StarCraft: Liberty's Crusade

StarCraft: Liberty's Crusade is a science fiction novel by Pocket Books taking place in the StarCraft universe. It takes place during the Terran campaign of the original StarCraft, and is narrated by Universe News Network investigative journalist, Michael Liberty (called "Mike" by his friends and sometimes "Mickey" by his editor-in-chief, Handy Anderson)

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

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

The Norad II then travels to the sister world of Mar Sara where Liberty is thrown off the ship. Liberty, in the process of investigating the recent incident, meets Lieutenant Sarah Kerrigan, Marshal Jim Raynor, and rebel leader Arcturus Mengsk of the Sons of Korhal. He witnesses Raynor's defense of Backwater Station and his subsequent unjust jailing by Edmund Duke. Liberty defects with Raynor to the Sons of Korhal (breaking Raynor out of his prison ship with the aid of Sons of Korhal members) and begins working for Mengsk, ostensibly as a Korhal propagandist. Liberty is angered when the Confederates alter his reports into fabricated anti-Mengsk (and therefore pro-Confederate) propaganda.

He soon realises that Mengsk is just as corrupt, fanatical and brutal as the Confederacy he is fighting -- Mengsk even forces General Duke into his service, but Liberty doesn't give up on him until he abandons Kerrigan to the Zerg on Tarsonis. Simultaneously, Raynor and Liberty are disgusted with Mengsk's act of consigning the population of Tarsonis to die just so that the Confederacy will fall and he will rise to power. Raynor, who was beginning to hold Kerrigan in more than high regard, picks a fight with Duke and then abandons Mengsk. Liberty accompanies him, despite a final offer of power and influence from Mengsk and Liberty's former boss, Handy Anderson.

The book ends with Liberty's last transmission, his manifesto, being rewound by Kerrigan, now the Zerg's Queen of Blades. The manifesto had begun to stir something human within her, but she remains Zerg, and begins reexamining the transmission for tactical information she can use to her species' advantage.

Characters in StarCraft: Liberty's Crusade

 * Handy Anderson – editor-in-chief of Universal News Network
 * General Edmund Duke – Alpha Squadron commander
 * Lieutenant Sarah Kerrigan – Sons of Korhal Ghost and operative
 * Michael Liberty – Universal News Network investigative reporter
 * Arcturus Mengsk – Sons of Korhal leader
 * Jim Raynor – Marshall 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.

StarCraft: Liberty's Crusade is not treated as canon, but concepts and quotes were used in most of the novels that were published later.

Contradictions

 * Edmund Duke is referred to as Colonel at the beginning of the story and was promoted just prior to the Norad II's crash. In the game, he claims to have held the rank of General for 15 years.
 * While Raynor claims that "Arcturus' boys" had sprung him and his men from imprisonment in the game, the novel depicts the event as Liberty sneaking onto the prison ship where they are being held and convincing the crew (who had essentially been left to die as the Protoss had recently arrived to sterilize the planet) at gun point to abandon their posts and leave the system. Liberty may have had Sons of Korhal soldiers as backup, however.
 * 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 battlecruser 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.
 * There is no mention of the player's character, with Michael Liberty taking on some of the role and events being altered accordingly. However, Mengsk does inform Liberty of his negotiations with Mar Sara's colonial magistrate prior to their coming into contact.
 * Not technically a contradiction (as the game does not offer insight) is the novel's assertion that Raynor was previously married to a woman named Liddy, with whom he had a son. Raynor's son, coincidentally, had psionic potential and was inducted into the Confederacy's Ghost Academy, where he died during an "accident", and it is hinted that he had actually been killed during the final stage of testing. This led to Liddy's death from depression, and initially caused Raynor to dislike Kerrigan due to her being a telepath. (In the game, the first encounter between Raynor and Kerrigan is construed as being suggestive.)