.
“Horace!” Jameson shouted as he stepped into the cargo bay.
Looking around he could not see him, until he turned to the large slab of metal that had implanted itself in the floor of the room. Madison’s hand was all that was visible on top of it, and it was shaking. Jameson rushed over and found the corporal lying on his stomach against the piece of metal. His foot slid slightly in blood as he stopped beside him.
“Willy,” he grunted as he tried to lift his head.
“Oh Jesus,” Jameson whispered as he knelt down.
“Get me off of this thing!”
Jameson moved around him to see that he had fallen onto a piece of the metal slab that had torn through the hull.
“It’s in my side…I don’t know how deep it is,” Madison said through gritted teeth.
“Okay, hold on,” Jameson said as he wrapped his arms around the corporal’s torso.
He achieved some leverage with his legs before quickly pulling his body upwards off the metal.



As the vast majority of the fleet obeyed Orion’s orders, the seventeen UED ships stopped in space. There was a strange, brief stillness at that point, and as Orion glared at the nearest enemy ship he realized that he was playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun, and he had no idea how many bullets were in it.
“Sir, twenty battlecruisers have their warp drives online, though none have the power to yield any kind of navigation!” cried Adams.
“And the other?” questioned James, interrupting his father’s next orders, which certainly did not pertain to the twenty-first battlecruiser’s status.
“Its power supply has been completely exhausted—it’s dead in the water.”
“Prepare all ships for a subspace jump immediately!” shouted Orion as anger began mounting toward his son.
“We have absolutely no subspace navigation capabilities—at best we’d end up deeper into UED space and at worst inside a planet!”
“Just link the fleet’s God damn warp signatures with one another to keep all of the ships together—staying here is a bigger gamble!”
“Sir—” James cried in objection to the fate the crippled battlecruiser was being sentenced to.
Orion engulfed the distance between the two of them in three strides, before gripping the collar of his son’s shirt and pulling him close.
“Do not question my orders at now of all times!” he angrily whispered.
“Admiral!” cried one of the techs, prompting Orion to release James and twist to stare out into space.
The laser batteries that resided upon the front of the long battleships began to glow orange, before the light lanced outwards, striking the ship beside The Vanguard. Watching the starboard wing of the unshielded and already damaged vessel erupt into a brilliant display of light as it was sheared off, Orion screamed the order whilst nine more battleships primed their weapons.
“TAKE US TO SUBSPACE!”
The UED vessel directly across from The Vanguard deployed its laser burst just as the warp drive tore a jagged slit through space that dissipated the lethal shot intended for the flagship. Orion watched in momentary shock as the orange light faded in the disturbance in front of them, before everything in front of him erupted into a shockingly bright shade of bluish-purple, which forced him to turn away as the familiar sensation of nausea washed over him, and the air was sucked out of his lungs.
After a moment he felt the intensity of the light begin to wane as the windows were covered by the blackout panels that protected those on the bridge from the dangerously bright lights in subspace. At the same instant there was a loud hissing noise that filled the bridge, which granted every man and woman on the bridge the ability to inhale again as it pressurized.



Major Grant heard voices. He was absolutely sure of it, but he couldn’t tell where they were coming from, or even how close they were. They echoed as if they were miles and miles away, but as he felt a sudden brush against his left arm he knew them to be right there. It hardly even sounded like English, but he recognized the accents as those that humans used. Humans.
He was no longer with Kerrigan, that much he was quite sure of. Part of him felt immense relief at that fact; though as his memory returned to him fear gripped his chest again as to what might be happening to him. A brief thought of infestation filled his mind, though the panic that thought caused made him ignore it for his sanity’s sake. The voices were now becoming clearer, and to his surprise he realized that they were being broadcasted through a filter rather than through just their mouths.
“…vitals are good,” finished one man.
“There’s nothing on these x-rays—what the hell is wrong with him then?” asked another.
There was a brief silence before the first man replied, somewhat nervously.
“Pestis?”
“It can’t be, Jake—look at him! When Pestis causes unconsciousness there are physical manifestations everywhere, you know that,” continued the second voice. “His skin is completely clean, and his bone structure isn’t shifting at all.”
At the mention of his skin Grant realized that he was completely naked, and apparently lying upon a cold, elevated table. The one problem was that he still couldn’t open his eyes, which was aggravating the shit out of him.
“Still, there’s no way to be certain without blood work, and until I see a report on that come back clean he’s staying in containment,” the man now identified as Jake muttered.
“We don’t have the lab capabilities to interpret blood samples, so we’ll just have to hand them over once we’ve docked.”
Them. For the first time since he regained consciousness he remembered Taylor, and now knew that he was at least still with him. Whether or not he was in the same room remained to be known, though somewhat to Grant’s shock the touch of a gloved finger to his forehead caused his eyes to reflexively shoot open. They were immediately blinded by the bright light hanging above him, which made him grunt as they shut just as quickly as they’d opened, and this time his hand flew up to cover them.
“Hey! Jake! He’s awake!”
Grant heard footsteps approach him before another gloved hand pried his hand away from his eyes. Becoming frustrated and pissed from his confusion, he shifted his hand out of the man’s grasp and reopened his eyes as he smashed his fist into his face.
To Grant’s surprise, his knuckles were barred from Jake’s face by a plate of glass. Regardless, the man staggered backwards into the wall as Grant frantically elbowed the second man in the stomach, before sliding off of the table and moving into a corner. With his eyes still adjusting he began to finally take it all in. He was in a very small room, of which the table was the center piece, with several other pieces of equipment around the room.
What caught his eye were what the two men were wearing, which could most accurately be described as biohazard suits, each with face plates above small respirators that likely filtered the air they were breathing of toxins. The man whom he had punched was on the floor against the wall panicking as his hands felt his face plate. The other had regained his composure and was approaching Grant with one hand raised.
“Hey, buddy!” he said in a firm, yet controlled tone. “It’s all right; calm down!”
“Where the fuck am I!?” cried Grant as he raised his fists again.
“You’re on a UED salvage ship!” he continued; clearly trying to defuse the situation without exercising force. “We picked up your drop ship floating in space two hours ago.”
“What?” Grant asked in total confusion.
“You son of a bitch!” Jake cried as he scrambled to his feet, before launching himself at Grant.
The other man intercepted him, slamming his co-worker into the wall just feet from Grant.
“He slugged me Aaron!” cried Jake. “What if he had broken my fucking face plate!?”
“Then you’d be staying in here with him!” said Aaron in return, forcing Jake to move back. “Now get the hell away from the man!”
Both Grant and Jake glared into each other’s eyes for a brief moment before the latter gave in to his friend’s command and moved to the other end of the room.
“Can you remember anything that happened?” Aaron questioned calmly.
Memories of Kerrigan, and then the Dominion fleet—Jesus they’d probably left him—shot through his mind.
“No,” Grant lied, before observing the expression on the man’s face. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
There was a brief pause as Aaron looked away from Grant for the first time.
“The dropship that you were on belonged to The Onyx according to its markings and identification numbers.”
The confused look on Grant’s face was not subsided by the new information, and if anything his understanding lessened. Feeling slightly confused himself, Aaron continued.
“It was a UED battleship that disappeared three years ago.”
“Two weeks before the first Pestis outbreaks,” Jake added from across the room. “The two have always been linked by rumor, since no trace of the ship had ever been found, until now. You can bet the UED governmental infrastructure will have extraordinary interest in you two.”
Grant’s mind was once again racing as it tried to absorb all of the new information, and attempt to put together the puzzle with a handful of the pieces. There was still a crucial one missing.
“What’s Pestis?” he asked.
The look on Aaron’s face transformed within moments of Grant’s query from his own confusion to shock. Jake bore a similar expression, and the two men turned to glance at each other before Jake opened the door near him, and stepped out of the room somewhat violently. Aaron backed away slowly before he too turned and left the room, leaving Grant alone.
As soon as the door closed Grant’s confusion transformed into anger, and he slammed his fist into the cold metal behind him. The skin on two of his knuckles split, smearing blood across the gleaming surface. Grant noticed neither the blood nor the pain, and so he quickly began inspecting the small room. Something was very wrong, and being in the dark was not something he enjoyed.



Admiral Charles Jackson’s uniform was no longer as pristine as it had been minutes ago, as the shirt was torn and much of it now ragged. He himself was not in the best condition, with blood seeping from a wound above his right eye and a tear in the skin of his arm. He watched emotionlessly as several UED battleships approached the one remaining Dominion vessel that had apparently been left behind in their escape.
The bridge was in substantial disarray as multiple medics scurried over the bodies of the dead and the injured, helping who they could. Jackson had refused treatment until all others on the bridge had received it, despite the protests of several medics. His second in command was dead on the floor beside him, an emotional loss that he was tactfully suppressing. There were very few living still capable of operating the various systems on the bridge, and he suspected that his capital ship’s close proximity to the explosion had caused massive trauma to his vessel. Due to communications being disabled status reports were slow to come in.
As the stranded Dominion battlecruiser was ripped to pieces by the lasers of Jackson’s remaining armada, he turned away from the window and looked to the communications officer that was attempting to repair his console.
“Initiate quarantine on all remaining ships and delay the transfer of survivors—if Zerg truly were present on that station it is likely that Pestis was released.”
“Sir, we need to get you to a stable and operational vessel right away,” replied the technician.
“My safety is secondary to that of this fleet; with the number of hull breaches we have contamination is likely and a very serious threat. Alert Command of the present situation and have them deploy decontamination vessels to process all survivors, including myself.”
Jackson’s ship was the closest surviving vessel to the space station, and as such had been rendered almost entirely useless. Eighty percent of the entire fleet’s weapon capacities had been offline following the blast, and Jackson was pleased that his own gamble had paid off. What still mystified him was the cloaking and subsequent disappearance of the Dominion battlecruiser that had been docked with the space station. There had been no indications that they had any such capability available on their massive vessels, though their alliance with the Protoss made it a realistic possibility.
Jackson exhaled as he discretely checked his skin and flexed his major muscles. If Pestis had indeed gotten on board the situation would be complicated significantly, and its degree of contagiousness could cause a problem long before the decontamination ships arrived.



Orion’s nervousness had subsided substantially upon exiting subspace. Their extreme lack of navigation made his actions shockingly reckless, and the fact that none of the twenty two ships had exited in close proximity to a planet or star was a miracle. The question now, however, was where had they ended up, and was it charted space? A brief scan of the sector in which they had exited subspace indicated that they were on the edge of a system of planets, making Orion further thankful for their safe exit.
“Is there any indication of where we might be?” Orion asked Sergeant Adams, who was now one of the eight men still manning their stations on the bridge.
“If we can get closer to the system it’s possible that we can make a signature match from one of the planets, but at the moment our systems are too damaged to discern much at our present location.”
“Then take us to the nearest planet—we’ll need a gravity well to perform repairs anyway. I want updates on possible hostiles should any be discovered.”
Orion’s head was hurting immensely, and he took the brief pause to examine it with his hand. Everything seemed to be alright as far as he could tell, aside from the constant throbbing.
“Sir, there’s a message for you from the medical bay.”
Orion moved carefully over to the man’s station and looked into the monitor. The face that looked back at him was that of Dr. Jared Marcel, the ship’s head medical specialist.
“Admiral, I need to speak with you immediately and in person. I will meet you at medical bay 6.”
Orion was rather irritated that the doctor ended the transmission before awaiting any response, though he began walking off the bridge nonetheless.
“Captain,” Orion said sternly to his son, who was hovering over a technician’s shoulder. “You have the bridge.”
James made a brief acknowledgement that his father ignored as he exited through the doors. Orion’s thoughts shifted back to Vice Admiral Hayden, and he was hopeful that whatever the doctor had to say about him was not serious. Wanting to talk in person did not suggest good news.
Medical bay 6 was empty when Orion walked in. He glanced around the room as his slight frustration turned to confusion. Surely there were enough injured to warrant the occupation of all the medical bays? As this question occurred to Orion one of the doors opened and Dr. Marcel walked into the room wearing a white contamination suit.
“Admiral,” the doctor saluted loosely.
“What has happened?”
“Follow me, and don’t worry, you are safe,” Marcel reassured him.
Orion despised being left in the dark like this, though he moved rapidly into the next room in the footsteps of the doctor.
“What the hell is going on?” he questioned in a mix of anger and anxiety.
The room that they had entered was small and very narrow, with a window on one side of the room. It peered into a small operating room with a table and various pieces of medical equipment. On the table was a marine. His body was contorting on the table.
“This marine was brought to Medical Bay 9 twenty five minutes ago,” Marcel commented. “His name is Horace Madison. He suffered a puncture to his left side that ruptured his kidney and damaged his large intestine.”
“What is wrong with him?” Orion questioned as he observed the painful twisting of the man’s body, which was testing the straps holding him to the table.
“We aren’t entirely sure. Testing is still underway. According to Private William Jameson—the marine who brought him here—he had been impaled by a piece of metal that had breached the hull prior to the subspace jump.”
“From the space station?” Orion was not sure what was happening, but it was not good.
“Possibly,” Marcel replied.
The doctor moved across the room to another door, which led into another room that was identical, though the window looked into a different operating room. On the table was a different marine, though he too was violently contorting on the table.
“This is Private William Jameson,” Marcel said. “He started exhibiting the same symptoms several minutes after Madison.
“Oh shit,” Orion whispered; he finally understood.
“We believe there was something on the metal that impaled the corporal, which entered his bloodstream.”
“A virus?”
Marcel turned from the window and looked at the Admiral.
“That’s the only explanation we have so far.”
Orion’s eyes suddenly widened as he glared at the contamination suit Marcel was wearing. He began backing up as he spoke.
“It’s airborne?”
Marcel nodded slightly.
“Several of the medical staff were exposed before we understood what was happening, including myself. As I said, you are safe while I am sealed in here.”
“How long do you have?” Orion asked shakily.
“From what we’ve pieced together of the timeline I have perhaps ten minutes before I am in their state,” the doctor answered as he motioned toward the seizing men on the table. “We won’t be able to tell what kind of effects or lethality the virus has until we can either analyze the blood work or one of these men die.”
“Jesus Christ,” Orion whispered as he glanced once more at Private Jameson.
“We have no idea who these two men came in contact with before arriving at the medical bay. We have patient zero, but if he was contagious when he was near other marines we could have a very serious situation. I have already sealed the Medical Bays that have no infection so as to prevent its spread there, and I strongly advise that you order a full quarantine of the ship until we have some idea of what we are dealing with.”
Orion was speechless at this point and merely nodded, before moving rapidly back into Medical Bay 6, and then out into the hallway. He made certain to breathe as sparingly as possible


“Something is wrong here,” Aaron Young muttered.
His face was so close to the glass that his breath clouded a small portion of it briefly before evaporating away.
“He’s exhibiting all of the initial signs of Pestis, but nothing is progressing. He’s been on the ship for at least six hours—we should have started seeing seizures, cell deterioration, and foreign cell growth by now. Christ, I have never seen someone infected live this long before even with the symptoms!”
Jake Hill stood beside him quietly as he thought.
“Maybe he isn’t actually infected,” he speculated.
Aaron shook his head. “That’s what it seemed like at first, but when I spoke with him a few minutes ago he said he was experiencing fatigue and muscle soreness. His God damn temperature is at one hundred and two! He’s exhibiting none of the usual signs associated with a fever—his normal body temperature is rising.”
“What about the other soldier?” Jake questioned.
“He seems to be fine—he suffered several wounds that appear to be from blunt trauma, though none of the injuries suggest Pestis.
“So where did they come from?”
Aaron shrugged. The most obvious answer was unfortunately the most complicated. The Onyx was one of the biggest UED mysteries still unanswered, and the pure fact that the Major and Corporal had been on board one of its drop ships was going to make them two of the most valuable assets the UED had.
“We’ll be arriving at Corin II in about an hour, let’s see if he lives until then,” Jake murmured. “I’ll prepare the medical information that we have on both men, I’m sure the UED will want the records when we hand them over.
Aaron didn’t meet Jake’s gaze as he spoke to him. He instead focused on Major Grant, who was presently sitting against a wall, apparently asleep. Aaron’s mind was bustling with thoughts and ideas. He knew what he had to do, but wasn’t certain that he was the man to do it.


Doctor Sarah Carter depressed several keys on the keyboard in front of her. Her hands were trembling substantially, which caused her to mistype several things. After correcting them she pressed another, and then began speaking, allowing the recorder to tape her voice.
“This is Dr. Sarah Carter, who will be heading the examination and operation of Corporal Horace Madison. Assisting me are doctors Craig Daniels and Harvey Ericson.”
There was a quiet ping from Carter’s laptop to inform the three doctors in the room that Admiral Orion had responded to Carter’s message and accessed the room’s camera feed. The camera itself was located in the corner of the room, slightly below the ceiling and provided what Carter imagined to be an extensive view of the small operating room.
Her hand picked up a small knife from the tray beside her. As it visibly trembled Daniels placed his hand on her arm to comfort her. All three doctors had been exposed to the pathogen nearly twenty minutes after Dr. Marcel. The only reason he was not heading the operation was that he had begun seizing several minutes ago, effectively placing a short timer on their lives. They didn’t want to risk exposing anyone else to the virus, so they had volunteered to undergo the fast examination.
“I will begin by removing several tissue samples for later examination,” she recounted for the tape.
She realized that she would likely be unconscious or dead when the results came out, though she rapidly hid that thought and approached the Corporal’s body. He had stopped seizing ten minutes ago, though at the same time extraneous cell growth had begun all over his body. The result was what could most readily be described as tumors covering most of his arms and chest.
Carter controlled her shaking long enough to grasp one of the larger tumors on his left arm and used the knife to carefully separate it from his arm. A dark green liquid spilled out, causing her to recoil slightly before placing the tumor on a tray beside her. Dr. Ericson quickly took a small cotton swab and soaked up some of the liquid, which he subsequently placed into a test tube.
“Christ,” Carter whispered as she looked for a second tumor that she could remove for analysis.
She found one slightly smaller than the last, but as she was about to remove it Dr. Daniels stopped her.
“Sarah!” he whispered.
She pulled away rapidly, before focusing her gaze on the stump of the tumor she had just removed. It was beginning to twitch, and as it did so more of the dark liquid seeped out. The tissue actually began to re-grow right in front of their eyes as a new tumor formed.
“Shit! It’s accelerating!” Ericson cried as his eyes darted back and forth.
All over Corporal Madison’s body more tumors were forming, and his normal skin began to split apart.
“What’s happening?” Daniels asked as the sound of skin ripping filled his ears.
Carter jumped backwards as Madison’s body suddenly arced violently in the air and he let out a shrill scream of pain. He suddenly began seizing once more. His head jolted back and forth, splattering blood across the wall as his teeth tore through his tongue.
“Jesus Christ, hold him down!” Ericson shouted as he moved forward and grabbed his arm.
The growth of the foreign tissue on Madison’s body was continuing to accelerate, and it was no longer possible to see human skin. Carter and Daniels were frozen in place as Ericson attempted to force the soldier’s body back onto the table, though the strap holding the other arm to the table suddenly snapped. Ericson had no time to react before the newly freed arm twisted around and slammed into his face. The impact broke his nose and sent him flying into the wall behind him, which shattered his jaw.
Carter was screaming at this point as Daniels moved toward the tray of operating knives. Madison snapped free of his restraints and removed himself from the table as the tissue growth began to create a bulge around his mid-section. Tendrils were starting to sprout from various parts of the creature’s body, and as soon as Daniels turned toward it wielding one of the knives, the first thing that came to his mind was how similar the figure now looked. It was nearly identical to an infested Terran.
“Sarah, get out of here!” Daniels cried as he lunged toward the creature.
The knife lodged itself in its rapidly expanding chest, though it didn’t stop it from smashing his head into the wall. Carter screamed as she saw this, and rapidly turned toward the door. The creature was not far behind her, however, though as she reached the keypad it stopped in its tracks. Carter turned cautiously to see what was happening. Its breathing was substantially faster and its eyes were completely blank. He eyes shifted to the mid section, which was now nearly four feet in diameter. The growth had finally stopped, though that was hardly a good sign. The infested Terran exploded, shredding the equipment in the room and shattering the windows on the back wall. Dr. Carter was torn apart by the blast that covered the entire room in a brownish-green substance.


Both Vincent and James Orion were frozen in place as they stared at the static from the camera feed. The rest of the bridge around them, which had not been able to see the feed, was continuing their attempts to regain functionality of many of the ships systems.
“Holy Christ,” Admiral Orion whispered finally.
What he had just seen bore a striking resemblance to infested Terrans that often emerged from command centers that had been infested, though in the past a queen always had to be present. The mere thought that there was actually a highly contagious pathogen capable of the same effect was horrifying, and a massive threat to Orion’s fleet.
“Listen up!” he shouted, causing motion on the bridge to cease as the various technicians and officers focused their attention on the Admiral. James continued to be glued to the static-filled screen.
“I want this entire ship locked down immediately! Personnel movement is to be ceased from now until I order otherwise!”
Orion turned next to his son, who had finally regained his composure and his complexion.
“I want you to communicate with every ship in the fleet. If any of them sustained significant hull damage I want them to initiate lock down and begin quarantine procedures. Alert them that we have a very serious threat that is extremely contagious; all necessary precautions should be made!”