Saul was picked for the drop team not long after the Protoss army was seen moving south of their base, leaving their defences open for a small window of time. The scan that revealed this lack of defence also revealed the Protoss’ technological advances, which were still meager in comparison to the intel that Flynn updated them with en route to the drop zone. That was all they knew on the Medivac, and it seemed good enough to let the worry slip to the back of Saul’s mind. Flynn was sitting next to Saul, looking out one of the windows. Not just looking, but staring. He was seeing something. Saul tapped him on the shoulder and Flynn brushed him off.
“Shut up,” he muttered, “do you see that?”
Saul did not have to look more than a few seconds to see what Flynn was talking about, and right away he could see why Flynn looked so worried. Usually he was never nervous going out on drops, but on those times they were stealth—this time was different. What Flynn saw was essentially nothing and everything at the same time. The air just outside the window of the Medivac looked different than the air around it. It looked as though someone poured a thick, clear liquid into water. Saul almost mistook it for the heat from the Medivac’s exhaust until he noticed the shape and, as Flynn used to say when he didn’t really get the joke until later, the penny dropped. Four little tendrils trailed behind what looked like a steel eye.
“It’s an Observer,” Saul whispered. Flynn nodded, and then finally broke vision of the thing outside the window. “Pilot, relay message to command, Observer spotted and it is following us. Do we still proceed?”
The pilot did as she was told, and with great speed. She knew the ramifications of a scouted drop ship. The Protoss has had time to prepare, which compromises the lives of the people in the Medivac, as well as the effectiveness of the mission. They could be running right into a massacre. Saul anxiously awaited the reply from the command center. His stomach shrunk when the pilot turned around.
“Copy that,” she said, removing the two fingers she had pressed to her ear. “Command says that the drop will continue as planned. They are planning an attack at the front which will stall their defences if they return.
Saul said nothing, but Flynn couldn’t contain himself. “But the scan went down hours ago, do you honestly think their base looks anything like it did then? No.”
“We have our orders, marine,” the pilot said. “Our infantry is prepared for most of their ground forces.”
She was right about that. The three Maurader units were equipped with concussive shells that slowed them down and gave the marines some distance. But it all didn’t really matter if they were shot down before they even were dropped off.
The cloaking field on the Observer was similar to the one that Saul once saw tested on one of their Banshees, a ground-assault air ship, but of course it looked far better. This was something Saul judged based on how close he came to not seeing the Observer at all. That worry that he let slip to the back of his mind was back again, and now it was scraping around in his head. He wondered if Flynn was feeling the same and then decided that he was based on the way Flynn was repeatedly tapping the side of his gun with his thumb. The nervous tick of a man who is afraid to die. Saul imagined that Flynn was thinking about what he would lose if these are his last moments alive, and honestly there wasn’t much. They were both prisoners, only serving to lessen their sentences; Flynn was essentially going back to base—probably to do another drop later the next day. Things just worked that way. You break the law and it breaks you back, and it definitely broke Flynn. Saul looked out for him for that reason—Flynn was broken and Saul picked up the pieces when he wasn’t looking. Saul realized that he would lose that job, that responsibility even, and Flynn would lose him.
The pilot turned around again. “Approaching drop zone, all personnel prepa—
A loud crack blasted through the ship, followed by several direct hits on the starboard side. The Medivac rocked back and forth and for a moment Saul felt like he was on an amusement park ride, holding onto the metal bars so that he was safe. The feeling passed just as the next round of fire hit the Medivac, this time causing a breach up near the front of the ship. The pilot had to shield her eyes from the sparks that spat out of the control console.
“Taking evasive action. What’s shooting us!?” The pilot asked the question to anyone who would listen. Judging by the sparking now spewing out of the cockpit, Saul guessed it was addressed to them. Flynn looked out the window and the horror in his eyes was enough to make Saul laugh. Sometimes it was all you could do.
Flynn pushed himself away from the window, past Saul and into the space in the middle of all the seats. “Phoenix! You need to drop us or we all die.” And as if those were the magic words, the doors behind them opened.
The fall was a short one, but Saul knew it would hurt. He landed as he was trained to land, but he could feel the bone in his left shin get that much more brittle. If it had broken, the marine suit would do its best to support him, but it wasn’t much. He would need to limp for the rest of this mess, at least until he got back to base if not for the rest of his life.
The Phoenix above them was joined by a second one and they continued firing at the Medivac. More marines and Maurader units were still in there, trying to unload. Flynn was already firing at one of the Pheonixes, depleting its shield reserves. Saul was about to join in when the Medivac above them erupted in a ball of fire and burning metal. Debris rained down overtop of them, and one of the engines came down on top of one of the Maurader units, killing him instantly. One minute he was there, the next Saul only saw the engine. It was only he, Flynn, and one other marine remaining, one of the recruits from the expansion. They were all shooting at the same Phoenix, inflicting hull damage. Saul heard Flynn screaming in either fear or anger, but probably both, as he fired almost blindly into the air. The other marine took a few steps forward and was surrounded by a blue aura that was at the end of a beam emitted from the damaged Phoenix. The marine turned around to say something to Saul, but Saul couldn’t hear a word of it. It was like someone took a remote and turned him on mute. Saul could make out one word, though, one word that was being repeated over and over again, each time becoming more and more intensified. The word was “Help.”
The marines feet began lifting off the ground, and in the next moment he was in the air at the same height of the Phoenixes themselves, Saul could hear him screaming even over Flynn’s continuing gunfire. The damaged Phoenix’s last shot was at the marine, and it caused him to completely disintegrate in a mist of blood and some larger pieces Saul didn’t want to try and identify. Saul realized he had been frozen this whole time, and only then began firing at the damaged Pheonix. It exploded in a bright blue blaze. The other Phoenix, being useless alone against ground infantry, flew off back to base.
Half an hour after the crash, Flynn and Saul could still see the Medivac smouldering away in the distance, waxing and waning in a black socket of charred snow. They stopped a moment to look, and Saul made a mental note not to do it again. The arm of smoke that reached out into the sky from the wreckage might as well have been waving the Protoss forces in. Surely they saw the two marines being dropped off just before the explosion, and of course that meant that they would send a small group to clean them up. Time was not something they could afford to use if it did not have to do with moving further away from the crash site. They already had been given orders to retreat to the Xel’Naga tower and he did not want to waste time taking in the scenery of the place where he could have been blown to bits with the rest of the drop team. He turned away, being sure to pull Flynn back to reality as well—he too was staring.
The two made it to the Xel’Naga tower without any hindrances. Even Saul was able to keep up with Flynn even though he could feel pieces of bone floating around his shin. It was a pain he never felt before. One he could deal with, but also one he knew would probably never leave him.
“Are you okay?” Flynn asked, taking rest against a rock. He wouldn’t dare actually touch the tower, there was something about it that looked unsafe. There was a low but audible buzz coming from it, as it were charged with something powerful. The sound tore through Saul’s mind.
“As okay as it gets, I suppose.”
“Reinforcements are coming soon. I think we can…”
Saul stopped listening right then because of something he saw just to the left of Flynn’s head. It wasn’t much at first, but it was enough to completely freeze him where he stood. Even if he had the time, he was sure he wouldn’t have been able to warn Flynn of that same liquid-like air swirling around behind him. Swirling around and getting bigger.
Flynn continued for a few more seconds before he suddenly stopped talking. Saul thought that it looked like what happened when you had an epiphany mid-sentence. “The penny dropped,” Flynn used to say when he got a joke late. This time, Saul knew it was nothing like that. There was also a sharp shhhwipe sound that happened just before Flynn had that last epiphany. Saul saw a trail of blood snake out from the side of Flynn’s mouth. As it dripped down, Saul took a step backward. More blood started pouring out of the midsection of Flynn's marine suit, and soon there was a line of it starting at the right shoulder and ending at the left side of his waist. Flynn’s body split at that line, the top half slipping off and landing against the tower (apparently it is safe to touch the towers, after all), his head looking up at Saul. The penny dropped, Saul thought, and that same thickly air started moving closer and closer to him.
