StarCraft: Liberty's Crusade

StarCraft #1: Liberty's Crusade is a StarCraft novel authored by Jeff Grubb. It takes place during the Terran campaign of the original StarCraft, and is narrated by Universe News Network investigative journalist, Michael Liberty.

The book became part of the StarCraft Archive.

Back of Book Description
Far in the future, 60,000 light-years from Earth, a loose confederacy of Terran exiles is locked in battle with the enigmatic Protoss and the ruthless Zerg Swarm. Each species struggles to ensure its own survival among the stars in a war that will herald the beginning of mankind's greatest chapter -- or foretell its violent, bloody end. Danny Liberty was a good reporter...too good. When his investigations struck too close to the heart of the corrupt Terran Confederacy, he faced a simple choice: continue his current series of exposés, or take a hazardous new assignment covering the Marines on the front lines of the Koprulu Sector. It didn't take him long to decide.... Behind the attacks of the Zerg and the Protoss lies the story of a lifetime, but every piece of information blurs the mystery further. Thrown into the middle of a war where the outcome will determine mankind's very survival, the only thing that Danny Liberty knows for sure is that the only person he can trust to keep him alive is himself. Liberty's Crusade The first in an epic new series of space warfare novels set in the world of the bestselling computer game!

Synopsis
Liberty was assigned to the Norad II, command ship of Edmund Duke, after grievously offending one of the ruling Old Families of the Terran Confederacy.

There, he witnessed the aftermath of the Zerg-infested Terran world of Chau Sara's destruction by the Protoss fleet under Tassadar. He made some pointed observations (such as asking how Duke knew the name "Protoss") and got thrown off the bridge; from this point on his reporting was "lost in transmission" or edited to the point of falsification.

The Norad II then traveled to the sister world, Mar Sara, where Liberty was thrown off the ship. In the process of investigating the recent incident, Liberty met Lieutenant Sarah Kerrigan, Marshal Jim Raynor, and rebel leader Arcturus Mengsk of the Sons of Korhal. He witnessed Raynor's defense of Backwater Station and his subsequent unjust jailing by Edmund Duke. Liberty defected with Raynor to the Sons of Korhal (breaking Raynor out of his prison ship with the aid of Sons of Korhal members in the process). He also aid Raynor in raiding the Jacobs Installation, where they stole secret Confederate technology and learned about their experiments with the Zerg.

Liberty traveled with the Sons of Korhal to Antiga Prime and began working for Mengsk, ostensibly as a Korhal propagandist. He was angered when the Confederates altered his reports into fabricated anti-Mengsk (and therefore pro-Confederate) propaganda, enough to work alongside Kerrigan while sneaking the recently decrypted stolen technology into a Confederate base. After being surprised by a novel Confederate technique, and being forced to confront a strange eye and an Infested Terran, they planted the device, calling a massive swarm of Zerg to destroy the Confederate blockade.

Liberty soon realized that Mengsk is just as corrupt, fanatical and brutal as the Confederacy he was fighting -- Mengsk even forced General Duke into his service, but Liberty didn't give up on him until he abandoned Kerrigan to the Zerg on Tarsonis. Simultaneously, Raynor and Liberty were disgusted with Mengsk's act of consigning the population of Tarsonis to die just so that the Confederacy could fall, putting Mengsk into a position of power. Raynor, who was beginning to hold Kerrigan in more than high regard, picked a fight with Duke and then abandoned Mengsk. Liberty accompanied him, despite a final offer of power and influence from Mengsk and Liberty's former boss, Handy Anderson.

Liberty's broadcast his manifesto, which was intercepted by the Zerg and rewound by Kerrigan, now the Zerg's Queen of Blades. The manifesto had begun to stir something human within her, but she remained Zerg, and began reexamining the transmission for tactical information she could use to her species' advantage.

Characters in StarCraft: Liberty's Crusade

 * Handy Anderson – editor-in-chief of Universe News Network
 * General Edmund Duke – Alpha Squadron commander
 * Lieutenant Sarah Kerrigan – Sons of Korhal ghost and operative
 * Michael Liberty – Universe News Network investigative reporter
 * General Arcturus Mengsk – Sons of Korhal leader
 * Captain Jim Raynor – Marshal of Mar Sara and later Sons of Korhal officer
 * Lieutenant Emily Jameson Swallow – neurally resocialized Alpha Squadron military police officer and former serial killer on Halcyon.

Veracity and Followups
Some of the information from Liberty's Crusade has appeared in other novels: StarCraft: Queen of Blades and StarCraft Ghost: Nova.

Concepts and quotes from the novel are used in most of the novels that were published later.

Contradictions

 * Michael Liberty spent three months with the Norad II, as Alpha Squadron tried to locate the Sons of Korhal, before the destruction of Chau Sara. However, in StarCraft: Loomings, the official prequel map series, Alpha Squadron fought on the surface of Chau Sara against the Sons of Korhal a month before the destruction of Chau Sara.
 * The exact details of first communication between the Protoss and the Terran Confederacy varied somewhat from the novel.
 * Korhal lost 4 million people in the Confederate nuclear bombardment, according to the manual, but in the novel Mengsk says that 35 million people were killed.
 * In the novel, Duke set the Norad II to self-destruct after agreeing to Mengsk's offer to join the Sons of Korhal. From then on, Duke served aboard the battlecruiser Hyperion. In the game, the Sons of Korhal salvaged and refurbished the Norad II, which Duke used as his flagship on the attack on Tarsonis' defense platforms.

Excerpt
Starcraft: Liberty's Crusade (Starcraft). Simon & Schuster. Accessed 2007-11-24.