Nova took a deep breath as the thudding pain subsided and readjusted her mask, but something was wrong.

The filters had been damaged by the hydralisk’s attack. This close to the rift in the planet’s surface, she noticed the same greenish gas swirling everywhere. She smelled a coppery scent like blood on the wind, and the scent seemed to wriggle its way deep into her lungs, pulsing with her own heartbeat until she glimpsed bursts of pink color like flowers opening across her sight.

She shook her head as if to clear it, then opened the channel to Ward. There was empty space before her, an easy path to the carriers and safety. But it wouldn’t last long.

“Protect your right flank and rear,” she said. “I’ll take the left.”

The terrified marines didn’t need any more prodding. They ran forward, fanning out and laying down suppressing fire as she took up a spot guarding their passage. She could hear Ward shouting at them to move faster. Zerglings attacked in waves, but she pushed them back with her C-20A, watching the skies for more mutalisks. They circled above her but did not attack, and she wondered why. Maybe they sensed what she had done to the last hydralisk and were keeping their distance.

The smell was terrible. It kept eating away at her until she could barely think straight.

In moments the marines reached the ship, boarded, and started the engines. “Come on,” Ward’s voice crackled in her earpiece. “Your turn! Move!”

She turned to the ship. “On my way—”

The hydralisks were advancing, crawling over the rock face in front of her, their jaws open and dripping fangs exposed. Dozens of them. They had closed off her escape route. She could sense even more coming, close enough now to overwhelm the carriers. With the mutalisks in the sky they would be lucky to make it at all. Now she realized why they had been circling; they were preparing for an all-out assault on the two ships after cutting her off from any hope of rescue.

She had no choice now. There was only one way out.

Kill them all. Like on Tarsonis.