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Back when people didn't have the beta for SC2, there was a shit-ton of competitions on the internet to get a key. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, reTweet this picture, show us your boobs, that sort of thing.

Anyway, one of the competitions was a fan-fiction sort of thing. A bunch of surprisingly good writers posted their efforts - I remember one poem call "My Ling Skip" that was fantastic - including myself.

I didn't win, but I thought I'd try and clean up the story a little and post it here.

****
THE PRIVATE, by Alex Walker
****

Originally, I’d planned to tell you a grand story about one of the greatest heroes of our time. It was a tale full of hope, bravery and overcoming the odds. It’s no different from the odds we Terrans face today, against the might of the Swarm and the superior psychic technology of the Protoss.

Sure, we have our heroes too. Jim Raynor’s exploits against the Confederacy and his efforts to undermine Arcturus Mengsk’s regime are legendary. There’s Admiral Duke, and even the achievements of Admiral DuGalle before his unfortunate … death … impressed the UED Council.

But if you took any one of those heroes, would they win a war on their own? No. They cannot. Terrans, unlike the Zerg or Protoss, cannot work alone. We cannot build a family without a partner. You cannot fly a Battlecruiser solo, and one hero cannot defend a sector.

That’s where you come in.

You might not be a great soldier, or a leader. You may not possess the intellect of a scientist, or the latent abilities of a Ghost. But you are important. Your actions matter and you need to know that you counted for something.

Rather than thinking about the glorious, or the legendary, I would like you to stop and consider the seemingly unimportant, the little, the inconsequential.

This is a story for you.

***

You could hear the hydraulics in motion, the gas being expunged from one cylinder to another. People looked at a door, and usually considered nothing. Thoughts were not reserved for doors, much less for the mechanics that bind them together. Occasionally you might get frustrated - it’s not opening fast enough, or it’s broken - but it’s like everything else, a simple object taken for granted.

But imagine life without a door: it would just be a wall, or an empty space. Doors give privacy, act as emergency barriers and even shield sound. Take that away and you start to miss the benefits it provides.

“Step in, Private.”

With the tell-tale mechanical exhale, the doors parted to give The Private a look at The Captain. He was everything you could expect from a bootcamp commander. There was that typical look of steel and the chiseled jaw of a drill sargeant. Years of toil and hard training had left no body fat to be seen, but he had a wily appearance. The Private guessed that The Captain was quite slender as a child, and had probably weathered a lifetime of insults.

That explains the steely look, The Private thought.

Mid-salute, The Private noticed The Captain had an unusual lack of personal effects. It’s not as if The Captain had just moved in - he’d been here for a year or so, and not having any memories or trinkets was a sign of a typically cold man.

“Looking around the room, Private?” The Captain’s acute gaze caught The Private off guard, and he reflexively twitched at the discomfort of betraying his thoughts.

“Uh, yes sir. I just noticed that … well, there wasn’t anything to notice.”

“And does that bother you, Private?”

True to form, The Private thought. The Marine Corps didn’t advertise picnics and sentiment, and be damned if The Captain let a little love get in the way of a good bootcamp.
“Of course not Captain.”

“I should hope so. The Zerg don’t give you time to say goodbye to your loved ones out there on the battlefield. If you have time to do anything, it’d better be firing that C-141. Got it Private?”

“SIR YES SIR!”

“Good. Go to the OC and report to the Supply Sargeant. He’ll direct you to your quarters and give you your schedule. First run is tomorrow at 0400 Zulu. That’s all Private.”

Snapping to a salute, The Private pondered something bordering on heresy: what’s the difference between being born from a womb or a larva if we all behave like the Swarm?

***

That doesn’t look like much of a Marine, The Captain thought.

Then again, neither did he.

Men were judged in battle, not in an office.

As the right side of his lips curled into a half-smile, The Captain knew it was irrelevant: The UED couldn’t afford to be picky.

“Hope he’s not some sick wacko.”

***

After two weeks of fairly mild training - mild by UED bootcamp standards - The Private remained the same way he had been when he wandered into The Captain’s office: fairly nonchalant, and mentally unprepared.

Marines were required to be obedient, not dazed. His squadron leader - The Corporal - had already made a rather loud, humiliating, note about The Private’s dream-like capabilities.

Apparently, dreaming slows the brainwaves down, reducing the flow of blood slightly and calming the body down. The Corporal said this was of particular use in making sure the brain was as tasty as possible for Zerglings, who had a 60% increased rate of hormonal activity when eating brains that were less active.

The Corporal also noted that The Private’s distinct lack of physical ability would particularly pleasure members of The Swarm.

“Dinner’s tastier when you don’t have to run for it, boys! So enjoy your dinner tonight while The Private does toilet duty for you!”

Laughter ringing through his ears, The Private stopped and looked around the unisex latrines. There was nothing special about the room, but the sound of bristles being pushed back and forth against the neo-aluminum alloy had almost a numbing effect on the memory of his new-found popularity.

It gave him the peace of mind to focus. The nearby laser broadcast played highlight reels of the fights in the Korpulu sector, and there was the odd interjection of news reports; the Zerg had begun to branch out from Char, laying siege to Mar Sara and causing all kinds of havoc for the rogue Dominion and Arcturus Mengsk.

War, as always, was imminent: even if The Private was far away from the Korpulu sector, and quite safe on Jupiter.

But when faced with thousands of sentient, violent … things … what could he really do?

The Private looked at the brush in his hand, and understood.

***

AIM!

FIRE!

As The Private pulled the trigger a micro-dream floated into his head. Instead of hitting styrofoam targets, they would be severing the limbs of the insectoid zerglings.

Except The Private wouldn’t be severing his target.

“WHAT WAS THAT PRIVATE! You came closer to hitting the OC than your target. You’re not even standing up soldier. If that was the Zerg you’d be dead by now. We’d all be dead by now. FIRE AGAIN PRIVATE!”

Tightening his grip around the C-141, The Private took a breath and blinked rapidly - a shooter’s technique that stops your eyes from drying out quickly - and squeezed again. Trying to fight against the recoil, The Private tightened his hands around the foregrip and pressed harder into his shoulder - only to see his shot fly wildly over the target.

“GIVE ME THAT YOU USELESS SCUM!” Snatching the rifle from his hands, The Seargant rammed the rifle into his shoulder, and then took a breath before squeezing the trigger.

The whole squadron heard the pinch of the bullet parting the styrofoam, and while the target was over 40 yards away everyone understood: it could have been 400 with The Seargant’s aim.

The Private wondered why someone with that good an aim wasn’t still on the field. Was there an excess of elite soldiers going unreported by the networks?

“THAT’S HOW YOU DO IT. Breathe and squeeze ladies. NOW AIM … FIRE!”

As he continued to miss the target, albeit by ever-decreasing margins, The Sargeant and The Private had a rare moment of synchronization: if the UED were this desperate for Marines, were they really winning the war at all?

The Private was carrying out his orders. Breathe and squeeze. He even tried a few wrist exercises to limit the shaking of his hands, and adjusted his breathing pattern (this would of done nothing anyway, but it was interesting to watch someone be creative with their breathing while lying down holding a rifle).

Incompetent soldiers weren’t new. The Sargeant had seen them come and go, discharged through court marshals or the port side hole in a Battlecruiser. But those soldiers were just deficient in their orders; not following, or hesitating, was the number one killer of men on the field.

In bootcamp, those men were ideal. They had the right amount of enthusiasm for battle, mixing that lust for war with the almost necessary hatred, almost racism, for the Zerg. War ill affords luxuries, sympathy and indecision least of them. Zerglings don’t stop for the drive through - they simply plow through each other and burrow on through.

But The Private didn’t have that lust in his eyes, that imagination picturing the biomenace lurking on Char 40 feet away from him. There wasn’t fear, either, but indifference.

Perhaps it was time, The Sargeant thought, for some alternative treatment.

***

“At ease, Private.”

Folding his arms behind his back and relaxing his shoulders, The Private wondered if he was being kicked out of the grunts - the lowest form of the military, the home that would take the rejects from everywhere else. Rich, poor, smart, stupid, if you needed a home, the Marine Corps was there for you.

The infantry gave its men discipline, their reward for abandoning society in order to protect it. Men who were normally assigned to desk jobs or menial tasks could find heroism and bravery, as well as themselves, in the Marines.

Except for The Private.

It’d been six months since he transferred to Jupiter, and the regular hazing, harassment and consistent latrine detail had confirmed one thing: God didn’t have a soldier in mind when he made him, and if he did it wasn’t for the Marine Corps.

“Private, you’re being transferred to a small research facility a few thousand clicks north of Centauri. You’ll form part of the security detail for the scientists there. Your scores didn’t justify sending you into the front lines, so we’ve found another use for you where you can be useful but also stay out of harm’s way.”

Being transferred hurt a little, but The Private’s nature wasn’t to complain. Months of psychological scarring had made the obvious now reality, even if the increasing desperation of the UED against the Zerg had forced the Council’s hand into dropping the fitness test for new recruits. Bodies had become more important than skill, and the Marine Corps resembled less of the feared squadron that the military hoped and more of a wasteland for emotionally distraught civilians, mentally destroyed from the shock of having won the conscription ‘lottery’ back on Earth.

Of course, even winning the real lottery was just about as depressing as getting conscripted. The ever-growing fear of extinction galvanizes people more than say, poverty in New Manhattan or a sandstorm on Mars.
That was the main emotion going around the barracks: fear. And by the looks of things, it’d crawled up the hierarchy, burrowing its way through the minds of officers.

As The Private signed the forms, saluted The Captain and largely ignored the fake pleasantries that one employs to comfort someone’s who’s just been fired from essentially the lowest job on the social ladder, two thoughts ran through his mind.

The first was the door which he’d sat pondering six months ago, listening to its inner workings and contemplating its place. This door would never see battle, and would never be considered for anything but a door. But no matter how unimportant, it was still absolutely essential: you’d never in a million years build rooms without doors, but you never put as much thought into a room as you would a door, even though a functioning door can be more useful than the objects inside.

His second thought was darker, more cutting: if I wasn’t good enough to be a miniature cog in the grand scale, then why am I here?

The doors opened, and The Private heard the sound of the hydraulics once more - except this time, he understood that the gas wasn’t created to be used in a door.

It was simply trapped.

***

Floating in orbit around Eris, The Private had been more relaxed and less bruised in his tour on SCV-134X9, but less satisfied. He wasn’t able to contribute - the lead scientist had offered him a textbook and suggested several years of study when he’d offered to help - but he could at least continue his habit of quietly observing the minutia that surrounded the platform.

In essence, The Private felt more entwined with the scientists than he had with his fellow Marines back on Jupiter. Granted, the scientists weren’t smashing his shins and solar plexus in with soap, but at least he could understand the motivation behind the research.

Science by its nature relied on observation, necessitating the constant study and recording of the unimportant. One change in a single particle could alter the relationship of every other particle with another, sometimes morphing and evolving the sample tissue into new strands of DNA. Or at least, that was the explanation the Junior Researcher offered - the rest sounded like mumbo jumbo.

Often days would go pass and The Private would barely notice. Sometimes it was Tuesday, and then it was Tuesday again, except time had passed and he’d been simply floating in and out of consciousness the whole time. He was meant to be part of the security detail for the science vessel - in fact, he was the only Marine on guard - but there’d been so little work to do that he’d often doze off or stare at the scientists while they worked, gazing into the microscopes or blinking blindly at the printouts of DNA sequences.

It was during one of his less lucid moments, when he’d only just woken up that the vessel seemed unusually quiet. Science vessels aren’t exactly party ships, but the constant hum and whirr of the databank servers almost imitate the feeling of being at sea back on Earth; the constant feeling of being surrounded by something larger than yourself, massaging your thoughts gently as you go to sleep.

The Private felt uneasy - the servers were off, which only happened in case of power. Dressing quickly, The Private could hear the slow rumble of the emergency generator down the hallway, keeping the life support and lights running on a low dim. Running on a miniature singularity core wasn’t unusual for a science vessel, but the complete lack of enthusiasm for any other living lifeform within warp radius made The Private double-back to his bed for his C-141.

Walking the few steps up the hallway to the next room, The Private opened the door to find the Junior Researcher sleeping peacefully. Scanning the room with his eyes, there was nothing out of place save for the scattered printouts and half-eaten cheese sandwich lying atop the nightstand next to the bed.

“Quick, quick, get up!” Shaking the Junior Researcher, The Private feared for his life, irrationally - the file servers were simply off and the power had cut out, neither all that unusual for a research vessel and both certainly not cause for alarming the fleet.

But in truth, The Private had never made a good Marine to begin with. If he’d been thinking rationally he wouldn’t have joined the Marines in the first place, opting instead for a cushy job doing deliveries or some other reliable work back home in New Berlin.

Rolling over with a groan in his throat, the Junior Researcher opened his eyes slowly and groaned, “What … sleep … go away.”

“Get up now! The servers are down, the emergency generator’s on and it’s too quiet.”

“It’s … too … quiet.”

“And the servers are down.”

Exhaling the rest of the air from his lungs, the Junior Researcher stumbled out of bed, pulling on the bathrobe from the hat stand across the room. Scientists weren’t exactly known for their grace or style, and no server would notice the colour of the bathrobe operating the keys.

Stumbling down the hallway, the Junior Researcher mumbled something about sleep several times while The Private’s eyes darted around the corridor rapidly. The rest of the staff should have been uploading the results from the weekly tests, but there was no chatter or even the quiet shuffling of feet across the galvanized iron that formed many of the walkways.

As they reached the door to the main research chambers, The Private and the Junior Researcher gasped in unison: the rest of the crew had been mutilated with their limbs severed. It wasn’t murder - it was a slaughter.

Humans weren’t responsible for this - humans didn’t kill other humans this way. Simply being dead was good enough for most people. You didn’t cut someone’s limbs off unless you had a serious vengeance hard-on, or a bit of space rot in the brain.

Walking tentatively into the room, the Junior Researcher lurched as the stench of his former colleagues’ cadavers reached his nose. The Private wasn’t bothered by the smell, having spent six months at bootcamp in an environment The Captain designed to be “uncomfortable”.

But the fear of battle still twinged in The Private, and his hands shook against the foregrip of his C-141. It was true that he’d once longed to be a small cog in the grand scheme, but he’d been so psychologically scarred and brutalized by his fellow soldiers that he had long given up the thought of being able to contribute.

As The Private rotated around the research chambers scanning for enemies, the Junior Researcher toiled frantically on the GUI pad looking at security footage.

“It’s …. it’s … Zerg. I don’t even … know … how-“ the Junior Researcher stammered.

“WHERE?” The Private screamed.

“I don’t know … I’m bringing up the communications module-“

As the researcher frantically keyed in the codes to access the satellite, The Private began twitching uncontrollably. Rejected from the front lines for being too inept to be cannon fodder, here he was now defending a scientist from the Zerg, possibly the only person more vulnerable in battle than himself.

“YARHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

As the screams of the Zerglings bounced around the walls, The Private became confused in the darkness and responded with the only option left available to him: squeeze and breathe.

The percussive sound of the C-141 firing around the room caused the Zerglings to momentarily scatter, but they were joined with a second, unexpected sound: the sound of a bullet hitting soft flesh, followed by the dull thump of the Junior Researcher’s head on the GUI pad.

“…. Oh … my god …-“

In his fear, the ultimate terror, in his one moment of truth, The Private grasped what happened.

He had shot the Junior Researcher, killing him instantly. His mouth was left open, probably from sheer terror at the Zerglings; although as one saving grace, he would probably not suffer the painful tearing of flesh from bone, of limb from socket that was to come.

It was the last thought The Private had.

***

CONNECTION ESTABLISHED

“Ah, Lieutenant. What news do you have for us?”

“General. We have a strange report coming out from one of the dwarf planets past Pluto, where a science vessel was in orbit researching and experimenting with the DNA sequencing on some Zerg samples. Apparently during one of the experiments, one of the scientists managed to accidentally activate a psionic beacon within one of the samples which attracted some nearby Zerg to the vessel.”

“What is the status of the crew?”

“The crew was all killed and the vessel destroyed. It appears during the infiltration one of the crew was able to activate the self-destruct sequence, destroying all the Zerg and research data on board.”

“That’s fortunate. Are there any lasting implications from their findings?”

“No sir. It appears all lasting data went down with the vessel, so there’s no risk of any hidden beacons being activated.”

“That’s good. What were the names of the men on board?”

“I’ve got my secretary to forward you the list of all the scientists on board, including the one Marine who was acting as the security detail. Apparently he was too incompetent to be on the front lines, so his commanding officer in bootcamp on Jupiter had him reassigned to the vessel.”

“What do ya’ know? Have him recommended for a posthumous Medal of Merit, and make sure the press get full details on the story, especially about that Marine. It’ll be a good boost for the troops.”

“Understood General.”

THE END

(OK, I couldn't really be bothered entering it, but figured I'd post it anyway. Might help someone through the boredom, or whatever.)