Broken Wide

Tactical Data L45.967.22

Remnants of the damaged audio files recovered from the wreckage of the battlecruiser
Emperor’s Fury (holo files were completely unsalvageable).

Subject: Private Maren Ayers, Medic, 128th Platoon “Iron Jesters”.

Receiving: Captain Serl Gentry, Doctor, Special Research Ops.

Captain Gentry:
Have a seat, Private. I can imagine that you’re upset after what you’ve just been through.

Private Ayers:
Upset? Don’t be silly, Captain: this wasn’t a complete surprise. Nature doesn’t just adapt.
Nature cheats, changes the rules, and slips out the back door with your wallet while you’re still
trying to figure out what happened.

Captain Gentry:
I’m not sure I follow.

Private Ayers:
Sorry; those aren’t my words. That’s from my father, the venerable Dr. Talen Ayers. It’s his
own special flavor of insight: one part renowned research geneticist and two parts backwoods
yokel. Always embarrassed the hell out of me.

He’d throw that proverb out whenever I complained about unexpected results in my research.
Force of habit, I suppose.

Captain Gentry:
Private, if we could start at the beginning?

Private Ayers:
It’s like the time an entire control group of my fruit flies decided to breed small enough to
escape the netting in its container and spread into the other habitats. They deliberately ruined
three months of long-chain protein sculpts. At least it seemed deliberate to me.

I was twelve at the time and had been slaving away on my own custom mutation of Drosophila
melanogaster for a school project. Dad just laughed, told me to use jam jars next time. Old
bastard. He didn’t have a clever maxim ready when I dropped out of grad school to join the
marines, did he now?

Captain Gentry:
Private Ayers, if we could please just stick to the matter at hand?

Private Ayers:
Sorry – too personal? You said to start at the beginning, but I guess you’re not interested in my
daddy-daughter issues. It’s just… it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to really talk with
anybody who has more than a boot-camp education, and we’ve got a long flight back to
civilized space.

Captain Gentry:
(Clears his throat.)

Private Ayers:
OK, I’ll cut to the chase.

Captain Gentry:
Please.

Private Ayers:
Six months back, our platoon was headed to a remote sentry outpost on the frosty side of
Anselm, swapping chairs with the poor slobs who had been assigned to that ice world for the
previous year. We had just warped in-system and were calculating to make our final jump
when we got the priority call from Korhal IV: all Minotaur-class battlecruisers were being
recalled to the capital to be refitted for interatmospheric combat.

Instructions were for any non-critical missions to belay their progress, drop any passengers and
payloads at the nearest habitable checkpoint, and warp to HQ posthaste. Retrieval would be
assumed by secondary military vessels as command deemed appropriate. That sobered us up
real fast. You know as well as I do that the term “habitable” can be used a little too loosely by
the Dominion.

Captain Gentry:
Unexpected transfers are a part of military life, Private.

Private Ayers:
Yeah, well, I don’t think anybody was happy about being indefinitely sidelined for a vehicle
upgrade.

Our nav comp calculated that the nearest rock fitting these criteria was a barren mining world
on the edge of our in-system range: Sorona. You’ve seen it – a rust-orange planet with a
slender asteroid ring around its midsection. Looks like a fat kid wearing a dirty little belt.

Captain Gentry:
(Laughs, then catches himself.)

Yes, I’ve seen Sorona.

Private Ayers:
Right. I’d been a medic with the 128th platoon for two years at that point. We called ourselves
the Iron Jesters, under the command of Lieutenant Travis Orran. Only a handful of our crew
had ever seen combat before, and most of that was just minor peacekeeping actions. Yeah, we
were hardly the Heaven’s Devils, I know; they don’t send war heroes out to sit watch on
Anselm. Regardless, I don’t think any of us imagined that our temporary setback was going to
be somewhat more than temporary.

That was six months ago. Six months, Doc.

Captain Gentry:
That’s Captain….

Private Ayers:
Regardless, there was no welcoming committee waiting for us on the hot tarmac.

Captain Gentry:
This is not uncommon, Private. Some of the smaller colonies lack the personnel to keep a
starport fully staffed.

Private Ayers:
This wasn’t a case of arriving during lunch break, Doc. The place was empty. Had been for a
long time.

The lieutenant’s plan was to gather whatever supplies we could carry and slog the fifteen miles
to the nearest colonial outpost, a little hole in the ground called Cask. There we would make
contact with the local mayor and try to find a comfortable place to camp out for the duration.
Lieutenant Orran joked that we’d at least be able to work on our tans before shipping out to
Anselm. There were a few laughs; I think we were all trying to look on the bright side of the
situation.

The zerg cut that short.

(This is followed by a long pause and the sound of Gentry shifting in his seat.)

Captain Gentry:
Please, Private.

Private Ayers:
We were about five miles from the colony when the ground just… just exploded all around us.
All I can remember is a chittering sea of claws, gnashing teeth, and blood. So much blood. The
zerg swam through our platoon like fish in an ocean of red. Private Braden was just in front of
me, and I watched as his arm was ripped clean off – armor, bone, everything – and he went
down under a pair of the beasts.

You and I both know there hadn’t been any zerg activity in terran space for years. I’d heard of
these xenos, seen the training vids. But nothing can prepare you for the sheer animal terror
that hits you when these monsters attack. The speed. The savagery. I’ve seen hundreds of zerg
since that time, but the first attack still haunts me. Always will.

(Another long pause.)

Captain Gentry:
So how did you survive the ambush, Private?

Private Ayers:
Well, it was the lieutenant who kept his head, who finally pulled us out of a blind panic. He
called for the Jesters to drop their packs, circle up, and open fire. I can remember his voice –
steady and even in the midst of that chaos. He’s a good leader. A good man.

Five marines were already wet piles on the sand before the first shot was fired. On instinct, I
had holstered my A-13 and was headed to Braden with medkit charging when Private Delme
grabbed me and shouted that I should save my breath. She was right. There’s not much my
nanos can do when a marine’s had his viscera pulled out through the belly of his CMC.

It probably wasn’t two minutes before Lieutenant Orran called for a halt. The smoke cleared,
and we just stood there, stunned.

Captain Gentry:
Stunned? Come now, Private. All Dominion marines are trained for the eventuality of a zerg
attack.

Private Ayers:
You’ve never seen combat with the zerg, have you, Doc?

Our troop of sixty marines had just dropped by twelve, and three more would be joining them
shortly. The zerg had caught us flat-footed, and all the training in the world hadn’t counted for
squat. The worst part? After checking and double-checking, we were only able to recover ten
alien bodies. Ten xenos. A handful of zerglings had taken out a quarter of our platoon in a
matter of minutes.

And we wouldn’t have seen the next dawn if the colonists hadn’t heard our shots and come to
investigate. We saw a dust cloud on the horizon, red in the evening light. The lieutenant called
us into formation, and we readied ourselves for another attack. Then we heard the welcome
sputtering of a heavy terran motor. A mining vehicle – a big ore loader, by the look of it – was
heading our way, and we started cheering.

The cheer stopped when the vehicle got within eyesight.

Captain Gentry:
Not what you had expected?

Private Ayers:
Let’s just say that the loader had seen better days. Deep gashes cut through the chassis in
places, and the treads appeared to have been gnawed through on one side. Mounted on the
front of the transport were two hydralisk skulls, and the plasteel headlights shone grimly
through the empty sockets. Not the welcome wagon we’d been hoping for, but at least it had
room to spare for our platoon in the dented ore trailer. We loaded up and tried to ignore the
hopeless look on the faces of the civvies crewing the thing. They’d obviously been expecting
more than our wide-eyed platoon.

We got the story on the drive back. The zerg had first hit the outlying Soronan settlements
about eight months ago and then quickly swept across the remaining terran holdings. Yes,
that’s right – eight months. The colonists claimed to have been sending emergency messages
to the Dominion and any nearby ports on a daily basis ever since then. No reply. They assumed
that their comm station must have been faulty. Helluva time for the fones to go out, huh, Doc?

Captain Gentry:
So how did a civilian population of unarmed miners survive an eight-month siege by one of the
most dangerous enemies mankind has ever come across? This has us baffled.

Private Ayers:
Any chance you got a look at the recon vids from when youfinally decided to show up? If they
haven’t already, have your tech boys pull up the schematics on Cask.
The colony is well named. Situated in one of the most perfect natural fortresses I could ever
imagine, the colony is a military architect’s dream come true. Cask is nestled in the folds of a
high-walled canyon that terminates under a massive arch of rock. Apart from providing shade
from the planet’s twin suns, the arch shields the colony from anything but the heaviest air
attack. A land-based assault would be forced through a narrow bottleneck that the miners
have affectionately named the Wedge. Even our single transport was scraping the walls as the
miners opened the scarred paristeel gates to let us pass inside the makeshift barricade.

Doc, the zerg had been swarming the Wedge for eight months on a daily basis and had been
held off by civvies armed with shotguns and mining lasers. It was the first time I’d ever heard
of civilians stemming a zerg assault, and I think we dared to hope that a strategy of attrition
might bear fruit. The zerg couldn’t sustain this kind of activity on a practically lifeless world
forever, could they?

Captain Gentry:
I am unable to relay any further scientific information on the xenos than what you have been
cleared to see in your training vids, Private. Please continue with your report.

Private Ayers:
Right. Sorry.

So we made contact with the local leader, who grew more and more despondent as we made
it clear that, no, we weren’t part of a larger force and, no, we didn’t have any idea when our
transport would return. The colony’s doctor had taken his own life only a month before, so I
found myself quickly inundated with sick and injured civvies.

Malnourishment had set in once the supplies had run low, and the civilians were scraping
together whatever they could from the beleaguered hydroponic gardens and a native mold
that grew along the shadowed edges of the canyon. The stuff was acidic, tasted like paste, and
had an odd peppery scent. But it had enough protein and carboxylic compounds to keep the
people from starving. The acid had worn through most of the enamel on their teeth, so I
actually spent a lot of time doing dental extractions. Not what you’d expect following a zerg
attack, I know.

The first wave of zerg hit only an hour after our arrival. We were unloading what gear we had
been able to bring with us when the Klaxon went off. In between the sounding alarms, I could
hear a rustling crescendo as the canyon walls seemed to shiver. The lieutenant had us drop
everything and take posts along the makeshift walls the civvies had erected.

Being ambushed by the zerg is one thing. Being prepped, locked, and loaded for them is an
altogether different experience. The first zerglings turned the corner to meet a withering
crossfire of three dozen C-14 rifles and eight mining lasers. A shower of ichor painted the
canyon walls, and the next wave of creatures rushed forward, the aliens wet from the remains
of their siblings. They were mowed down just as quickly.

The next twenty minutes were filled with regular bursts of gunfire punctuated by the hissing
cries of dying zerg. After it became obvious that my field-dressing skills wouldn’t be needed, I
took a spot on the wall and started firing with a loaned C-7.

Firing. Punching wet holes into zerglings. Watching them squirm, drop to the ground, twitch
before going still. Hippocratic Oath notwithstanding, it felt good.
Captain Gentry:
Mmm?

Private Ayers:
Yeah. It felt really good. Putting spikes through those fekking demons. After they had
murdered so many of us… just being able to kill and kill and kill and…

(Soft sounds of crying.)

Captain Gentry:
(Into his lapel) This is Gentry. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get any further here. Get
meds down here and a gurney prepped for –

Private Ayers:
No! No, I’ll be alright. Just need… just need a minute.

Captain Gentry:
(Still into his lapel) Hold on that.

Private Ayers:
(Sniffs, then takes a big breath.)

I apologize, Captain. For a moment I was back down there and…

Captain Gentry:
Steel yourself, Private. This is information the Dominion needs to save lives. Remember that.

Private Ayers:
Save lives? Ha. I’m glad you put it that way, Doc. That will make this much easier.

So my platoon is locked down on this dirt world, and the zerg are hitting us on a daily basis.
Like clockwork. We hold the line. Days go by. Weeks.

We learned to conserve ammo, relying on the mining lasers the civvies had jury-rigged onto
platforms above the walls to control the xenos. The Wedge really did seem to nullify the zerg
offense: no matter how many claws stormed down that canyon, they could only get close
enough to scratch at the barricades before being picked off. It was almost more work to burn
away the corpses with the lasers when the attack was over.

We settled into a routine. Attacks would come at indeterminate times during the day, but only
once in any twenty-four hour period. It started with a few dozen zerglings, then spilled into a
rush – hundreds of the things crawling over each other in such masses that each shot was
guaranteed to pierce two or three bodies at a time.

Captain Gentry:
Alright, Private, now we’re getting to the important information. What form did the attacks
take? Were you only assaulted by the smaller zergling strain?

Private Ayers:
Yes. I asked about the other types of zerg that I’d learned about – hydralisks, ultralisks,
devourers – you know, the whole cast of uglies. Apparently they had been part of the initial
assaults, but their numbers had diminished as the siege wore on.

Captain Gentry:
Diminished?

Private Ayers:
Diminished and then disappeared entirely. The colonists noted this as a significant change as
the months passed, and we surmised that this was a sign of the zerg population being worn
down to its cheapest weapons.

Captain Gentry:
Is that still what you think was happening?

Private Ayers:
No. I wish I had seen it for what it really was.

Captain Gentry:
Care to elaborate?

Private Ayers:
I’ll get there. You need to hear the rest to understand.

The civvies were grateful to have us there, and they made sure that we were provided with
water from the colony well and ammunition hot off the colony’s modified tool factory. The
food and supplies that we’d packed in provided some relief, and our tech-savvy Private Hughes
did a checkup on the comm gear. It was all up to spec: as far as he could tell, the messages had
been going out. It’s just that nobody was answering.

(A long pause. Captain Gentry again clears his throat.)

Captain Gentry:
Go on.

Private Ayers:
It wasn’t until the first few weeks had gone by that my suspicions started to grow.

Captain Gentry:
About the comm system?

Private Ayers:
No, about the zerg. Why would I be suspicious about the comm? I’m no techie. It was the
constant and utterly fruitless zerg attacks that got me thinking.

I was reminded of an argument I’d had with my father after his lecture one day. We had been
focused on evolutionary theory, and I made the mistake of complaining about one of his tenets
– something about instances of mutation occurring more frequently in populations that
suffered from drastically diminished numbers. I thought it was ridiculous to consider a
population of organisms as some sort of collective unconsciousness that could react to threats
with a gestalt reasoning apart from the whole.
Captain Gentry:
“Gestalt reasoning”? Private, I’ll give you high marks for vocabulary, but you’ve just used a lot
of fancy words to describe the widely accepted zerg cerebrate concept. It’s certainly nothing
new or groundbreaking.

Private Ayers:
Pardon me, Doc, but I don’t think you understand. That’s not what he was proposing. He
claimed that a separate population of individuals within a species could have a group-wide
increase in its offspring’s mutation frequency due to severely dropping numbers. This supposes
that some sort of biochemical communication exists at the genetic level for all species. Even
my damn fruit flies.

Captain Gentry:
So… you’re saying that an isolated group can mutate to deal with unexpected situations. This is
nature slipping out the back door with your wallet, right?

Private Ayers:
Well, you’re getting warmer.

The theory was stupid, I thought. It didn’t follow any formulas, algorithms, or predictable
patterns. Most of science is like a pistol, right? You load it, pull the trigger, and it fires a slug.
Once you understand the mechanism, you can predict it every time. Why do you think I joined
the marines? Daddy issues aside, I mean. Fire guns; patch the holes they make; and win the
battle. Simple, clean, and easy. My father hated my hunger for that simplicity, an unrealistic
black-and-white universe that he called “a foolish binary fantasy.”

“Maren,” he’d say, “sometimes A plus B doesn’t equal C. Sometimes it equals M; sometimes it
equals 42; and sometimes it responds in the form of an essay. You have to accept the fact that
the most important questions have too many facets for you to count. You have to step back
and be content with the fuzzy big picture.”

He failed me that semester in spite of perfect test scores. Said I just didn’t get the most
important part.

Captain Gentry:
So Cask had you rethinking your father’s theories?

Private Ayers:
Yeah. It burns me to say it, but yeah. Something about being stranded on a desolate rock,
being surrounded by homicidal cockroaches, and eating alien mold. I finally started to see the
big picture. Father would be so proud of his little girl.

First of all, why would supposedly intelligent spacefaring aliens deliberately and systematically
throw their forces at an impenetrable target? And why do so at such a constant, methodical
rate? Cask certainly didn’t hold any position of strategic importance. Neither did Sorona, for
that matter.

My studies in xenobiology had never gone too deep; I was out of school, out from under my
father’s thumb, before zerg physiology was really taught at a scholastic level. From what I’d
been able to piece together from the dumbed-down boot-camp vids, the zerg Overmind used
an adaptive form of DNA to incorporate other useful bits from distinct, unrelated organisms
into its own genetic palette. This made my fruit fly gene sculpting look like child’s play.
What if whatever consciousness was controlling this population had recognized a unique
dilemma in this terran holdout on Sorona? What if my father’s theory was true? What if the
inverse relationship between a population’s survival rate and random mutations was a concept
not only understood by this consciousness, but also used to overcome obstacles when all other
tactics proved useless? Was our desperate holdout providing a damn testing ground for the
enemy?

Captain Gentry:
I’m impressed, Private. I can’t go into detail here, but your field analysis syncs up with much of
the data our tactical team has been running through. What was your conclusion?

Private Ayers:
I had to know. Had to know if we were being used, even helping the zerg by playing into a
forced mutation strategy. We had to seek out the hive responsible for this population of xenos.
We had to destroy it.

The lieutenant laughed at me. I tried explaining it to him again, and he cut me off; this time his
expression was stern. He told me that he had no idea how long we were going to be stuck on
this rock and that, through the grace of whatever god looked out for atheist marines, he had
found a way to keep his platoon alive in the midst of a zerg assault. He was going to sit tight
and wait for the cavalry. “Leave the science to the scientists, Private.”

That stung. Believe it or not, it stung. I’d been trying to distance myself from my father and his
world of intellectual vagaries for years, and now I ached for that understanding. That
perspective. Here I was literally stuck in the center of what was potentially the next
evolutionary step of an entire species, and I lacked the tools, training, and support to do
anything about it.

Captain Gentry:
So what did you do?

Private Ayers:
I did what I could. I waited until the next attack had petered out, and I climbed over the
barricade.

Captain Gentry:
A little field research?

Private Ayers:
Exactly.

The other marines all started shouting, and I could hear Private Delme calling to the lieutenant.
Something about “losing another quack to suicide,” and I had to smile at her tender concern.
Hey, if the pattern held true, the next attack wouldn’t come until tomorrow morning at the
soonest.

The lieutenant had reached the top of the wall and was yelling by the time my feet hit the
sand. I ignored him and got to work, collecting samples from carcasses. The attenuated surgical
lasers on my armor made quick work of this, and I kept my C-7 at the ready in case the
zerglings weren’t as dead as they seemed.
By the time I had gathered a good sampling, Lieutenant Orran had raised the gate and was
standing just inside, fuming.

What was he going to do? Shoot the only medic on the planet? I was shouted at for a good
hour and then confined to quarters. The moment my door was shut I set to work, turning the
room into a miser’s laboratory. Most of the equipment I needed could be adapted from the
instrumentation in my armor, and within the hour I was doing comparative analysis on the
flesh of our attackers.

Captain Gentry:
You built a lab out of your armor? Again, I’m impressed, Private.

Private Ayers:
You higher-ups think we grunts are all a bunch of brain-dead apes, don’t you? Didn’t really
expect us to see what was going on?

Captain Gentry:
“Going on”? I don’t know what you’re implying, Private, but I suggest you continue with your
report.

Private Ayers:
Uh-huh. The lab was nothing fancy – just enough to run some basic tests. It didn’t take long to
locate the mutation, even with my rusty training. You know how human transplant surgery is
all about fighting the host’s bodily rejection of the foreign new flesh? Well, imagine the
reaction if the new cells are from an entirely different species.

The zerglings’ connective tissue – the tough, leathery stuff that binds the hardened zerg
exoskeleton to muscle tissue – was blistering. Every sample that I collected showed some level
of swelling and agitation due to the bulbous pustules clustered across it.

My next discovery took me completely by surprise. The agitated flesh had a unique peppery
smell. A smell I’d grown accustomed to at every meal since we’d arrived on Sorona.

Captain Gentry:
The same smell as the –

Private Ayers:
Why the zerg would want to absorb a local mold into their potpourri of genetic features was
beyond me.

Maybe this wasn’t deliberate. An alien infection caused by some?? insidious algae? Ha. I
doubted that anything could get through the bio-defenses of these monsters, but it was
possible. I decided to dissect one of the smaller blisters, an angry green specimen the size of
my fingertip. I charged up the med-laser and made a small incision.

Captain Gentry:
And?

Private Ayers:
And I woke up two hours later in the med-bay with my skin burning. Lieutenant Orran was
standing over my gurney, his face sick with worry. He told me how the grenade had brought
him running, how he had found me underneath a collapsed wall in the next room. That’s when
I glanced down and saw the remnants of my suit. The entire right side looked like a candle that
had been held to a flame: the armored plates had been fused together. The lieutenant told me
that, the next time I wanted to “off” myself, I should remove my armor first. Yeah, he’s a funny
guy.

I asked him to take me to my quarters. Either Lieutenant Orran was feeling pity or he had just
given up fighting me, because he ducked under my arm and half dragged, half carried me from
the med-bay. My room had been flattened, with the walls blown out in all directions. I was
lucky to have survived.

“This wasn’t a grenade,” I told the lieutenant. “It was a blister.”

He laughed, convinced that I’d gone insane. I asked him to explain how I had managed to find
an acid grenade in my quarters. He supposed that I’d cobbled it together from parts of my suit:
they’d found pieces of my makeshift lab scattered throughout the wreckage. I could hardly
fault him, you know. Who would believe my story about vicious alien pustules?

In the end, I was confined to another room with Private Delme on constant watch. My skin
blistered, cracked, and then started peeling; you can still see the patches on my hand here. I
told the private about my worries, about the need to broadcast what was happening here. I
told her that maybe news of a new zerg mutation would get somebody to listen to us.

She only nodded, smiled, and then focused on cleaning her sidearm. Delme must have cleaned
that stupid thing a dozen times over the next few days.

Captain Gentry:
Meanwhile, your troop was still coming under daily zerg assaults, correct?

Private Ayers:
The zerg? Oh, no. They stopped coming.

Captain Gentry:
They stopped?

Private Ayers:
Yes, sir. One last assault the morning after my accident, and then nothing. Delme told me that
everybody was being cautiously optimistic, and even I dared to hope. Maybe this really was
some sort of miraculous infection that had blistered the zerg into submission. Did we owe our
lives to the Soronan mold?

Lieutenant Orran relented after a few days and let me out of my confinement. I’m not sure
who was more relieved: me or Private Delme. Another week went by without incident, and the
lieutenant decided to risk a scouting party. He picked three marines from a crowd of raised
hands; we were all feeling some high-grade claustrophobia after so long in that damned
Wedge.

I found some tools and got to work on my poor melted suit, and I freed up the leg joints to a
point where I could wear the ugly thing. Zerg or no, it felt better to walk around in my modified
CMC again. I wasn’t the crazy wannabe scientist anymore. I was a Dominion medic, damn it.
My father’s views on nature as a shrewd pickpocket had been gloriously shattered by an
infectious mold.
Captain Gentry:
Yes, yes. What did the scouting party find?

Private Ayers:
We were all curious when it got back, and the civvies gathered around too, hopeful to hear if
the attacks were over for good. Lieutenant Orran decided to break protocol and take the
report in front of the crowd.

Orran asked if the party had encountered any hostiles. The three marines just looked at each
other and smiled. Private Godard even started laughing. They said that they’d found an entire
valley full of sick, dying zerg. Claimed that the beasts were swollen with disease, sluggish.

Private Evans said that they had spent the afternoon emptying their clips into “the poor
bastards.”

The civvies started cheering, and Lieutenant Orran had a big grin on his face. It was the first
time those canyon walls had echoed something akin to hope in a long time. But something the
marine had said struck me as odd. Maybe I’d misheard him. I had to shout over the noise.

I asked if they’d really emptied all of their clips. I asked how many of these sick zerglings they
had seen. Evans smirked and shrugged his shoulders. Said he wasn’t sure, but the valley was
full of ’em.

My insides went cold. This was wrong. Very wrong. An infectious disease would result in a
population producing fewer offspring, not more. The zerg weren’t dying. The zerg had found
their mutation. A new strain was swarming, and the Wedge was about to burst wide open.

I turned and ran. Lieutenant Orran called after me, confused by my reaction. I had to get to the
comm station, had to make some attempt at getting the message out. I don’t remember how
long I ran, but I made it to the station by the time the first explosions started echoing through
Cask.

(Another long pause.)

Captain Gentry:
Private?

Private Ayers:
The rest you know, or at least most of it. You heard my message. You came. The right
motivation got you here with an entire fleet of battlecruisers in only four days. Four fekking
days! You monsters had been listening to this colony die for months and didn’t lift a damn
finger until we had some precious military intel for you!

Captain Gentry:
I’ll ask you one more time for the rest of your report, Private. You’re on dangerous ground
here.

Private Ayers:
The rest of my report? You want to know what happened in those four days? I got to see a wall
we’d defended for six months dissolve under a slowly crawling wave of acid. I got to watch a
platoon of marines giving their lives one by one, trying to stop an endless horde of swollen
green xenos inching closer and closer with every detonation. I watched the last rays of hope
disappear in those marines’ eyes as the next generation of explosive zerglings arrived –
creatures that had gained the ability to roll into balls and project themselves along the terrain
faster than a fully armed marine can run.

And finally… finally I got to watch a colony of civilians die, screaming in slow motion while this
new breed of zerg destroyed Cask inch by inch, an endless series of explosions echoing through
the Wedge.

Captain Gentry:
That’s your report?

Private Ayers:
That’s my report. Yes, I know that I have rambled and not shown you the proper respect due a
superior officer. I also know that I’m not going to see the end of this flight, that you’re just the
first and gentlest of the Dominion interrogators who will be visiting me. I’ve known ever since
you brought me onboard with Lieutenant Orran. He’s not going to see daylight either, is he?

Captain Gentry:
If that is all, Private, I can have you escorted to –

Private Ayers:
That is most certainly not all. Perhaps you’ve been listening close enough to my report to know
what this is.

(Sounds of a gasp and a chair scraping backwards.)

Yes, I brought a sample for your labs, Doc. It’s significantly bigger than my fingertip, isn’t it?

Sit down. Sit down, sir. You stand up again, and I will blow this room through the fekking hull. I
barely survived a blast in a suit of armor, and that pustule wasn’t half as big as this one. That’s
right: sit still.

You were so anxious to get my report; you probably should have gotten me out of this beat-up
suit of armor first, eh? Or at least searched my storage vials for foreign matter, maybe
deactivated my little lasers? A dumb field medic would never turn violent, would never
suspect….

Captain Gentry:
(Whispering into his lapel) This is Gentry: I need security in interrogation room 7E stat.

Private Ayers:
Oh, by all means, call for security. This won’t take long.

I know that you bastards heard our cries. That you’d been listening the entire time. I know that
you wanted to see how long a civilian population could stand against an incursion. And I know
that you wanted to see how the infamous zerg adaptability would deal with an insurmountable
problem. I can read the excitement in your eyes from this new data, you sick, murderous
sonuvabitch. Well, I’ve got some bad news for you.

I saw something else in those four days. I saw the zerg pull back once they’d beaten the Wedge
and destroyed the colony. The lieutenant and I watched the creatures turn and crawl from the
smoking ruins of Cask, watched from our hiding place in the cliff face where you found us. They
left because their experiment was done. It was a success.

You thought you were experimenting on them? They were experimenting on themselves. It’s
how they grow, how they become stronger.

And for the last twenty-four hours before your fleet arrived, we listened to the massive spore
cannons that they’d grown in the surrounding mountain ranges. Cannons that could have been
turned on Cask at any time, mind you. But that would have ruined the experiment. No, these
cannons were firing spores into space – no doubt on trajectories to other zerg planets. They
were sharing what they’d learned with the rest of the Swarm. I know that it has been years
since we’ve seen any zerg activity in terran space. But I hope you’re prepared for the next
encounter. The zerg are coming. The zerg are nature in all her fury.

Still recording? Good.

Dad was right, Doctor. Nature doesn’t just adapt. Nature cheats, changes the rules, and slips
out the back door with your wallet while you’re still trying to figure out what the hell
happened. Now shut off your recording and stand up.

(The recording registers a long pause, a gasp, and a wet explosion. It then cuts to static.)