Harbinger/41

Loomings
Of course war wasn't fair. There was little there that Daniel could argue with.

"Yeah, well I still hope to make a substantial contribution to the war. I can't do it if, as I'm aware of, you aren't willing to give us more of your technology, and even if you did, like you said, it wouldn't help to simply redistribute forces."

"And so you're planning on doing something?"

"Exactly. Now, ever since Antiga's downfall I have been aware of the tremendous power of the psi emitter. I've also figured out a way to reverse the programming on such devices so that they repel, rather than attract, the Zerg. I don't know just how extensive its effects used in this way may be, however. Problem is, we don't know enough about the magic we're casting."

"If you had wanted to learn of that information, I believe you are in luck. Right before we sky-blasted Chau Sara with a Dreadnought, we located an installation on its perpetual far side away from the main planet, one that goes by the name of Flannum. Sensing that the place held significant potential, we used our polarion beams to assimilate all electronic data contained within the installation, encrypted or otherwise."

"Great, well then at least we will have access to what we both believe to be important information regarding psi emitters. And have you cracked the encryption?"

"There isn't much to decrypt... at least, not when you're - that is, we - are using a polarion beam. It can perfectly analyze any physical object that stores data of any kind, and it was immediately obvious which part of that physical data was the encryption key. By the time we stored in our data banks the bland data had already been retrieved."

"Well, so much for biological encryption. What have you got?"

"So... What's the progress on Project Alone?" Daniel asked Christopher.

"Wait wait wait, what's Project Alone?" interrupted Sarlena before Christopher could begin.

"Chris, why don't you explain," Daniel brushed the question aside.

"Right, so in the aftermath of the fall of Mar Sara, the Sons of Korhal managed to infiltrate Jacobs Installation and retrieve a pair of data discs. In effect, they were dual experiments that ran in parallel. One was about the psi emitter, which could send specific vibes through deep space, amplifying the signals of telepaths. These would generally be lust and desire, or terror and repulsion. Remember two months ago, when we first encountered their use on Antiga?"

"Yeah," said Sarlena, her interest piqued, while Raynor subsconsciously stopped eating his food to listen.

"Well, that's that. The other data disc holds information on how to build, use, and predict results of a psi disruptor."

"What's that?" queried Raynor.

"Right, so the psi disruptor does the near, but not exact, opposite of the psi emitter. The original plan envisioned was to create small box-like devices like the psi emitter, and to use them to prevent the Zerg from showing up--"

"Wait, how the Heck did the Confederacy know that the Zerg could float through space, so early?" exclaimed Raynor, anger swelling up.

They looked at each other, not knowing what to say. It Did seem really weird...

"Yeah, well they did, and then they tested the device--"

"But... That doesn't make any sense at all! How can you test whether or not the device works, if the Zerg wouldn't be going anywhere in the first place?" exclaimed Raynor.

"Well, you see, there were actually several experiments. They first created a psi emitter and wondered if it'd attract anybody. They put it on an abandoned and distant planet code-named Braxis and activated the device, with a handful of people stationed there to act as the welcoming committee. Needless to say, none of them survived," explained Raynor.

"Because they all got killed by the Zerg," realized Sarlena with sadness.

"There were so many of them, and the Confederacy really became frightened at that point. They wanted to create a device that would repulse the Zerg away--"

Daniel interrupted, "and instead of doing it the correct way, which was to give a second programme to the psi emitter that sent off repulsive and terrorizing vibes."

"Instead," continued Christopher, "they thought the psi disruptor was the way. So they set up another test, this time on Chau Sara--"

"The planet we've lost touch with two years ago!" realized Sarlena.

"--And they ran an experiment using both psi emitter and psi disruptor. Problem was, the psi disruptor didn't work as intended--it could only keep the Zerg away by a few miles, while the psi emitter attracted some Zerg from throughout all of deep space. And spaceborne weapons can hit beyond a few miles, so the psi disruptor and its vicinity were swiftly destroyed. The Zerg went on to claim the planet, and we've lost contact with it ever since."

"Such a well-disguised thing, this whole mess!" shouted Raynor as he banged the table.

"Please calm down, Jim," said Daniel. "So the psi disruptor didn't work. But they did notice that it caused Zerg within a space of a few miles to become disorganized, some to even fight each other. So they established another test on Mar Sara--"

"The whole collection of Confederate planets they've turned into testing grounds!" roared Raynor.

"That's indeed how the Zerg got on this planet, and that's also why Air Los Andares got thrown off air the moment the Zerg showed up on the television screen. Remember?" Sarlena and Christopher nodded.

"So here comes retribution."

"If it involves another experiment, I'm not for it," declared Raynor.

"The whole of Koprulu Sector is under attack and you want to tell me that you won't see this experiment through?" Christopher exclaimed, with anger in his voice. "You'll doom everyone!"

"No--the experiments have doomed everyone," Raynor returned.

"Yes, but they're also our only chance of victory over the Zerg! You've seen their numbers, their ferocity, their technology! Fighting them head-on isn't the way to go!" Daniel challenged.

"So the plan," continued Christopher, "was to build a massive psi disruptor on this other planet the Protoss have given us, which we've done already. It's an ice world, and the Protoss once had a colony there, known as Khyrador. The place is always caught inside a massive planetwide blizzard, which will make it nearly impossible to find anything there. The psi disruptor, once activated, should be able to reach across worlds, much like the psi emitter. But this time, it'll affect all Zerg, rather than just the one percent or so that are lured by the small psi emitters. Once it's built, we need only defend it, and the Zerg, leaderless, will be useful."

"How do you know that the Zerg can't continue to fight without a leader?" asked Sarlena, who was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

"Because my nightmares have shown me that the Zerg is controlled by one Overmind," announced Daniel at last. "And the experiment on Chau Sara proved my point."

Raynor and Sarlena stared at Daniel. For a long while. "What else are you not telling us?" asked Sarlena.

"Well, one is that Jaxtor and I are also working on Project Red Herring," said Daniel, trying to throw it out as if it were nothing.

But the others didn't take it as nothing. "What the heck is it this time?" asked Christopher, who had evidently not known of this either.

"The counterpart to Project Alone: a massive psi emitter, on an uninhabited planet close to Khyrador, which will attract almost all Zerg in the galaxy to the one planet, which we hope is close enough to the psi disruptor for its activation to catch almost the entire Zerg Swarm off guard," Daniel explained.

Sarlena shook her head at this, and wanted to back out of the conversation, having lost her appetite. "May God have mercy on you," she told Daniel.

Battle of Braxis
Another month had passed since the ignominious defeat of General Duke's Alpha Fleet by the Protoss. Mengsk had done what Daniel thought a crafty leader would have done: instead of dispersing navies across the worlds under his control so that they were more or less equally protected relative to how important and populated they were, he clustered all his forces together into the newly christened Imperial Fleet. After having amassed a powerful fleet, he had instructed his new Grand Admiral Edmund Duke to scare the remaining Confederates on Tyrador into surrendering peacefully, and Duke had of course delivered. The new Imperial Fleet was thus stationed at the place where Mengsk had finally defeated the Confederacy: Tyrador. Mengsk however seemed to have taken to heart the warning that the Protoss had given him; he did not make any more aggressive moves on the Umojan-Morian Combine.

Daniel's base had continued to expand, though of course not as quickly as an impatient Daniel would have liked. There were only twelve carriers so far, which could hold 1728 Wraiths in total. Daniel currently had twice as many Wraiths, which was a good ratio to have.