UED Expeditionary Fleet

The United Earth Directorate Expeditionary Fleet, also known as the UED Expeditionary Force, was a human strike force dispatched to the Koprulu Sector to bring the region under the control of the United Earth Directorate during the Brood War. The fleet was commanded by Admiral Gerard DuGalle, with Vice Admiral Alexei Stukov as his second-in-command. It conquered much of the sector and captured the second Overmind before it was destroyed by the Zerg Swarm, temporarily backed by the protoss and several terran groups. Afterward only scattered remnants of the fleet remained, keeping a low profile across the sector.

Formation and mission#

The United Powers League became aware of the zerg and protoss in the Koprulu Sector and feared that an attack on Earth might one day follow. Out of that fear the League reorganized itself into the United Earth Directorate, which dispatched a large fleet with three objectives: to conquer the rogue terran colonies and capture Arcturus Mengsk, emperor of the newly formed Terran Dominion; to seize control of the entire Zerg Swarm by capturing the new Overmind with psychics and powerful drugs; and to use that captured Swarm to pacify all protoss activity in the sector.

The fleet arrived after the Great War. One of its first actions was a cold-blooded weapons test, in which DuGalle observed a battle between zerg he had deliberately unleashed on an unsuspecting Dominion colony in order to study them.

The conquest of the Dominion#

An early campaign was fought at Braxis, where the fleet moved to take the world from the Dominion. Its blockade of the planet was forced open by protoss escaping with the Uraj crystal, but the fleet pressed on, assaulted the capital city of Boralis, and captured the world. In the process it recruited Lieutenant Samir Duran and elements of his Confederate Resistance Forces.

The fleet continued to grind down the Dominion. It seized the Dylarian Shipyards, capturing a large number of Dominion battlecruisers for its own use, and destroyed a Dominion counterattack led by General Edmund Duke. On Tarsonis it located the psi disruptor, a device capable of scrambling zerg communications, despite the heavy zerg presence on the world. DuGalle, however, chose to destroy the device rather than risk it falling into Mengsk's hands, judging the Dominion too great a threat.

The fleet then besieged Korhal, the Dominion throne world. The Dominion's numbers and defenses could not stop it, and the UED took the planet and destroyed Mengsk's palace in Augustgrad. Mengsk himself escaped capture at the last moment through the intervention of Raynor's Raiders and a small protoss fleet.

The death of Stukov#

Pursuing Mengsk and Jim Raynor to Aiur, the fleet found a large protoss refugee base built around a functional warp gate and ringed by zerg broods. The Directorate destroyed one brood, established a base, and routed the protoss defenders, but a vast zerg wave from the northeast forced it to fall back. The fleet did not realize that Duran had quietly withdrawn his own troops from the battle.

Alexei Stukov, against DuGalle's orders, secretly rebuilt the psi disruptor on Braxis. When DuGalle learned the device had not been destroyed, Duran convinced him it was an act of treason, and DuGalle sent a commando force under Duran to terminate Stukov's command. Duran killed the vice admiral, but with his last words Stukov named Duran the true traitor, possibly an infested agent, and warned that the psi disruptor was in fact crucial to their mission. The fleet then held the device against a zerg assault and a self-destruct that had been set on its power core.

Zerg slaves and the fall#

The fleet's last great victory came at Char, where it deployed in full to enslave the second Overmind and its broods. The psi disruptor scattered the zerg, and after overcoming three specialized cerebrates the fleet destroyed the creature's guardians and captured the young Overmind at last. Control of the Swarm passed to the UED Science Corps, and the fleet became the dominant power of the sector. A victory report was sent to Earth, much of it exaggerated, including a claim that Stukov had died heroically in action.

The fleet's heavy-handed rule turned the whole sector against it. An uneasy but powerful alliance formed between the Queen of Blades Sarah Kerrigan, Raynor's Raiders, protoss under Fenix, and the remnants of the Terran Dominion. The alliance destroyed the psi disruptor and struck the fleet's garrison, and though the UED lost the battle the alliance soon fractured when Kerrigan betrayed her partners. The Directorate then sent its slave broods against Kerrigan's hive clusters on Tarsonis and experimented on the zerg to tighten its grip, but its Science Corps lost that battle as well.

When Kerrigan struck Char in force, the fleet held firm control of the enslaved Overmind, the bulk of its strength stationed at the planet. With the aid of the Nerazim, Kerrigan broke the fleet and its slave Swarm, and Zeratul slew the second Overmind, returning the zerg to Kerrigan's command. The surviving Directorate ships withdrew from Char, and many troops defected and were left stranded in the sector. When the remnants of the fleet returned to Char at the moment Dominion and protoss forces also converged on the world, DuGalle made a final demand for Kerrigan's submission and was refused. His attempt to negotiate for the lives of his men was rebuffed, and as the fleet tried to retreat to Earth the zerg hunted it down. Not a single vessel reached home.

Remnants#

Scattered remnants of the Expeditionary Fleet survived in the Koprulu Sector, hiding on worlds such as Abaddon. One abandoned element became the Spartan Company, a band of mercenary goliath pilots who later offered their services to Raynor's Raiders. The Terran Dominion continued to regard the remnants as a threat and, along with the Umojan Protectorate, branded them race traitors; Arcturus Mengsk sent ghosts to assassinate their leaders. In 2503 the remnants were falsely blamed for attacks actually carried out by Project Shadowblade, the Dominion using them as cover for its own kidnapping of ghosts. For years afterward the aftershock of the invasion fed UED sympathizer movements across the sector, some of them xenophobic, who hoped the Directorate would one day return to wipe out the protoss and the zerg.

Organization#

The fleet was divided into at least two wings, Atlas Wing and Cronus Wing, alongside several specialized formations: the UED Blockade, the UED Strike Team, the UED Commando Force, the UED Science Corps, and various garrison and battle-fleet elements. The Blockade besieged and cut off worlds, the Strike Team and Commando Force served as ground troops, the Science Corps controlled the captured Overmind and its broods, and the garrisons held key worlds such as Braxis. Alexei Stukov maintained his own Elite Guard, marked by the color blue. The fleet's forces were augmented by colonial conscripts during the war, and its infantry tactics were innovative enough that they were later imitated by Amon's Forces during the End War.