Cutthroat

Cutthroat is a StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty mission. Raynor's Raiders competed for a mercenary contract with Orlan to hire Mira Han's mercenaries. Afterward, the Raiders attacked Orlan's base.

Background
Raynor's Raiders stole Confederate Adjutant 23-46 from a Dominion excavation on Tarsonis, but found its data encrypted and inaccessible. The rebels hired Colonel Orlan at Deadman's Port to decrypt the adjutant. Orlan succeeded and found it contained proof of Arcturus Mengsk's war crimes during the Great War; the mercenary planned to sell the adjutant to the Dominion instead and hired Mira's Mercs to prevent the Raiders from interfering. Mira's Mercs were to be paid in minerals.

Mira Han, leader of Mira's Mercs, warned the Raiders of the betrayal. As Orlan has not yet paid, she offered to resell her services to the Raiders if the rebels could pay the contract first.

The Mission
Mineral deposits were scarce at Deadman's Port, and the Raiders gathered scrap produced from local salvage operations to supplement mining. The rebels received assistance from Han in the form of a long-delayed gift of vultures. The resourceful rebels bought the Mira's Mercs' contract before Orlan; Han was only too happy to switch sides.

The Raiders advanced on Orlan's Mercenaries. Orlan's Mercenaries dropped a nuke at the entrance to their base as the rebels approached but this failed to deter the attackers. Orlan surrendered himself and the adjutant as the Raiders laid siege to his planetary fortress.

Aftermath

 * Main article: campaign quotations

Jim Raynor spared Orlan on the ground that the mercenary might be useful later, but had Han put the treacherous mercenary "on ice". Han agreed to do this for free.

More importantly, the Raiders discovered the adjutant's contents: intercepted transmissions from the Fall of Tarsonis. This gave the Raiders the ammunition to finally fight the Dominion's propaganda machine.

Gameplay
Orlan has command of multiple resource nodes, so beating him by mining will not work. Collect scrap to gain resources, and meet the quota. There are scrap processors around the map that generate scrap periodically. Orlan will send scouting parties to stop you. Once the quota is reached, Han's elite units and fully established base become controllable.

Destroy the three enemy mining outposts as quickly as possible. The starting marines and vultures, augmented by a few medics and siege tanks, can handle them. Bunkered marines can hold off enemy attacks. Destroying the neutral port junkers will yield a small amount of minerals.

Orlan's base is on two levels. The upper level has the planetary fortress that must be destroyed. Ascending the ramps to the first level causes a nuke drop above the ramps.

Development
In the original version of Cutthroat, players could fail to prevent Orlan from hiring Mira Han and still attempt to fight them both.

Trivia

 * Wreckage of starships resembling the Galactica and the Enterprise from Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek respectively may be found near the southern most enemy base.


 * To the north and to the south of the map one can find a metallic slab with a marine laying on its back on top of it extending its arms into the air. The pose and circumstance resembles Han Solo encased in carbonite. There's another slab underwater in Haven's Fall.


 * There are many crates with StarCraft: Ghost cover art for the PS2 on top or on the sides of the map.


 * There is a big doodad of a destroyed predator unit located on high ground to the east of the first enemy base, north of the Raiders' base. The only way to see this wreckage is by floating a building on top of the platform to gain vision through the fog of war. The model is exceptionally larger than a regular predator.


 * The mission achievements are references to the games of the same name.