Covert Ops Crew

The Covert Ops Crew, also known as the Black Ops Forces, was a Terran Dominion covert operations team that became a vigilante group loyal to Ghost Agent Nova Terra. The team had originally answered to Emperor Valerian Mengsk, who transferred its command to Nova to aid her campaign against the Defenders of Man. Operating from the advanced stealth ship Griffin and equipped with the most advanced technology in the Dominion, the crew followed Nova through the insurgency and into open defiance of imperial orders, emerging as a force that answered to her above all else.

The Defenders of Man Insurgency#

The Covert Ops Crew was originally under the command of Emperor Valerian Mengsk. When Nova Terra returned from a Defenders of Man facility with no memory of her time there, Valerian offered her the Griffin and the crew on the condition that she swear loyalty to him. She accepted, and was introduced to Reigel, who helped recover some of her lost memories and led the team to Tarsonis City.

On Tarsonis, the crew landed outside a Defenders of Man base, only for feral zerg to surround their position. Nova ordered her forces to garrison the surrounding structures to buy time while she infiltrated the base, where she discovered an activated psi-emitter drawing the zerg in and uncovered the Defenders' plan to use such a device against Tyrador IX to expose the weakness of Valerian's regime. The crew arrived at Tyrador IX too late to prevent the zerg from overrunning the resort of Elsecaro, but the Defenders of Man fleet evacuated the surviving civilians while the crew's banshees supported Nova on the surface. When the Tal'darim Death Fleet under First Ascendant Ji'nara arrived and deployed a mothership against the Defenders, Nova sent the crew to destroy its shield projectors, and the enraged Ji'nara sent the mothership after them only to see it destroyed, allowing the Defenders to rally.

Terrazine, Antiga Prime, and the capture of Davis#

After Nova Terra struck a bargain with Highlord Alarak to trade the location of the Defenders for terrazine to restore her memories, the crew travelled to Jarban Minor. There they found the Umojan Protectorate research team infested and faced Ji'nara's forces sent to challenge them, but successfully defended the terrazine extraction devices and obtained the substance. With her memories partly restored, Nova led the team to Antiga Prime, where they fought the feral zerg in the city of New Andasar while she used terrazine to recover the details of an earlier operation, after which they identified General Carolina Davis as the true leader of the Defenders of Man.

The crew then aided on Vardona as Valerian Mengsk announced his resignation in a speech and Nova slipped into Davis's compound to capture her. The capture succeeded, but the city was struck by a Tal'darim invasion, and the crew fought alongside Dominion defenders and lower-ranking Defenders of Man unaware of Davis's agenda. In the chaos Davis escaped aboard the Medusa, and the crew gave chase aboard the Griffin. They tracked her to the Cerros Shipyards, where she had activated the experimental war machine Xanthos, and with the support of Admiral Matt Horner's forces they disabled its weapons and destroyed it. Against Valerian's direct order to bring Davis in alive, Nova infiltrated the wreckage and killed her.

Becoming a vigilante force#

Aboard the Griffin, Reigel revealed to Nova Terra that the crew was loyal to her above all else, even though defying their orders had made them fugitives. Nova declared they would defend the Terran Dominion in their own way, no longer answering to its chain of command, and the Griffin sped off with the Covert Ops Crew reconstituted as an independent group.

The Shadow Wars and the spectres of Tartarus#

After the insurgency the crew turned to hunting down quantities of jorium at Nova's direction, with the aim of preventing the creation of any future spectres. At Last Junction, Nova and Reigel bought jorium from renegade Dominion soldiers under Elms, and the crew later lent equipment, including a cloaked liberator, to help Elms assassinate Captain Hogarth.

The crew then dispatched the Griffin to the world of Tartarus, which held secrets from the reign of Arcturus Mengsk and the largest jorium stockpile in the sector. After rescuing the former reporter Donny Vermillion and two survivors, Nova discovered that the facility had been secretly creating a force of spectres loyal to Arcturus. When she ordered them killed, Reigel defied her and released them, but as indoctrinated servants of the dead emperor they turned on him, kidnapped Vermillion, and stole the Griffin. Rescued by a void ray from Matriarch Vorazun, Nova hunted the spectres down and, rather than destroy them, convinced them to lay down their arms and not die for a dead emperor. The spectres agreed, and after a period of separation, during which Reigel took the Griffin to do his own good through the sector and Nova trained with the spectres on Aiur, the crew was eventually reunited under its commander.