Harbinger/10

First Contact
Daniel and the other commanders of the fleeing humans sat around the Operations Center, admiring the large craft known as the Hyperion, while the visual showed the similarly massive golden hull of the triangular Protoss craft drawing nearer and nearer. The battle raging around them seemed to have all but ended, a temporary lull with each side regrouping.

It kept on drawing near, coming closer and closer, --it seemed to take so long! But at last they were there, connecting to what seemed to be a circular, two-meter-diameter docking hatch in the side of the ship. The link fit--almost too perfectly, it seemed, and then the lights in the various displays in the room winked out, leaving the bright but tactically meaningless room lighting. "It's time," said Daniel, leading the others out of the inner complex and into the corridor, where twenty meters later they arrived at their side of the docking hatch.

There was an awkward pause. Daniel knew what the others were wondering--how would they communicate with the other species, even if they were ramen, like humans? But Daniel thrust such thoughts out of his mind, and clicked on the buttons opening the door. The two half-circles slid apart from the center, revealing the Protoss side--iris-shaped, with eight panels overlapping each other. A moment later, it too opened, revealing--

a catawalk, facing a vast seeming chasm with a brilliant cyan orb in the middle, not touching anything. By the size of the vast interior, it seemed to be the only room in the entire ship--and being a room, it was mostly hollow in the middle. As they passed through to the catawalk, Daniel inspected the golden hull. It was only half a centimeter thick, so...

It must mean that these aliens, the Protoss, had at least some technological improvements over the humans for them to be able to resist the Zerg flyer attacks.

The catawalk stretched all around the circumference of the ship in a ring along the interior, composed of more of the gold-like plating. It was wide, but there were no railings, and as the two connected ships were currently not in orbit, there was some weight, and that was a precipitous drop...

Down below was a being--the only living creature in all the entire empty vessel. It seemed strangely humanoid in shape, but with a tan, reptilian-like scaly skin, a larger body size, and bluish, glowing eyes. For hair it had three gnarled--things--reaching back two meters to its back. Its hands had three opposable thumbs and two fingers, clearly visible from the cast of the blue, soothing light in the middle of the expanse. Aside from the scales, which at this point could have possibly been mistaken for a vest, the creature was otherwise 'naked'...

"Hello?" shouted Raynor down the long path. The others looked at him--it was not likely that the alien would understand him anyway. The being turned to stare at them, and Daniel was confronted with swirling images of an otherworldly spire, a multitude of orbs resembling planets... and a sense of wondering.

While the other humans waited for a response by what was obviously a mute alien, Daniel recalled from his nighttime conversations with the Overmind that thoughts transcended language, experience, and custom. Time to try it out, he thought.

[[Greetings, fellow Protoss. We are Terrans.]]

[[Of course you are, Whispering One. Your fellow Terrans, however, are mute.]] It seemed to be practically a thought SHOUT, and he had never experienced such forceful communications with anyone except--the Overmind, who suddenly seemed to have been deliberately speaking in a 'normal' tone that Daniel could more readily handle...

Daniel stood in place, stunned by the very unfolding of this effective 'dialogue' he could hold with the Protoss specimen... Could it be! Ramen, after all--

[[Our custom of communication is by sound waves. We produce them through a combination of our mouth and voice box.]] Daniel didn't notice the awkward silence of a group of ten or so humans staring at a staring Protoss...

[[Our custom of communication is by psionic vibes. We produce them through a combination of our stimulae psionicus and khaydarin crystal,]] came the reply.

[[I believe that most of us cannot communicate with your kind through thought, and that most of you cannot communicate with us through voice.]]

[[And you would be correct. You have done well to come to us; we hope that we should be able to arrange a peace, an alliance.]]

[[How did your battle with the Zerg begin?]]

[[That is a long battle which we have fought for a millennia of Tarsonis years. We have forgotten the reason, though we are constantly reminded of it by endless bloodshed.]] (Tarsonis years were remarkably similar to Earth ones.)

[[We too have a grudge against the Zerg, and we have been fighting them for the last month.]]

[[That we know. Our observers have been following the progress of Zerg and Terran alike. For one thing, you do not know that we Protoss came several Tarsonis hours after the last evacuations from the planet where you encountered the Zerg--]]

[[Mar Sara--]]

[[Agreed, then Mar Sara. Then we obliterated the Zerg, as well as all other life on that planet.]]

Daniel was surprised. Mar Sara too? [[Just as you obliterated Antiga?]]

[[We sense what you refer to, and yes, much like we did to Antiga.]]

[[Yes, you have some good weaponry--]]

[[We sense your desire for our weaponry. Of that, only you shall master of these brought before us, Whispering One.]]

Daniel's hopes were stopped at that. [[Then we'll have to rely on our own,]] he thought.

[[Yes, you have your own weapons against the Zerg. Inefficient and impotent, but they seem to offer your people a misguided sense of your own safety.]]

[[Hence, our need to find someone with more. Otherwise, I sense the Zerg shall take planet after planet... And we only have so many planets left.]]

[[Only sixteen, of which only thirteen are in Koprulu, including the three we glassed?]]

[[Three???]]

[[Ah, you shall learn of that later. We do have potent weapons, but you should not underestimate your own.]]

[[What do you consider to be our potent weaponry?]] Daniel rapidly recalled the various weapons he had seen the humans wield.

[[Your psi emitter is very attractive to us, and the now destroyed ion cannon fired an interesting projectile not long ago.]]

Okay, so you are fully psionically oriented. [[Were you dragged toward the psionic emanations of your own accord?]]

[[We must not, or else we should one time or another find ourselves in dire situations. The Zerg are a force to be reckoned with indeed, one such as which our race has not encountered one similar. All that which your Terrans may control pales in comparison, but we see flickers of your advantages. You are indeed worthy specimens for us to analyze, and you may be worthy of assimilation.]]

[[Analyze...asssimilation?]]

[[Yes, Whispering One--fine then, Daniel Travincal--We shall explain more of this to you--]]

[[Plural?]]

[[For as long as we recall, we have been fully linked to each other as a race--each member of it, able to communicate with, and also to block out the thoughts of, each other. In meeting with you, while you give your thoughts to us, we share such thoughts, and so our entire race is made knowing of that information even as we communicate through the Protoss specimen you see before you.]]

[[Amazing... Could you do that kind of bioengineering for us? We would have much to benefit from doing this.]]

[[We see no significant potential worthy of undergoing such treatment in those you bring with you, and you already can use your telepathy to communicate with any of us-- to an extent.]]

This entire conversation had taken less than a minute for their minds to process, during which the astonished humans had been analyzing the alien and the craft. But one minute later, Sarlena looked at Daniel--still staring, he was--and bumped her elbow into his side.

!!!That hurt!!! "Oww! What was that for?" Daniel questioned her, as the others came to attention.

"You've been staring at the Protoss alien for way too long, I think."

Meanwhile, he continued his communication with the Protoss.

[[I believe we've been holding this conversation for too long, Daniel Travincal,]] communicated the Protoss representative. [[We shall begin phase warping to one of our staging worlds shortly.]]

Daniel glared at Sarlena, but the courageous woman did not back down. "Don't interrupt my--meditations, ever again, Sarlena," he intoned.

[[Has your barrier been tested?]]

[[What??]]

[[Has any other psionic entity tried to pry information from inside your mind?]]

[[Yes, indeed. The--Overmind.]]

[[That is exactly what we suspected. Were you able to resist?]]

[[I don't know if I succeeded.]]

[[The Overmind is very wily. If you don't know if it succeeded, then it succeeded. You are not yet safe to expose to the world where we are headed--hence, we shall instead be phase warping to an isolated, worthless, wasteland planet, thus denying our secret coordinates from the prying Overmind.]]