Gerard DuGalle

Gerard DuGalle was a human from Earth and a highly decorated admiral of the United Earth Directorate. Considered the greatest military leader within the United Powers League, he was entrusted with command of the Expeditionary Fleet sent to bring the Koprulu sector under Earth's control during the Brood War, with his lifelong friend Alexei Stukov serving as his tactical advisor. Manipulated by the infested agent Samir Duran, defeated by Sarah Kerrigan, and broken by the death of Stukov, he ended his own life as the fleet was hunted down by the zerg.

Background and the expedition#

DuGalle spent most of his life defending Earth from its enemies. By the age of sixty-four, with countless victories to his name, he was considered the greatest military leader within the United Powers League. He was married to a woman named Helena, with whom he had children, and his friendship with Alexei Stukov reached back to their youth.

The Directorate had long been aware of Doran Routhe's failed attempt to colonize new worlds, and during the early battles among protoss, terrans, and zerg it resolved to send an expeditionary force to pacify the sector: to bring under control the colonies the newly christened UED regarded as rogue and to contain the aliens. Given the extreme nature of the undertaking, DuGalle was unanimously nominated to command the force. His three objectives were to conquer the rogue terran colonies and capture Emperor Arcturus Mengsk of the Terran Dominion, to take control of the entire Zerg Swarm by capturing the Overmind with psychics and powerful drugs, and to use the captured Swarm to pacify all protoss activity in the sector. DuGalle accepted, though he was uncomfortable using the zerg and would rather have relied on conventional tactics. He commanded from the flagship Aleksander, with Stukov as his tactical advisor.

Early actions#

The fleet arrived after the death of the original Overmind, by which time most of the terran population was under Mengsk's control and the remnants of the Terran Confederacy had largely been conscripted into his forces. DuGalle issued a proclamation to his subordinates, reminding them that now they were isolated from home, only unity and resolve would secure victory and perhaps their own survival.

His first action was a demonstration of the zerg's destructive power. He released captive zerg onto an unsuspecting Dominion colony and forced Stukov to watch the massacre, declaring that the live demonstration would instill a resolve in him that recorded dissections could not. When asked whether he wished to intervene, DuGalle declined and ordered the Aleksander into orbit, abandoning the colonists.

Conquest of Dominion space#

At Braxis, DuGalle's landing troops were low on vespene gas and lacked intelligence on the planet's deposits. Help came from the Confederate Resistance Forces under Lieutenant Samir Duran, accepted as colonial conscripts despite initial suspicion because Duran knew the planet better than the fleet did. With his help the UED located vital geysers and took the capital, Boralis, securing Dominion intelligence assets that anchored their rapid push into Dominion space.

DuGalle then planned an attack on the Dylarian Shipyards, where Dominion battlecruisers sat in drydock. Duran warned him the Dominion could reinforce its outlying bases quickly, but DuGalle was unhappy with Duran, considering the turncoat a liability. The UED commandeered the fleet of battlecruisers, defeated an intercepting Dominion fleet under General Edmund Duke, and destroyed the shipyards. When a psi disrupter was found on the former Confederate capital of Tarsonis, Duran convinced DuGalle to destroy it over Stukov's strenuous objections. Duran was left on Tarsonis while the main fleet traveled toward Korhal, but Stukov's ghosts intervened and his Elite Guard secretly disassembled the device rather than destroying it.

The hunt for Mengsk#

The UED launched a full-scale assault on Korhal to shatter the Dominion's power. After a hard-fought series of battles the Directorate prevailed, and Mengsk was nearly captured fleeing the planet, escaping only through the intervention of Commander Jim Raynor and a small protoss fleet. Outraged at being thwarted in his moment of triumph, DuGalle pursued the fugitives to a base hidden on Aiur. The battle there was a disaster: his troops defeated the protoss defenders and fought through rampaging zerg, but a second wave of zerg, allowed through when Duran moved his troops aside and ignored Stukov's warnings, gave Mengsk and Raynor the opening to escape through a warp gate that then self-destructed.

The death of Stukov#

Stukov left Aiur with a large contingent of troops on a private matter, telling DuGalle nothing, which led DuGalle to believe he was abandoning the battle. Tracking him to Braxis, DuGalle and Duran discovered that the psi disrupter had been reconstructed and activated. Duran told DuGalle that Stukov had betrayed him and rebuilt the device to sabotage the mission. DuGalle was reluctant to believe it but found the evidence incontrovertible, and with a heavy heart he ordered Duran into the disrupter to deal with the traitor. Duran confronted Stukov in a control center and executed him. Mortally wounded, Stukov managed to tell DuGalle that the real traitor was Duran, who had been infested by the zerg. Duran vanished as the disrupter began its self-destruct and zerg poured in. An enraged DuGalle saved the device, swore vengeance on the zerg, and set out to capture the Overmind.

To chain the beast, and defeat#

DuGalle succeeded in capturing the new Overmind on Char, helped in part by the psi disrupter. In the aftermath Duran resurfaced and presented his queen, Sarah Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades. The two sparred verbally, Kerrigan assuring him the UED's reign would be short-lived and delivering a final barb that Stukov had been twice the man DuGalle was, and that she was glad to have been spared the trouble of killing him. DuGalle then instituted intense training exercises on the surface of Char so that the harsh environment would not jeopardize the security of the tamed Overmind, and he attended Stukov's memorial aboard the Aleksander.

He had underestimated Kerrigan. She recruited Raynor, Mengsk, and Fenix, destroyed the psi disrupter, and drove the UED from Korhal. DuGalle launched the enslaved Slave Broods against her base on Tarsonis, but the UED struggled to control the Overmind, and Kerrigan killed his scientists and defeated his forces. When Kerrigan attacked Char itself, Dark Prelate Zeratul, blackmailed into it, slew the reborn Overmind. In a last bid DuGalle attacked Kerrigan's weakened position on a platform over Char alongside protoss under Praetor Artanis and Dominion forces under Mengsk, but all three were defeated. DuGalle acknowledged his defeat and offered terms of surrender, which Kerrigan refused, mockingly granting the survivors a head start before sending the Swarm to annihilate them.

Fall from grace#

The Expeditionary Fleet began to retreat from the sector. The defeat and the death of Stukov weighed heavily on DuGalle. He composed a farewell letter to Helena explaining the circumstances of the defeat and revealing the true nature of Stukov's death and his own role in it, then shot himself with a 9mm pistol. The message, and any news of the defeat, never reached the UED: the fleet was caught and entirely destroyed by the pursuing zerg. Years later, Stukov, surviving in infested form, remembered his old friend fondly.