Marine Marooned

[Jim Raynor]

Jim cocked his rifle, spinning in a circle. His barrel zoomed past acres of white, barren plains, with only a fountain to break up the monotony. His mind tripped over itself, a jumble of thoughts trying to force some sense out of the situation. He slowed his breathing, and despite the sweat collecting on his forehead, relaxed his muscles. The barrel of the C-14 rifle tilted at the ground.

"Where am I?" he said, his voice echoing as if in a cave. "The last thing I remember ..." His eyebrows joined at an angle. He couldn't recall. 

There was a bald kid talking to him. Some kinda powerful spotlight must've been on him, because he came out all white and featureless. He said something, but it was all hazy. Trying to claw a memory before that grew troublesome. He was heading an army, going somewhere ...

"Aw, hell." Jim spat on the ground. Standing around and worrying about the past wasn't getting him anywhere. "Better work out my next move."

Jim strode up to the fountain. Crystal clear water jetted from its tip and rained into the basin, disrupting the surface. A metal hand dove into the collected water and brought a small pool of it to Jim's lips. The cool liquid sloshed down his throat, wetting his parched mouth. He stared into the rippling waters, watching his own reflection break and reform endlessly. There was something he was forgetting, something damn important. The fact that he never forgot anything with a shred of relevancy served to tighten his jaw. He sighed and turned away from the fountain, finding nothing but frustration.

The milky landscape pulsed with its own ambient light. Jim dropped the visor on his combat suit, dimming the brightness and adding some soothing contrast. "Man'd get a headache lookin' at this place for too long. There must be someone out here who can tell me where I am."

He remembered going somewhere with an army. Did they warp jump, and something went wrong? Then where was everyone else? A crew of a Battlecruiser doesn't fit in a small space, after all.

"Adjutant," Raynor said.

The image of a robotic female face imposed itself in the top right of Jim's visor, skin steel and pale blue. "Yes, Commander."

"Just where in the blue blazes are we?"

"Processing ... unknown. Contact with nearby satellites cannot be established. No recognisable communication networks found."

"Well ain't that just peachy," Jim grumbled. "None of the Raiders nearby? Dominion forces?"

"No terran signals detected, Commander."

"So I'm stuck out here without a soul to rely on." Jim's eyebrows raised. "Wait, Adjutant. You said no recognisable networks found. So what about the unrecognisable?"

"Unknown datanet discovered. Scanning ... it is known as the Dataverse."

"Dataverse, huh? Whoever named that ain't very creative," Jim said, gazing out onto the pearl void. "Anything of value on it? Can it tell us where we are?"

"Scanning ... we are in the Omniverse," the adjutant replied in her emotionless tone.

Jim pursed his lips. "Ain't never heard of an Omniverse before. Geez, just where the hell did I end up? Adjutant, can you get anything else off it? Directions, maybe?"

A few moments passed. An overhead map of the white area, titled 'Nexus,' flashed on his HUD. A number of icons appeared around Jim's location, forming a eight-pointed circle with him in the middle. 

"These are gates," the adjutant said. "Each gate will take you to a different verse."

"Verse? And here I thought there was only a universe. How many damn 'verses are there? Wait, don't answer that, don't wanna know. Which gate should we take?"

"It's up to you, Commander," the AI said. The northwest gate highlighted in red. "This gate leads to the Endless Dunes, where-"

Jim didn't care. He needed a direction, and now he had it. "Sounds good. Mark it."

"Yes, Commander." A red line superimposed over the white earth and into the horizon. A compass arrow appeared at the top of the HUD, pointing the way. "Estimated travel time: two hours."

Jim's heavy metal feet plodded forward. "Sure could do with a vulture right about now."