Bucephalus

The Bucephalus was a Gorgon-class battlecruiser that served as the flagship of the Terran Dominion during the Second Great War. It was developed as an impressive command vessel to replace the Hyperion, a Behemoth-class battlecruiser that had been stolen from Dominion service, and by 2504 it was the largest battlecruiser ever built. The ship was closely associated with Arcturus Mengsk and his son Valerian Mengsk, and its bridge served as a setting for some of the key decisions of the war against Sarah Kerrigan and the Zerg.

Construction and design#

The Bucephalus was constructed at the Ursa Shipyards and commissioned in 2503. It was developed specifically to replace the stolen Hyperion as the Terran Dominion flagship, conceived as an imposing symbol of imperial power rather than simply another warship of the line. Larger than the Behemoth-class Hyperion, it was described as of 2504 as the largest battlecruiser ever built. The ship was outfitted with the ability to deploy a defensive matrix, a shielding system not common to the wider battlecruiser fleet.

The bridge was lavishly furnished, fitted with paintings, a phonograph, and a starmap, and functioned as a kind of observatory for Valerian Mengsk. A year after commissioning, in 2504, the ship carried a crew complement of 8,239 and flew as the flagship of Emperor Arcturus Mengsk. The vessel took its name from Bucephalus, the horse of Alexander the Great.

The campaign against Kerrigan#

After Raynor's Raiders retrieved a fragment of the Keystone from Typhon XI, Crown Prince Valerian Mengsk took the Bucephalus to the Moebius Foundation rendezvous point. There, with the ship's shields down, Commander Jim Raynor and Tychus Findlay boarded and fought through Dominion marines until Raynor reached Valerian, who offered him the chance to rescue Sarah Kerrigan.

Once the full artifact had been assembled, the Bucephalus led half the Dominion fleet to Char. With the ship in high orbit, Raynor and Valerian met with General Horace Warfield on the bridge, and Valerian contacted his father from there to report the undertaking. The Bucephalus was then caught in a Zerg surprise attack, and Warfield ordered the bridge cleared.

The rogue flight#

After the deinfestation of Sarah Kerrigan, Raynor's Raiders and Valerian's Dominion forces withdrew into orbit. When Arcturus Mengsk arrived and demanded that Raynor and Kerrigan be surrendered, Valerian and his crew went rogue and turned on the Dominion fleet. The Bucephalus engaged in the battle, but its supporting ships were destroyed one by one. The Bucephalus, the Hyperion, and a handful of vessels warped out of Char orbit, only to be quickly followed once it was discovered the ships had been bugged. The crew of the Herakles was evacuated to the Bucephalus, and the Herakles was sent on a suicide run into the Dominion fleet to buy the others time.

The survivors reached Dead Man's Rock, by which point only the Hyperion and the Bucephalus remained. The two ships hid among the port's rubble through the kindness of Mira Han, but a group of her mercenaries turned on them to claim a Dominion reward, forcing another escape, this time to the Moebius Foundation station Prometheus. The Foundation personnel there were working for the Dominion, and engineers sent to repair the Bucephalus sabotaged its power cells, disabling its communications and weapons. The crew worked to bring the weapons back online, and in coordination with the Hyperion they evacuated allied personnel and escaped through a cloud of asteroid dust, reaching the Umojan Protectorate research station EB-103.

The Defenders of Man Insurgency#

The Bucephalus returned to service as Valerian Mengsk's command ship during the Defenders of Man Insurgency. Aboard the ship, Valerian met with Agent Nova Terra and asked her to uncover the conspiracy behind the Defenders of Man; when she pledged her loyalty, he gave her the Griffin along with his covert ops crew. As false flag operations escalated unrest against his rule, Valerian evacuated from Korhal onto the Bucephalus and contacted Carolina Davis from the bridge to announce that he was stepping down as emperor.

From the Bucephalus, Valerian, Admiral Matt Horner, Nova, and Reigel planned the capture of Davis. While Valerian's escort drew the Defenders' attention during his resignation speech on Vardona, Nova infiltrated Davis's compound through the sewers of the city. After Davis was killed and stability began to return to the Dominion, Horner used the ship to track Nova and the Griffin, which had gone renegade, though Valerian chose to let her go.