Who am I? Where am I? Did the spatial rift's exit open at the wrong coordinates?
Such was Kerrigan's question.
As her Leviathan flagship tore through the rift, psionic signals connected her with the entire Swarm. Yet what greeted her eyes was a scene of a grand interstellar war raging in full force—the starry void ablaze under the fury of steel creations.
That was the vast perspective gathered through the Swarm's sensory organs.
Cotton-like sparks dotted the black curtain of space. Towering steel behemoths drifted like void Krakens in the icy cosmos. Blinding, searing light burst into dazzling halos across the abyss.
A space battle.
Densely packed beams nearly covered half a star system's orbital space: lances of laser fire, macro-cannon blasts, countless missiles, torpedoes, plasma rounds, and railgun slugs tearing endlessly through the void.
Could it be that after gaining the power of the Primal Zerg and the first Broodmother on Zerus, she had yet to fully merge with this body of the primal Queen of Blades? That the first time wielding a psionic force greater even than the Overmind's had brought instability?
In that stunned instant, she almost believed she had mistakenly opened the rift into some other part of the galaxy—into the battlefields of alien intelligences.
But within a fraction of a second, Kerrigan dismissed such absurd doubts.
The coordinates of the Korhal system were not wrong. Her calculations were not wrong!
And the wreckage drifting before her—the twisted, shattered hulks of warships—gave her the answer.
Twisted, charred fragments, bizarrely shaped, some massive, some small. Pitiful "ants" ejected from motherships drifted without order in the void.
Corpses clad in red-painted CMC-300 power armor, intact SCV engineering suits, Marauders with gaping holes blasted through their chests, broken Reapers missing their heads…
As a former Ghost of the Terran Confederacy—an assassin and secret police operative—Kerrigan recognized them instantly.
And there it was: the military equipment descended from the Confederacy, stamped with crimson insignias on their pauldrons.
This was the Korhal system. These wrecked battlecruisers were the forces of that bastard, Arcturus Mengsk! And the world under siege—their fortress world Korhal IV!
"What a delightful surprise."
"You're like a spider in its web, Mengsk, waiting in your nest. But all you've done is weave your own cocoon of death…"
A wild smile spread across Kerrigan's face. She could not restrain it.
If Arcturus suffered misfortune, then Sarah Kerrigan rejoiced.
Yet her glee lasted only seconds before vanishing.
Because—
Suddenly, a steel behemoth broke formation, surging ahead with reckless acceleration. It cut directly across the Leviathan cluster newly emerged from the rift. Boldly, it swept past those living warships—dozens of kilometers long—striding straight toward the largest Leviathan, the Queen's own flagship.
The sharp prow smashed aside Brood Lords and Swarm Hosts blocking its path. Scattered lesser Zerg, exposed to space, flailed helplessly. Countless eggs were flung outward like a celestial shower, only to be crushed beneath the rushing steel, splattering yellow-green ichor.
Some were even swept into the roaring plasma thrusters, stretching kilometers in length—like a feast roasted over a bonfire. Cooked through.
"Bring the ship closer—!!"
Not even using internal comms, some brute with flaming starfish-red hair stood on the deck plating, lungs filled with air, red light blazing, and bellowed. His roar thundered across the void, carried by surging violet-red psionic energy.
Before the eyes of billions upon billions of Zerg, the steel behemoth charged alone into the endless tide.
Such an act of sheer provocation instantly drew the swarm's furious response.
Massive beasts and bio-ships surged like a flood of wasps. Though lacking formation, their vastness blotted out the stars. Gaping maws, whipping tendrils, scything limbs—they spewed azure orbs of plasma, hurled Banelings, spat corrosive torrents of viridian acid in a storm of fire.
BOOOOM!BOOOOM!
Every second, the warship's void shields rippled with uncountable impacts.
"Psionics?"
Watching the dagger-like advance of that unknown Imperial warship as it carved into the swarm's ranks, Kerrigan narrowed her glowing violet eyes while commanding her Leviathans to intercept.
Though she could not understand the Imperial tongue, as a natural psionic trained since childhood—and further warped by Zerg augments—she understood well enough the intent conveyed through that psychic surge.
Exaltation. Bloodlust. The raw desire to slay her, to take her head as a trophy.
And when her psionic senses brushed against that uncanny violet-red energy, dread surged. A vast shadow loomed over her.
In that plane where psionic and void intertwined, atop a throne of nameless corpses, stood a radiant platinum silhouette, its scarlet, diamond-pupiled eyes glaring down. Within those eyes swirled endless malice and frenzy, flooding into her mind, dragging her into a maelstrom of fragmented visions.
Greed, arrogance, cruelty, hunger, wrath, slaughter, conquest…
Beneath a hollow diamond cross of doom, they tore all asunder, raising aloft the bloodstained double-headed eagle, proclaiming eternal expansion in the God-Emperor's name. Conquest! Conquest!! Conquest!!!
Beneath the moon of forgotten massacres…
Voices—honorable, warm, elegant, cold, savage, hoarse—all fused into one command:
Swear loyalty, or die.
This was its essence. The shard of "Selene's Honkai" Kerrigan glimpsed—the truth beneath the Empire's radiant colors.
"Ahh—!"
In an instant, Kerrigan staggered, clutching her head, her wings scraping the Leviathan's organic walls. Around her, the swarm convulsed into chaos and frenzy.
"Kerrigan!"
A shadow appeared. A rough hand pressed on her shoulder, blue-white psionic light flaring.
"Hold to yourself. Do not gaze at that violet sun. Its madness will make you a beast."
Zeratul's pale-green eyes narrowed faintly—the sign of his grave concern upon the aged Dark Templar's face.
At last, Kerrigan steadied, the shadow receding from her mind.
"Weakness has never been the obstacle to survival—arrogance is."
Zeratul spoke gravely: "Kerrigan, you were reckless."
"You may be the strongest psionic in the universe, the Primal Queen of Blades who commands the Swarm's void-born might. But that also makes you a thorn in the eye of the dark powers of the void…"
Indeed, the power Kerrigan now wielded already surpassed his in many respects. Yet she was still young, untrained, uneducated in restraint. Her control of that strength was far too crude.
How long had Kerrigan lived? Zeratul was nearly seven hundred years old.
Were it not for the press of time—and her insistence on confronting Arcturus Mengsk here in Korhal—he would have demanded to train her first.
Especially when she dared stare directly into the essence of that power, attempting to trace its roots and analyze its being. In Zeratul's eyes, that was nothing but overconfidence.
Had she learned nothing?
It was the same flaw the Protoss and Jim Raynor's Raiders had exploited against her before. Her personal might had made her reckless, and she had paid dearly.
So she had gained the Primal Zerg's strength, risen higher still—then naturally, pride followed.
Like a nagging elder, Zeratul could not help but warn her again and again: you are the universe's hope, tread carefully.
"Thank you," Kerrigan exhaled, lifting a trembling hand over her head to dispel the last confusion clouding her mind. "You glimpsed it as well, didn't you… Was that Amon? The one fated to destroy the universe? If so… the weight on me is crushing."
"…I cannot be certain."
Zeratul shook his head. "It was similar—very similar. Yet my instincts tell me it was not Amon. Different… though I cannot say why."
He had looked, too—but unlike Kerrigan's stubbornness, he had merely stolen a glance from afar before retreating. Perhaps his psionic gift no longer matched hers, but where talent failed, discipline spared him. The stronger the gift, the deeper the sight—yet the greater the danger of being consumed.
"They have reached Korhal itself… Kerrigan, I fear we must give everything now."
With a long sigh, shhhk!—his warp blade ignited, ghostly green light gleaming against his masked features. "Their target is you. Whether or not they are Amon's servants, you cannot fall. You must endure. The burdens upon you are immense."
"You truly are an odd one, Zeratul."
Kerrigan stood at the Leviathan's vast organic aperture, gazing over her swarm. The brief lapse had already borne consequences: that warship seized the chance, driving the Leviathan into stasis as it forced its way before her.
The Zerg surged like waves against its hull, their rhythms clashing with the furious roar of engines.
A towering wall of steel loomed close. Kerrigan raised her eyes across the unfamiliar design, so unlike Terran warships. Layer upon layer of armor plating, bristling with countless weapon arrays that thundered with rage.
"A decapitation strike, is it…? Then let us see what kind of beings Amon's brutes truly are."
"Zagara, hold this sector with the Leviathan."
"Abathur, reconfigure the Leviathan's gene-sequences. Reinforce its hide and raise its heat resistance."
...
Challenger-class Assault Ship.
Angry Crow Takes Flight.
Specialized for broadsides, ramming, and boarding actions, smaller in size at around ten kilometers. Even within the Sacred Selene Empire's already armor-obsessed naval designs, it was considered extreme.
Engines, armor, and void shields occupied over eighty percent of its structure. Only the remainder was left for the command bridge, servitor nexus, crew quarters, armories, supply holds, hangars, and other spaces.
It went without saying: such vessels could never operate independently. They required constant support, tethered to the fleet for fuel, munitions, and sustenance. Alone, they could not endure.
With the shuddering impact of the collision, on the boarding deck—beneath the golden double-headed eagle of the Empire and the roaring dragon emblem of the Third Legion Black Templars—three thousand warriors in purple-gold power armor stood in flawless formation.
Each bore reinforced modular Terminator plate. Haloed by deflection fields and plasma shields, they carried not only storm bolters and power weapons but also the arsenal of heavy fire teams: finely crafted melta cannons, rotary particle blasters, high-pressure flamethrowers—their great toys, ready for slaughter.
Fully armed, they stood unmoving as statues of marble.
At the fore, Hak Foo watched the shimmering layers of shield energy, gauging the projection range of the teleportation beams. Slowly, he raised his masterwork power fist.
"Advance!"
In that instant, the warship's surface, still slick with ichor and clinging Zerg flesh torn from Leviathan tendrils, convulsed with mountain-crushing force. Its countless guns, clustered as densely as a hive, roared in silence.
Shells from colossal macro-cannons, melta blasts, and lances of light streaked forth in unison, tearing across the void and striking the purple-black carapace of the Leviathan.
BOOOOOOMMMMM—!
Explosions and firestorms consumed the rugged armor plates. The swarming ranks of lesser Zerg circling the Queen of Blades' Leviathan were scattered in an instant.
"Activate the teleportation array!"
—
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