SW:Evolution of the RogueZerg5

Star Wars: Evolution of the Rogue Zerg


Chapter 5


Warning: Lockdown is commencing. Please refrain from attempting the usage of exits at this time. Thank you.



Hunter party leader Hiktic was absolutely panicked and furious. It seemed like only a second ago, he was in this outpost’s hangar mouthing off impatiently to some Republic troops in an attempt to make their leader appear faster. So their leader arrives fashionable late to finally bring him, Karsona, and the 14 other zerg that were under his command inside his base to talk. Then all of a sudden when everything seemed fine, the Republic officer goes crazy, walks out of the room with all of his troopers, and decides to lockdown the base.

So yes, now a new bloody thing that Hiktic has to deal with. Even with 5 hydralisks and 9 other combat ready zerglings at hand, getting out of this foreign metal box of a base was proving difficult. And not just that, but he and his zerg also have to make sure that Karsona doesn’t get killed.

“DAMN IT ALL!” he yelled as once again his recently sharpened claw failed at cutting into the metal door that separated all the zerg in this room from the rest of base, “This metal is much too thick to cut through.” His gazed turned to the other hunters. In the room, there were three doors: one that leads to the hangar, one that the Republic scum left through, and one that has an unknown path. Three other zerglings were trying to cut down the hangar door with him, the hydralisks were trying to break down the exit door by ramming into it, and the last six zerglings were trying to cut down the unknown door. He took a few steps back and thought about what more could be done while also examining everything in the room. He could barley concentrate over the sound of the chattering hunters and the feeling of rage flowing through his blood.

The telepathic voice of Overlord Ruktis then echoed into the heads of everyone in the room, “Do not panic, any of you. I’m absolutely sure that if you all stay calm and muster the intellect to do so, you’ll be able to escape.”

Hiktic couldn’t help himself, “Why in the flaming world would these Republicans turn on us all of a sudden?!” he thought back.

This time, Overlord Nibloth responded relatively coldly, “It is not the Republic at fault. We just so happened to unluckily come in contact with a maddened Republic officer who is psionically strong. I can feel his presence even from inside the hangar, and it is one that is immensely coated with the psionic energies that connects all us zerg together.”

Hiktic was stunned, “How is that possible?!”

“That I cannot answer; perhaps his religion has trained him to be strong in psionics, but once again, it is truly unknown to me. The only thing you all need to keep at mind at all times is that you must not engage him. Judging by the psionic presence he is emanating, I can roughly presume because of my education that he has been driven mad by the same dark energy that our ancestors used… the same energy that caused our ancestor Zasz as well as all other zerg at the time to be ruthless killing machines.”

At that point, all the zerg in the room had halted all movement. Every zerg alive knew the story of Zasz. And even though the story had been more light-heartedly told to everyone from birth, they all knew the truth behind it. The disgusting truth was that there was a massive history the evil deeds caused by the Zerg Swarm in the times before the Rogue Zerg’s separation from Zasz.

Hiktic knew that he had to work and think fast. He ordered the hydralisks at the exit door to step aside. After they did so, Hiktic fastened his ear canal to the door and tapped in various places. He found the door to be actually thinner than he expected, which mean that the metal must be relatively strong by itself. He did the same thickness test with the other two doors and found them to be the same as the first. He stepped back, thought hard, and then had an idea.

He turned to a hydralisk, “I’m not one of you, so I must ask. That acidic liquid you use to project your spines… can you excrete it by itself?” The hydralisk quickly confirmed his assumption to be true. Hiktic smiled, “Then try and see if you can melt this metal with it. If you can, then melt or soften the edges of the doors so we can knock them down easily.”

He knew that everyone was going to fine from that point. No puny humanoid could withstand the might of a force that has been trained by the Rogue Zerg! Even though he took to heart what Overlord Nibloth said about the officer Abdule Rithcus, with Hiktic’s leadership experience, he was going to make sure that not a single zerg in this building died.

While he waited for the hydralisks to work their magic, he walked over to Karsona, who was cowering in fear on the other side of the room’s large table. Before he approached with her sight, he quickly injected himself with a hormonal depressing reagent, and then walked over and sat right next to her.

He could see by the looking at her that she was scared out of her mind, though seemingly tried to not show it clearly in an attempt to be brave.

Her eyes fluttered over in Hiktic’s direction, “I’m scared.”

“Don’t you worry, we’ll all get out of this alive,” he reassured her, “All of us here have dealt with tougher things.”

He watched as she clenched her razor sharp teeth, “I’m just… so tired of… being the one who always messes everything up,” she just barely managed to choke up before slouching down and breaking into tears.

Hiktic gaped and then whispered, “What? Hey, hey… it’s not your fault. You heard what the Overlords said…,” he took his claw and stroked her crest reassuringly.

“Don’t you understand?!” she snapped and shoved Hiktic’s claw off of her crest and looked at him with a solid gaze, “Look at me and tell me, out of all of the zerg in this room, who are the ones who are actually able to do something useful?”

Hiktic leaned back up and fell silent.

She then looked away from him, “That’s what I thought.”

“Karsona, it isn’t your fault,” her attitude was beginning to annoy him. Even though he didn’t want to be mean, she was being irrational. Her emotions might put the party at risk, “Nothing that has ever happened to you is your fault, and if you weren’t so pessimistic all the time about it, you’d know it.”

Karsona began to reply, but then fell silent.

Hiktic began to stand back up, “Now if you’re done skulking over the irrelevant, then I believe it’s time we get going.” He stood in place next to her for a few moments, waiting for a reply. But she didn’t even stir.

He then started walking around the table to his troops but then turned back to her, “The Hive Mind sent you here for a reason,” she quickly looked up startlingly, “He could have sent any civilian here, but no, you think he sent the only civilian with no training here on accident?” She looked partially awed and surprised.

“And you know why? It’s because you are useful.”

He turned back around and walked past the table and to his troops right as the door leading to the hangar fell and hit the metallic hallway floor with a loud bang.

* * *

Kriss stormed around the base’s control room in a frenzy. For Master Rithcus to drop the entire responsibility of commanding the entire squad was a bother. They all may be RCs, but they only had the formal training of RCs and none of them had seen any action, unlike Kriss.

He had decided to break the ten other squad members into two teams of five that he was going to guide to the hangar through the control room. His intentions weren’t to kill the zerg, but to instead get the teams safely to the hangar and kill the zerg only if necessary. In a way, he was disregarding his orders to kill them first and then go to the hangar to meet Master Rithcus. But what the Rithcus didn’t know was that it was clone protocol to disregard orders from a Jedi if the orders were contradictory to the Republic’s goals. And even though he didn’t technically have that much leeway to follow that protocol since it was written by the Jedi and therefore the Jedi are the ones who are supposed to interpret it (meaning if Master Rithcus was in fact not insane at this moment and instead right to order the zerg’s deaths), then Kriss could be discharged from duty for mutiny.

He didn’t care; he wasn’t going to get his troops killed. Master Rithcus may have thought that these zerg could be killed easily, but there is a high chance that they couldn’t. The reason behind that is the fact that Kriss and the squad don’t have any combat statistics on the zerg whatsoever. So not only are the clones outnumbered, but they might possibly be outgunned as well.

“You know, you are quite the strangest being of them all,” a voice came from absolute nowhere.

Kriss startlingly took his hands off a control panel and looked quickly around every corner of the room to see who had spoken to him, but he saw no one, “Where are you, coward!?”

“Oh please, I’m a coward? Even though you’re the one confined to the safety of a sealed room?”

“Where the bloody hell are you?!”

“Why, I’m in the hangar. Or did you not know that we Overlords have such long distance telepathy? But in any case, I couldn’t help but oversee your strange mental aura of emotion. It’s strange, but interesting. It’s too bad that I never studied mind reading strategies, or I could have found out by know what you are doing cramped up in that room.”

Kriss gaped at realization of what was going on and his helpless inability to keep the voice out of his head. He then slowed his breathing into a calming state, and began to walk over to the camera controls to see where the squads were. He was hoping the voice of the Overlord would just go away and not distract him anymore.

He spoke into the comlink in his HUD, “Okay Doub, you and team one are approaching the armory, if you can secure all the arms in that area and then completely lock it down, we won’t have to worry about the zerg reaching it and taking advantage of that area.”

“Roger that, Kriss,” Double replied. Kriss then unlocked the doors in most of the southern hallways to let team one get through more easily to the armory.

“Oh how pitiful, it seems you have already forgotten that I’m still here,” the Overlord practically whispered.

Kriss froze solid. It just heard what he said to Double?! How was that possible?! He felt sick with anxiety as he thought of what that could mean.

“You know, the Hive Mind sent me, High Overlord Syrmatu the Intelligent, for a reason. I think I’ll tell you why, since I doubt that you’ll live much longer after this. I do not excel at mind reading as an extension of my psionic power, but what I do excel at is mind control.”

Kriss’s eyes widened as he quickly spoke into the HUD, “DOUBLE! Get your team ou-” Kriss was then cut off as he felt his mouth stop in mid sentence, unable to move. He then watched in horror as his hands, against his own will, lifted itself towards the computer’s comlink and his HUD, grabbed the communications controls on both, and easily crushed them with his strength.

“I’m sorry little one, but it seems you have only been trained to fight a physical battle, not a mental one,” Kriss then felt a splitting pain run down from his head, to all the way through his spinal cord. His body didn’t move in response to it though, but instead, he felt his consciousness recede to the back of his mind.

He watched as all of his actions were completely taken control of; his mouth even spoke out loud under Syrmatu’s control, “Now, I’ve been watching you through your own eyes recently and I witnessed you using this control right here to influence the doors. Noooow… let’s see what I can do to completely jeopardize your tactical advantage.

Kriss then watched as the Overlord cackled and proceeded to sabotage the lockdown system.

* * *

“Kriss, come in. Come in. Can you hear me, roger, roger… blast!” Double repeatedly tapped his HUD’s comlink transmitter, “Can any of you get a signal?” he gestured to the rest of the team.

“Na, Doub, none of us can, but our signals to team two are just fine. It’s just the connection to the control room that is broken,” one of them replied.

“Damnit,” Double muttered to himself. If something had happened to Kriss, then they had just lost their best combat advantage. Now not only do both teams have to lead themselves, but now they won’t know the location of the zerg.

Suddenly, one of the lockdown doors that had been unlocked moments ago closed quickly, separating two team members from him and the other three. Double stood up, rushed over, and hammered on it. It wouldn’t even budge, so he tried contacting them on the comlink. He got nothing but static. But then in the process, he realized that the comlink transmission to all of the squad had been broken. He turned to the other two troopers that were left and since he couldn’t talk to them, he signaled them to follow. Phase one of Kriss’s plan was over. Double had no long range communications and no statistics on the zerg’s location. He was going to try and make sure that the troopers that he was leading got safely to the hangar. No acquiring of extra arms, no pit stops, not anything. They were going to the hangar, and if anyone tried to stop him, he wouldn’t hesitate to open fire.

He gave hand signals to the other two to follow in a specific formation, and then led them down the only available hallway.

* * *

Thurk slithered right next to hunter party leader Hiktic and right in front of Ambassador Karsona as the entire hunter party of zerg moved at a swift-but-comfortable pace down the hallway. At a moments notice, he was ready to fire his spines at anyone who stood in their way. Thought they didn’t quite know where they were going, Overlord Ruktis was leading them around the lockdown in the fastest possible path to the hangar. The only problem was that because of so many inaccessible hallways, this path forced them to run around most the base. At the moment, they were heading to the southern part of the base, which was actually in the opposite direction of the hangar, but was unfortunately the fastest way to the hangar.

The voice of Ruktis filled all of the zerg’s heads, “You all should be arriving near the entrance to a large room that will be adjacent to the next turn coming up. Syrmatu is attempting to open the next two locked doors: the one right ahead of you and the one that comes after the next turn.”

Thurk himself was actually the most powerful hydralisk in the party, for his expertise had nearly given him a high enough status to become a lurker. It was mostly because his ambush tactics were finely tuned; his hearing was excellent, practically bordering on being able to sense all vibrations.

So as the party approached the next locked door, Thurk focused on the door, like he did with any prey that he sensed. He did this because a few of the lockdown doors the party encountered weren’t as sturdy as others, and could be broken down with a few steady running charges. So if High Overlord Syrmatu couldn’t open it before the party arrived at it, Thurk was going to break it down to save time.

But as they bridged the gap between them and the door, Thurk didn’t see, but heard movement from behind the door. He began to quickly think of what it could possibly be. He quickly came to only one logical conclusion of what could be behind it. The rest of the party was slowing down, since it seemed like the door wasn’t about to open, but Thurk didn’t. He kept slithering, listening intently on all movement that was behind the door.

“Hey! Hydralisk! What are you doing?” Thurk heard the voice of Hiktic behind him as he advanced. The sounds he heard behind the door sounded like the movement from two life forms. One was on the door’s far left and the other was in the middle.

And then Thurk heard a beeping noise coming from the far left life form. He instantly remembered that next to each lockdown door they passed, there was a small consol of sorts on one side or another.

The door then quickly swung open to reveal two Republic troops behind it, and behind them, a door to the large room that the Overlord had spoken about as well as the left turn at a corner. He heard the party behind him all of a sudden begin to move around in surprise. Thurk was only 20 feet from the troopers, so he gave a hissing roar with his raspy, hydralisk voice and charged with all the strength his tail could muster.

He stretched out his left arm as he charged straight into the trooper in the middle of the hallway so that he also struck the trooper on the left who had opened the door. His momentum and bulk sent the trooper he smashed into to go plummeting backwards until he slammed into the corner. He then spat a readied spine at the right leg of the trooper he had scraped with his claw. The trooper fell to his knee as Thurk’s spine logged itself in his thigh and began to dissolve his tissue.

Thurk turned around and yelled at the party, “Go around without me! I’ll hold these two off!”

He caught a quick glance of Hiktic nodding as the party quickly charged around Thurk and the corner in which they rocketed down the hallway to get away as quickly as possible. The trooper at the corner of the room quickly drew his weapon and fired only a few shots of bright blue light at the party before Thurk rapidly fired two spines at him. One of them hit and knocked his weapon out of his hand, and the other hit and nailed his wrist to the wall.

As that trooper screamed in pain, Thurk felt his shoulder and upper crest get hit by an immensely painful blast of heat from the weapon of the trooper right next to him. He turned, and before the trooper fired again, Thurk spat a spine into the barrel of the weapon which made it too damaged to fire. The trooper dropped the broken weapon while standing up quickly, despite is injured and melting right leg, and swiftly drew a similar but smaller, hand-sized weapon, only to have it knocked out of his hand by Thurk’s claw.

Thurk then heard something eject from the trooper’s right bracer as he coiled back for an underhand punch at Thurk’s head. The trooper’s counterattack missed as Thurk quickly reared back onto his tail, which increased his height to a point where he almost touched the hallway’s ceiling. Because Thurk was taller and in melee range of the trooper, he looked down and shot a spine into the top of the trooper’s head. The trooper went limp and fell to the floor immediately after.

Without looking, Thurk heard the trooper in the corner swiftly muster the strength to unfasten his hand from the wall, get up, eject a punching dagger from both bracers, and charge at Thurk. After the dead trooper hit the ground, in one swift motion, Thurk reared back down to a normal height, solidly stuck his claws into the ground, and whipped his tail around just in time to trip the charging trooper. The trooper’s charge had gained himself enough momentum to plummet thirty feet away from Thurk after tripping.

A few months ago, Thurk had grown himself a useful set of opposable thumbs in the evolution chamber back home, so he had not too much trouble picking up the body of the dead trooper and hurling it at the still living trooper. The giant weight of dying, melting flesh and plastic armor landed on its target right square on the chest. The supposedly living trooper didn’t attempt to lift the corpse up off of him as Thurk slithered over to him at a leisurely pace.

Thurk looked down at the still barley breathing trooper; he could just taste the fear emanating from him. Thurk then made a snap decision. If this trooper had fought him only because of orders, then he would be grateful for Thurk to do this, but if he had fought Thurk for personal or sadistic reasons, then the trooper would suffer deliciously.

Thurk reached behind himself into a small pouch he had hanging from his organically plated backside and pulled out an injection parasite that had a liquid solution in it. Recently, not to long before he was chosen to be a part of this expedition, some drone scientists back at the Hive asked him to test some of their concoctions on creatures he encounters on missions or hunts. So here he was, about to inject what was supposedly a solution with a virus into this barley living soul. The drones had told Thurk that this particular solution would spread “our race’s essence” into the body of the subject.

Thurk placed the parasite on the trooper. It scurried over to a weak part of armor on the trooper’s neck and injected its needle-like proboscis into his neck. After it emptied its fluid into the trooper, Thurk picked the dead body up off of the trooper and laid it next to the living trooper. Thurk pulled out another filled parasite with a different kind of solution and did the same to the dead one as he did to the living trooper.

Thurk then slithered off around the corner and considered chasing after the party, but then glanced at the opened door to the large room the Overlord spoke of. He slithered into the room and examined it. It was completely dull, except that it was completely filling with containers, storage wracks, and selves that all had Republic trooper weapons in or on them.

Thurk hissed in delight, “I wonder what I could possibly do with all of this?”