Jack Frost: firebat commander of Brontes IV

Lieutenant Jack Frost was a terran firebat and militia commander formerly of the Terran Confederacy. When the zerg Incubus Brood invaded the Brontes system and the colony world of Brontes IV collapsed into insurgency and civil war, Frost came out of retirement to defend its people. At the head of the New Dresdin Outlaws he stood against every faction that sought to harm the terran population of the planet, from the rebel Fist of Redemption to the colony's own corrupt government, and finally against the Swarm itself alongside warriors of the protoss 7th Fleet.

Early service and retirement#

Frost served as an officer and firebat in the Brontes IV Colonial Militia, and by the outbreak of the Great War he was thirty eight years old. He was regarded as having written the book on colonial warfare, a competent commander with a long record in the Confederate militia. That record ended when Frost retired after experiencing undisclosed atrocities carried out in the name of justice, an experience that left him with little appetite for further service to the Confederacy.

His personal life carried its own ruptures. Frost was involved with Black Morgan, a dropship pilot considered one of the hottest in the Confederacy, and at some point was engaged to her. He vanished from her life without a word. Morgan later settled in the city of New Dresdin on Brontes IV, and roughly ten years passed before the two found themselves in each other's company again.

Recall to duty#

The zerg Incubus Brood's invasion of the Brontes system shattered the colony's fragile order. At the same time an insurgency led by the ghost Atticus Carpenter and his movement, the Fist of Redemption, rose against the colonial authorities. Marshal Bill Constantine, unable to obtain further help from the Magistrate or the Confederacy, turned to the retired lieutenant. Frost did not want to return to duty, even after Constantine showed him a propaganda disk that had been removed from a Fist of Redemption installation, but the marshal ultimately secured his services and Frost was recalled.

Frost raided the installation the Fist of Redemption operated from and threw the insurgents out of the region. He declared his job done, but when Carpenter's forces besieged Constantine's base, Frost returned and helped defend the marshal. His efforts, alongside the Brontes IV Colonial Militia, blunted Carpenter's ambitions at the very moment the rebel ghost had grown confident enough to demand Constantine's surrender.

The Hammer and the Council of Inquiry#

The newly formed Council of Inquiry conscripted Frost to lead its equally new enforcement arm, the Hammer Strike Force. The arrangement did not survive contact with the Council's methods. Ordered to kill innocent colonists, Frost walked out. With the help of Black Morgan he fled to New Dresdin along with the colonists he had refused to slaughter, and there began organizing a resistance against the Hammer he had briefly commanded.

The Council answered by declaring New Dresdin infested for its refusal to submit. Frost's militia defeated the Hammer's assault on the city, and Frost then personally infiltrated the Council's stronghold with Morgan's assistance. He sabotaged the Council's nuclear silos, hoping that with the Council destroyed the Hammer could return to its original duty of protecting colonists rather than butchering them. The corrupt Council was all but wiped out by its own missiles, but the plan's second half failed. The Hammer's commander, Tsuname, appointed himself Governor of Brontes IV and declared martial law.

Frost returned to New Dresdin with Morgan and was joined by Charlie Vane and a small group of Hammer soldiers who had grown disillusioned with being forced to kill innocents. In the militia's absence the zerg had infested New Dresdin itself, but the combined force of Frost's outlaws and the Hammer renegades quickly recaptured the city. The militia then struck at the Fist of Redemption's primary base, where they learned that Tsuname had entered into league with the rebels, his Hammer troops fighting alongside Carpenter's. Frost's forces fought on regardless, destroying the Fist of Redemption stronghold, the Hammer contingent, and a zerg hive cluster in the area. Tsuname was killed in the battle, and Frost, Vane, and Morgan went home to rebuild New Dresdin.

Alliance with the protoss#

The respite was brief. The lingering zerg presence outside New Dresdin drew a protoss 7th Fleet task force under the command of Edullon to the area. The militia allied with Edullon's troops and destroyed the remaining zerg, and a militia detachment under Charlie Vane went on to help Edullon free her father, Demioch, from Fist of Redemption captivity.

Carpenter had not been idle. The remnants of the Incubus Brood had passed into his control as the Carpenter Brood, and while Syndrea's Vanguard of the 7th Fleet swept the planet engaging zerg forces, and on occasion the surviving colonial militias, Frost mounted an attack on the new brood with the aid of Demioch, Edullon, Vane, and Morgan. The assault destroyed what was believed to be the heart of the Carpenter Brood, but Carpenter himself could not be found.

The victory drew a dangerous response. Judicator Syndrea's vanguard, commanded by Aedus/Xerxes, fell upon Frost's forces in full strength while hunting the renegades Edullon and Demioch. Demioch stated that the only way to calm Aedus/Xerxes' rage was to defeat him in single combat. Frost volunteered for the duel, but it was Edullon who accepted the task. While she slew Aedus/Xerxes, Frost and his militia held off Syndrea's forces and destroyed their central nexus.

Last stand#

Then the main zerg host arrived in the sector. Frost and Edullon's forces captured Syndrea, but the Swarm stormed the base holding her and took the judicator for its own purposes. Frost joined with the forces of Executor Andraxxus, and the allies pushed into the hives of the Fenris Brood. A brood under the command of a new cerebrate reinforced the cerebrate Nargil and repelled the offensive.

Black Morgan parted ways with Frost, but the zerg tracked her and implanted her with a parasite. Through her the Swarm found the New Dresdin Outlaws' secret compound, which was raided and destroyed. After several close escapes Frost resolved to go to Andraxxus and learn who the zerg were using to shadow their movements. Accompanied by Vane and Morgan, he met with Andraxxus, Edullon, and Demioch, but the zerg had followed them once more, and the Overmind's broods seized the opportunity to eradicate the core of the 7th Fleet and the surviving terrans. Overrun by the Swarm, Frost deliberately detonated the fuel tanks on his armor, killing himself and the attackers pressing in around him. The man who had refused to abandon the colonists of Brontes IV ended his war the way firebats feared most and he chose freely, in fire of his own making.