Amon: Don't Think You've Won

As Kerrigan spoke with Warfield, another large group of technicians in dust-gray uniforms poured into the spaceport. Transport ships loaded with crates of parts descended from the sky in orderly lines, like a vast flock of birds returning to their nests.

Directly above them, an Imperial fleet emerged from the hyperlane exit. The parted spacetime vortex resembled an iridescent oil slick floating on water. Rows of dark, massive warships filed out, every porthole reflecting countless rays of sunlight, while the muzzles of their murderous main guns and twin-linked laser cannons gleamed with a chilling light.

From any angle, it was a spectacular sight.

Kerrigan noticed that the fleet's flagship was a super-battlecruiser, virtually an enlarged version of Loki, the Gorgon-class Battlecruiser prototype. Larger than both the Gorgon-class and the Pride of Augustgrad-class, it had thicker armor and greater firepower. Equipped with Doomsday Executioner Cannons, plasma torpedoes, and giant Serpent laser batteries, it could rain destruction upon a planet's surface from orbit.

Super-battlecruisers could scarcely be called an independent battlecruiser class, because there were so few of them. Since construction began, their numbers had yet to reach double digits.

Building such warships required astronomical sums of money. From Marines to battlecruisers, nothing came free.

The Imperial Navy had placed great hopes on these vessels, hoping they might become the Terrans' own Protoss Motherships. But apart from their size, there was little cause for optimism. By every current measure, super-battlecruisers remained far inferior to Motherships.

The naval design director in charge of these ships had been a brilliant student Augustus had sent to Umojan for further study during the revolutionary era. By now, he had become an indispensable figure in the Imperial Shipbuilding Bureau.

Kerrigan still remembered visiting the Seros shipyards with Augustus when Typhon and Python, the first and second super-battlecruisers