Harbinger/24

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'...

A pause, as the humans waited for the alien to give something like a sign of recognition rather than simply waiting for the humans to make the first move and prove the reasons of their visit...

"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.))))

((((Hey, don't insult our weaponry!))))

((((We realize that you already have realized the superiority of our weaponry,)))) the alien replied telepathically.

((((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 third one 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.))))

((((I wouldn't know the coordinates of a planet simply by being on it,)))) Daniel challenged.

((((You'd be surprised by how much you would learn just by sensing our minds, from seeing the kind of sun, and from seeing the arrangement of stars in the sky.))))

((((All right then, I want barrier preparations to begin very soon, as I cannot wait to go to your home planet.))))

((((You shall have to prove your worth to be granted access to our home planet.))))

"You're staring at it again!" said Sarlena, looking at Daniel with suspicion. "What's the problem with you!?"

"I don't have any problem with me!" Daniel fired back. "Why don't you look at the alien yourself, since this could very well be the only time you'll have such an opportunity?" He glared at her.

((((It may be about time that you reveal your psionic power to your fellow Terrans. Doing so shall make it much easier for them to accept whatever truths you shall tell them about yourself and about us.))))

((((All right then, I'll do as you suggest.))))

The other humans were all looking at him, he realized, as he looked from side to side, anxiety swelling upward from his heart. "Okay, okay!" he shouted, trying to prevent his face from blushing. "I'm telepathic, all right?"

"See, I knew it," Sarlena shouted to Christopher exultingly. The master technician only nodded, though only a bit surprised.

"Oh?" challenged Michael. "Then can you tell me what I'm thinking right now?"

((Disbelief,)) Daniel sensed, looking at him and peering into his mind psychically. "Mike, you are currently thinking that there is no way that I could possibly know what you're thinking of right now."

Michael's eyes and mouth opened wide and silent, which was a very clear signal that he knew that Daniel had guessed accurately...

Daniel continued.

"I've been steadily growing my telepathic powers over the course of the last two months--that is, ever since I killed my first Zergling. So you see, I telepatically communicated with Kerrigan to find out her name, then telepathically met with a crew member aboard the Hyperion to get him to free me--"

"No WONDER you have had such an easy time rising to the top," said Jaxtor. "You knew what everyone else was thinking!"

"NO!" shouted Daniel right back in furious indignation, especially that a subordinate was challenging his military prowess. "I developed every bit of my military tactics through my own intelligence and experiences, and don't you dare go out of place, Jax!"

His face was contorted in his great anger, and Jaxtor backed away, remembering what had happened to him the last time he angered the colonel...

"Now. I am telepathic, like I've just explained. And I had just been communicating with the Protoss representative right here, using our minds. The Protoss don't understand your words, and can't speak them anyway." ((So if you want the Protoss to do something for you, you'd better make sure I like you,)) he added silently.

The others were still stunned, but it gradually was sinking in. Daniel knew it would...

((((You're scaring them, Daniel Travincal,)))) the Protoss intervened.

((((I know I am,)))) Daniel replied. ((((They need to be scared. They aren't like your race, which can probably understand such truths through thought alone, no convincing needed. Humans aren't like that...))))

((((We would imagine it not to be. Now, if you wish, take one last look at Tarsonis before we leave.))))

Suddenly, there was an eerie feeling, though it lasted for a mere split second and so none of the humans could describe it...

Brethren
The cyan orb in the middle of the room suddenly flickered, then returned to its normal brightness.

((((What's just happened?))))

((((We phased to a barren planet.)))) (((The image of a planet, all desertified, with craters from a thousand nuclear bombs still visible on its surface...)))

Realization dawned on Daniel. ((((Korhal IV! The same planet that the Confederacy had decimated decades earlier!))))

((((Interesting. Were we just fighting the Confederacy back at Tarsonis?))))

((((Yes, yes... What, so you mean we're at Korhal already???))))

((((Indeed. By now the radioactive fallout has fallen to far below the level that can be considered the slightest harmful to the Protoss. We believe that such would indicate a satisfiably safety level for you Terrans.))))

((((So exactly what does it mean to 'phase'? Is it our basic science-fiction idea of warping?))))

((((Not exactly. The psionic force knows no boundaries, and stretches across worlds when strong enough. Through our various nexii we have developed a strong enough psionic matrix to process the physical aspect, and telekinetically create a replica at a distant place. In the process, we create another self. Now, do you sense your other self?))))

Daniel tried, but as much as he attempted, he could not. ((Is this because I've been split, and the two halves are not in contact with each other?))

((((You would be mistaken, Daniel Travincal. Ordinarily, when you phase warp you retain a psionic connection with your other self, but you cannot at this occasion because shortly after we phased, the massive amounts of Zerg still in space around Tarsonis destroyed our previous selves.))))

Daniel was shocked. So swift an attack--and he felt nothing?!?

((((Tranquilize yourself. Where you are now, and with Protoss technology, you should be safe from the Zerg. Also, our former selves have valiantly fought the Zerg. Since we lost no 'souls', as you consider it, we Have engaged the enemy in what may be considered a normal battle, with casualties on both sides. Only this time the Zerg swarm was much greater than our fleet could handle. We believe that it was because of the interesting lure device your kind had activated.))))

((((But what about the hundreds of dropships that followed our ship?))))

((((Tranquility! We have brought them with us to Korhal, at serious cost to our psionic gradient reserves...))))

((((Then I, as their speaker, thank you. What about the Sons of Korhal and the Confederacy?))))

((((The Sons of Korhal broke away from the battle swiftly, so dishonorable were they that they did not stand and fight. Thus, many of them avoided the swarm, escaping to a number of other planets which we assume have been colonized by your kind, with the Zerg in close pursuit. The Confederacy's means of retreat have been all but annihilated, and only few of their number were able to escape; the rest of them fought honorably, dying in the end.))))

It was only then that Daniel realized how highly the Protoss valued honor: above even life.

((And, in retrospect, they have good reason to do so, as they were a war culture with the sufficient technology that their selves do not die...))

Within moments the Protoss Expeditionary Fleet which Daniel was on had landed on the sand-swirling, reddish-orange desert world. A horribly mutated scantid crawled across the ground on its thirteen legs and wishbone-shaped tail, before using its claws to drill into the ground and disappear. In the near distance, the desert sands collapsed into a stark depression, a black abyss that sucked in the sands, deep... a ring of jagged teeth encircled its perimeter, slowly shifting around, waiting for prey to fall through... The eerie peace of the landscape suddenly shattered as a bit of ground not too far away from the monstrosity of emptiness suddenly erupted into a plume of opaque tangerine. The reddish-tinted sky flickered for a while, before streaks of cyan and lavendar coursed over what the observer later realizes is but the hulls of the glorious fleet, uncloaking and revealing its awesome presence...

From the deck of the carrier, iris-shaped portals opened up against the gilded walls, and robotic probes emerged from the darkness within into the brilliant sunshine. In the still quiet landscape, these handful of drones rushed from place to place with a knowledgable determination; at each vertex along their journey they established a new warp rift, a spinning sphere of plasm glowing brighter than the immediate vicinity, oases of blue and virgin white against a dystopian backdrop of Korhal IV. Several shafts of light stretched upward from its core; one could see particles appear from nowhere, coalesce, and form into larger constructs as they settled into place. Circles, a few floreses shone around it, periodically travelling up and down the vertical axis of the rift, as the data from the psionic network coursed throughout the infantile, yet steadily growing object... This was happening in certain places throughout the site where the Protoss had decided to establish their first foothold on the surface.

Daniel and the other humans gazed out the windows of their respective ships, looking on with awe as the Protoss showed off their advance technology. Somewhere, they knew (as Daniel had started to tell them), the Protoss held a template for each of the disparate buildings now being constructed, and the sheer psionic potential charging through the voids was steadily creating additional duplicates of that template, many thousands of light years from home... Though the Protoss knew no home, merely a blessed homeworld...

From the dropships, battlecruisers, and the Protoss carrier, the humans emerged, outfitted in their heavy and reinforced hostile environment suits; they paused as they came out of the shadows of their vessels to take in the marvelous beauty--or to some, the lack of it--that this new world offered. None had anticipated being able to see another world, to be immersed in one, so swiftly as the alien technologies now made possible, and they treasured this opportunity for a moment, then another, and a moment more, before settling to their task of constructing the first of the terran establishments to arrive after the eradication of the "rebels" (mostly innocent civilians at the wrong place and at the wrong time) so many years ago. They went in the SCVs that were on board--the space construction vehicles had been programmed to build directly from blueprint, and so they mostly took care of themselves as first the foundations, then the ground floor, then the second went up in predictable fashion. The Protoss looked on with interest; they had never in their lifetimes seen this method of constructing things, and relished the chance to see how their new accompaniment compared against them.

The humans failed the test. The Protoss structures had completed their warp-ins within mere seconds, the orbs, swirls, and shafts of light dissipating after being replaced with the solid, also gilded walls of what seemed to be temples, gateways, gencores, etc. Their immense, seemingly gothic style architectured creations dwarfed those of the humans, which were small, utilitarian (at first anyway), shanty, and above all, excruciatingly slow. By the end of the day, the humans had all predicted, their barracks would only be one third on its way to completion, even though many of the SCVs were working together on that single project; and the supply depots would be complete yet still lack the ability to subterraneanize. The command center? They hadn't even decided to build one; the battlecruiser Hyperion would do just fine...

Shortly after the humans had landed, several members of Protoss emerged from their different starcraft. One seemed to Daniel to be the twin of the first alien he had encountered back on the carrier, only now more colored from the light of the Korhalian sun. This one brought two others with him, one on either side, causing several of the nearby humans to quiver in fear, staring at them as if watching a movie.

Only after Daniel had seen all three could he make out the characteristics that distinguished each: the first had a trio of thick, dark nerve cords hanging out the back of its head, had three appendages that seemed to be arms (one came out in front but looked different from the other two), and had two legs. This first one stood nine feet tall, a formidable sight indeed with the thick reptilian skin, the glowing cyan eyes, the psionic emanations of power and grace... In fact, these were the traits that the other two did not have in common with the first.

(((('Tis the alien,)))) the foremost Protoss thought, and Daniel heard as well as the other two (who were intended to hear).

((((Greetings to the three of you,)))) replied Daniel psychically. ((((So is it time that we got to know each other a bit better?)))) Daniel held respect for the first one, until suddenly his supposition was disturbed by a reply:

((((You must be mistaken, stranger. You were talking to my ditto aboard that instance of the Pride of Aiur.))))

((((Wait... so you mean that you Protoss have very little genetic variations?))))

((((We were designed--so says the Khala--by a great and at first seemingly omnipotent benefactor. We did not evolve into our current forms. But our history has long been lost through the millennia of Tarsonis-years we have gone through, and at any rate this benefactor race has long since disappeared into the void.))))

((((Wait--so you're the other one's ditto?!)))) Daniel led the other three Protoss into the Hyperion, where he found himself a seat and sat down, without welcoming the other three to sit (which perhaps would have broken the seats anyway).

((((Correct you are. I am, strictly speaking, older than that ditto which you have already met before, older by far. We are the same individual, duplicated through Phasing.)))) Meanwhile, Daniel listened intently as he drank a Cold Fusion, swiveling in his chair aboard the bridge.

((((Wowww... That's amazing,)))) replied Daniel. ((((But it's a bit confusing for me.))))

((((It may be, just as we are confused with all the tremendous variety and individual form that you humans take.))))

((((Ha! Well, I guess we have a lot more in common than one may at first realize. So--what's that ship called? The Pride of Aiur?))))

((((There is no 'the' in describing our ships, generally. Our ships, like ourselves, are Phased; so the Pride of Aiur is the name for all of the ships of the same model, made from the same template... They are carriers, the backbones to every Protoss fleet... You had stepped into a particular instance of the Pride of Aiur. Consider that a first in all of our races' histories.))))

Daniel smiled. ((((Well, you have stepped into the one and only Hyperion that we have to offer. I guess you could consider that a true First as well.)))) Daniel also telepathically let it leak that he was the fleet's head admiral--more accurately, colonel, since it was still a pathetically small fleet. ((((Your largest starcraft seems to be very well armed in comparison with your other ones.))))

((((Thanks, I'll take that as a compliment. Indeed, the Hyperion has some good armaments, but I'm supposing that you and your advanced technology would be superior by far.))))

Daniel sensed the Protoss turn haughty at that. ((((Well of course our technology is much better,)))) the Protoss bragged in unison, and Daniel sensed that this unison included millions of other, much more distant voices. ((((The Protoss are the most advanced race in the known universe, perhaps with the exception of the Xel'Naga--))))

Daniel nearly fell out of his seat when he realized that there might be another, even more powerful race. ((((What's the Xel'Naga?))))

((((It's not what's the Xel'Naga, it's what was the Xel'Naga. They were our creators, says the Khala, and of course had some really instrumental technologies, but they had afterward never been found again...)))) And seemingly inexplicably, the whole of the Protoss conscious wailed in their sorrow, their loss. Daniel decided it was best to change the topic...

((((What's the Khala?))))

((((It is our system of beliefs. From it, you would learn much of our history. But since you are a newcomer, it would be hard to explain all to you.))))

Daniel did not push for them to do so. ((((So, since you have called me the Whispering One, I'm supposing that I may have the opportunity to learn from you, to get to know your ways?))))

((((Many of our ways focus on using psionic potential for warfare. We shall demonstrate to you how it is performed, but I believe it is best that you, as the leader for this part of your race, do your best to ensure the continuing survival of your race.))))

((((What's that supposed to mean??)))) asked Daniel, a bit disgruntled by their condescending reply.

((((We shall have ample more opportunities to understand each other on a better note. Your race would not benefit much from your learning our ways, certainly less than if you had led your Terrans to greatness. On the other end of the balance, should you prove to be a good learner, we shall teach you enough to make you great in your abilities. That, however, would require considerable time and patience.))))

((((Well then, why did the three of you decide to come here?)))) Daniel queried.

((((To introduce our kind,)))) replied the foremost one. ((((My form is that of the Templar caste, focusing on destruction.))))

Then the Protoss psionically pointed out the one to his left, which stood only seven feet high and had a far weaker countenance with a skin that seemed merely wrinkled, not formed into clear, large chunks like that of the templar. Instead of cyan eyes, the latter had iridescent ones that alternated between orange, yellow, white, and blue; the two side nerve cords stretched to the sides rather than simply drooping down the back; and a garment of sorts, perhaps a sash, hid much of its skin. To Daniel, it almost seemed as if the one were purposefully hiding the skin, as much out of shame for its difference from that of the templar as out of tradition in the Protoss race. This second protoss had a much weaker psionic signal, but only because it was too pinpointed--useful for engineering work, but not for massive destruction. ((((This Protoss form is of the Khalai caste, focusing on creation.))))

Next, the Protoss pointed out the final one, an eight-feet-tall Protoss which had reptilian-like scales that were even more pronounced than that of the templar; in addition, each piece was small, so as to give the appearance of a skin covered in tough, pyramidal spikes. As Daniel looked into this one's eyes, he saw--eyes that appeared strangely human-like, appraising, unaltered like so much of the Protoss. These eyes did not have any unnatural coloration to them; they seemed just like that of the ordinary human, with black pupil and white iris... It was at this point that Daniel first suspected it, but then afterward he had forgotten what he suspected... The nerve cords of this one were bundled together behind the extended Protoss-ian head, tied into a knot but clearly not by physical exertion. This Protoss had only two appendages where the hands ought to be, unlike the three for the others. Two robes draped down either shoulder-blade of the final Protoss; dyed dark blue, they stretched flowingly all the way down to the Protoss feet but revealed the central portion of the Protoss body, bristling with the pointy scales. Its psionic signal--Daniel couldn't tell, but it seemed as if the Protoss were reserving it, as if in a perpetual state of meditation--but the power was clearly still there. Daniel had the unsettling feeling that it was checking out his own thoughts... ((((This Protoss form is of the Judicator caste, focusing on decision.))))

It took a while for Daniel to get it all in, but once he did, he realized even more clearly the values that the Protoss upheld: a clear sense of specialization of labor, preference for powerfully built and clearly defined bodies, alteration of the eye, the caste system, the different growth directions of the nerve cords, etcetera.

Daniel smiled. ((((I always knew that aliens aren't similar to us.)))) This understatement struck a chord with the Protoss, and their resulting joy at realizing this informed Daniel that they too had a sense of humor. With a start, however, he realized that the Protoss hadn't have had any humor, of any kind, for ages...

((((Us humans have a lot of specialization too, perhaps far more so. However, we don't look so different, we like to consider ourselves similar enough to each other that we can associate with them. Our troubles are generally with race, though that is more prevalent on our homeland than in Koprulu.))))

((((Ah yes, long ago your peoples tried to oppress others solely based on skin color, eye color, and facial appearance. Well, all is not equal between the three Protoss castes. At the top are the Judicator, followed by Templar.))))

((((Yes, yes, I see. So now what, you want me to go oversee the development of the human camp?))))

((((There is actually another reason for our coming,)))) corrected the Judicator. ((((We are here to see that Salutation is accomplished.))))

Salutation
This was something unusual to Daniel, so he naturally asked, ((((What's Salutation?))))

((((It is a ceremony held whenever psionically potent leaders of previously unmet groups meet each other, and it is one of the most influential of events. The last salutation was held back a millennium ago, when Adun and the Dark Templar underwent Salutation-))))

((((Wait, there's DARK templar?))))

The Protoss did not respond that that, but Daniel felt their upswelling of anger at the mention of what seems to be their foes. ((((-The Salutation before that was ill-fated, as it was with the Zerg... and the first two Salutations were what united the disparate tribes, bringing together Khalai, Templar, and Judicator...))))

Daniel dropped his head. ((Four Salutations in all of recorded Protoss history... Two were for the better (supposedly), and two were definitely for the worse, at least so it seems. So it is up to me to determine whether Salutation is for the better or for the worse...)) Daniel felt the pressure of the psionic emanations of the Protoss weighing heavy upon him... He had to prove that he was on their side, that this ceremony were not in vain...

((((So how do we do this Salutation?)))) Daniel asked inquisitively.

The Templar replied, ((((Each one of us has a special role in the Salutation process. The Templar make sure that all goes as it should and that nothing disrupts the process. The Judicator act as witnesses to its process and determine that it is indeed legitimate. And the Khalai--)))) The Templar's psionic signal pattered off into the chaos of conflicting emotions.

The Khalai stepped forward, and psionically began to undress itself. As the white sash fell to the ground, exposing the sleek, wrinkled skin, Daniel felt a sense of repulsion. He had no intentions of seeing a naked Protoss like that... ((Or is that the Protoss definition of naked anyway? And is naked a bad thing for an alien race??)) Such questions were fighting inside Daniel's mind as the Khalai stepped up toward him and came down to its knees, so that its head was about a foot and a half lower than that of Daniel's.

((((What's going on? What am I supposed to do?)))) Asked Daniel, perplexed, while staring at the Khalai.

A pause, and then, ((((Salutation requires that one party creates a Khalai and the other to eliminate it.))))

((((So... How do I eliminate...??)))) Daniel already had the sense of what was coming.

((((More specifically, Whispering One, you must kill her,)))) replied the Judicator.

((((What????!!!!)))) Daniel was in turmoil. He had no wish to harm anyone, much less kill a Khalai, who was after all part of the Protoss race, who had given the humans, as well as him in particular, the opportunity to escape the wrath of the Zerg back on Tarsonis... ((Why would they want to have one of their own number killed? Were they savages?)) Daniel could not think of an answer to them, so he postponed, the sides of his brain still fighting with each other-- ((This is much like the human sacrifices of old, and they were always bloody and detestable,)) Daniel recalled from his history textbooks. Then again, they were after all Confederacy history books, so he couldn't be sure anything like that had really happened... But the idea was disgusting, just the very idea itself, so he knew that he ought not to do it... (('Do unto others what you would want others to do unto you' was that Commandment (which had made it to Koprulu along with the Confederacy), and it was the cornerstone of human society. To break it, shatter it like it were nothing, for a pointless meeting--even if it only occurred four times in history--is a clearly barbaric act.)) Yet something told Daniel that it was different this time, that something about this occasion would pardon him if he were to do as the Protoss bade him do. ((It was, after all, a monumental moment in the history of both races; but still, why the sacrifice of an entire person, mind, body, soul, and all?)) And then Daniel remembered what the Templar had told him earlier, that through the process of Phasing, they could recreate a new identity that was exactly the same as an older one, so death would not technically be the loss of a unique individual; he had experienced this himself, as the Protoss Expeditionary Fleet had fled from Tarsonis... Then Daniel remembered how so many of the rules had been broken, how nothing is as it should be, how things so strange had happened... Maybe this was just another one of them? But no, he couldn't allow himself to commit murder, be it of another race entirely... Killing a cornstalk to eat the corn may not exactly be murder, but a Protoss was more similar to a human than to corn; and he had seen in the Judicator, eyes that were strangely reminiscent of a human eye... Back on the core planets, even pets were treated like people, not merely killed; how could he treat the Protoss any differently?

Gradually, another presence entered his mind: that of the Khalai, feeling anguish, repulsed, discarded, unwanted... Left all alone, unsure as well... Daniel, moved out of pity, were about to console the Khalai, when he realized that the psionic emanations were generated not because the Khalai feared for death--in fact, it seemed that the Protoss feared honor far more than death, much, much more--but because of Daniel's very inaction. In other words, the Khalai wanted to die at his hands!?! --which struck Daniel was an experience that was totally out of this world. The strength of the signal increased; now the Khalai was pleading to be killed, pleading to complete its mission, the Salutation ceremony...

((((Remember,)))) a third voice echoed into him, throwing Daniel into even more confusion, and as it continued over the next few seconds, Daniel felt his conscious slip away...

((((...Remember, that real Protoss don't die, they just fade away--))))

((The heck??!?))

((((--Remember, this Khalai, who has devoted to you all that it has, even placed its honor on the line, so that this salutation may be accomplished...))))

(((But... How... I can't!!)))

((((...Remember, remember this Salutation, which marks the true beginning of the relationship between Terran and Protoss, two races, different in many ways, yet which stand united...))))

((---But how does this have anything to do with the relationship between Terran and Protoss?--))

((((Remember: let this Khalai's end be a marker for all of you, on Aiur, on Khyrador, on Shakuras, on Zerus, on Char, on Tarsonis, on ....... ......... ......... ......... .......... ......... .......... ......... ........... ........ ))))

((--What's all those names??? Why do we need the Khalai to be a marker?!?))

((((Remember this point in time, the dawn of a new era, the end of another beginning, the beginning of another end...))))

((I shall remember, like all of you!!! I shall accept!!! May our two races live in peace for all time, and may we triumph over the Zerg!!!!!))

((((((AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!))))))

((((Remember... Remember... Remember...))))

((Acknowledge, Remember, Forget...))

Daniel awoke on the ground of the Hyperion, mind summoned back by the Judicator's powerful psionic pull. The Templar and Judicator were standing nearby, looking down upon his prostrate body.

He pulled himself back up, stepping around--only then did he see the corpse of the Khalai glowing brilliantly, shining rays of light erratically flying in every direction, arc lightning trailing across the surface, as the body started to shrink, keeping its proportion, as the brilliant light grew ever stronger until Daniel had to turn away from the blinding crescendo; each moment drawn out, a ball of yarn, streching and stretching with no end in view; sparks of heat burst forth from the violet-cyan-lavender-white sphere of amassed psionic potential, focusing with every moment, condensing, pulling itself together faster and faster, the black hole of a vortex consuming the psionic power discharged from the Khalai's body, drawing back together, into a mere pinpoint, revealing a tiny yet immensely beautiful crystal that pulsated with the very life-blood of the sacrificed one, and now its light was dimming, enveloped within the bluish, nearly opaque material, stored, empowering, enchanting, overpowering...

Daniel was dazed by the psionic shockwave that traversed through his mind. When he re-awoke, the Judicator held out a beautiful, golden amulet with the crystal embedded into its socket, placing it gently around Daniel's neck. The moment it touched his skin, Daniel felt an overpowering surge of potential, of majestic might, graceful grandeur, such a powerful feeling that few would know what it meant... He felt--capable.

It was then that Daniel realized how powerful his true psionic potential might one day become. For as Daniel looked at it, he realized that it was--

A Khaydarin Crystal.

((((So... Accomplishing Salutation... is the Khalai dead??))))

((((You are incorrect, for the spirit of the Khalai resides within that crystal. As long as it is preserved, her spirit shall be preserved as well, and shall help you in your psionic endeavors.))))

((((Cool! Well, that's a relief... But what about you, do you all have such crystals as well?))))

((((Some of our instances do; others do not. Since you are the only one of your race that we have so far encountered who has psychic capabilities, to us you are set apart from all others, and deserve to be awarded with such a gift.))))

((((As for the Khalai...))))

((((Need not feel any guilt. She eagerly sacrificed her First Life so as to help your relations with out society and to enter her Third Life.))))

((((She...?))))

((((Indeed. That particular Khalai is one of the two reproductive forms of our race. However, it is done differently from the process of intercourse that you Terrans undergo. Our process is that of a merging. Fate willing, we shall explain more of that particular facet of our society.))))

((((And what's this about the First and Third Life?))))

((((We undergo up to three transformations while we are extant in this world. The First Life is the form that I take, as you can see right in front of your eyes, and is surprisingly similar to your body. The Second Life is the result of the merging, after which we create offspring. The Third Life is life as a spirit within a crystal.))))

((((Oooh.... Sounds a bit alien to me, I'd admit--))))

At this point Sarlena came into the bridge at a brisk pace before duly being startled. "Daniel, what the--?"

((((It is best that we leave now, Whispering One,)))) was the way the remaining two Protoss bid him farewell--at least for the moment, leaving through the main exit. Daniel and Sarlena were left alone.

"Well, Sarlena? I was communicating with the Protoss, you know, trying to get to know them--"

"Yes, so you'll be telling us what you've discovered, am I correct?"

Just then Daniel thought of something. "You know, it would be really cool if we taught the Protoss our language--either written or spoken--so that you all would be able to communicate with them, therefore making life easier for me-" Daniel got out of his chair and strode to the viewport of the bridge, as Sarlena turned around to keep facing him.

"I was thinking the same thing too, but evidently the Protoss have just left--"

"Oh, there's no hurry," interrupted Daniel. "We're probably going to be here for a long while. See the Protoss base? They're obviously turning Korhal IV--at least this part--into a base of operations, and during this time we'll have more opportunities."

"I think you had better come out into the daylight," Sarlena changed the subject quite abruptly, while obtaining a glass of water from a nearby dispenser.

"Why?"

"We've gotten to the point at which we decide how to develop our base. You want to come?" Sarlena beckoned; Daniel, piqued by this little bit of information, decided, ((why not?)) and thus trailed after her, one hand still clasped around the blue khaydarin crystal which was giving psionic emanations which he felt were synchronized with that of his own.

Out in the evening sunlight, the twin suns had nearly both sunk, revealing a world with long purple shadows in an orange landscape. Not too far from the landing sites, an extensive Protoss base had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, building after building standing gilded and prouded in the glistening shafts of light; many more iridescent war rifts were being opened. The Terrans were nearly completed with their first two supply depots, and were making good progress on their first barracks, while a second had started construction.

As the pair of them went closer to the buildings to inspect the building effort, Christopher caught sight of them and hurriedly rushed over, bringing in his hands a tablet laptop which had the designs for a new military craft that he had devised.

"Hey Chris! How's the projects going?"

"Good! Everything's on schedule and ready to go. You'll want to take a look at this, however," he continued, raising the tablet so that Daniel could easily see.

"Well then, what have you got?" he asked, while simultaneously turning his attention toward the screen. "Ah, I get it," Daniel remarked mere moments later. "You want to know whether we're doing the standard Confederacy blueprints or doing something altogether different, an automated, robotic system?" He raised his right eyebrow.

Chris replied in kind, then stated, "Exactly. This is but one of the designs that I've come up with already. If you plan to go with the new designs you'll have to say so now, since the rest of the barracks design will depend on what we plan to produce."

Daniel thought about it for a moment. Actually having people fighting battles would probably be more reliable in unusual situations, and definitely easier, but the downside would be that their fighting forces would be less accurate and more unneeded bulk--people's bodies--would have to go along with it. For a while he was caught up in his own world, pondering how best to determine the solution based on a handful of production possibilities curves, then gave up and gave his decision:

"We're going robotic."

At this, Chris smiled, rapidly turning back to his studies, while Sarlena but nodded.

The Commencement
That night, the moment Daniel fell asleep, the Overmind returned to his dreams--or nightmares, if that's what you'd call it--and addressed him:

((((Daniel Travincal. What have you done?))))

((((Now what, Overmind?))))

((((By allying with the Firstborn, you have forfeited any possibilities of our coexisting peacefully, maybe perhaps with the exception of abandoning that race at the earliest opportunity you get.))))

((((Get out of my mind then!))))

((((You Terrans overreact to situations, unrealizing the true impacts of everything.))))

((((Oh? And what do you know?))))

((((I am the Overmind. I have watched over the Swarms since time immemorial. I have fought the Firstborn since our first encounter-))))

((((Your Salutation gone bad?))))

((((I never had any intentions of it going well. The Swarm and the Firstborn are the creations of the Xel'Naga...))))

((((A race so powerful that it thereafter got destroyed?))))

((((Indeed. It was their great experiment--to create the ultimate race.))))

((((Right...))))

((((The Firstborn were gifted with purity of form, but the Xel'Naga gave up hope of their becoming powerful in exchange for another concept. The Swarm is that second concept, the Secondborn, gifted with purity of essence. We shall see which purity dominates in the end. But I can tell you right now, that the Firstborn are valiantly fighting a losing battle, despite all their advanced technology. For no matter how many the Firstborn may be able to kill, the Swarm is much, much greater. In the end of all things, only the Swarm shall triumph, and all who stand in its way--let it be Firstborn, Terran, or otherwise--shall supplicate before it and become assimilated. That is my covenant with the Swarm.))))

((((Why should I believe any of this? You have already destroyed so much of Terran space.))))

((((Indeed, the Swarm has overcome nine of the thirteen Terran worlds in Koprulu--))))

((((What?!? So many so fast?))))

((((You have no one to blame but yourself in ordering the dropships to head to the other worlds. None of their magistrates had the wit to have their men hold fire, and even now the last of those resisting forces are being overcome.))))

((((You!)))) Daniel was seething in anger.

((((Why should you believe all this? Even if you do not, you will become convinced in due time by the events yet to happen.))))

((((You will not triumph over the combined might of the Protoss and Terran!))))

((((Ah, so that's your term for the Firstborn? You are however incorrect. We shall see... We shall see...))))

The dream ended abruptly as Daniel woke up with a start, fingering the amulet with his khaydarin crystal. ((I really have to start taking psionic lessons from the Protoss,)) he acknowledged fate.

Only an hour later did he finally fall asleep, all the while pondering what he would learn from this new race...

He didn't autonomously wake up that morning. He was brought out of his slumber by a psionic call, and when he opened his eyes he saw the Templar he had met before (was it? he was not good at distinguishing between Protoss individuals yet) standing right next to him, its three arms stretched out and waiting. ((((What's the matter?)))) Daniel asked.

((((Today you are to begin your training.)))) It definitely seemed to come from a different individual with a different style...

((((Hey, ah, what's your name?))))

((((I am an instance of Tealdarin. Now, shall we begin our training?))))

Daniel eagerly jumped out of bed, switched into his day clothes, did his daily ablution, then met the Templar Tealdarin in an open square right outside his battlecruiser. There were now so many Protoss individuals, robotic units, and structures on the surface that Daniel couldn't help but to be astonished by the Protoss technology. ((How could the Zerg triumph over a race with such fast construction?))

Daniel was quite surprised to find about a dozen other individuals--all human--waiting for him there. "Why are you guys all here?" he asked.

One of them replied, ((((To take lessons.))))

((Oh crap,)) thought Daniel. ((They are telepathic too! Well, actually that might be a good thing at times...))

Tealdarin walked to a place where the others could all see him. ((((All right, Terrans. You have all been selected for Commencement due to your psionic abilities--for some, merely telekinesis. For others--)))) and he looked at Daniel--((((this may include more potent abilities. But before we actually begin training, we must first undergo the Commencement ceremony.)))) At this point, a Judicator walked into view from down an alleyway. ((((A Judicator shall be here to record the successful completion of this ceremony. Some of you shall fail, but it is our hope that most of you will succeed. For those who fail, rest assured that as your psionic powers grow, you shall have future opportunities to accomplish what you fail today. Now. Are we ready?))))

((((Yes,)))) replied Daniel along with the others. However, it turned out he wasn't going to go first, but rather, third. Tealdarin gazed at the first human, and all was silent as the others looked on. The human's eyes glazed over, and Daniel could tell that suddenly a surge of internal stress was washing over the man's mind, as he began to bit his lip, blink rapidly, clench his teeth, and make sporadic jerking motions... Then, mere seconds later, it was over: the man appeared utterly relieved, but also depressed and irritated. The other humans looked on at the first one, wondering just what to prepare for, what to expect.

((((You have failed, first test subject. Next.)))) Tealdarin walked to the next in line, as the first human's legs gave away, collapsing onto the ground in humiliation and defeat. Suddenly, the second human flinched, gripping with his own mind, as if trying to think as hard as he can, before relaxing and keeping his eyes closed; he closed his fasts, making swinging motions, and tried shaking his head...

But that too was futile. Moments later, the human sighed with relief as Tealdarin dropped his glare and declared, ((((you too have failed, second test subject. Next--Daniel.))))

Daniel kept himself from gulping as Tealdarin walked up to face him, staring intently into his eyes. Nervously, unknowing what to expect, his hands closed around the crystal worn about his neck, as it emanated a sense of reassurance.

Suddenly, Daniel felt his mind practically explode as a psionic entity assaulted it, boring deep into his cerebrum, groping about for information and rapidly processing the information held in his mind. It all went flashing past his mind, uncontrollably, subconsciously: his first mental encounter with the Overmind, helping Raynor recover from a fit of anger, turning on the psi emitter, feeling the psionic draw and repulsion of the instrument, aiming his Gauss rifle at a Zergling, analyzing the various displays aboard the Hyperion, watching as the Protoss structures appeared, following marines into an underground black market, threatening the captured adjutant on Antiga Prime, staring out into the depths of space aboard a dropship...

Daniel realized what was happening: the Protoss was probing his memory. He knew at that moment that this was the test--to see if he could resist this mind-reading procedure. He realized that he had to stop the intrusion, to push the second mind out of his, to regain control of his brain--

...meeting Sarlena the day he joined his first fire team, promotion to lieutenant, seeing the reapers in action, the sudden end of over two hundred Zerg in a fiery cataclysm, mutalisks swarming over Antiga, raining a storm of acid...

Daniel tried to shut down his memory part of the mind, but he had no experience with that response, and the result was that his mind gave away information even faster:

...tricking the crew of the Hyperion into letting him out by claiming to be God, Sarlena making her first kill, seeing the first Protoss with his very eyes, holding his prized khaydarin crystal, meeting with the Red Wolves leader, briefing soldiers for the defense of Mar Sara...

Daniel shook himself, as it that would help, clenched, and tried to think of something irrelevant. He focused on happy, innocent thoughts, such as when he was celebrating his forteenth birthday, when he was playing chess with his friends, when he was still a toddler and rolling around on Antiga's grassy prairies--

Yet another part of his mind was leaking all sorts of information-- another meeting with the Overmind, meeting Christopher inside the command center, Kerrigan suddenly stating "you pig!", ambushing the guard at the Antiga Prime airport... Everything was coming out of his memories, spilling into the invading presence's sponge-like mind.

Infuriated with the inefficacy of his attempts, Daniel let out a roar, sending his psionic reserves to the Khaydarin crystal he clasped; his mind touched with that of the sacrificed Khalai's spirit; together, it seemed, his powers had increased multi-fold. Now, he knew, he had a chance of resisting Tealdarin. They concentrated on the probing force that the Templar had sent, rather than on the signals; the Khalai seemed to be teaching him about the ways of keeping the secrets of the mind safe.

...Education in the barracks, a trip to his family, fixing a Goliath--

Then the flow of information slowed, turned into pockets of leaked information, then the stream ceased altogether, as the two minds simultaneously struck back at the investigating mind, squeezing it away, forcing it back, denying it further information, indeed, even the privilege of remaining within Daniel's conscious.

Tealdarin lashed out with another attempt, which was able to draw out only a slight bit of information before that too was choked off, successfully resisted... Tealdarin realized that the mental battle was over, and withdrew his mind.

An exhausted Daniel collapsed onto the hot desert ground as Tealdarin let his mental assault withdraw, the khaydarin crystal still pulsating from its burst of activity. Tealdarin mentally congratulated him: ((((You are the first human to have successfully completed this first stage of Commencement, though that was because you had been helped by your khaydarin crystal. Keep your guard up--we're not done yet, and remove that amulet.))))

Daniel groaned. He had had enough of this oppressive squeezing-out of information; he didn't like the idea of the whole of the Protoss race knowing the various situations he had experienced or actions he had committed... Reluctantly, he took off the amulet, knowing that he had only succeeded this time because of the Khalai's help.

Tealdarin walked over to the next human, and struck into his mind. On the surface, nothing seemed to happen; within, however, potent psionic streams were lashing out throughout his mindscape, consuming whatever information they could retrieve; moments later (but which seemed to be minutes to Daniel), Tealdarin withdrew, announcing to the exulting human, ((((Congratulations to you, you have passed Commencement, and have done so without the help of a khaydarin crystal.)))) Daniel felt his face blush, even as the Templar progressed to his next test subject.

((((How did you do that??)))) Daniel asked the person right next to him, who had withstood Tealdarin's test with ease. ((((Oh, easy. I'm what people call Ghosts.))))

((((Not that I know what a ghost is, but it seems to me like they specialize in psionic stuff.))))

((((Indeed,)))) replied the man. ((((Ghosts are elite specialists in the Confederacy. But some of us have decided to tag along with this organization, since it offered us the hope of survival and perhaps victory that the Confederacy couldn't give. And yeah, the ghosts are all telepathic, and some of them have nice abilities that are rare even among ghosts. Others simply have the standard set of psychic abilities that are required to get through Ghost Academy.))))

((((Oooooh. Sounds hard. Like what, exactly?)))) Daniel further inquired of this ghost.

((((All ghosts have to master telepathic communications, telepathic invasions, blocking telepathic invasions, and perform alternate-target telepathy. We also have to be able to convince others into believing obvious falsities through obfuscating the mind. Not all that bad, if you come to think of it--those tricks can surely come in handy in situations like Tealdarin.))))

At this point Tealdarin had finished texting his sixth subject, and without warning struck back at Daniel's mind, probing into him again. And this time, Daniel didn't have the power of the amulet to protect his secrets. They started spilling out again:

The time lag from jumping to opposite sides of Mar Sara, painfully slow barracks construction, the barrage of multiple siege tanks, missiles streaking to the air and impacting a wraith, his super-short prison term in Los Andares...

He tried to resist, but futilely. At every point at which his mind stood up to the wave of assault that best characterized the Protoss telepathic invasion, it turned out that the Protoss was stronger, and Daniel's mind had to give way, the same way a flexed muscle is forced to bend in the opposite way by pressure--painfully. His mind quickly went numb after about a dozen confrontations taking place within a mere two seconds, and his consciousness retreated into the dark recesses of his mind, unable to fight to preserve the integrity of his knowledge.

Tealdarin had extracted as much information as he wanted from Daniel to prove to the Judicator looking on nearby that Daniel had failed his test. The Protoss withdrew his probing psionic assault, a back-sting so strong that it had a physical manifestation: tossing Daniel backwards onto the scorched desert. Daniel's unclosed and weakened mind gave him no psychological protection, and he cried out in pain as he hit the ground. Only with the help of the ghost right next to him was he able to finally erect himself and slowly recover from the arduous conflict.

A minute later, Tealdarin had finished testing the remaining members of the group. Only two had made it through Commencement out of the dozen individuals; they were both former Confederate ghosts. The others' minds were in various stages of trauma, defeat, and devastation. Daniel weakly signalled to the man propping him up that he could take care of himself, smiled at him with a short grin, then trekked back to the temporary command center, which had been set up (not too surprisingly) within the Operations Center of the Hyperion.

Once he got there, he vented all his frustration on Christopher and Sarlena, at one point grabbing the unfortunate master technician by the collar and threatening to do something lethal if he didn't feel better about it quickly--and it came to having the marines nearby restrain him, preventing him from taking any action that would have shattered the until then nearly flawless leadership dynamics.

"Daniel, once you have calmed down, we can decide on a name for the human base on this planet," Sarlena remarked quietly after a minute of silence.

Still perturbed, Daniel took the opportunity to lash back with "Call it Hell!"

Communications
Sarlena looked away from him, and went back to her work, directing the operations of the fledgling colony in the absence of Daniel's leadership.

A few minutes later, after Daniel's hyperventilation had stopped and he had for the most part recovered from his hope-shattering defeat, Tealdarin returned, carrying Daniel's amulet in his outstretched ventral (middle) arm. Daniel stared at him for a moment, still a bit languished, before grumpily snatching the amulet out of the Protoss's open palm like a child grabbing a toy. Daniel hastily put it back on his neck, and its soothing psionic signals alleviated much of his suffering.

((How could I have failed??)) Daniel kept on questioning himself. For all he knew, he had been an outstanding psychic as far back as on Tarsonis, where he had convinced a crew member to free him from the on-board prison. But such things were probably not going to happen again with as much usefulness, he realized; the Protoss psionic capabilities were just too strong. Well, at least the ghosts have a chance... Then he realized with a start that these ghosts had come from another dropship, and were not with him when he and company met up with the first Protoss.

All was silent, even Tealdarin, who really did not have all that much work to do at the moment. Then Sarlena spoke up, "What do you want to be the name of the human colony here on Korhal IV?"

Daniel was about to shout out some profanity, before he stopped himself and considered the consequences of such an action: a broken friendhip, perhaps, unless Sarlena were to forgive him yet again, which was not likely within one day. He considered his options, and the possibilities, before finally deciding on the name of Travincal--his last name.

"Is is pronounced Tra-vin-kal or Tra-vin-sal?" asked a wily Christopher. Daniel frowned; he recalled how the role of being joker had belonged to Michael back when they were on Mar Sara. ((He still hadn't recovered from the strain of having accidentally shot and killed a girl back on Mar Sara,)) Daniel realized.

Daniel smiled at last. "Travinkal is Travinsal. Pronounce it any way you like." And Sarlena and Christopher both smiled at that.

Tealdarin turned from investigating the others back to looking at Daniel, their leader. ((((We would like to learn your written language.))))

Daniel was actually a bit surprised. ((((Why do you want to learn our language? Aren't you able to decipher our meanings through what we think?))))

((((That is indeed the case. However, it has come to our attention that much of your communication is based on writing, and we can sense no psionic energies within your writing.))))

((No duh,)) Daniel was about to exclaim. He thought about it for a moment, then replied with a smile, ((((Sure. We can get started on it right now.)))) He whirled around in his swiveling chair and began to bark orders to several of the not-so-busy professionals in the the office. ((It just gets better and better, our relationship with the Protoss,)) Daniel remarked to himself, while any onlookers only saw his content expression, not knowing what he was thinking of.

((((And Commencement can wait until later,)))) Daniel thought, as he looked at various analyses, trying to figure out how best to utilize the resources that the first mines would be able to obtain from below ground. He already had in mind a plan for how to teach the Protoss his language. That is, until Sarlena objected: "I'll teach them myself," she said.

"But Sarlena, you're not telepathic!"

His comment was greeted with silence.

Daniel looked from her to Christopher, then realized that he was outvoted on this matter.

Sarlena met Tealdarin aboard one of the Protoss carriers at the agreed-upon time. The Protoss had already known that she lacked the ability to communicate with him telepathically, so he didn't bother try.

((((We trust that you can communicate with us through speech. We will be able to deduce what you mean through the thoughts that you emanate.))))

"Got it," she said. "Peer closely into my mind, because this is going to be a crash course if we plan to get anywhere in one month, and because I'll be trying to explain everything through my mind."

((((Interesting. How?))))

"You'll see," Sarlena replied, and took out her notebook. The first item on it was "human". She put a slender finger on the word so that the Protoss would see the English, then said it, "human", before conjuring, in her mind's eye, an image of a sterotypical human. Not a very sharp image, but an image nevertheless. To a psionically inclined race such as the Protoss, it was easy to identify the characteristics that comprised "human", for those were what Sarlena was specifically trying to send.

((((So is this a human?)))) asked Tealdarin, and conjured an image in Sarlena's mind. It was far sharper, almost as if Sarlena were seeing it in reality. It was the image of a chimpanzee.

"No, no... There are quite a few differences between the two species," she said, before starting to explain all the differences between their intellect, build, physical qualities, and lifestyle.

At the end of thoroughly describing that one word's meaning, Sarlena let out a tired "this will take a looong time," and put down her notebook. "I hope you've at least got the gist of what I said, right?"

"Yes, we have. Thank you for explaining your race to us; now we have a clearer understanding." Tealdarin was referring to Sarlena's lecture of the human body, the circulatory, respiratory, digestive, nervous, immune, endocrine, excretory, and reproductive systems in detail.

She looked out to see that the sun was setting. "It's been quite a while," she said, but Tealdarin didn't give any reply.

She waved in front of the Protoss. "Hello? Are you paying any attention?"

And she waited a while, while the Protoss seemed in a trance, increasingly losing her patience.

At last, the Protoss spoke. "We think that what you've told us has given a bit of insight into our own history," said Tealdarin abruptly, then left, leaving Sarlena alone in the Protoss vessel, wondering just what had transpired, and what she had said that had become... so volatile.

She traversed the precarious catawalks of the landed craft, examining it, passing her hands over the interior of the walls, feeling their warmth which quickly disproved the notion that it could be gold; she examined the bright blue-cyan orb that glowed brightly in the center, and tried to understand what it was for; she walked across its length, trying to imagine how the craft could have survived battle against the Zerg, considering how thin the hull was.

At last, realizing that none of the Protoss were about to return, she left the ship, taking her notebook with her. When she got back to the Hyperion, Christopher quickly came up to her. "So! How'd it go?"

"Not well, I got tired out trying to explain what human was," she said dreamily. "I evidently had to go through the entire human anatomy for them to be able to distinguish between ethnicities, and then Tealdarin said something weird and just left."

Just then, Daniel came by. "Well? I hope everything went well?"

Sarlena replied, "it went Way better than you'd have expected, Dan," and looked at Christopher with a wink, who smiled back.

"Right then," Daniel said, resisting the urge to peer into their minds, and went on to his duties.

Christopher patted her lovingly on her back, and smiled. "I think what you need right now is a nap, eh?"

Sarlena looked into his reassuring smile, smiled back, and let him carry her lithe body to her bed, feeling ecstatic the entire time he carried her.

At dawn of the first day of the next week, Daniel was up early to see the glamorous sunrise, its brilliant shards of light splashing playfully across the expansive firmament in a bedazzling display of violet, peach, copper, and incarnadine. The dark-tinted neosteel structures that the humans under his command had been able to construct cast long shadows across the landscape, their penumbras scattering the rays of light, making patchwork of the light shining from the distance.

A day seems very long. But if one looks at the rising or setting sun, one realizes that time rushes past very quickly--within two minutes, the sun had gone from arising at its point of apex, to becoming a complete, gilded orb slowly lofting higher and higher. As it went, it steadily lost its crimson glow.

Daniel reluctantly turned away from his duties to face another day of hardship and work on the fledling new colony of Travincal. The terrans and protoss were getting more acquainted with each other, now that they could both communicate in written Terran Basic; their working near each other meant that they would become familiar with each other's lives and become more tolerant of their differences. It still struck Daniel how strange it was that there were so few differences between the two of them...

It was the day that his dropships, which had gone off to Telar, returned, bringing back with them ten thousand civilians. A paltry drop in the bucket when compared to the population of that planet, but it was something. On this planet, that meant a doubling of the present human population, which not only meant a much stronger workforce but also meant that the robotic units that would be produced would have plenty of controllers, allowing for much more flexible and coordinated battle tactics.

It was, as a direct result, also the day that the Travincals would be coming. So he quickly shook himself out of his stupor and progressed to the improvised landing zones, just as silent whirring alerted the others to the dropships' arrival.

Most of the people who had first met up with the Protoss over Tarsonis had been from Antiga. They generally didn't have much connection with the new arrivals from Telar, though there was still a considerably long line of people waiting to reunite with the rest of their families. There was considerable fanfare; several entertainers had gotten out their musical instruments and hooked up loudspeakers, and now music was being pumped away into the desert atmosphere, much to the delight of those who still had not been too scarred by warfare.

Which, sadly, pertained almost exclusively to the new arrivals. Daniel had known, from ansible messages over the past week, that Telar was one of four remaining human colonies that the Zerg hadn't been to. It was so... different, to be encountering other people who have not been through what you have, who know nothing of which you speak, which has dominated your life for all these recent months...

And then, he saw them. Daniel's parents, now in their mid fourties, his younger brother Cory who was now actually older than him by over two years, Cory's innocent wife, and their toddler child. Daniel didn't expect to see anyone else related to him, since he had yet to marry, but the family brought along Cory's parents-in-law as well. Daniel was at a loss; he hadn't met them before via ansible.

"Oh, it's so nice to see you again, bro!" shouted Cory at the top of his lungs the moment he saw Daniel, and they ran for each other, ending in a long hug. "It was you who decided to send the dropships to Telar, wasn't it?"

"Indeed, it was," said Daniel.

"And it was because you wanted to meet with us again in person, right?" Before Daniel could nod, he exclaimed, "I knew it! Say, you found yourself a wife yet?"

"Um..." Daniel muttered, before the rest of his family came up, Cory's wife carrying the toddler in her arms. "Still trying to prove you're better than me, eh?" Daniel gave him a light-hearted slap on the back, before his parents practically crushed him in their rush.

Daniel dutifully gave them both a mighty hug, while Cory and wife looked on.

But with a tinge of sorrow, Daniel realized that he didn't have much to tell them. He was left just standing there, surrounded by family and without much to tell them about. He wanted to avoid the most obvious topic of all, the Zerg--he didn't want them any more worried than they were already, and besides he wanted them to think of other, more pleasant things (which would have been just about anything besides peoples' dying).

"I love you all so much, it's been long enough," Daniel finally made out. But inside, he knew that had they come earlier, he would still have nothing to tell them. Actually, that wasn't exactly true--they'd be talking, talking about things that ordinary civilians could bear to hear, such as gossip, the life of a boring Artifact Station guard--but no more.

No more, he could not. It was over for him and his relation to family.

Only then did he realize how different he had become. He wasn't like them anymore--he was outside of their group. Their peaceful group, which he had so desired. Now, he was too into the thick of the military--his life dominated by the one thought of survival against the Zerg and anyone else who stood in the way. His actions had led to the death of so many millions--indirectly or not, human or not, necessary deaths or not... it didn't matter. It was a taint that would stay with him for the rest of his life, that distinguished him so far apart from Cory, who had a happy family (at least he hoped, wearily), from his parents, who were likewise removed from the ravages of the Zerg.

"So... what have you heard about the Zerg?" he whispered fearfully to his father.

"Not much, actually. They tend to keep the stuff about the aliens all so secret from us. They've cut off communications with nine colonies already, so of course we're worried, but in Telar... Nope, it's still more of a children's story to scare them into bed before curfew time." There was no humor in that remark, Daniel realized.

"Listen, Daniel," said his mother, in a nearly pleading voice. "Don't go off fighting the Zerg on your initiative any more. Stay with us--stay with your father, your brother, and me. We don't you want you to... leave."

Daniel looked into her eyes. Those eyes belonged to the same person, those lips belonged to the same person, who had taken care of him through much of his pre-adult life. How could he refuse such a small wish? One part of him wanted to remain with family--feel secure, regain the peace that had been so forcefully snatched away from him. Out here, on Korhal, he was safe, at least so it seemed. What would his parents think, do, if he died in battle?

But then... How could he agree? He belonged in the military--it felt like family to him, it soothed him to know that he still had the power to exact vengeance on the enemy. He looked away, and said, "The war with the Zerg is my life now. Do you not want revenge against the aliens that have killed so many people?"

"No, darling. We're tired of this constant fighting. We want peace--and we want you... to share in that peace with us. We don't want revenge--what's past is past," said his mother.

He looked down, unable to face them, incapable of making a statement that seemed right. How could he talk to them? There was nothing he could say. So he turned away, and looked at the Terran and Protoss bases which were not too far away. "We've met yet another race, one that communicates with thought," he remarked boringly, although the fact was clearly not ennui personified. "You want to look around?"

"No, not really," said Cory's wife, clutching her child. "Military stuff can stay with the military people."

Daniel's worst fear was realized. Already, Cory's wife had lost interest; and this was what, only five minutes into the reunion? They didn't want to know about military life and environment; they wanted to live a normal life, and wanted to keep the horrors and rigid discipline of the warrior's way hidden away from them. To them, that was exactly what Daniel represented. To them, he was an outcast.

Sadly, he turned away from them, as he saw in the eyes and faces of them all that they just came here to live a normal life away from the control of the Confederacy. He left them wordlessly, every moment feeling more internal turmoil and anguish at not being able to associate with them. ((What has the war done to us?)) he queried himself, feeling that something that was vital to him had been ripped away.

He left and attended to his duties, not shedding a tear.

Design
Almost immediately after Daniel had gotten away from the landing area, Christopher rushed up to him, clad in his not-so-common uniform of the "head engineer". "What's up?" asked Daniel, for this one day he was in a good mood; his dreams had "behaved", as he'd like to consider it.

"I've been developing deep space battle strategies, and I think you might want to take a final look at it before I give the green light and development on bringing the plans to reality begins in earnest," replied Christopher.

Daniel nodded, and turned on his monitor. He was back in his element now. Or was he?

On the screen were some of Christopher's designs; it was formulated into the shape of a presentation. Perhaps that was why so many of the other high-ranking officials in the fleet left their duties (which were by no means crucial) to study Christopher's plans. He blushed as he realized that his presentation skills were all of a sudden placed to the test before some of the most important people in this military organization--

"Uh,..." was all that Christopher managed to make out, as about two dozen people dressed in uniforms surrounded both him and Daniel. He tried to push the others a bit away, to make room for his presentation--which was projected onto a fairly large screen. Christopher swallowed, and began in a steady, loud voice:

"So. Everyone here is, I believe, fairly acquainted with the Confederacy military machine. People in everything, from the backbone space construction vehicle to the immense battlecruiser. People everywhere. Well, the problem here is that, there's simply not that many people here to lead such an effort. And it would be quite stupid to attempt something like that, considering the high casualties the Confederacy's 'plans' had racked up against persistent Zerg invasion--"

At this point, Michael, unfortunate enough to be in the room at the time of the seminar, started cracking--

"I believe that our hope to survival as a race depends on our abilities to produce robotic 'drones' that can fight our battles for us--preferably, even better than we can do so ourselves, whether it be in a cloakable, light combat vest or in a heavy combat suit, whether as the gunner of a Mjolnir siege tank or as a crew member aboard a starcraft--"

Michael had by now broken into open sobbing; it seemed the experiences of the past were still getting to him. Dutifully, and full of the seriousness of a doctor coming to a patient with dire news of a terminal illness, those nearest to the traumatized fellow carried him out into the next room, the walls only partially blocking out the man's tortured cries. Christopher realized that the man was hopeless; trauma that had struck so deep would not go away for the rest of his life. Michael no longer experienced any joy; he was just another casualty of war.

"--We can no longer afford to do it ourselves. So we had decided to develop on a robotic track eight days ago."

Christopher paused, considering what he should say next and at the same time trying to understand the feedback he was getting from his audience. Were they happy? Confused? Bored? It turned out that they had already known all these facts, considering that they were in the upper echelons of this (albeit small) military force... So they remained hushed, waiting for Christopher to get around to presenting the actual 'meat' of his speech, which would undoubtably be about concepts that the others hadn't fully investigated academically...

"Unlike the Zerg, we do not mindlessly charge into battle, hoping that superior numbers and ruthlessness of firepower shall prevail. We have to have a strategy; we fight wars from a long distance away. My plan therefore calls for the establishment of an immense, preferably underground complex, complete with an inhabitable biosphere, large enough to incorporate the thousands of men we have here once we have fully made the shift to mechanical development. This "Subterrannean command center" would coordinate all the battles fought from its central location, and thus it would necessarily have better avenues for information to go up, commands to go down, and attempts at collaboration to go across between the many commanders. I envision almost every one of us to be a commander--many of us as individual commanders of only one unit at a time, with a few others coordinating such procedures. Every one of us would command from within the subterrannean command center, and so even if anything is destroyed, we will survive, able to quickly shift to controlling another, replacement 'droid with which we would be able to continue our offensive."

The seminar continued after Christopher looked around and noticed unanimous attention from the people in charge--Daniel, Sarlena, Jaxtor, Raynor... He scarcely noticed the beads of sweat which were just beginning to form on his facial sweat pores. It didn't matter to him; he was performing well this time.

"Instead of having the complex suits with which we would keep our marines protected, we would have androids, to be armed with sonic concussion armaments to complement the standard-issue reaper laz-rifles to which we already have the blueprints. Don't worry--some of my men had already carried out tests with the equipment from the barracks and factories, and we've come to the conclusion that it's definitely possible to make this a reality. The benefits of having the sonic boom would include being able to knock back and seriously disorient masses of approaching Zerg, especially those pesky 'lings, while at the same time perhaps liquidating their bodies through the severe shearing action that such a charge would generate.

"There's more advantages to the concept of using droids, by the way. We don't have to constantly support them with food, and if we give them solar arrays, we should have little difficulty in ridding any need for those supply depots. Aren't we all just simply fu**ing tired of glucose crackers?"

The crowd laughed at that, and chimed in agreement. Those things were, to say the least, gross.

"No more bloodshed like they have in those movies when there was peace! We had had enough of death and losses of loved ones; many of us have lost people to the relentless Zerg onslaughts. This time around, our battles shall be clean, and what's more, we don't need medics and their expensive tricorders on the field all the time. I call the new androids we're going to create, the truly affectionate name of... 'Bots. Yep, that's right.. We'd be able to pour all our resources into developing more useful instruments, such as additional cloaking fields, jet packs for the entire infantry forces to allow quick getting-in and getting-out, fusion cutters so that they can do the construction work, fragmentation grenades if need be, optical flares for everyone, and also, one or two heuristic spider mines for each android. That way, our soldiers will be far more flexible and a much greater threat to the Zerg bastards."

Someone in the crowd raised her hand. "And what's the progress on the programming to make them work?" Several nodded in agreement with the incisiveness of this question.

"Indeed, Jaxtor and Sarlena have been working on this project lately, and they say that there's absolutely no reason why a basic follow-the-instructions robotic command system can't work. The problem is, of course, with the AI, which is why I decided on the fail-safe plan that we direct the soldiers in the actual battles. But yes, we will establish patrol lines and various other peacetime, mass-action procedures so that you won't have to be monitoring all of them simultaneously. Does that answer your question?"

"Yes," the woman replied meekly, and Christopher relaxed a tension that he until then didn't realize he had been holding.

"All right. Any other questions at this point?"

"Yes, about those heuristic land mines," said a rather high-pitched voice for a man near the back of the audience. "Are they going to anticipate the Zerg?"

"Don't think so, the Zerg thought patterns probably are totally different from that of a human, so our psychological understandings will more likely than not defeat ourselves. Heuristic as in only, being able to communicate with each other and plan to fight known Zerg formations and presences most appropriately, taking into consideration what strains are in the general vicinity, and all," Christopher shrugged it off at the end.

Apparently satisfied, the others let Christopher continue with his spiel. "So that's the general plan for the androids. Now, as you're all likely to be well-trained military personnel (and if you're not, what the heck do you think you're doing here at HQ?), you'd likely be asking, 'well where's the heavy metal, and what about the vulture speedbikes?' Ahhhhhhh, lucky you, but I have an answer for you today," Christopher gave an unusual, I-knew-it rhetorical expression. "I present to you the second of my brainchilds, the Viking."

(No, actually, none there was childish enough to give out any 'ooohhhs' and 'aaahhhs', even if you'd want that to have happened. These people are all oh-so-serious with their work.)

Christopher Daniel went on to yet another slide in his presentation, featuring a streamlined model of what also seemed to be a tank. "The viking I'm envisioning is a double-modular construct able to rapidly convert from ground to air. Guess where I got this idea from?" Christopher smiled.

One member of the audience burst out, "from the siege tank design?"

"Exactly," Christopher replied, glad that the audience was catching on to his ideas. "So the viking should be able to switch modes in under five seconds to be truly effective. Now, I'm not expecting them to be able to fight back while in the transition mode, and they'll be particularly vulnerable in that stage, but the added flexibility is going to be very important. It'd mean that we can bring in lots of our heavy metal through the air, to attack swiftly and securely against even island bases lined with missile turrets and what-not. This would be a lot less risky than trying to use dropships to unload goliaths and vultures. Perhaps, if we are able to make the Bots very dense, we will be able to cram a few within the vikings."

"Interesting," said Daniel. "I take it it's going to be significantly larger than either goliath or wraith. So what armaments will it have?"

"Well, Confederacy reports seem to highly suggest that the wraith armaments are seriously imbalanced in favor of anti-air. The Vikings, I'd believe, will be more often than not directed toward fighting surface opponents. Therefore, I've incorporated a few ATS and STS weapons systems into my schematics." He gleamed with pride at his newest invention, and went on to the next few slides. "Here are views of what the Viking will look like, in the aerial stage, and in the grounded stage. In the aerial stage it will have longbolt missile packs--you know, firing only one of them at a time but have longer range, in rapid succession--and it will have quintuple burst lasers--two more than the standard wraith complement--making it just that much more powerful against ground, but barely faring better against equal numbers of wraiths.

"In the aerial stage, it will be able to fire all seven separate weapons systems in near simultaneous time frames. Now, on the ground form it will be even more impressive, complete with arclite cannons against medium-strength targets and buildings, and those triple gatling guns that have proven so devastating against infantry. Like in the air phase, it will be able to move while attacking, giving it the advantage over stop-and-fire units like the goliath, reaper, ghost, vulture, and marine. However, in the ground mode, it will have to choose between using the cannon or the gatling guns."

For the next few moments, the audience remained silent, even though Christopher had stopped speaking to let the ideas sink in. It seemed a bit complex for them at first, but gradually, he thought he saw signs of understanding among the others. ((Good,)) he thought. ((That's just what I want.))

So he continued: "So, quite straight-forward: the barracks produce bots, the factories produce vikings, the starports produce shrikes, the silos produce nukes, and the bots produce thors."

A long, drawn-out pause, during which the many listeners had signs on their faces that clearly read 'I have no idea whatsover of what you're talking about'. Only then did Christopher realize that he'd forgotten to mention the other stuff.

"Okay, sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself in my over-eagerness. The nukes, well, they're still produced in the silos, but this time they'll be launched after the target gets painted by bots rather than by ghosts. I'm also advocating completely shifting production from the starports to shrikes--the newest airborne model I've developed. Frankly, there won't be much difference in the aerial fleets, since there's only the shrikes and the vikings I mentioned earlier. The shrikes are going to be a bit lighter than the vikings, but with long-range anti-air attacks based on tachyon particle beams--for those of you who are non-technicians, those can do considerable damage at nearly the range of a yamato gun, but can't do such single-impact damage and are a significant drain on energy reserves. After a while the shrike will run out of energy, and the shrike depends on that energy to sustain its cloaking perimeter. To compensate for that weakness, I've developed a means to incorporate lockdown and EMP shockwave into 'cold' missile form, which means those particular abilities won't require any energy.

"And now for the final unit, the Thor. It's going to be a massive land-based mech, complete with a dozen weapons systems. Produced from scratch by any Bots who don't have any urgent need to defend base, the Thor will be a quadrupedal, hulking giant with an array of conventional weapons, as well as an irradiation gun, a detector, and dual mjolnirs. Because of the massive size of the Thor, all it has to do to sustain the power of those mjolnirs is to merely 'sit down', which will take nearly no time at all. On top of that, the massive weight of the Thor means that it can practically crush nearly anything that gets in the way, whether it be bunkers, turrets, supply depots, infantry, grounded starcraft, even goliaths. The only drawbacks are that it can't turn very fast, and that when it 'sits down' to unleash a bombardment, it can't shift position at all. Well, actually there's more--the Thor is incredibly vulnerable to being attacked by hordes of zerglings and the like."

Sarlena responded, "That sounds like a serious modification of our current strategy. Are you sure you're willing to accept responsibility for the consequences of those decisions?"

Christopher thought for only a second before shooting back, "Definitely, if that means I get to have you if I succeed!" Sarlena turned her face away and blushed as the crowd broke into laughter, as some of them patted Christopher on the back for his ingenuitive ideas, and then dissipated back to their duties. Quite impressed, Daniel waited for the others to return to their posts, before coming up to him. "Christopher Metzen, that was one impressive juggling of stuff you just did. Not bad..." Daniel broke into a wild grin, thinking of the possibilities that the new units would afford Travincal. ((Just perhaps, it would be what could lead us to victory.)) "Not bad at all..."

Reflections
Daniel spent the next hour looking at the various designs that Christopher had made by hand and had then scanned into the computer. Try as he might, he found no critical flaws with the entire group, provided they were mixed with the standard Confederate complement--but on their own, some of them had deep troubles. The Thor, for example, was just too clumsy against Zerg flyers. There was a world of difference between the figure-eight flight formations of the mutalisks and this slow-turning, sitting-down hulk of a mechanical beast. Somewhere deep in his heart, Daniel found that he had a love for a swift, fast-paced military that could strike fast and strike flexibly, if not strike hard and broadly. He whistled, imagining a sting operation successfully carried out. ((That's what I want,)) he thought to himself.

Then there was the problem with the Shrike not having detection, which meant that none of the starcraft that Christopher was advocating would be able to locate a single cloaked wraith starfighter. None of the designs covered close-combat fighting. More importantly, every one of those designs had so many armaments and on-board equipment that it could very well prove to become extremely expensive. Besides, how could a growing base like Travincal not have the high aspirations of one day creating its own class of capital ship? Would the Hyperion suffice? Such questions lingered in Daniel's mind for those many minutes as he began to make sketches of his own designs. He knew that somewhere between his ideas and those of Christopher's, they'd formulate some 'ultimate' strategy...

At one point Daniel dragged an empty dust-bin beside his desk, and tossed the worst designs into it. A good writer needs a creative, open mind, and an adjacent trash can, he recalled. He was going to perhaps turn writer for the day, even if it only revolved around developing a handful of new units that he could feel comfortable with.

A while later, Sarlena revisted Daniel, who by now had at least a dozen sketches complete with military-detail specifications scattered around and all over his desk in one giant clutter. "You seem to be turned on by Chris's talk," she remarked nonchalantly.

"Oh, really?" replied Daniel, still half-concentrated on his work and unwilling to look away. His other side of the mind, however, changed its focus toward the woman. "I'd think that of all people, You'd be turned on by Chris himself?" He was purposefully nagging at Sarlena and her un-feminine roughness and stoic perspective on life, and Sarlena gave him what he deserved by stalking off in barely bridled anger and frustration, leaving the fleet commander quite alone.

Daniel gave a short laugh, then returned to the growing pile of drawings in front of him, thinking of what he could do to further his chances of success in this great war...

Two days later, Daniel himself called for a military strategy session. He opened up his own presentation, with his own sketches on it--and asked, "All right you all, I'm posting these ideas so that I can get feedback about whether or not these are good ideas. Send all kinds of questions you can at me; I want to know if the plan can work out, or if there's certain things that need to be changed, or if the plan needs to be scrapped entirely." At least this time the meeting had been planned, and the audience found chairs behind them that they could recline in as they listened to the presentation and judged Daniel's ideas.

Before long it was all silent, and the windows and lights closed and darkened, respectively. The room lit with the only source being that of the presentation. Daniel took out a laser pointer--and he was dressed in business dress and all--and directed its dot of light at the points of interest in his presentation. "All right. My first concept is the need for flexibility and speed over power and reliability. So--scrap the idea of having a centralized dome underneath the ground. We're going to set off to a variety of different places across the infinite reaches of space, and direct our activities from each of them. We're going to have a variety of units for a variety of different tasks--you'll see why in due time. The main idea is, however, that we want to be able to evacuate any base within minutes of discovering that an enemy is en route. So that means that we no longer have any ground units--any at all."

Daniel let the strength of those words sink in, and some of the lesser minds in the room let out a gasp at the thought of fighting war with no marines, medics, ghosts, vultures, goliaths, siege tanks, SCVs, and reapers...

((Good,)) thought Daniel, as the room quickly hushed when the officials realized the consequences of making such a drastic change. It would totally imbalance it all, wouldn't it? Being able to quickly rush units from one place to another at much, much faster than the speed of light... Nomands, not having any planet they could call home-- what an unsettling feeling, Daniel knew the others must be feeling.

Indeed, that was precisely why he wanted to do it this way to begin with: to challenge the status quo is the only way to discover something never known before. Who knew? Maybe his idea would turn out to be a good plan after all... Daniel mused on.

"All right, so the first unit I'm going to introduce to you all is the Alpha model. This is a small starcraft, smaller than the wraith and with weaker armaments. Now, we all know that the war is about dominating space, not any planets in particular. Once we prevent enemies from being able to emerge from the surface, we will be able to pick them off, one by one. The Alpha is the first of a series of forms that does exactly this--a war of attrition to gradually erode the space parity of the enemy. Armed with an energy cloaking perimeter and triple gemini missiles, this unit will be able to defeat a wraith one on one but will be totally helpless against ground units--however, that should generally not be a problem except in chase missions."

Daniel continued this seemingly endless listing of creations that he had devised, all of them portrayed in a serious manner. Halfway through the presentation, however, a bored and clearly irritated subordinate declared, "How about we just take a vote on the matter? Let's decide which plan is better--Chris's or yours." Daniel shrugged, not knowing just which side everyone else would support.

However, it turned out that Daniel's plan was exceptionally disliked--for some reason or other, everyone liked Christopher's plan more, even Sarlena and Jaxtor... As soon as the results were read, Daniel stormed out of the room in anger. Betrayed! and by his own men and women, who had stayed by his side for weeks now! The sense of displeasure was unbearable; he felt ashamed, totally humiliated by what must have been his poor presentation, or--why else would no one so dislike his obviously good plan? True, it was extremely focused on pinpoint attacks and flexibility of units, but why so unanimous a dislike? Was it the way he presented himself, too much of an upper-brass person? Daniel shook his head, disbelieving. Although he knew that he could at any moment relieve anyone on board any ship, in fact, any human on Korhal at this point, of duty, he knew that he had to actually convince them of his justifications. He wasn't about to turn into an evil king of sorts. Yet that would be hard, he reasoned to himself; there was just too much a sense of misunderstanding in the air...

He wondered what he had done that deserved such ignominy, and his memories and thoughts suddenly focused on the fact that he had been speaking as if he were giving out commands--he had, even without knowing it, been broadcasting his intentions to see his ideas through, and that had been the exact reason why none of the others liked it--it reeked of condescension and big-headed-ness. ((Heavens, if only I had another opportunity to make that presentation, to turn back time--)) He then realized that other major difference; this time, he had purposefully arranged for a strategy discussion session, and he had, rather than actually discussing with what should have been his teammates, instead used the entire time to reveal his own plans, not listening to any suggestions or critiques that the others might have had...

Daniel felt like such a failure. Oh, how he wished for another audience, another chance! Perhaps this time he'd get into his normal casual dress, striving not to intimidate the others with the complex schematics of it all and concentrate on a few interesting ideas, the way Christopher had been able to--

Then, it just struck him: perhaps he was not responsible for his actions, at least not entirely; it was very likely that another one was simply more capable than he was, and that he ought to accept the toss of fate which resulted in his being a good tactician but incapable of providing effective leadership, unable to elicit willing support from his peoples...

At that moment, he understood what he had to do. Instead of simply commanding the growing base so disregardingly named after his name (Travincal) to follow all of his commands, he decided that he would need the support of his other close advisors: Christopher to provide leadership and general support for any direction of development; Raynor for his charisma and daring, for he was eager to strike back at the Zerg for the death of his family; Sarlena as his support advisor (he wasn't exactly sure on this one); and Jaxtor as strike team leader, for which he had already demonstrated his abilities.

((There, I've got it all down pat,)) thought Daniel with a sense of uplifting invigoration. He felt relieved of the oppression that had been weighing down upon him ever since he had found himself in command of a major portion of the Sons of Korhal...

At that moment, an exasperated Tealdarin stalked into his office, followed by Sarlena, with a not-so-happy expression written on her face. "What happened?" asked Daniel.

((((Your Terran Basic is so much a waste of time! Why does the same word "bite" have three spellings "bite", "byte", and "bight"?)))) The protoss vented his frustration in not being able to easily understand English correctly. ((((And only Sarlena would be aggravatingly insouciant enough to give out enigmas such as "which path should one take if the right path to take is the one that's left behind?" Your language has too many incongruencies as well, what is with her replacement of the word "bright" with "brilliant", "glowing", "flashing", "radiant", "luminous", "scintillating", "shining", "shimmering", "glimmering", and "incandescent"?))))

Daniel, caught by surprise, could only smile and shrug his shoulders while his cheeks filled with red.

Knowing that he wouldn't get an answer, Tealdarin strode out of the room in continued anger, while a pleading, profusely apologizing Sarlena trailed behind, ineffectually attempting to mollify him.

Once the other two had left his field of vision, he shook his head slowly and thoughtfully. ((Well, you Protoss asked for it when you wanted to learn our written language. Good thing I won't be asking to take courses in Protoss-speak, er, whatever you'd call it,)) he thought inwardly, to himself. Then he turned to his computer screen, and began working on designing the placement for subsequent new-building construction sites...

Christopher was speaking to Daniel. "Sarlena is actually not that bad at--er, interspecies communication. I mean, even though she had a light mess-up every now and then, with the result of disorienting and angering the Protoss with the peculiarities of our language, culture, and arts, she's been able to tell them much about what we value as humans."

"Yeah, I've started to notice that for myself, and I'd agree, she's definitely valuable towards that regard. In fact, I'm thinking of keeping her on Korhal indefinitely, allowing her to constantly meet and message with Tealdarin."

"The Protoss are quick learners, aren't they?"

"Yeah, well with the minds of how many millions or billions of Protoss out there to rememeber every single word she says, it's not like they will forget anything, and they can process and review things even when Sarlena has long been off to sleep."

Christopher nodded in agreement, even as they walked in step. "Indeed, they've learned what the average second-grader knows about human technology already. I won't be surprised if they will have completely finished learning all our technologies and knowledge within the month."

"Don't sweat it, at least if Sarlena does finish early, there's so many other things this base needs to accomplish, that it shouldn't be much of a problem at all..." At this, Christopher also concurred, then the two fell silent for a while as they neared their destination.

They were walking down the corridor of the Hyperion to the mess hall; the walls were utilitarian and, as far as Daniel knew, not all that thick. Hyperion was now floating in low orbit around Korhal, its geographical information systems scanning in circles around the planet surface for any signs of activities, civilian or hostile, as were the Protoss ships, now that the crew had managed to discharge all of the construction-materials to the planet surface.

The pair of commanders entered the mess hall, and immediately proceeded to get their share of food--rationed, as was nearly everything in Travincal. The base was effectively facing a shortage of everything, since Daniel was demanding so much.

It had already been over a month and half since Travincal had been established on Korhal IV, gradually turning a radioactive dust-bucket into a thriving base of operations.

The Protoss had ceased to construct anything else on the planet after the initial building spree on day one, and the Terran facilities were now beginning to catch up, with a few dozen buildings either finished or in progress. In the center stood a proud, compact starport, half a mile long in diameter and easily eclipsing the already impressive size of a Behemoth Battlecruiser. A trio of factories were placed at balanced intervals around the starport, and various lesser buildings, including nearly a dozen barracks, surrounded those. The base was bristling with missle turrets, though the key points were the mobile military. Christopher's plan, announced nearly a month ago, was now in full swing, and the various construction facilities of Travincal were turning out copious amounts of them, whether it be Bot, Viking, Shrike, or Thor. They milled around the base, waiting idly as per the commands of the AI system that ran them gave them bland jobs, waiting for the situation to become dire.

For in Christopher's system, only when the people in the orbiting fleet--those commanding the robots--were actively using their consoles, would the military actually become ready for battle.

"I'm tired of thinking about fighting wars," said Daniel, after he and Christopher had sat down at a longtable especially reserved for them, Raynor, and Sarlena.

"Yeah, it's been such a long time of a peaceful life, without the worries of death and destruction, and nothing but continuous growth of our proud colony, that it just wouldn't feel quite right," said Sarlena.

"Why of course, for You it would be strange, since you're preoccupied with relations with the Protoss. But you didn't lose your family to the Zerg," said Raynor.

Daniel knew what was about to transpire next, so he abruptly put open palms in front of both of them, urgently telling them to stop, then broke off onto a different topic altogether in the hopes that Raynor would forget his desire to seize revenge against the Zerg invaders of the past.

Loomings
"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.

A week later, after Daniel calculated that they'd have cooled off from the shock of Project Alone and Project Red Herring, he finally decided to bring them all back together for another strategy planning session.

"Everybody knows that there's two main economic systems: the market and the command economies," said Daniel, musing about something no-one else found to have connection with the topic at hand. "The market--"

"Yes we know," replied Christopher. "The market is supposedly the more efficient of the two, and you wouldn't have to work on it in particular for the invisible hand of Adam Smith to flex its muscles. But why are you mentioning this?"

"I'm thinking about applying the concepts of the market system to the way this base is run."

"Er, well, this base is yours to give away, but not to take back. In fact, right now it's all yours, and so I don't think anyone else would have all that big of an incentive to do their best, especially since there's the tragedy of the commons and Zerg aren't within light-years of here," replied Raynor.

"I don't know, but aren't you all supposed to be smart? That's how you managed to get to your current ranks, right?" Daniel goaded them to come up with Something.

There was but one moment of silence, before Christopher continued, "well, there is indeed a way to make this market system work--you'd have to make everyone responsible for their robots." He explained: "the problem with having the robotic system rather than fielding personnel in the battles, is that no one's life is directly at stake by how well one performs. If and when a battle breaks out, and we all rush to our consoles to take command of one or more robots, it would be in each person's best interest not to do anything while everyone else does the task for them. After all, they're not losing anything. But what's good for the individual would be devastating to the society, because if no one were to command the robot in the optimal fashion, then nothing gets done and the Zerg will wash over our forces."

"Now, I'm sure there are quite a few zealots out there in our ranks who will eagerly multitask multiple robots and strive to do more than their very best," countered Sarlena vigorously in a voice that seemed to emanate the vibes of a challenge.

"Yes, but that's beside the point. If we're fielding many units at once--which will be the case if the Zerg decide to attack Travincal--then we can't depend on a handful of zealots to do it all for us, especially since doing so will mean that they would have less focus on each individual robot. Most of our forces will remain unmobilized, meaning that the Zerg--each of which can attack on its own--will have a vast numerical advantage from the very start."

"Very good reasoning there, Chris! But now what?"

"So I'm saying that we assign each one of the to-be commanders with a small set of 'points'. Each point or points will correspond to robots of the various specifications, and so they work like currency. People would be able to 'buy' command over vikings at a certain location in exchange for 'sale' of command over thors elsewhere."

At that, Raynor jumped at the idea--it was clearly something he had wanted to have since his days as marshal back on Mar Sara. "Yeah! That way, people who are aggressive and know when their offensives will work will want to keep swapping for robots closer to the front lines, while those who are a bit laid-back will exchange for robots defending colonies."

"What's more," added Sarlena, "those who are good with vikings will collect them, and team up with those who are good at and collect bots, for instance. We'd mark kills made by each individual's robots, and the kills can be exchanged for additional points. Points can also be used to earn rewards--"

A brilliant light was shining in each of Daniel's eyes as he heard the proposition. This was exactly what he needed to be able to convince everyone in his military to do his or her personal best--

Daniel interrupted, saying, "so you mean that if we offer stim packs, massages, promotions, decorations, delicacies, and cabin luxuries for those with the most points, and attach a cost to robots, then everyone will want to earn them by fighting the Zerg in the most effective situations?"

"Exactly," came the reply. "That way, we can practically ensure that the individual commanders will do their utmost to earn the things that they really want."

"Wow, team, that's amazingly quick for coming up with an idea just like that," Daniel replied, and he snapped his fingers to drive the point home. He had finished his tray, and placed it back on the moving line for the cooks to take care of. "I'll be getting this concept off the ground then," he told the others before heading back out for the Systems Operations center.

By nightfall he had drafted the first version of how the plan would work, so he asked his adjutant, "would you please patch me in with Raynor." The adjutant obliged, replying in her sweet voice and opening the chat line.

Raynor's image, with the background of the Hyperion's bridge, appeared on screen. "Hey bud, what's up?"

"I've just finished the first outline for my plan. I was wondering if you'd like to be the one to speak about its merits in front of the crowds."

Raynor thought about this for only a second before vigorously nodding his head. "That's exactly the way I'd like it, Daniel," he replied. Daniel then sent a copy of his conceptualization over to him, and Raynor began to peruse it. A while later, Daniel flipped on the intranet service that Robert had installed, connecting all the humans allied to Travincal to the same news network.

Raynor was already broadcasting, and Daniel knew that many others must be listening to his speech. Raynor was speaking loudly, quickly, and most importantly, excitedly: "...And what's more, you'd get to CHOOSE what you want from our selection of rewards, whether it be decorations, or promotions in rank, or bunches of other stuff that I'm sure you'll find amazing, 'cause they're just awesome. Like, we have a good amount of caviar left on this ship, those of you lucky enough will be able to get your first taste of it in what must have been nearly a lifetime. Oh, and there's also quite a bit of illicit stuff you can trade for, like drugs, booze, and boobs--"

Daniel nearly burst out of his seat. ((What? How could he be saying things like that?)) He shook his head sadly, then crumbled back into his easy chair. ((Raynor's getting himself too excited about this plan himself, and I KNOW I didn't mention anything about prostitution and comfort-women during that lunch conversation...)) Then Daniel realized something that was missing, for the first time in over a month: the fact that Kerrigan wasn't with them. ((That's who Raynor's missing,)) thought Daniel. ((Perhaps... He meant to use the subtle advantages of this organization to give him the edge in recovering his... acquaintance.)) Even though Raynor was still talking about the things in the plan, Daniel had turned off the monitor, since he knew what Raynor was going to be saying in general. ((No, it's because I don't want to hear him say something improper like that again,)) he realized with a start. ((Oh, whatever. Soldiers who have put their lives on the line have a right to go a bit fuzzy on taboo and law.))

The vice chief engineer Robert rushed up to him, nearly breathless. "Did you near what Raynor's been saying?"

"Yeah, I heard," Daniel replied, a bit disgruntled.

"Hmm, you sure? Did you hear the part about his decision to go to Char with the majority of the robots we have stockpiled so far?"

Daniel was for the second time in one minute shocked out of his ordinary tranquility, and he looked at the messenger with shock. "Char? Is that like out of the blue? I've never heard of it before!"

"Neither have I. But Raynor seems to know something we don't."

"Hmm, that's weird. Here, I'll go call him up--" Daniel turned and bolted for his console, and urgently sent a pager message to Raynor. Before long, Raynor was pounding through the catawalks, on the way to the System Operations room.

"What were you thinking of while you made that broadcast, Raynor? I mean you were good, effective and humorous in your speech, and I'll forgive your improper statements, but what's this about going to--?!?"

"Well... Er... Did I say that?"

An ominous pause.

Agent of the Swarm
"Show him a replay," Daniel commanded his adjutant, and she willingly obeyed, drawing up the recording of his speech:

"...and who knows, maybe we'll be able to fight all the way to the surface of dystopian Char and uncover our mystery lady there? It could be the chance of a lifetime! So who's with--"

Raynor's eyes were opening a bit wider. "I--I said that?? I must have been possessed or something, to be thinking of that! I didn't mean to say that! It--It just came out, you know?"

At that very moment, a message appeared on the screen right next to them, with Tealdarin's signature. Written in English. "You surely did not mean to say that, eh? Because Char is a Zerg bastion planet, and it's a god-forsaken world with endless plumes of fire, and there's a clear, powerful psionic emanation coming from a spot on its surface that I can sense to be a variant of a woman."

Christopher poked Sarlena gently. "You did an awesome job with teaching the Protoss English," he said, causing her to blush.

"Let's just say the Protoss are excellent learners," she replied.

Daniel read the message, felt something in the psi, and whirled around, just in time to encounter Tealdarin as he appeared inside the Hyperion's supposedly secure System Operations center. ((((How did you--)))) began Daniel, though he stopped his question mid-track when Tealdarin anticipated and replied: ((((This is another instance of me, Phased. If this is not too troublesome for you, I shall reside aboard the Hyperion, since our starcrafts are now separated by thousands of miles.))))

Raynor had just finished reading the message, and he was wide agape. "So--there really is a situation in which someone needs to be rescued--Who is it?"

The message was written in Terran Basic on the monitor: "Only one person would be sending you a signal, expecting you to know who that person was. Can you not guess?"

Daniel and Raynor both arrived at the same conclusion, and spoke out roughly simultaneously: "Sarah Kerrigan!"

"But I thought she was lost on Tarsonis!" exclaimed Christopher.

"Okay then, if there's a call for you, then I think it's because Sarah's in trouble." Daniel pondered for a moment, while the others watched his expressions. "We first need to know how concentrated the Zerg are on Char. We don't want to sacrifice all our robots in a futile attack."

((((Indications exist that the Zerg had abandoned Char several months ago.))))

Raynor's eyes lit up. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go!" He got the approval of the other VIP's of Travincal, and they set off to their tasks. With Daniel's support, the mission was bound to begin.

Within a minute, the Hyperion and a host of other Terran starships cruised into the planetary atmosphere--or whatever was left of it--and opened their hangars for the many robots that entered: several hundred of the infantry Bots and dozens of mode-shifting Vikings were brought aboard the various dropships, dozens of cloaked Shrikes entered high orbit, and the Hyperion uploaded the first of several Thors under construction.

Daniel went to the secondary entertainment room to get a rest as the Hyperion lifted back off into space on its dozen Quantradyne engines. The secondary entertainment room was for those who wanted to enjoy free time in relative peace and relaxation, as contrasted with the primary one, which was always filled with brawling fights and competitive drinking like any old-fashioned battlecruiser would have. The secondary was barely ever visited, and that was why Daniel chose to go there. If they were about to assault another planet, Daniel wanted to spend some time meditating.

Instead, he found several Protoss Khalai busy at work, brilliant cyan lights flowing about everywhere, and an enormous, gilded contraption filled most of the room. All the game tables and televisions were absent...

((((What the heck do you think you're doing here!?)))) demanded Daniel, staring at the uninvited Protoss.

Tealdarin turned to face him, and replied, ((((Don't you want to go to Char? Do you think getting there is a stroll in the garden?))))

((((Then thats...))))

((((Exactly, this is an instance of our wormhole generator. With it, your ships will be able to reach their destination within the minutes it takes for this contraption to punch a hole through space-time and come out the other end. This would shorten your effective journeying time to Char by about fifteen days, as it is forty light-years away.))))

((Really?!!! Dam*, that's cool! So much for my worrying about whether or not we'd make it in time.)) ((((Well then, I'm sorry I was so rude against you, you're certainly welcome to install these devices as long as they--))))

((((Apologies accepted. We hope you do not mean to imply that our technologies should fail?))))

((((Absolutely not!)))) Daniel backtracked, though that was the very suspicion he had. ((((Your technologies are probably fail-safe, are they not?))))

((((Protoss technologies are superior to all others. You can rest assured, Whispering One.))))

((((You can call me Daniel. What's the radius of effect of this warp drive?))))

((((Fine then, Daniel. The way your fleet is currently positioned--centered directly over Travincal--the wormhole will just be able to instantaneously direct all of your starcraft to high orbit over Char. There now, the warp drive is finished.))))

"What's the progress now, adjutant?" Daniel asked through his intercom.

"Loading has just completed, and I was about to contact you. The fleet's all yours to command. There are nearly no mobile Terran defenses left on Travincal."

"Forget about that, and forget about the fleet's warp drives. Tell everyone to hang on tight."

"Sir? What?--what are you talking about? Hello?" The adjutant was a bit confused at being told not to activate Quantradyne engines...

((((All right then Tealdarin, how do you activate this contraption?))))

((((I activate it by sending my psionic signature into the device.))))

Daniel was asking how he could do it himself, then realized that he had asked the technically wrong question for that. ((Oh well.)) ((((Let's see it activate!))))

And with that, Tealdarin gave the wormhole generator a psionic signal, and it opened, revealing a pylon created out of something that appeared similar to the khaydarin crystal Daniel wore around his neck as a talisman. Nothing happened for a long moment, and Daniel tensed, assuming the obvious possibility: that the device had failed. Then the large jewel-like rhombus-shaped prism glowed with such a brilliance that Daniel had to turn away from it and shield his eyes; he used his psionic mind to sense what it looked like, and was rewarded with a mental image of the device, glowing brighter but at least not searing his eyes.

For a moment, everything flickered, redshifting and then immediately blueshifting. Daniel went into a brief spasm from the psionic shockwave, collapsing onto the ground sprawling. The Protoss were still standing... Everything then returned to normal.

((The hel*?!?)) Daniel wondered.

((((Ah, that was to be expected, Daniel. You'll get accustomed to it in due time. You may want to get back to Commands, we are already at Char.))))

((Already?!)) Daniel took one last, appreciating look at Tealdarin before rushing out into the corridor, headed for the Commands great hall, Travincal's logistical and strategic base of operations. It was the largest room on the Hyperion, generally reserved for storage of supplies but now cleared out and replaced with row after row of computer frames, with at least a hundred people seated behind the desks on which they were placed, ready to give out the command to their units. The room was, like much of the Hyperion, utilitarian; there were a few plants here and there, but most of the central space was well-used with the matrix of command consoles. Overhead and on the walls were even more displays, only recently installed into the plating, that displayed the results of various sensor scans.

Raynor was already there and making a speech to the general assembly, this time in a serious voice. The moment he had begun to talk, there were crowds of applause. ((Seems like Raynor's struck a chord with the men,)) Daniel realized. ((Darn popular--freak. Wish I had that much attention.)) He listened to what Raynor had to say:

"All right. All crews, stay frosty, and keep your eyes peeled for our target. Remember, not only are we up against the Zerg here, but our old pal General Duke may be creepin' around too. Let's hope this trip wasn't a big mistake..."

Daniel sat down by his monitor, looking out at the planetary surface in front of them. A total ash world, so geologically unstable that there were multiple plumes of supervolcanoes stretched across the entire surface. All clear, it seemed, except that much of the surface was a blackened purple. ((What the heck?!?)) he wondered, and then applied the biosensor scans, superimposing over the image. Immediately, the entire planet turned into a globe of dense red blips--there were... Zerg here, Zerg there, Zerg everywhere... Just not visible to a standard visible-light scan.

((They must be underground--all of them, burried under the creep... Oh shi*,)) Daniel cursed. ((((Tealdarin, exactly what is the matter with there being so many Zerg here?))))

((((It seems that the Overmind has withdrawn the Swarms to this remote planet.))))

The adjutant had found a good landing location, and created a theoretical path toward the location where faint psionic signals continued to emanate.

"Okay men! Deploy! Let's see this over with!" shouted Raynor, eager to test the robots, knowing that in this engagement, no one's life was on the line. He'd have his revenge against the Zerg, but he just wasn't all that happy with the thought that Travincal's robots would have to fight through that many Zerg...

The Hyperion landed on the barren, ashen surface, accompanied by a dozen other crafts which also touched down in the immediate vicinity. Immediately as they landed, the robotic drones affectionately dubbed "bots" poured out of the hatches, as the vikings came out of the hangars, ready to shift into airborne roles at a moment's notice, as the bristling Thors lumbered out of the Hyperion's massive hangar bay, and as Shrikes patrolled the air.

"All right Jaxtor, here's your chance," Daniel told him via intercom.

"I'm on it," he replied, and proceeded to search out an area dense in the Zerg bio-signs before keying in the code to launch an Apocalypse-class thermonuclear warhead. It shot out of a nearby battlecruiser, streaking at high speeds through the atmosphere before streaking back down, detonating a mile above the surface.

A massive, spherical cloud rose out from the ground as several rings of white gases lashed out in a circle from ground zero. There was no mushroom this time--just an immense white orb, burning the eyes of observers with a brilliance far stronger than even Char's dangerously close sun. For a moment, it flowered, before gradually dissipating.

The huge patch of Zerg reportedly hidden underneath the creep had vanished, supposedly blown into smithereens.

((Where's Michael?)) wondered Daniel suddenly. He didn't know why, only that once he did, he got this sudden disappointing feeling of foreboding... of others following his fates. It had nearly seemed normal that Michael wasn't part of the group here. ((If he actually came on deck and saw what we had been able to wrought, he'd be so proud,)) he thought, before quickly closing it off. He didn't want to have a mental breakdown the way Michael did. No--Daniel had no intention of losing his sanity, alone as he was in this command center crammed with over two dozen people.

"All right, it's time we go explore," said Raynor, raising a fist as he rallied his men. From the central halls of the battlecruisers, the robot operators saw him and cheered alongside each other.

Immediately, the hundreds of robotic craft began to proceed toward the site of the detonation.

However, they encountered no resistance, as--the Zerg in their way all seemingly decided to pick themselves up and left.

"Adjutant! What's going on!" Daniel shouted, assuming that she knew what he referred to.

"It seems like the Zerg are rushing toward a point that is releasing some sort of signal."

((Dam* right they are, stupid!)) Daniel showed his disapproval toward her superficial analysis before looking back at the monitor.

The Zerg converged with a terrifying accuracy toward the point where Kerrigan supposedly was; all kinds of beasts, both those the humans had seen before and those they had not, covered the ground and took to the skies. An immense powerhouse of an army swirled around their prize.

Daniel stared at his monitor, at the converging Zerg. ((What the heck is going on? Whatever it is, it doesn't seem right.)) "Jaxtor," he whispered, "launch another nuke. This time, target it at the point of convergence of those thousands of Zerg."

"But that's where Kerrigan is," Jaxtor protested, even as he turned around to key in the commands for a second launch.

"Just do as I say, Kerrigan is not as valuable to us as taking out those thousands of Zerg in a single shot."

The missile left its silo, streaking out from the battlecruiser at low orbit and straight at the immense concentration of Zerg. Along its trajectory, the Zerg fired an assortment of lethal projectiles, almost instantly burning the missile to scrap before it had a chance to detonate. The unconnected pieces of radioactive material scattered into the atmosphere, raining slowly toward the ashen surface.

"Missile Two destroyed prematurely," Jaxtor dutifully reported, perturbed that his charge had failed. Daniel sighed as he looked at the displays.

((((Do you sense it?)))) asked Tealdarin, even though Tealdarin was probably still in the secondary entertainment room.

((((Sense what?)))) Daniel wondered.

((((I guess not then. I was getting a message from something on the surface, distinctly dissimilar to the psionic signature of the Protoss, though its vibes indicate a size of mind almost as large as a typical battlecruiser. This was its message: "Cerebrate! The chrysalis is opening! Do not allow any Terrans near it!")))) The Protoss representative was displaying signs of confusion, and as Daniel looked up to it in all matters psychic, it was not quite that comforting.

Daniel stared at nothing in particular, thinking carefully about those mental signals. ((I had thought only the Overmind controlled its minions. Apparently not, since something else is obviously giving commands right now.))

Just then, the Zerg began to scatter, a disproportionate amount headed straight for the Terran robotic army which was still trudging forward. Daniel looked at the imminent confrontation with alarm. There were simply way too many Zerg headed toward them. "Retreat! All commanders retreat back to the hangars! All ships in orbit proceed to the surface to pick up our robots!"

Daniel then felt the Overmind gleefully send a powerful psionic broadcast, as if it were meant to be heard by others: ((((Well done, Cerebrate! What I have wrought this day shall be the undoing of my enemies! Let not a Terran survive...))))

Just then, Raynor managed to get a lock on Sarah Kerrigan with the psionic 'adjustment' of Tealdarin from afar. The image of her body appeared on his monitor, and everyone--for everyone was watching--everyone's mouths dropped in horror.

She was no longer Sarah Kerrigan anymore. Although strangely humanlike and svelte, she now sported a pair of blackened, vampire-like wings; her body's skin a sap green carapace; her hair had become bundles of nerve cords similar to that of the Templar, only far more numerous; and her hands and feet had turned into claws and talons. She had taken a deadly form, and her glaring, gothic eyes had that certain something that proved it.

Repugnant.

Raynor was the first to speak. "Mother of God... Kerrigan what have they done to you?" he intoned, to no one in particular. He looked over the figure, thinking, ((That's what she's like now?!? I thought I'd be able to rescue a beautiful woman, but what... How--could this have happened?)) Raynor was emotionally distressed, not knowing what to think, what to do. "Sarah... Is that really you?" he said to the computer's monitor.

Daniel felt a psionic force travel through the voids of space. He knew who it was from, and for the first time, he felt his mental privacy become suddenly... violated: ((((To an extent... I'm far more than I once was, Jim. You shouldn't have come here.)))) Raynor practically fell out of his chair at that, for he had not expected ex-Kerrigan to be able to--

"But the dreams... I dreamed you were still alive... that somehow... you were calling to me." To the simple observer, this would appear to be an insane person's monologue with himself, or with no one in particular.

"So what? Are you goin' to kill me now, darlin'?" Raynor continued to say to himself after a pause, knowing that his words were still somehow getting to ex-Kerrigan.

"Doesn't look like I have much choice."

"What did she say?" asked Daniel.

"She's acting as if she's all so powerful and omnipotent. I think she might be right, too. Maybe it's time we got ourselves out of here." Raynor looked at Daniel, a tinge of fear in his eyes. "What'll become of her?"

Daniel shrugged. "How should I know? Probably just the Overmind's pet." He turned around, knowing that his words were probably too strong for Raynor to accept, and yet he still heard the man whimper at his defeat, covering his eyes and wiping the stinging tears away--

Teachers
"Should we get going?" Daniel asked Raynor gently, knowing how hard it was for him. It was difficult for Daniel himself to swallow down the fact that a human could have been adulterated to such an extent--it only went to show how cruel, how fallen, how brutish the Zerg were, reinforcing his desire to destroy the race altogether.

Although he knew that it was probably not going to happen.

Even if the Zerg would someday be eliminated, it might not be him who would get to do it.

Which, he knew, was also the first thing on Raynor's mind.

Raynor finally recuperated from his shock, saying at last, "I... think so. Have the Protoss--take us back home." Daniel caught the undertone for that one: Since the Protoss had mysteriously got them here, it would also be the Protoss to get them back.

((((Time to leave, then, Tealdarin,)))) Daniel communicated to the Protoss representative across the length of the extended battlecruiser flagship.

((((It's pointless to... return.))))

((((What do you mean by that?!?))))

((((Do you not recall what we told you on the first time we met?))))

((((What? --Oh,! Phasing...!?))))

((((Exactly. We have been Phased here. This is your third Instance, Daniel. The former instance of our fleet still remains over the surface of Tarsonis. Even if you departed for there through another Phasing sequence, this fleet will still remain over the surface of Char.))))

((((Then... We are stuck here?))))

((((You have clearly not tried to reach out into the deep voids of space. Try it---search for your other self on Tarsonis.))))

Daniel did as the Protoss recommended, and closed his eyes, trying to contact the former Daniel...

They found each other. Impossible to describe in words, it was, but he realized very clearly that there were these two souls, two spirits, which had become lost when the Phasing had occurred...until now.

Now, Daniel suddenly felt a lot less... alone.

He had found... love.

Love for his other self. ((What??? But that's insane, I can't love my self! ...er, my other self,)) thought Daniel. ((I've got to stop this...))

((((No, Daniel. You want to foster the relationship between you and your other you. And no, it is not taboo to do so, even in your culture. Can you honestly say to yourself, that you have never loved yourself, when you were one and alone?))))

Daniel realized what Tealdarin meant. ((((So... This love that I'm feeling, it's because of the Phasing effect, isn't it?))))

((((Yes. You will always experience that sensation of self-longing and spiritual fulfillment, for that is a key component to the psionic connection.))))

((((I... Don't get it.... Why can't you explain this in more detail?))))

((((We could try, but it would be far more effective for you to discover on your own, and for your fellow humans to discover on their own. In our culture, our Protoss culture, psionic means... A sharing of gifts. In the times to come, Daniel, you shall find many situations in which you and your identities shall find mutual benefit from such a Sharing. You shall come to realize it all... But in the meantime, we are afraid that you shall find it difficult to convince your fellow humans that we shall not be getting a ride back. The Nexii have more important jobs to do.))))

((((So... What is the Nexii, exactly?)))) asked the other Daniel to another Tealdarin, in low orbit over Korhal IV.

((((The Nexii is the collective of all Nexii our race have constructed. An individual Nexus coordinates the psionic energies that our race send throughout the infinite voids of space, allowing the processing capacities of the other Nexii spread throughout the universe to focus at one individual point relative to the Nexus. Therefore, we can Phase duplicates of our assets to anywhere in the vicinity of at least one Nexus.)))) The Protoss Templar was staring off into the voids of space, waiting.

((((Oh, is that the big temple-like building in the center of your base on Korhal?)))) asked Daniel, mentally envisioning a copy of the gilded, hundred-feet-wide structure.

((((Indeed, it is. Through the collective energies of the Nexii and Pylons, we bring to reality what we imagine--of course, what our psionic technologies present a template of an object to far greater detail than any individual can. Using the powers of memory, the Nexii can select a particular Nexus as an anchor--))))

((((And simply Imagine something into existence?))))

((((Exactly.))))

((((Dang, that's cool! Wish we could do that. I'd Imagine my dream significant other into this world--))))

((((Ah yes, your appreciation of beauty and love--))))

((((Oops, but what am I thinking...)))) Rushing to change the topic, Daniel asked, ((((so why can't you Protoss just Phase in massive fleets of carriers where-ever you encounter any Zerg? That'll devastate them in a moment.))))

((((As we were communicating to you earlier, both Nexii and Pylons are instrumental to the process of Phasing. Nexii are a means of focusing psionic energies to a point, but Pylons hold that "liquid" psionic energy for quick harvesting. Once the psionic energy is used, much like your electrical batteries, they must be slowly replenished. The large Khaydarin Crystals that constitute the majority of the Pylon is a form of half-solid, half-liquid psionic energy generator and holder.))))

Daniel flashed back to the Pylons he saw on Korhal--vertically elongated octohedrons composed of some crystalline blue material, around which was a gilded disc which slowly rotated around the--Khaydarin crystal. ((So that was what it was--just much larger than the one he currently bore about his neck.))

((((So are you implying... that my amulet carries the same power as that in those Pylons?))))

((((It is comprised of the same potential, though we would not use the term "power", for without a Nexus, a Gateway, etcetera, it is impossible for your amulet to create anything out of thin air.))))

((((Oh... )))) Daniel was a bit disappointed, but then he realized that he had set his sights way too high...

((((Back to the topic of Phasing in fleets. The Pylons have only a limited reserve and regenerative capacity for psionic potential.))))

((((I recall seeing your race Phase in a Nexus from scratch?))))

((((Because the function of a Nexus is to serve as an anchor, the act of starting up a Nexus creates the anchor from which its structure may be Phased in.))))

((((Oh, I get it! And I recall the base rising up around the Nexus just like that, too! *visualizing snapping his finger* The Nexii can also Phase new Pylons?))))

((((The Nexii does so constantly, though much of the currently tapped psionic forces are being directed toward construction of other objects.))))

((((Wait... But if you can create Pylons, then why don't you just concentrate all your psionic energy to creating them, and nothing else? Before you know it, you'll have such a tremendous capacity to Phase that your race would be unstoppable!))))

((((Every civilization faces the same dilemma. For if we had done just as you said, our military would have become far weaker than that of the Zerg, and we would have lost our prized Nexii and Pylons everywhere. So we must decide the best distribution of how to optimize our resources. We think that the class your race takes, "Economics", addresses that fundamental issue?))))

((((Erm, well I haven't taken that class... Who told you about classes anyways, Sarlena?))))

((((None other.))))

((((Okay well--so I get it that you can't simply turn out Pylon farms because then there won't be anybody to defend them, right?))))

((((Exactly. Additionally, a point we believe you are missing out on is that every object we Phase requires resources. The same minerals and liquids that your race seems to have a desire to collect as well, and the same as those the Zerg can utilize. These resources are Warped into energy form and transported instantaneously through the application of psionic energies.))))

((((Oh... I see.))))

((((Therefore, we are in constant need of searching for resources, for our homeworld has long been depleted of them. Well, that may not be exactly true, there is a solitary formation of Khaydarin Crystal the size of a good sized settlement on Aiur, which we have not touched because it was first created by the Xel'Naga...))))

((((Who are the Xel'Naga?))))

((((Our Creators.))))

((((Wait... Is this a Fact, or do you just believe in it, is it a Faith?))))

((((Our history, like yours, is lost in the far past. But now we subscribe to a Faith known as the Khala--the Way of the Enlightened One.))))

((((Sounds very uplifting,)))) Daniel remarked.

((((It has helped us in combat ever since the first tribes followed it.))))

((((What's it say?))))

((((In very general terms, "trust in the glory of the Khala, for the Khala is our strength, and hence our strength is Infinite".))))

((((So did the Xel'Naga create the concept of the Khala?))))

((((No... To Them, we are the Fallen, the failed Firstborn.))))

((((Why so?))))

((((Because shortly after we became strong through their guidance, we fell into war amonst each other, bickering over who was the stronger and deserved the "reins" of control. In the end the Xel'Naga abandoned us, disgusted that we had fallen so far.))))

((((Oh, so I see now! The Khala fixed the internecine warfare problem by saying that everyone is united in their infinite strength!))))

((((Even now, not all of our race are unified as one...))))

((((Why, what happened?))))

((((It's a long story. However, the basic points run like this: Some of our kind did not believe in the Khala, and so in order to rebel, they cut their psionic nerve cords--)))) Tealdarin pointed at the three long tusk-like tendrils sticking out the back of his head--((((And fled into the void. Our peoples were indignant at this lack of faith that they demonstrated, and so we ordered one of our Executors--))))

((((What's an Executor again?))))

((((A commander, though generally of at least one large fleet. This particular Executor, Adun, determined that it was not wise to fight against our own brethren, and so allowed them to escape. We know of them now as the Dark Khalai, Templar, and Judicator--even more fallen than we. However, we have come to accept the wisdom of Adun's actions, as many centuries thereafter, we first encountered the Zerg.))))

((((Just how long ago did that happen?))))

((((Adun's time was just a bit over a thousand years ago. Our encounter with the Zerg happened four hundred years ago, and we have been fighting them ever since.))))

((((Well... are you winning, or losing?))))

((((Do you know any oncologist?))))

((((What's that supposed to mean?))))

((((Their patients have a phenomenon known as cancer, as Sarlena told us a few days back. Well, fighting the Zerg is much like trying to wipe out a cancer that is spreading throughout the universe.))))

((((Hard task,)))) Daniel could understand. ((((And one which doesn't yield much expectations for victory.))))

((((Do not believe that our race lacks the power to defeat the Zerg. It is merely that the time of our final engagement has yet to come.))))

((((Sorry, I didn't mean to say that your race might be weak in any respect...))))

((((But with enough resources, we should be able to decisively overpower these critters, exterminate them...))))

((((So I gather that you and everyone you know have been caught up in the war against the Zerg for as long as anyone can remember?))))

((((Indeed. Our forces grow by the second. Soon we shall take the battle to the Zerg homeworld.))))

((((Which is...?))))

((((We don't know yet. But once we know, we shall begin our offensive.))))

((((The only thing preventing all-out war at this point is that neither you nor the Zerg know the locations of each other's homeworld?))))

((((Indeed. Though even if we gave the location of Aiur, we should have no trouble defending it. Mighty is our race, which was crafted by the Xel'Naga to be perfect!))))

((((You seem quite perfect to me, with your imposing frame, powerful psionic potential, and advanced technologies,)))) Daniel hurriedly indicated. ((((I'm sure you'll win.))))

Meanwhile, the Daniel in high orbit over Char looked at the minimap display in wonder. There were other Protoss arriving on the surface of the planet, and the Zerg had already begun to engage them in direct battle. On the minimap, they showed up as red blips for Zerg and violet blips for Protoss.

Yet these were different Protoss from what Daniel had been used to.

((((These are Dark Templar you see represented here,)))) Tealdarin informed Daniel as they stared at the display intently. Daniel strangely recalled what the Dark Templar were--and hastily jumped to the conclusion that his other self on Korhal had learned of this. After all, wasn't this how the Protoss could instantaneously learn of what every other Protoss knew?

((((The Dark Templar--we wonder what they're up to,)))) noted Tealdarin.

Just then, Daniel sensed a message coming from the Judicator on board--((((The traitorous rebels! We must crush them! Tealdarin, do not stay your hand!))))

The third Protoss, another Khalai, interrupted the conversation. ((((What's so big of a deal about hating the Dark Templar, Judicator? They build, just like we do, and here we have ample proof that they fight the Zerg. As Sarlena would have put it, "the foe of my foe is my friend"--))))

((((Silence! We shall have enough of this! The Conclave has determined that these Dark Templar are to be crushed at the earliest opportunity.))))

((((Whatever that time may be, it is not now, Judicator,)))) Daniel telepathically messaged. ((((Since the Dark Templar are fighting the Zerg, the longer we wait, the more Zerg die and the more of these traitors die along with them, which just makes our job easier.))))

((((Silence, Whispering One. We never wanted to come in the first place.))))

((((Yes we did,)))) challenged the Khalai representative.

((((Salutation with this Daniel Travincal was a mistake from the very start--)))) Daniel would have expected the Judicator to hiss...

((((You would want to sacrifice some of your peoples just so that you could slay the Dark Templar before the Zerg can? Why are you in such a rush?))))

((((If you hadn't learned yet, the Dark Templar's day of judgment has been long in coming. We have waited for this day long enough...))))

((((Even if you managed to kill these, I doubt that they are all who remain of the faction who broke off a millennium ago, Judicator,)))) Daniel replied with the voice of reason.

((((Then at least these shall not present us with the troublesome prospect of having to hunt them and their progeny down in the future,)))) the Protoss lashed back.

The Harbinger
Daniel left the Protoss to squabble among themselves, and turned his attention to the planet---and the nearby asteroid belt. ((Well isn't that some idea,)) he mused to himself.

On the surface, it seemed that these Dark Templar were being horribly overpowered by the Zerg. It seemed hopeless. ((Why would the Dark Templar be bad?)) Daniel had to ask himself. ((Weren't they also fighting the Zerg? And as long as someone's fighting Zerg, hey, I'm happy...))

Daniel waited out the time, as did the other humans on the fleet's ships. It was dinner time, and that meant a victory feast. As their leader, he knew that he would be in the midst of all the attention. The atmosphere was jovial, but the rest... he didn't remember very much happening, so little attention did he pay to the ceremony. His thoughts were on the road ahead, the mysterious dislike between the two Protoss factions...

He left the party early, and a concerned Christopher and Sarlena trailed him to his quarters, leaving Raynor to rally the men. "What's wrong," asked Christopher, not even bothering to make it a question.

"Yeah, tell us and maybe we can help," added Sarlena.

"Can you help me decide whether the Dark Templar down there should be helped out or not?"

"The Who?" asked Sarlena.

"Dark Templar. You know your Protoss history, right?"

"So That's why the display's showing purple rather than yellow," said Christopher, as if he had just realized something. "The Protoss must have decided to tag them all with a certain color."

Daniel replied, "Yes, and we all know that the Protoss love the color gold, because that's their tag color and all their structures and crafts are gilded. And we all know that yellow and purple are complementary colors. Which means, if the Protoss decided the color, that they must really hate them."

"The Protoss always bicker about what to do about the Dark Templar," said Sarlena, recalling those days spent with Tealdarin. "Of the three classifications of Protoss, it seems it's always the Judicator who are most zealous in wiping them all out, while the Khalai advocate the opposite and the Templar are ambivalent."

"Now, why would the Templar be ambivalent? I recall that you taught Tealdarin the phrase 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'?" asked Daniel.

"Yes, but the Protoss Templar seem to have a different preconception of what 'just' is, and so it doesn't matter who the Dark Templar are fighting; it'll still seem to the Light Protoss that they are traitors and must be eradicated," said Sarlena, a bit displeasured.

"Look at the monitor!" cried out Christopher in surprise. The three of them looked at the display, just as the last bits of purple disappeared in a sea of red.

"The Dark Templar are no more," said Daniel. "The Judicator on board will be pleased. That's what he wanted, wasn't it?"

A pause, as the three of them realized how Wrong it was for one group of Protoss to wish a forlorn death on another group of Protoss by the cold and unforgiving Zerg. But at least the Zerg had only been fighting because they were practically everyone's enemy. The Protoss--especially the Judicators--had the luxury of allying with the Dark Templar, and yet had remained cold and unmovable for a hundred decades...

((((The Conclave will not be pleased that we missed our opportunity to eradicate the Dark Templar ourselves,)))) the message of the Judicator entered Daniel's mind.

((((You got your wish, didn't you?))))

((((Our wish is to fight the Dark Templar ourselves and thereby prove that our Khala is great.))))

Daniel didn't know how to reply to that, so he looked to Sarlena and Christopher and told them, "The Judicator still isn't satisfied. Oh, and what's the Conclave?"

"It's like our government," replied Sarlena. "The highest-ranking Judicators comprise it, and they determine foreign policy for the race as a whole. Except of course, for--"

"Yeah, I know, those who broke their nerve connections with them," finished Daniel.

((((An illusion? Are you afraid to face me, Templar?)))) suddenly erupted into Daniel's mind. It was an incredibly strong signal...

((((So long as you continue to be so predictable, O Queen, I need not face you at all. You are your own worst enemy.))))

((((Insufferable Protoss coward! Tassadar cannot evade my wrath forever! I shall find him and--))))

"What the heck was that about?" said Daniel out in the open. He was looking straight at the other two humans, who stared back with blank expressions. "Oh, forgot. Obviously someone known as a Queen wants another someone called Tassadar dead..."

"Uh... Umm... Why not go ask Tealdarin?" suggested Christopher, who felt awkward outside of his element.

"Yeah, I guess I should," said Daniel. But he didn't have to.

((((Daniel, you listened in to that conversation, right?)))) Daniel recognized its particular psionic signature as Tealdarin's.

((((Absolutely, it was so loud!))))

((((Seems like there are still Protoss on the surface.))))

((((Is Tassadar the leader of the Dark Templar, then?))))

The Judicator protested, ((((What infamy is this? The Executor Tassadar with the Dark Templar? The Conclave shall find it necessary to select a new Executor in his place then...))))

((((Why not the Whispering One?)))) offered the Khalai.

((((Why should we supplicate ourselves before an insignificant Terran?))))

Daniel was outraged. ((((Another out-of-line statement from you, Judicator, and you'll find that you're not welcome on this ship!))))

((((That seals it, you have no chance of currying favor with the Conclave!)))) was Tealdarin's reply. ((((Don't be so rash, Daniel. The Judicator here isn't your general nobody.))))

((((I realized that, he did oversight while I was doing the Salutation ceremony. But... I guess it was just his anger getting at me,)))) replied Daniel.

((((Whatever is Tassadar doing with the Dark Templar?)))) asked Tealdarin.

((((We shall be finding out soon...)))) replied the Khalai.

((((Cerebrate, Zasz is dead!)))) It was another statement that rang out through the psionic void, which Daniel managed to latch onto. There were clearly several beings capable of sending immensely powerful psionic signals. He guessed they were all Zerg; after all, they needed to be able to communicate with their minions...

Daniel turned to stare at the digital minimap. Red dots seemed to be disappearing for no apparent reason...

((((There seems to have been a split amonst the Zerg Swarm,)))) noted Tealdarin, who was also looking at a similar display where-ever he was. ((((The Zerg seem to be infighting right now.))))

((((The Zerg fighting themselves? Impossible!)))) responded Daniel.

((((What do you know about them that we do not?)))) asked the Khalai.

((((But... The Zerg... Aren't they lead by a single Overmind? And it controlled all the Zerg, at least so it told me...))))

((((The Overmind definitely does. This seems... strange of it. Perhaps it is dying?))))

((((You wish,)))) thought Daniel. But he knew that it was a rare war in which one side won because the other's leadership died naturally.

((((We are receiving reports that the Zerg have been infighting amonst themselves across many worlds currently under our Observation,)))) Tealdarin declared.

((((So... Is the Overmind going to die? Is this it, the end of the war?))))

((((A five-hundred-year-war does not end anticlimactically,)))) was Tealdarin's reply. ((((If it is indeed the case, we shall find our lives meaningless.))))

Terran and Protoss stared at their minimap displays for the next hour..., while Daniel sat beside his computer, steadily crunching numbers away... The party in the main mess hall showed no signs of dying down...

"Jaxtor," Daniel spoke into his comlink.

"Yes admiral?"

"What would happen if the Zerg suddenly realized that something awful was about to happen to all of Char? What would they do?"

"Uh... I guess they'd flee," Jaxtor offered, confused.

"What's going to flee?" Daniel pressed his question.

"Well, any units they have, but they obviously can't simply pick up their buildings and depart now, can they?"

"Right," was the weak reply Daniel gave him. Then he changed the link so that his words could be heard by everyone. "All ship commanders, set destination to the coordinates I'm giving you," he suddenly announced into his comlink, prompting Sarlena and Christopher to trade questioning glances. Meanwhile, the forces remaining on Char were in disarray, fighting having broken throughout much of the planet.

"Why into the asteroid belt?" Christopher asked.

"Well, I've got a plan," was all Daniel said, leaving everyone else scratching their heads. The Protoss, meanwhile, were silent to him.

Several minutes later, Daniel's fleet had moved into position--behind a screen of asteroids. He typed a bit more into his computer, and spoke into his public intercom. "All ship commanders, set the targets of your nuclear missiles focused on the asteroid whose positions I'm now giving you."

Daniel emerged from his private quarters to the main tactical chamber, and the adjutant gave him worried looks. "You're wasting our nukes on a piece of rock?" Several others were looking at him as if he were crazy.

"Just do as I said, I'm in charge here, remember? Fire at the coordinates I gave you on my mark. Ready... Get set... FIRE!!!"

On command, every one of the six battlecruisers in his fleet fired their nukes, temporarily generating a second sun far more brilliant and intense--and deadly--than Char's broiling star. It was a spectacular sight, and Daniel relished it for the several minutes that the flare lasted.

The asteroid veered off trajectory, heading along the path that Daniel had calculated it would, away from the asteroid belt... and headed straight for Char.

It took merely a minute for Christopher to find conclusive, numerical proof of what Daniel was planning to do. Daniel smiled back, merely stating, "This world's already been ridden by both Zerg and hostile volcanic activity. What more is Armageddon?"

As the asteroid approached the planet at increasingly high velocities, the Zerg took notice, and very rapidly fled from the surface. Whatever could flee did so--many flyers of various classifications, as well as the Overlords (behemoths), fully loaded with ground-based minions. They all proceeded to a particular sector of space, and Daniel laughed exultingly at their flight. ((All those Zerg... and they are totally unprepared to meet my challenge,)) he thought to himself. ((And even if they fly away, they can't move their structures away, nor their countless remaining ground minions.))

Then the asteroid finally impacted. The ten-kilometer-wide foreign object drove a crater into the already lava-coursed planetary surface, causing the ground all around it to erupt out and away from the impact zone, a circular wall of destruction that traversed, covering the entire planet within a few short hours. The ubiquitous Zerg presence on the surface were totally destroyed, vaporized, gone.

All life upon the planet was extinguished.

And in the midst of it all, while many of the humans were torn between gladness at the eradication of the Zerg and the horror at seeing such cataclysmic obliteration, Daniel was nearly dancing in his ecstasy. No one paid any attention to the cluster of Zerg flyers, who were proceeding to a huge hurricane-like vortex, a wormhole the size of a small moon which progressively got brighter toward the center, which steadily sucked in countless Zerg silhouettes. In, in, and more in, they were all drawn to...

"Why are you so happy?" asked Sarlena, more than a bit worried in his voice.

"Why shouldn't I be?" replied Daniel, raising his fists into the air in hoots of joy. "I just masterminded the destruction of a billion Zerg."

They didn't pay attention to another signal that the Protoss had picked up: ((((Behold, my long silence is now broken, and I am made whole once more. The cunning Protoss have dared strike down that which was immortal...))))

"And aren't you horrified by what you just did?" asked Sarlena, rather cautiously. She didn't want to ruin Daniel's day if she could help it.

But then, everyone in the fleet was rejoicing.

Everyone was happy.

Everyone--was--insanely--ecstatic.

And then, it struck him. Daniel realized that there was another, much--larger presence that was also happy. It felt--wrong.

Daniel collapsed onto his bed, the delight still whirling through his head, a very wide smile on his face.

And then he suddenly had the vision of a massive eyeball in an even grander socket.

The Overmind.

((((((Joy.))))))

((What the hell??))

Daniel abruptly burst out of his vision, halted his laughing... And looked around, seeing the many other humans who were still gleeful with the aura of victory.

There was no victory if the Overmind was giving off such a strong sense of joy... It was incredible.

((Were these not the Overmind's minions?)) Daniel wondered. ((((Tealdarin, did you sense that?))))

((((Of course I did,)))) replied Tealdarin solemnly. The Protoss projected the image of a blue-green planet half occluded in the darkness of night, the other half brightened in the day. Daniel peered closer at the image. Several continents could be clearly made out: all dense jungles, intertwining with massive blue oceans. From space, it looked like utopia, a bright teal marble in the endless black of space. Across the entire planet was a steady blue-and-golden sparkle which Daniel took for indications that the Protoss had settled and developed the planet the world over.

And then the image shifted toward the space. In the far distance, a massive wormhole--a purplish vortex with a bright white-orange core--was slowly closing, though still thousands of miles wide.

And illuminated against the abnormally bright background of the wormhole, was a massive alien swarm that seemed to not have any end.

A swarm of Zerg.

(((((AT LONG LAST,

MY CHILDREN,

OUR SEARCHING IS

DONE.

SOON

WE SHALL ASSAULT

AIUR

DIRECTLY.)))))

((((There can be no joy for us. The Zerg have found the location of our secret homeworld, Aiur, and even now the Swarms are descending into low orbit. The long-awaited final conflict has begun, and now we know that we are not prepared to face the Overextended Swarm in its entirety...))))

For a moment, Daniel was speechless.

There must have been a hundred billion Zerg flyers, holding who knew how many more Zerg minions. In comparison with that, the armageddon that befell Char was not even a drop in the bucket.

((((You've always been waiting for an opportunity to fight the final battle against the Zerg. You've been hoping for this your whole lives, and now you've got it,)))) said Daniel sarcastically and without any bit of joy

((((We are now going to Warp this fleet back to Aiur to help defend the homeworld.))))

((((Are you out of your mind!?! There is no way we can possibly fend off the Zerg!))))

((((Remember what the Khala said, Daniel? "Trust in the glory of the Khala, for the Khala is our strength, and hence our strength is Infinite." Never forget that.))))

((((But... Tealdarin! This... this is... suicide!)))) Daniel lamented, as almost on command, a whirling blue vortex appeared around their ships, taking them to where Daniel didn't want to think about...

((((We fight nonetheless. We shall prove to all who are taking notice that the Firstborn are superior to the Second. This is the moment we have all been waiting for, and we stride eagerly into battle.))))

Daniel felt as if they were striding eagerly into Hell.

The Invasion of Aiur
((((Wait, so why is it that we've been suddenly warped in here? I thought you Protoss were used to Phasing?)))) asked Daniel, seeing below them the teal celestial orb that was Aiur, the Protoss homeworld.

((((Phasing is our preferred way of duplicating our assets and thus growing in strength as a race. However, it is consuming to our psionic reserves. In situations of battle, we must Recall in our extended forces. Recalling can only bring forces to the anchor of a certain type of vessel, and can be performed on nearly anything.))))

((((Got it.))))

Christopher watch the display. The minimap, now magnified on the large displaying screen, sized in the entire planet as well as the Zerg Swarm, which was slowly encircling it. It reminded Christopher of a hydrogen atom--only instead of one natural electron, there were a hundred billion angry ones forming a dense cloud that stretched for a hundred thousand miles.

His heart dropped at that. ((No! I've got to keep in touch with reality! I can't slip--not now, not now... Not when I'm needed most. Okay, I've got to focus. Let's see--the first rule of thumb when encountered with this kind of situation is concentrate--think it through! Yes, that's what I'll do.)) So Jaxtor thought for a little while, remembered...

Christopher turned to the adjutant. "Patch me in to Christopher."

The adjutant turned around in utter disbelief and said, "What?"

"I said patch me to the Christopher on Bounty."

"But aren't you--"

"Just do it!"

The adjutant turned back to her consoles and opened a link via ansible to the small base on Bounty. The portrait of another Christopher appeared, much to the shock of the adjutant.

"Hey pal!" the Christopher in Aiur space said to the other.

"Hey self! What's up?"

"We've just encountered a MASSIVE Zerg force on Aiur. Is Project Red Herring done yet?"

"We're just patching it up!"

"Good, the moment it's done, turn it on!" Christopher(Aiur) shouted.

"But... what about Daniel's Two-Point Plan?" asked Christopher(Bounty).

"What Two-Point Plan?"

"You know, the one that says that we turn on the Psi Emitter and then the Psi Disruptor and trap the Zerg on Bounty. The Psi Disruptor's lagging way behind schedule and can't finish for another month. But if we turn the Psi Emitter on, the Zerg will come and destroy the Psi Emitter, and then we can't get the Zerg still spread out there when they're most vulnerable!"

Christopher(Aiur) thought about this carefully. He could scarcely believe that there was actually something else in the making. So Daniel Did have some other ideas... Why hadn't Daniel told him though? Was there some Point in keeping such information separate? But that could not be it either, because evidently Christopher(Bounty) told him quite freely.

The problem now was that this threw an added twist to what was going on. There seemed to be an infinite number of Zerg out there, and perhaps the combination would be potent enough to wipe them out entirely, which would quickly end the war. But that, even if successful, would leave the Protoss in power, and Their technologies were very advanced. In the event of war against the Protoss, humanity could still lose... And more likely than not, the combination, this Two-Point Plan, would have a very large flaw in it which would mean that all would be for naught.

And as for just using the psi emitter--it could attract the Zerg away temporarily, but not for long, and once they came back the Protoss homeworld was just about as good as dead anyway. The main advantage would be to show to the Protoss that the humans actually meant to help them, by distracting a part of the Zerg forces and allowing the Protoss to hold their own in battle. Never mind all the casualties that would be suffered thereafter; never mind the fact that people looking back on his actions would deem it one of the stupidest choices imaginable; never mind that once the Zerg felt the call they would destroy the Psi Emitter and obliterate any chance for victory.

The monumental decision of this made him feel numb. Either way they seemed to lose; either way he would be convicted of destroying humanity's greatest chance for victory. But what really mattered wasn't the final result of the war; it was how the war was fought, because the Protoss homeworld probably would hold something that would hold the key for destroying the Zerg, even if it be something the Protoss never discovered. And with surviving Protoss would survive hope for a two-race alliance against the foe, the tapping of technologies never before discovered, the forging of an alliance that could stretch across worlds.

Besides, by the time the Two-Point Plan had finished, the Zerg might have already discovered that hidden base and destroyed both...

Taking in a deep breath, Christopher(Aiur) responded, "Another one of Daniel's schemes, eh? I understand... I believe I fully understand what is going on, and I think this is for the best. I wonder what mess he's getting himself into. Whatever. But we've been told the whole time along that the point is to build the Psi Emitter for just a time like this--they claim the entire Zerg Swarm is attacking the Protoss homeworld, and if they're going to have any chance for survival it'll require the activation of your Psi Emitter," said Christopher(Aiur). "Look: we're on the same side, all right? Now let's get this done!"

"Fine then, but I'll have my superior to answer to--"

"Don't worry about that now, will you? We're getting the impression that the battle's going to get a lot more concentrated on Aiur--"

"What's that?"

"Protoss homeworld. Seeing as how the Protoss are our allies, we absolutely Must help them as much as we can."

"Yes, I see," said Christopher(Bounty). "Good luck. You will need it."

Christopher still hadn't developed his psionic connections, and so to him, his other self seemed to be--a stranger, only one he knew intimately. It was an awkward feeling--but it was getting him off task as well. He turned around to look at Daniel's face staring at the console. "Well chosen move, Christopher," said Daniel, his grim face breaking into a slight smile. "Maybe we still stand a chance."

Daniel could sense the residues of a billion complaints traversing the collective minds of the Protoss, wondering why the presence of these new, not-so-gilded-and-sleek vessels had appeared alongside them. There were others, he could sense quite clearly, complaining about Tassadar's inexplicable absence and unreachability.

Looking again at the display, Daniel understood why. All over the surface of the planet, bluish warp holes had opened up, bringing in with them many small fleets of ships which Daniel surmised came from the many planets that the spacefaring race had explored. ((((Recall,)))) Tealdarin told him. As soon as the fleets were brought back in defense of their home planet, they moved into formation and prepared to engage the extended swarm which now encompassed the planet like a huge globule. Upon the surface, all the open spaces were being filled up with photon cannons being warped-in--these round flower-like contraptions that could shoot spherical phase disruptors from their highly mechanized stigmas--so many of them were arriving that they covered the surfaces of Protoss buildings and completely filled up the roadways and forests across the entire planet, making it nearly impossible for ground forces to even move.

From up here, it all seemed so far away. One could hear nothing through the depths of space that indicated the encroaching alien life-forms, all of them arranging into formation and preparing for an attack. The hologram in the middle of the operations center held a three-dimensional image of the planet, now fully covered in yellow from continent to ocean, and floating in space all around it, a thick haze of red blips infinitesimally small.

"All right guys, this is it, we're putting our mechs to the test," Raynor announced. Even the normally eager and upbeat colonel seemed more than a tad depressed, and the people who heard him caught the mood.

((((Your men and women quiver in fear,)))) Tealdarin told Daniel(Aiur).

((((Nevertheless, Tealdarin, we shall attempt to do our best and aid you in the coming conflict. Why do the others on the surface and in low orbit all seem so perturbed at us?))))

((((Race, Daniel. Xenophobia. It is natural. Evidently many of them are not as trusting of other races being brought to set their eyes on the treasured homeworld as I am. May you be able to prove otherwise to them, so that they may all see the benefits of collaborating alongside you Terran. And now, we are about to begin our pre-battle anthem, and you may join us if you wish.))))

Daniel kept mentally silent as he heard the rising tide of voices from all the billions of Protoss so concentrated in the general vicinity. It was quite clear what they were saying, so strongly was the signal and so many signals there were. Ample proof that the Protoss were a very disciplined race, far more so than humanity. They began with ((((Trust in the glory of the Khala, for the Khala is our strength....)))) and continued for another full minute, as Protoss fleets continued to warp in at an unending stream.

Sensing that the greatest battle so far against the alien race was about to begin, Daniel retreated to his private quarters, and reclined on his black leather sofa.

Almost immediately, another, familiar presence entered his minds. Was he dreaming? It did not seem so, so vivid, and in such a serious tone, the psionic emanations were...

((((Abandon the Protoss, Terran. You have no hope of surviving this encounter. Go now, while you still can.))))

((((Mind your own business!)))) Daniel responded in his mind.

((((Ah, but it Is our business. Purity of Essence has always been greater than Purity of Form.))))

((((You know what's missing with your Purity? Purity of Heart!))))

((((Heart? What's that? How can a race have purity of a body part?))))

((((Feeling!--))))

((((Of course we feel, Daniel Travincal. We have been greatly aggrieved by all the woes you and your race have caused.))))

((((If you feel, then don't fight the Protoss!))))

((((The Protoss are our eternal enemies. We stand diametrically opposed--))))

((((Can't you befriend each other?))))

((((The Protoss have, over the course of five hundred years of warfare, inflicted a hundred and thirty billion more casualties upon us than we have upon the Protoss. Even if all the twenty billion Protoss were to die, that would still not be enough redress.))))

((((Evidently, but that's because your individual minions are scarcely any competition for individual Protoss.))))

((((You dare accuse our race of weakness?))))

((((Absolutely not, but you must admit that your race's greatest strength is fighting in numbers.))))

((((Our greatest strength is our purity of essence. And we will prove that it is superior to purity of form--))))

((((Yes, I know that already. What do you wish to get out of wiping out all Protoss?))))

((((Justice.))))

((((Yet you cannot ever achieve it because you've suffered more casualties than there are Protoss currently existing.))))

((((Xenocide counts for infinite casualties.))))

((((The destruction of an entire race?!))))

((((Indeed, that is our goal.))))

((((And does that include humanity as well?))))

((((You cannot dismiss the fact that your species have caused us great woes.))))

((((And just why is it so important that you must always force an eye for an eye?))))

((((We uphold righteousness, Daniel Travincal. If you have not uncovered so much from our past discussions, then we are very disappointed in you indeed.))))

((((Your sense of 'righteousness' is perverted!))))

((((It is also what our creators have taught us. We have never forgotten so much.))))

((((You and your creators... Don't you understand where it's taking you? Your war with the Protoss would just continue to escalate until the end of time--))))

((((Or until we triumph, you mean?))))

((((Or lose. I've seen the Protoss, both physically and mentally. They're incredibly strong and they will find a way to defeat you, to kill you--))))

((((The Overmind is eternal. So it was made by our creators.))))

((((You're full of yourself, oh Overmind...))))

((((And we have much reason to do so. We warn you, do not meddle in the affairs of other races, or you shall swiftly find your allies and friends wilting before your very senses.))))

((((Is that a threat?))))

((((In war, the existence of everything is a threat.))))

((((I despise you, Overmind, you who cannot even comprehend what the Protoss must have been thinking when they first encountered your kind, who does not have it within you to give the Protoss a clean start--))))

((((Do not think that we have not tried, Daniel Travincal. We have tried giving that race a tabula rasa countless times, but the Protoss have long ago taken an extreme dislike toward our kind.))))

((((Enough! I will not tolerate just standing aside and watching as you fight the Protoss into oblivion. I, having personally been rescued by the Protoss in space over Tarsonis, will not take your belligerence lightly.))))

((((Then we believe that we must make war with each other. As a credit to you, and in hopes that you will think over your decisions, we shall not actively pursue your fleet--))))

((((Just get out of my head, now!))))

((((We shall be judging you, Daniel Travincal, and we shall be finding you wanting. Ohh--interesting! --What is this?))))

Suddenly, a very powerful mental force thundered into Daniel's mind, contesting with it for control, access to his memories, trying to uncover into the depths of his mind. Within moments, his mind was numb with the incessant confrontations, and was crying out silently, pleading to be left alone. This was a presence even more formidable than that of Tealdarin's; this was planetary bombardment by comparison.

The Khaydarin Amulet that Daniel still bore around his neck turned a bright blue and glowed: warmly, softly, soothingly. Yet another entity entered his mind, also fighting back the Overmind's venturing threat, fighting alongside Daniel's own battered mind. As the fighting within continued, he flailed his body, his muscles spasming. The amulet's crystal grew hotter and hotter until it seemed to nearly sear the flesh on which it rested. It seemed as if the end were near.

Yet the Overmind, being, as it was, a formidable presence yet a stranger to his mind, could not grasp onto it. Unable to delve any further, and being thwarted by either Daniel or the dying psionic strands of the Khalai who had sacrificed herself at Salutation, the Overmind withdrew.

Immediately, Daniel regained control of himself, and felt his memories for any scarring. He was breathing heavily, knowing that something serious had happened, and was now wide awake. He opened his eyes and only then realized that he had been frowning during the entire engagement.

A figure, the face of a very attractive young lady, was peering down at him. Worry was written across her face; Daniel smiled grimly at the ease with which he could read her thoughts. Then again, Sarlena probably still had no ability to prevent others from looking into her mind.

"Forgive me, I had a bit of a trouble in my mind," Daniel stated wryly. It was more true than he had anticipated when he said it; the burden of responsibility over the past few weeks was wearing down on him.

Sarlena didn't budge.

"What's going on?" asked Sarlena, who was suspicious about what was going on. "You seem like you know something I don't."

"I should like to think that I know a Lot of things that you don't," replied Daniel nonchalantly. He had stared down far more acute threats of death back on Mar Sara, and now that he was fleet admiral, he didn't feel quite as alone or threatened. Besides, he was still in contact with his other self back on Korhal IV. "Such as the fact that the Zerg are going to be attacking only one hemisphere."

Sarlena looked at him suspiciously. "How?"

Just then Christopher came up to him breathlessly. "We're ready, Daniel sir." Sarlena raised her eyebrows.

"Good, let's activate it." Daniel watched through a security camera at the hundred mini-commanders arrayed in the great hall of the Hyperion, restless and fidgeting. Daniel wanted to smile, but found that he couldn't; his heart had become so hardened at all that had transpired lately, and deep inside, he wanted to weep at the effective loss of family, all those who, still being civilian, could no longer latch themselves emotionally to him. It was just him and his other self, as well as the plethora of subordinates he commanded. Saddened, he looked down for a moment.

Out of the corner of her eyes, Sarlena caught sight of the red dots starting to close in on the orb in the center of the hologram. "They don't look like they're going to be partial about what to attack," Sarlena observed correctly.

Daniel then turned to Sarlena. "I know, because we're about to turn on Operation Red Herring about now." He smiled wryly. "May providence be with us."

Two Engagements
"All right everyone, no point having formalities any more. It is very likely that this will be our final conflict, even though the order of battle has yet to be determined," begun Daniel in a loud and clear-cut voice on comlink.

"We are to stay out of the fight for as long as possible or until I give the order. Under no circumstances are you to open fire against the Zerg if we are not being aggressively attacked by them," he continued as he paced up and down the operations center--some thirty feet wide at its longest.

Daniel continued: "Participating in the brute action here will get us nowhere, because we are not even a drop in the bucket for either side. No--we are here to oversee more important roles that can only be performed by us, which the Zerg may not attack immediately. As a note to those who know what I'm talking about, Operation Red Herring is now in effect."

Everyone took a deep breath as Daniel finished his speech; each one of the higher-ranking officials here had spent at least a month with Daniel and was determined to do his or her best in the coming battle. Next to the hologram was the mainframe computer, an immense display upon which showed all one thousand four-hundred forty crafts at the fleet's disposal; each craft had its own cube, and they were arranged in neat formation with a bit of information about them within each cube. All cubes were lit on the display, pointing out the obvious fact that not a craft had been lost as of yet.

Daniel abruptly continued. "You guys--Christopher, Sarlena, Jaxtor--will have to--er, take care of me when the Psi Emitter activates. The effect will be immediate, and I'll be acting weird. Don't let me have my way, though."

Christopher looked at Sarlena and Jaxtor, who were looking at each other. The Psi Emitter... And suddenly, he realized what Daniel's words meant. As a telepath, he would pick up on the psionic signals and be lured there as well--thereby seriously distracting the whole fleet away from its duty beside the Protoss.

He beckoned Sarlena and Jaxtor over. "Remember the Odyssey? The part about the sirens? We'll have to bind him up--and we'll have to act on this the moment it happens to convince the others that it's not a mutiny of sorts." Sarlena and Jaxtor looked at each other, and gulped.

Christopher wondered what the Confederacy would be thinking right now if they knew that this fleet was about to bring battle to such a distant place as this one. Then again, the Confederacy was probably entirely gone by now, replaced by Mengsk's dominion. He scowled at that, but only for an instant, as he sensed Sarlena pass by, also deep in thought.

A great many ellipsoidal vessels hung suspended in crystalline formation in high orbit over Aiur, glistening golden in the brilliant sunlight. Around them waited many more crafts, their light blue engines periodically flaring, and their gravitic drives ready at a moment's notice. They were the only barrier between a pristine, possibly utopian world with its billions of people, and the now neatly ordered formations of flyers and behemoths which were slowly advancing toward the surface, and they were a weak veil of protection.

Christopher felt the blood race through him as he watched the great hologram at the center of the operations center. Not far from him, quite a few other high-ranked officials sat at their consoles, ready to utilize their control panels to coordinate the activities of the Terran forces. Several others, most notably Sarlena and Daniel, paced back and forth. He recalled with great sadness that Michael Still hadn't recovered from the trauma he had incurred so early on. He would hence be useless to this mission...

None of the officials gave a whit for the decorations and stars they bore, but were instead all thinking hard and preparing themselves mentally for what was about to happen.

There was no doubt that almost all Protoss naval forces would be eradicated within the first hours of engagement. They all knew enough about Protoss pride and war-readiness to expect any less than a complete fight to the finish. That also meant that, if the Terran fleet of six battlecruisers and the Hyperion remained alongside the Protoss, they too would be eradicated.

That was evidently the reason why Daniel had ordered the entire fleet to stay out of the way, hoping that the Zerg Swarm would neglect them in the Overmind's eagerness to eradicate its centuries-old enemy. By now most of the officials had learned of the antagonism between those Pure of Form and those Pure of Essence, and almost everyone felt insigificant against the history of the war they were now participating in.

The Travincal Fleet, with its seven ships and small complement of Wraiths, Vikings and Banshees, paled in contrast with either side.

The Swarm was now advancing.

Only now did Christopher pay attention to the fliers that the foe possessed. Besides the behemothian creatures that lumbered through space like very cumbersome and scaly jellyfish, besides the countless dragon-like mutalisks, came a deluge of tiny yet quick bee-like crafts. In the rear were larger, crab-like organic ships and others that looked like gigantic heads--all of them particularly ugly--ugly to the point that no one wanted to talk about them.

The swarm closed in on the planet from every side--much like a culmination point. Wheras at first they seemed quite spread apart, as they continued in their gravitic-drive-powered flight they seemed to all come together, converging at the homeworld that had evaded them for so long.

Suddenly, the signals from the one giant Psi Emitter reached them. He looked with shock at Daniel, who seemed to be suddenly out of his mind and exhorting the crew to go check out the disturbance. Christopher leapt to his feet and with several others, quickly bound their admiral up. It was with such a concerted motion by all the second-tier commanders that everyone else in the room merely looked upon them with meek and stunned silence.

"Let Me Go!" roared Daniel, who was shaking and trying forcefully to break free of his bonds. Goaded to motion, several of the other officers approached--

"No, don't!" Christopher halted them, and proceeded to stuff a gag over the fleet admiral's mouth. Daniel was struggling with all his might but was unable to break free. Oh, how badly he wanted to go to the source of that, to pleasure himself in its alluring vibes! Biting his lip, Christopher made sure for the third time that the bonds were tight before returning to his seat and turning to look at the hologram.

Throughout that entire portion of space, the Zerg Swarm was all headed in one direction--and he surmised that it was the direction of the Psi Emitter. Those Zerg that had at first been facing the wrong way now turned their back on the planet and headed into deep space, whereas those on the other side of the planet struck at the yellow blips which marked out the Protoss fleets. Everywhere else, the Zerg proceeded toward the emanations of the vibes...

"My god," muttered Christopher at awe at how well Operation Red Herring had worked. In mere heartbeats the vast majority of the Swarm had been distracted away from Aiur.

"ETA Five... four... three... two... one..." announced the blonde adjutant quaveringly. "Impact!"

Christopher could not see the attacks that were being waged outside the rather protected core of the Hyperion. Not far away, however, an enraged Zerg fought against stalwart Protoss ships. Several red blips vanished immediately; Christopher assumed that this meant the destruction of quite a few Zerg. Across the entire front which was the boundary between low and high orbit on this hemisphere, the two titanic forces clashed. More blips disappeared. It was the wrong mood for anything but concentrating on winning the war--that was, of course, except for the human fleet, which had the best hope of surviving by staying out of the fight entirely. And yet--

And yet Sarlena managed to find time for something else.

She was dressed in a velvety black blouse and a black short skirt--very stately. However, her mind was nowhere near the battle being waged deep in space some thousands of miles away. The main Zerg contingent had moved past them entirely, and there had not yet been a single incident.

She came up to Christopher rather shyly, and the two clasped hands. "Come with me," she beckoned to him, and together they walked down the corridor outside the operations center, indifferent to whatever was happening. They went merrily, lost in each other's embrace, all the way down to Christopher's quarters--which, considering his rank as a colonel, was well-adorned and spacious. Upon entering, Sarlena closed and locked the door.

Christopher turned on the computer the moment he stepped in, and soon what amounted to a movie was playing--a virtual renditioning of the battle between the Firstborn and Secondborn as the signals were being picked up by on-board ansible.

In the portion of the battlefield that they were watching (sitting side by side on Christopher's bed), the Protoss fleet had already been broken, terribly outnumbered. That particular fleet seemed to have gained tremendously in number since they last saw it; now various miniature starcraft had emerged from within the larger carriers and proceeded to pummel the Zerg at breakneak speed. For their part, the Zerg fliers had entered what seemed to be a very chaotic flight pattern, but to their trained eyes, both could make out the careful formation that the mutalisks were holding. To the side, bird-shaped Protoss vessels which Sarlena recognized as scouts were fighting in a different region against an overwhelming array of capital ships that looked like eldritch gigantic floating skulls. As they watched at the silent battle, a great plume of purple nebulae burst forth from each of the gigantic Zerg heads and bathed the Protoss scouts with what must have been hypercorrosive haze. Simultaneously, multiple bee-like starcraft shot out from the whirling mutalisk cloud to impact into the carriers while still having their gravitic drives active. The resulting "gravitic booms" sent a torrent of shockwaves through both colliding vessels, obliterating them instantly through space-time. A split second later, vast portions of the carriers and the suicide crafts were simply missing--thrust into a past space-time continuum, never to resurface in their universe again.

Sarlena turned off the computer screen, finally halting the incessant strings of eruptions being tracked by the Hyperion's ansible, and turned to Christopher with a seductive smile. "Look at me, Chris," she said to him sweetly while gently brushing her hair aside.

Christopher turned around to look--and was instantly struck (for perhaps the thousandth time) by his fiancee's delightful beauty. "You called, and I answered," he replied with a smile, even as he lost his self and his reserve looking at her. "So what's--?"

Before he could finish, Sarlena had playfully toppled over him, and they collapsed onto his bed, laughing their heart's sorrows and worries away and looking at each other lustfully. "I would Love to have a piece of you," said Sarlena.

"And I would Love to get to Know you," Christopher replied as they snuggled close to one another.

"It's been a long time since we were last so close together..." Sarlena sighed, showing Christopher her curvaceous figure.

"--Too long."

Sarlena placed her hand on Christopher's chest lusciously. "Are you happy?"

"Who, me? Happy as can be--"

"Oh, I don't think so," Sarlena nagged, a mischievous grin spreading on her face.

Christopher looked back at her. "Oh? How so?" Just then, he felt an upwelling of desire for her, one of intense anticipation, yet dampened by the possibility of refusal--

"Hmm, if you're too slow to figure that one out, maybe I fell in love with the wrong person," she teased ambrosially.

Christopher grasped her hand in his, and passed another one caressingly over her soft hair. "I think I may have a chance yet!" he replied, grinning also.

"How come I get the feeling you've been waiting for this for so long?" Sarlena goaded him and shot him a fakely innocent look.

"Well, you were always so lofty and at a level all to yourself," Christopher replied, as his hand passed down her back. "You didn't give me the chance--until now." He seemed to be in his own world--a bit carried away--

Sarlena giggled. "Well then, I suppose you Are smart enough to satisfy me?" she asked softly and lovingly.

"That's up to you, but I think you'd agree before we leave this room," Christopher whispered in her ear, and flipped off the lights. "Won't you?" Silently, they both began to undress.

"How do I feel?" whispered Sarlena as they pressed each other, felt each other's warmth--

"Oh, magnificent," Christopher replied in kind, and groped around in the darkness for--

"What are you waiting for, sweetheart?" Sarlena asked softly as she lay prostrate, enticing him to continue. Soon Christopher had tumbled over her and felt that natural orifice...

"Come into me... aah, that's right... yeah, just like that..." Sarlena whispered into the darkness.

"I'm coming, hold on tight," Christopher said softly. It was a feeling like no other, that touching of such gentle and sensitive skin... For the first time he Knew her, realized what a voluptuous and supple body in Sarlena meant; his breathing became more labored and his skin clammy with sweat as his mind became overcome with sensuous excitement, a captive of the moment, and lost track of time.

The First and Second Born
"Okay, I think it's time to turn off that Psi Emitter before the fliers actually get there and pick it to pieces in their lust," said Jaxtor(Aiur) to Jaxtor(Bounty) through ansible.

"Thinking the same thing, I'm going to give the order to turn it off now," Jaxtor(Bounty) replied through the monitor and spoke to several others in the distance. Jaxtor(Aiur) visibly relaxed at having taken care of this matter; if the Zerg didn't latch on too well to the signal's source, then maybe they would be unable to trace it all the way back to Bounty and destroy it. If they now were to go back to Aiur, it would only be a matter of time before Bounty could turn the Psi Emitter back on again. It would be a sort of monkey-in-the-middle game, only with much vaster stakes and indescribably complex technology at the back of it.

"Admiral Travincal, we are now entering Aiur's shadow projected from Bounty. The signal from Red Herring should not affect us here."

Daniel smiled at Christopher, who caught the point immediately and began communicating with Christopher(Bounty) to reactivate the massive Psi Emitter, this time continuously.

It had been nearly two hours into the battle; luckily, the Zerg obviously didn't pay a whit of attention to the Terran fleet, which merely continued to linger far beyond high orbit, pacifically observing the unfolding battle and driving the several Protosss on board nearly mad by the fact that they were stuck on a benign and alien vessel just when their homeworld needed the most help. Several questions were spinning through his head.

It was still a wonder why the Protoss hadn't lost their temper and attacked, nay, Forced the crew here to take the plunge into low orbit.

And the conspicuous absence of two high-tier officers did not go unnoticed. He wondered where Christopher and Sarlena went in a roundabout way, before concluding the obvious and chuckling in spite of himself and the situation at large.

Soon, Jaxtor(Bounty) came back into the computer's view to say, "done". As if on cue, Daniel finally relented, and several officers got to their feet, warily freeing him from his bondage.

"Ah good, you kept me from insanely wanting to go back to Bounty," he replied smiling at them. "Er--where are--"

Jaxtor gave him a wink, and Daniel knew right away. He wasn't about to disturb them any time soon.

Meanwhile, the battle below wasn't going so well. The friend's gate was Down, but 1) it didn't seem to prevent the overwhelming tides of enemies from coming in and 2) he thought it best when the Enemy's gate was down, not the ally's... The swarm had surged through defenses at both high orbit and low orbit, and were now preparing to breach the atmosphere.

Within minutes the lush and beautiful world that was Aiur, which Christopher sadly remembered he had never set foot on nor experienced, had been tarnished by the invasion. The entire planet over, beautiful gilded structures' shields strained under the pressure of innumerable strikes from the atmosphere, and those regions that had not been covered by Protoss buildings or protections were quickly burned to a crisp.

The officers were still gazing at the hologram (and the mainframe still showed 0 Terran robot casualties) when a seemingly very satisfied Christopher and Sarlena returned hand-in-hand in their uniforms. Everyone turned to look at them, and instantaneously their faces turned beet red, their hands quickly parting.

Trying to remedy the situation, Christopher blurted out bashfully, "did we miss anything?"

Daniel gave them a smile. "Nope, you missed not a thing, though the entire Protoss navy was shot down, and I think we all missed a lot of what happened in your room--"

Christopher and Sarlena stole startled glances at each other, but Daniel smiled. "So... You had your fun, yes? Guess what--so did I. I'm going to have somebody steal me a psi emitter, I'll feed it some positive vibes and then replay it over and over while I trance myself in its bliss," he replied, not a bit embarrassed. "And, I'm sure, everyone else here had plenty of fun taking over for me and tending to me while I was kept hostage." Several other officers blinked, embarrassed as well.

Only Daniel held his stoic gaze. "The monumental battle between the Swarm and the Protoss fleets was merely a prelude--an appetizer. The main meal is about to unfold in the atmosphere."

The psionic signal from Red Herring seemed unable to pass through the planet, even though it passed at speeds faster than light. The entirety of the Zerg Swarm that wasn't occluded by Aiur was now entirely out of the picture, hurtling through hyperspace as they travelled off toward Bounty. The cylinder of Zerg suspended in space on the other side of the planet, however, descended rapidly, having already burned through all Protoss defenders present.

((((What have you done?)))) thought Tealdarin.

((((Project Red Herring,)))) Daniel replied smugly, expecting overwhelming gratitude. ((((We used our knowledge of psionic emanations to lure away the vast majority of our enemies. Thanks certainly necessary.))))

((((Thanks? Why have you denied us the honor that is rightfully ours?))))

((((What? I don't get it--))))

((((This is the fight that Protoss have been looking forward to for half a millennium. You have done a great disservice to us by preventing the fated battle from happening.))))

((((Tealdarin, the Zerg are a force to be reckoned with. You see all the blips on our tactical screens. You can sense what the Protoss all Aiur over can sense. You should at least see that your forces are wholly outnumbered.))))

((((That is where glory comes from! What reason have we to exist, if we cannot fight when our peoples need us to?))))

((((You should be asking what reason have you to exist if you are all dead at the hands of the Zerg--))))

Massive indignance. ((((Do not for a moment doubt the power of the Firstborn! We never cared for superiority of numbers. I would have thought that you at least, as the Whisperer, would have understood this.))))

"Adjutant, show me what's happening on the surface," ordered Daniel grimly.

The image on the screen before him changed; an incredibly detailed visual picture of the surface near the epicenter of the point of impact. The behemoths had already reached the surface and were regurgitating out hordes of alien ground forces; scourge spun in massive circles around ground zero as flyers engaged in a short-lived riposte against fortified ground defenses. The dense, purple atmosphere gradually turned black all the way to the horizons from all the concentrated Swarm minions that were descending. For a few seconds, it seemed as if the Protoss were holding; within view, hundreds if not thousands of lifeless forms fell out of the sky, hit from the blue phase disruptor orbs of the Protoss. Intermingled with these were the burning wrecks of many a Protoss flier. But for the moment, the shields held, shimmering a life-saving blue from the impacts while the rates of fire increased.

But before the landed ground units had been able to attack any of the structures, the shields gave way, faster and faster. The hundreds of thousands of the Swarm now cluttering the firmament continued to unload an endless barrage of destruction, until all that was left on the surface was ashes, twisted gilded Protoss metal, and more ashes.

The Zerg had claimed that portion of the planet. And all across the hemisphere, the Zerg were gaining a foothold.

But on the other hemisphere, the Protoss saw little battle, for any Zerg that wandered there caught wind of the psionic signal and were drawn away from the planet altogether.

((((Tealdarin... Do you see what is happening now? The Protoss in that hemisphere have been entirely destroyed by the Zerg within the space of three minutes. Billions of Protoss and Zerg dead, and the juggernaut is still rolling. If I hadn't lured away all the Zerg, what would Aiur be now but yet another lifeless rock in the infinite void?))))

But all he heard in reply was a sea of echoing psionic death-screams that were radiating out of Tealdarin's mind; a billion Protoss dying simultaneously many miles away, separated from them by the emptiness of space, yet still intensely powerful and aggrieving. His otherworldly friends could barely do anything, so pained were they by the barrage of losses...

"Daniel, should we be like, nuking the Zerg or something?" asked Christopher.

"At this rate even nuking the Zerg where they are most concentrated will do very little. Even if a single nuke can take out a million of them, we only have a hundred on board all our ships. The Zerg concentrated on the Scion province itself number in the billions, and we can't even nuke that one province entirely, much less anything else. We have to conserve our resources, because given how avid the Protoss are about Recalling in their Templar to fight in the battle, how they go for glamorous battle rather than strategy, they won't be so willing to warp in nukes," replied Sarlena even as she read the preliminary battle reports that the on-board detectors and scanners were generating.

"I concur," said Daniel. "We need to find out something, some way to turn the tide of battle in our favor. I don't have many ideas at this point; I didn't think that just these remaining Zerg could easily wipe out all the Protoss. Sarlena, in your teaching of human Economics principles to Tealdarin, did you learn anything from him that could be... useful?"

She was deep in thought, but finally came up with an answer. "The Overmind is leader of the Zerg. If we attack it directly--"

One of the other officers in the operations center turned around and interjected, "then we could end this entire battle in one fell swoop!"

"Shut up, or I'll demote you," said Christopher, his acrid words stinging. "Who do you think the Overmind is, an idiot? If it hasn't been killed for hundreds of years, then it maybe can't be killed."

Daniel recalled something from his latest encounter with the Overmind. ((The Overmind is eternal; so it was made by our creators.)) "We can't kill it; it's eternal."

"What? There's no such thing as immortal," argued Jaxtor. "It's got to be kill-able."

"I'd like to see you try, Jaxtor," Daniel smiled at him wanly.

"Would you let me finish?" All attention turned to Sarlena.

"Go on," goaded Daniel, eager for an idea, for he knew that in half an Aiurian day the Protoss on the surface would be doomed, just from planetary rotation. And he couldn't allow that to happen.

"The Overmind doesn't control all of its minions directly; indeed I doubt it controls them at all. Instead, it acts as leader... Let me see, Tealdarin wrote to me that their race's last Executor,"

"Kills people?" interrupted Christopher in surprise.

"Gets things done, more like; anyway, it's the highest military position the Protoss have," responded Sarlena. "Their previous Executor was a nine-hundred-human-year-old Templar known as Tassadar. He went rogue towards the end, especially in dealings with humans, because he did his best to spare the humans on Mar Sara and then on Antiga Prime, giving them time to evacuate before coming in to annihilate the Zerg infestation. This went against Conclave policy, and--"

"Enclave? Whoever names a government after an--" began another officer.

"Shut it," said an exasperated Jaxtor.

Sarlena continued. "So the Conclave is the main ruling body of the Protoss, with immediate, psionic input from the rest of the populace. Problem for Tassadar was, no one trusted what he was up do. And then he has disappeared. But from what I can make of Tealdarin's recent-history lessons, Tassadar is still alive and well, and after he was stripped of his title and honors by the Conclave, had taken upon himself the heavy burden of finding an ultimate solution to the Swarm. Something involving killing Cerebrates--"

Just as another officer opened his mouth to speak, Christopher saw him and covered his mouth, and brief, silent struggle ensued as Sarlena continued unhindered.

"Cerebrates are monstrosities that directly control whole hordes of the alien minions. It turns out they use the same telepathic signals that ghosts like Kerrigan and Daniel use, which therefore has to be the same signals that psi emitters, the Overmind, and the Protoss use. Too strange to be mere coincidence, I'd say, but there you are. At any rate, these cerebrates each control what is known as a brood of Zerg, which leads to the conclusion that killing a cerebrate would be akin to disabling a limb of their war apparatus. If we take out enough of the broods that way, making them oh-so-mindless, the Protoss should be able to secure victory."

Everybody was holding their breaths, and now didn't know if they should release it. As sighs finally came out, Jaxtor asked, "well, how are we going to take out those Cerebrates? I mean, they may not be invulnerable like the vaunted Overmind is, but heck, we don't even know where they are!"

Their discussion was suddenly cut short when a powerful blast of psionic power traversed the cosmic tapestry, throwing Daniel into unconsciousness even while he was standing and talking. A shocked Sarlena rushed just in time to save him from cracking open his skull on a computer monitor. "Oh my goodness, oh-- what could have caused this? Stroke, heart attack-- quick, get the doctors!"

People scrambled around, and Christopher exited the operations center, just to find several worried onlookers hold the limp body of Tealdarin. "Someone tell me what's going on!" Just then, it hit him. "Wait a minute, this is too coincidental. I doubt--"

"Adjutant online. Sensors have reported an incredibly powerful psionic burst fully five magnitudes stronger than anything ever recorded in either our or Confederate files. Currently homing in on the source of this disturbance..."

"Seems like we found out the culprit already," Christopher remarked to himself, as a team of medics in their traditional white robes rushed through, pulling a cart holding a variety of high-tech devices.

"What was that all about?" asked Sarlena.

The adjutant responded by bringing up a video recording on the mainframe. "This clip was captured by a Protoss observer near the site of impact." It showed the surface of Aiur from the depths of space, from a viewpoint hundreds of miles away. That part corresponded to the heart of the Zerg presence on the planet. Suddenly, there was a burst of light at a spot on the surface, and a beam struck out from it into the void; even from so far away, the line of the beam was clearly visible. It was like a white, static, laser, except so powerful its path was visible, and so large it dwarfed a city.

From the space side of that beam of light warped in a massive meteorite that quickly sunk toward the planet, along the path of the beam of light.

"Tractor beam? That's--"

The meteorite struck the planet surface, surrounded by a near opaque nebula of Zerg fliers. It hit with the power of a thousand nuclear detonations.

The psionic emanations suddenly spiked, the light vanished, and a massive crater and debris cloud appeared. Through the piercing lens of the observer, the onlookers watched as the meteorite seemingly unfolded into a red-black, massive structure the size of a city.

Unharmed, it floated above a sea of roiling magma-turned-lava, as a mile-high wave of fire spread out in a ring from ground zero outward.

"The day of judjment hath come," someone quoted with eyes wide open, as everyone else hung their jaws in silent bedazzlement.

Into the Flames
"Is he going to be okay?"

"Psionic shocks aren't any established specialty. That said, Admiral Travincal should be in good shape, but his mind was clearly overloaded. There's no telling if he might awake with considerable retrograde and/or anterograde amnesia--"

"Just get to the point, will you, medic?" interrupted Christopher.

A pause, before responding, "He might come out a changed man."

Silence filled the room for a long time. He and Sarlena both pondered the meanings of those words, recalling their shared experiences so long ago. Daniel had been a pleasant man, authoritative when necessary, highly intelligent and flexible; the list went on and on. This conclusion from a medic seemed nigh close to a death sentence for the soul that was within the unconscious figure, the clear leader of this fleet. Without him, everything could soon fall apart, especially relations with the Protoss.

Christopher was pumped full of anger. "It's all the doings of the Overmind," he burst out suddenly, allowing his mind to succumb to the raw energy that swelled within him. "It's time we started doing something about all this. The deaths on Tarsonis, the planet-cracking of Antiga Prime, the invasion of Aiur, and now this - it's all the Overmind's fault! I'm going out there to the thing that just landed on the surface - I bet that's the one - and--"

"And what, Chris!" challenged Sarlena, nearly shouting out of despair. "What are you going to be able to do about it?"

"I'm going to KILL IT!" Christopher emphasized with an upraised fist.

"Chris, think about this rationally. If that thing really is the Overmind, well, you saw it bob up and down pacifically in a lake of fire and brimstone. What are you going to do, shoot at it?"

"Drop a nuke--"

"That thing WAS a nuke just moments ago! And a very big one! And I don't see it destroying itself with the landing!"

Christopher was hyperventilating. "Well, I'm going to kill it, I swear, and it may not be now, but someday - it'll happen. I'll see to it that it goes down. Meanwhile--"

"Now what?" asked an irritated Jaxtor.

"Right now I'm going to go shoot up some aliens!"

"NO" shouted several voices alongside that of Sarlena and Jaxtor. "You don't know what you're getting into!"

"Oh, I don't, do I?" Christopher challenged. "Are you just going to sit on your hands and let the Overmind get away with knocking Daniel into a coma? Is that what this race has become, cowards? I've made my mind; it's set. No one can change it; anyone who gets in my way will fall. Jaxtor, as your superior I order you to shut up. And Sarlena, with Daniel in his current state, we are both equals and leaders of the fleet. You've no right to get in my way."

"But Chris!" Sarlena protested. She would not allow him, her lover, to go into that endless battle and get himself killed. She just couldn't, and instantly she shut that scary thought out of her mind. "Listen to me!" She tugged and pulled on his arm, but the man continued resolutely to the docking bay of the battlecruiser. "You've never taken aerial combat training lessons with Viking fighters before, you'll get killed!"

"Not now, Sarlena," Chris replied steely, doing his best to ignore her.

"You can't go out there - you musn't!" she pleaded with him, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears. "I... I don't want to lose you!"

Christopher turned to Sarlena with a steel expression on his face. "I'm a man, Sarlena. I have to do this."

"But why!?"

"Otherwise, I'll feel like I'm only a shell, a shadow of my former self. I can't stand to allow this injustice continue. You, of all people, should know that! I have to do this."

"No, please! Won't you stay behind, just for me?" Sarlena supplicated, trying futilely to drag him away, while the crew on board watched in surprise. "Not even for me?? ... Comrades, stop him!" she ordered the onlookers, but they made no move to stop them at all, complacent with gaping at the two in continued surprise.

"No, Sarlena, I won't allow my love to get in the way of my duty," Christopher responded adamantly, before resolutely shoving her to the ground and stalking off, leaving Sarlena in her lovely, useless dress prone on the catawalk, wailing her heart out in her despair and longing, as he walked over to a Viking flier craft.

"Sarlena, if ever you think that I am dead, remember that your eyes can deceive you, and do not give up hope. I've come this far already; this heart is much more resilient than you may think."

That was the only thing preventing her from committing suicide.

She didn't know at the moment how prophetic those words were.

The crew members clustered around her. "Are you... okay?"

Sarlena's exhausted tears rolled down easily; she didn't even bother to get back off the ground. The stress in her was very evident. "He... he left me... he left me to fight in a war... Why couldn't he fight the war from here!?!" she shouted, not expecting an answer.

The crew tried to assuage her suffering. "He's going off to do something noble, Rear Admiral. You're intelligent enough to recognize that."

"No, no," muttered Sarlena between sobs. "There is a saying, 'Hold troops for one lifetime, use troops for one time.' No, I'm sober enough to see what that means. No, he's not going off to do something noble..." She broke down completely, slamming a fist onto the floor tiles. "He's going off to die."

Back in the operations center of the Hyperion, a now recovered and conscious Tealdarin entered the room, turned to the horrified officers stationed there and transmitted his thoughts to electronic words on the mainframe, stating "With the state of mind that he's in right now, he's going to be of no use to us." The others nodded solemnly; they were wondering the same thing about Daniel and Christopher... and Michael, and maybe Sarlena as well.

Great. Just when the leadership was needed the most, it was entirely gone. And none of them knew about their doubles back on Bounty...

Sarlena finally recovered from her outpouring of woes and started walking back to the operations center, long after the watching crew members had gone off to their posts. It was just fine; after all, she needed some solitude to reflect on the state of things, both external and internal. As she swooped down to take a sip from a drinking fountain, she thought she heard stealthy footsteps behind her.

Military instincts taking over and doing their best to push away the emotional residues of Christopher's departure, Sarlena whirled around, right hand on the gun in her holster - and found herself staring into a nearly expressionless Michael, who seemed to have just walked out of the psychiatric wards, and who had a hand outstretched toward her. Outstretched, as in holding a murderous blade to her neck and pinning her to the wall.

"Mike - What is this, what are you doing?" Sarlena's terrified voice came out trembling.

"Sarlena, these past few weeks have been just unspeakably horrible for me. All the suffering, all the guilt. And no one ever feels compassion for me, No One, do you hear? Everyone else just goes about life as if it were absolutely normal. Do I even matter to any of you? What am I but a vegetable laying in the clinic, untreatable? Is that the life I want to live? NO!"

"Mike, are you still thinking about the death of that girl back on Mar Sara?" That one girl - Michael was now hopelessly outdated. Things had moved so swiftly since then. But for one person at least, that famous paradox still held: innumerable deaths may be only a statistic, but a single one was far, far worse. Yet, to think that he Still hadn't gotten past it - this post-traumatic stress disorder was eating out his soul.

And worse, there seemed to be no remedy for it. Sarlena could only wish that his suffering could end soon, to allow him to live a blessed life... but it was so far away.

Michael was angry, his eyes' stares threatening beyond comprehension; maniacal. Totally wasted away and twisted by the months of tormenting solitude. "That wasn't just a girl, Sarlena! She had a life of her own, a soul - and all that was taken away from her! And you, you stood right next to me back then, and what did you do? Nothing!"

"What now, are you blaming ME for her death? You know that I had no part in it!" By now Sarlena had understood why Michael was behaving this way: the torment of holding full responsibility for having accidentally killed someone was just too much for him to bear. He could only hope to keep his sanity by throwing the greater part of his guilt on someone else, someone who could at least plausibly be held accountable. And in the process, he had unfortunately become the maddened, insane zombie he had tried to resist becoming.

"Yes you did! By your very act of doing nothing, you are guilty. You should have stopped me from doing what I did!"

"But it looked like you were about to hit the lisk, how was I supposed to know that you would have miss--" The cold of the blade pressing into her soft skin caused her to stop speaking, now absolutely terrified.

"You refuse to acknowledge your guilt? You refuse to?! How dare you! You are even more responsible than I am for that debacle!" Sarlena did not protest as he continued. "And now, so that I can say to the girl's soul in heaven, that I exacted vengeance, I'm going to-- Ah--" The flow of blood-curdling words abruptly stopped, time seemed to stop, as Michael seemed to all stiffen up and fall backward onto the ground, revealing Jaxtor and Tealdarin standing at the bend in the hallway, their expressions of utter horror and dismay, as a shocked Jaxtor then slowly dropped the tranquilizer gun he was holding.

Sarlena's relief at being saved from an untimely death brought far greater euphoria than everything - and that was everything - else that she had experienced in her life. It was so much for her that she blacked out.

As for Christopher, the entire struggle only added to his conviction, which was now total. Yes, he Would rid the universe of the Overmind - that abomination - and the first step to doing that was to rendezvous with a nearby Protoss fleet. They should at least recognize him for who he was, since he was so close to Daniel all the time. With every step he took, the memory of Michael's wailing cries of terror and torment replayed itself in his mind.

Soon he had docked with one of the smaller Protoss vessels, alike in its curvy, gilded frame. As the iris-shaped door opened, he stared at a motley assembly of what he could only guess to be Protoss warriors, all gazing at him intently with their colored, otherworldly eyes.

He picked up a tablet with English written on it; he guessed that whatever Sarlena had taught Tealdarin, the Protoss would have learned. It said, "I'm here to help you fight against the Zerg."

The Protoss merely stared at him. Unbeknownst to him, they were all entering his mind and finding him to be incredibly charged up with conviction, yet at the same time mistrustful, as they were of all alien species after they realized that the Zerg assimilated sentient races - and That had been proven over and over for centuries. The xenophobia was so great that the telepathic debate suddenly blossomed throughout the Protoss on all the worlds, even reaching the ears of the Conclave.

And as per the Conclave's decision, any threat that Christopher could present was to be neutralized, to be dealt with later, after the battle was over. Christopher was thunder-struck when he found himself being pushed into a glassy cylindrical cell. However, at the last moment the rebuttal flared up again, and he was saved the ignominy of being placed into Stasis - something now all too familiar to Christopher after what Sarlena had told him. Yet he was still trapped in a prison, one which belonged to the very race that he had wanted to help.

What a fool he had been! What a fool.

As Christopher watched, the shuttle coursed through the heavy, violet atmosphere, cruising near the surface toward a concentration of Zerg off in the distance. Suddenly, two of the large robotic contraptions that were before him - he hadn't noticed them much earlier - disappeared, landing on the surface and firing drones of highly concentrated destructive firepower, stronger even than a bunker buster. They hovered through the air, streaking toward the concentration of Hydralisks and Zerglings, and by the time the smoke had cleared there was a massive pool of burned-black blood and once-living debris.

The Reavers suddenly reappeared back on board, and the shuttle initiated its gravitic drives, speeding over the surface. Christopher watched from his place of captivity as the scene passed by him: much of the terrain had been an endless forest with scattered Protoss encampments, but they were now almost entirely eradicated. There was very, very little left standing, though the trees remained, some toppled and uprooted but most still well alive. Off in the distance, the lush green of the forest darkened to the purple-black of the creep. A creep that probably covered exactly half the planet.

At this point, he wondered why the Protoss had not been lured off by the call of the giant Psi Emitter on Bounty, and concluded that it was because the Protoss merely had more dedication than the Zerg, who were after all controlled by a single entity who, even if it Was the size of a city, couldn't Really control trillions of minions simultaneously.

The Reavers disappeared yet again. And even though he couldn't see or hear it happening, he knew that another cluster of Zerg were about to die... had died. And then the contraptions suddenly appeared back. Protoss technology was a marvel, it clearly was. The shuttle picked up speed once again, the forest below them receding with a blur as the lands below were now entirely purple. The forest here was sparse; much of it seemed to have been recently burned away by a titanic firestorm. There ware various bulging spots on the surface, reminding him of the Zerg growths and infestations on former worlds.

That nightmare was happening all over again.

The shuttle soon came across a much more massive, very defined and aged-looking structure. It was immense - the size of Daniel's entire base on Bounty. In fact, it had so much in common with the Overmind that it thought it was a second one. Then Sarlena's words came back. "Cerebrates are monstrosities that directly control whole hordes of the alien minions..."

No, this was not a second Overmind. It was a Cerebrate, a lieutenant of the Swarm. And it didn't seem slightly capable of fighting.

And the only reason the Protoss would be here, and now deploying its Reavers right next to it, was because the Protoss finally had a change of mind about how to fight. Christopher suddenly felt elated; as wrong as they were about imprisoning him, they now at least seemed to have the sense of taking out the leaders. Maybe there was hope for the so-called Firstborn after all...

But it was not to be. The Cerebrate which stretched on right beside them seemed to be still alive and well when the twin Reavers were brought back, both very beaten-looking, and one with bluish fires emanating. They appeared to both be half-commissionable wrecks.

Then, doubt crept up on his mind. What if the Zerg's leadership truly was invulnerable? What if he couldn't complete what he swore to do, to kill the Overmind somehow? And then he fell into a spiral of despair.

The Hunt for Tassadar
When Sarlena awoke, she found herself laying on a bed with all her clothes on and attended to by several members of the crew. "She's awake."

"Well then what are we waiting for! Let's get her to the trial!"

Sarlena's mind was still on slow as she murmured with a yawn, "what trial?"

The crew member looked at her incredulously. "You're kidding me, right? About Michael's attempted murder against you? Or have you forgot it already?"

Sarlena bolted upright and snarled at them. She did Not want to be reminded of that heart-stopping experience. "Fine then, lead the way," she said, getting out of bed to follow them.

The trial room was already filled with several people, all dour-looking and very serious about the unfolding case. Michael was bound in one corner of the room, still wailing endlessly about how he had failed to exact the dead girl's vengeance by not having killed Sarlena earlier. There was no doubt about the guilt here.

But there was no doubt about the man's insanity either.

"Order in the court! Order in the court!" pronounced Jaxtor. "All right, I don't have a JD, and we're in the midst of a war, so let's get this over with as quickly as possible. Michael obviously can't plead either way. So it stands, for you, Sarlena, to decide whether he did what he did intentionally or otherwise. I have already prepared two cards holding what the rest of us have voted on will be the sentence, whichever way you choose. Please choose quickly." He held up two miniature envelopes, one with the words "intentional" and one with the words "insanity".

It was not a hard choice for Sarlena to make, for it was the truth, after all. And besides, it was not up to her to determine the verdict; whatever was in the envelopes would determine the outcome. So she quickly replied, "insanity."

"All right then, the vote for both of them is either death or life imprisonment," said Jaxtor, taking the latter envelope and opening it. As everyone peered over to watch, he extracted a pile of folded pieces of paper, and unfolded them one by one. "Death." Next: "Death." "Death. Death. Death....."

Everyone in the room looked at everyone else in silent understanding as the votes continued to be read out loud. There was not a single dissenting vote. And that was for the lesser punishment...

"But... why?" asked Sarlena, stricken by being held responsible for the death of a one-time friend, yet knowing that both choices would have resulted in the same result.

Jaxtor answered for the others with his intuition, "This latest event has finally shown us how much suffering Michael has undergone in the past several months. There has been not the slightest sign of recovery, and there is no light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Therefore, in order to spare him of his misery, we have decided that a quick and painless execution is most fitting. Am I right?"

Grim, deathly nods from the officials arrayed around them.

"Sarlena, get yourself to sleep. You have been through too much already today, and I would hate to see the fate that befell Michael also consume you." He stood up at last, tapping his gavel one last time. "Case closed." Sarlena closed her eyes, remembering with sorrow and grief that the Michael before her was not, had not been, the friendly Michael she had known so long ago. It seemed entirely so surreal, that she didn't know what she should be thinking about it all. And yet... was she so heartless?

A few minutes later, when Michael had been put soundly to sleep, euthanasia was administered.

A few hours after that, Daniel finally awoke, to the great excitement of any who heard the news. Their great leader was back! And for others, it was 'the Whisperer was back!'.

"Are you all right?" a worried Sarlena asked.

Daniel quickly dispelled any beliefs that he might have been turned into a retard by the experience by rapidly recounting all that had happened since he had first encountered the Zerg back on Mar Sara, all the way up to, but not including, the massive psionic shockwave.

"Oh, thank goodness you're all right!" Jaxtor exclaimed. "We were all so worried about you, what with the guidance you give us all--"

Daniel brushed that away as if it were nothing, then asked humorously, "did I miss anything?"

The joviality vanished within the second as everyone turned to look silently and meaningfully at everyone else, leading Daniel to squint his eyes in distaste.

"Not much, just that half the planet got blown away by a city-sized monster crashing into it," Sarlena said, doing her best to simplify things.

"Hmm really, is that all? Come now, out with it!" The officers should have known that nothing could have slipped past their admiral. "Where's Christopher?" Sensing the uneasiness in that question, Daniel then invaded Sarlena's mind without her knowing. ((((What the... oh.. my... goodness... ))))

"I away for a little while and everything just collapses around me like rice paper," Daniel remarked angrily, after having skimmed through Sarlena's mind and learned about Christopher leaving, Michael's attempted murder, and the latter's execution in the course of two seconds. "Never mind - don't tell me, I don't think I really wanted to know."

Relief from everyone else, none of them having noticed him use telepathy on anyone. With that, he turned to the Protoss representative that was waiting in the room. ((((What happened?))))

((((A very long story. It seems that a few seeds of Khaydarin crystal has been stolen from one of the sacred formations left ages ago by the Xel'Naga as a parting gift, and distributed among the Overmind and several of its cerebrates. It turns out that we have never uncovered the full power of the Khaydarin, while the Zerg somehow did know. For the crystal holds power beyond our wildest dreams, powers we cannot even begin to fathom. They have somehow allowed the Overmind to implant itself on our planet, which had been made consecrated by our creators. The Zerg have done the travesty of breaking down one of the Xel'Naga's Barriers. That psionic shockwave that knocked unconscious you as well as all the Protoss was the result of the Overmind and some of its Cerebrates using the power of the Khaydarin crystal to land on Aiur much the way a meteorite would crash into a planet. The Overmind has proven its invulnerability to physical destruction, and continues to do so. Even worse, the cerebrates have demonstrated that same resilience, for one of our attempts to destroy it have failed.))))

((((You, the Firstborn, had decided to attack a helpless Cerebrate? What happened to your battle pride?))))

((((It was all at the blasphemous advice of that traitor, ex-Executor Tassadar. We will never listen to his communications again.))))

((((To the contrary, Tealdarin, if you know where he is located, I should like to meet with him personally.))))

((((What has gotten into you?))))

((((You know very well that humans uphold a different standard. We cannot rely on brute power the way your race can, for we do not have this Purity of Form. What we do have is a Purity of Mind, and I plan to use it to devastating effect. Simply fighting against a juggernaut is not what I have in mind.))))

((((Tassadar has offered naught but poor advice! It has come to no avail in our war whatsoever!))))

A different Protoss voice resounded in Daniel's head. ((((Fools. The Overmind and its lieutenants cannot be directly assaulted by our puny weapons--))))

((((You defile the Khala, Tassadar! Away with you!))))

((((You wish to seek me, O Whisperer? Then heed the call within your heart and come to Char, for it is there that you will find me.))))

((((I wouldn't go there if I were you, Daniel...))))

((((Enough! I have made up my mind. Let us make haste and get there quickly!))))

((((And how do you plan to do that?))))

((((Are you not going to offer us the services of your Phasing or Recalling technologies?))))

((((We vowed never to have anything more to do with the rogue and his dealings with the Fallen Ones.))))

((((Well then, we shall just have to make ado with the three Recall generators that we have managed to assemble so far.))))

((((Your actions strain our diplomacy, Daniel.))))

((((Then keep your eyes shut, will you?))))

((((Interesting response, Daniel. Since you are so dedicated, we will just have to offer to Recall your forces to one of the Arbiters posted in high orbit over Char. Because the main pylon matrix is busy with maintaining the battle, there will be no Phasing. The Arbiter's Recall generator is only capable of transporting so much mass. It would not do to strain it.))))

((((I knew you wouldn't disappoint me! I shan't disappoint you either, Tealdarin!)))) Daniel responded in excitement.

((((We shall see. We shall see....))))

"Jaxtor, Sarlena. Arrange for two Recall generators, four Vikings, a Televista satellite, a dropship with two Siege Tanks, and another dropship with Vulture speed-bikes and marines. We're going to make this a strike force to Char. I shall be personally leading the expedition."

"Daniel..." warned Jaxtor.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to enter the fray too closely, and besides, we shall be keeping a Recall generator here so that I can return if things look grim. I won't be the next Christopher."

At this, all the officers' eyes seemed to nearly pop open in shock.

"Let's get going!" And sure enough, thirty minutes later Daniel found himself in high orbit over Char: four fliers, a telsat, and two dropships appeared under the wings of the Protoss Arbiter, and rapidly began to home in on Tassadar's signal beacon on the surface.

"...And, touchdown!" said one of the marines as the dropships landed and opened their hatches. Not far away, a majestic volcano billowed plumes of yellowish lava mere seconds after it had stopped. "Gosh, this place is incredibly geologically active," the same remarked.

"Okay, signals indicate that the supposedly traitorous Protoss have to be around here somewhere," said Daniel while the others listened in awe, never having expected to be serving so closely with an admiral.

"We going to kill them on sight?" asked the marine.

"No, we're here to rendezvous with them. They're not supposed to be bad, so don't attack them unless I give the command."

"Yes sir!" And with that, the team began to move out, with the Vikings scouting ahead and the Telsat beaming down recon of the path they would be taking. "Admiral sir, Zerg ground forces have been spotted up ahead, a lot of them!"

The next moment a wave of Zerglings and Hydralisks burst out of the ground, while the Siege Tank commanders hurriedly shifted to siege mode, preparing their mininukes. The transition process took all of two minutes, finishing just as the Zerg regiment entered maximal firing range. "Fire at will" was not even necessary.

The ground forces took a pounding, and were all dead before having reached either of the two 'sieged' tanks.

"Don't unsiege," shouted Daniel abruptly. "We're going to play this the correct way. Tank one, unsiege!" he spoke into the intercom, and the tank driver complied, before proceeding to move head by half a mile. Just then the Zerg forces there attacked, and would have overwhelmed the tank, if it were not for the fact that tank two's mininukes took them out with ease.

"Wow, admiral, that's an incredibly well executed maneuver," fawned one of the marines as the Zerg attackers were wiped out and tank two moved ahead of tank one, eliciting a new wave of Zerg which were likewise pounded into oblivion, this time by tank one. "Hopscotching! You would have thought our other commanders would have done something like this, but no!" Daniel smiled; he liked being flattered after all. Who wouldn't, especially when given sincerely?

The Swarm had warmed to the battle, Daniel realized as a wing of Scourge appeared in the skies beyond. "Darn it, where are the Vikings? Oh, never mind!"

"Sir, they're out scouting!" came a late reply.

The Zerglings and Hydralisks along the path to Tassadar's position were now reduced to smoking rubble as the tank went ahead - but just then, a wave of spikes shot out from the ground, forcing the driver to hastily retreat the half-burning tank out of its range; another shot would have destroyed it completely. "Lurkers!" he explained to an upset Daniel. "They burrow and then once underground shoot out these horribly deadly spikes!"

"Now I wish the Vikings were here," remarked Daniel dryly, his mind racing to come up with a counter. "Okay, Marines one, two, and three, you are going to take out that lurker with the Televista satellite providing detection."

The marines were flabbergasted. "What? There's no way the two of us are going to take out a lurker! Those things, being underground and covered with carapace, will soak up a lot of fire--"

"An order is an order, and this one is coming from six or seven ranks up, so I don't think I'd be wrong," Daniel reminded them. "And take these stim packs with you; you'll need it."

"What, drugs? How could you want us to take those things?"

"I've seen a lot more than you have; trust me."

Daniel had the three walk up north toward the lurker, keeping their distance from each other. Just as the trio entered range, merely a forty yards from it, he commanded, "Quick! Stim up and run out of the way!" They did so, and the subterranean spikes hit no one. Daniel's orders were thrown out in a hurry. "Marine one, move to due west of that critter, Marine two, stay south, Marine three, move to its due east!" Now the marines were in three directions of the lurker.

It chose a single target, and a row of spikes rose out of the ground, but didn't hit the marine, who was moving.

"Stop and fire!" A rain of bullets struck into the soft earth, mostly bouncing off the thick carapace, but a few entering. Yet the lurker was not defeated.

Daniel looked at his stopwatch, and seconds before the lurker could strike again, he said, "one, go to the critter's north! Two, go to where one was! Three, go to where two was!" Suddenly the marines began moving in a cyclical fashion clockwise around the now disconcerted lurker just as it sent out a chain of spikes to where a marine had been standing.

Once again, it hit nothing.

The marines were now in their new positions, and opened up fire on the lurker once again. As the stopwatch neared the time, Daniel ordered, "All right, all of you go to where you were before!" The marines then moved counterclockwise, two strands of spikes both missing. ((Wait... two?)) The marines opened fire on the battered lurker once again, this time killing it as its blood soaked into the ground.

"You got the drill yet?"

"I think so," said a marine, amazed by what he had just been able to do. They approached the second lurker in much the same way, all of them moving around the lurker in a circle whenever it was about to attack, with the result that the second lurker died as well. And none of the three marines had so much as a scratch.

"Wow, you really are the best, admiral!" concluded the three marines in unison, still giddy with their inspiring victory.

It was with eager, joyful expressions that the team arrived in Tassadar's camp, where he was already waiting for them.

Dichotomies
((((I guessed that you would have come for me,)))) greeted Tassadar. ((((Few would venture so far with so little. I should like to know the story of how you managed to get here safe and sound, considering you didn't simply land.)))) Daniel looked up and saw countless Scourge milling about.

((((But ah, I am forgetting human manners. I am Tassadar, ex- and I should like to believe still-the Executor of the Protoss Expeditionary Fleet, in charge of finding a final solution to the Zerg problem. I have seen firsthand humanity's resourcefulness in its fight against the Zerg across many worlds, and thus you will find that we are more tolerant of your species than the average Protoss. As you should know by now, the Overmind has transported itself and the extended Swarm to Aiur, leaving only a pittance to guard its many worlds. Over the past few Aiurian months I have discovered much of what there is to know about how to break through the invincibility of the Overmind and its lieutenants the Cerebrates. Unfortunately, the main Protoss contingent now view me as an outcast as a result of my dealings with the Dark Templar, to which I owe much of my knowledge. I hope that you, who have demonstrated time and again to have an open mind, will see the universe from my perspective.))))

((((Well then, where are the Dark Templar?))))

((((Much as the location of Aiur is kept secret, the homeworld of the Dark Templar is not known to us. If Tealdarin has taught you much history, you may know that the Dark Templar don't communicate through the Khala, and so we must get to know each of them personally. As for those who I know, Zeratul and his followers have been intercepted by a Terran - err excuse me, a human - contingent with a much greater force than what I have with me, and have captured them. We believe that he is currently being held in an underground prison somewhere on the other side of this planet. Truth be told, you were one of the only hopes we had left for getting everything on schedule again.))))

((((I assume you want us to spirit them out from under the Dominion?))))

((((Indeed. For that goal, you shall have our forces at your disposal. Come with us, while we introduce the Protoss war machine to you.)))) Daniel followed, overtaken as he was by his curiosity.

Contrary to what Daniel had hoped, this introduction proved remarkably abridged. They came upon a Protoss that Daniel recognized immediately as a Templar (warrior). ((((This is a Zealot. They are masters of melee combat, and have a powerful shield that only activates against the strongest of blasts.)))) And then they were off to a gilded contraption that walked on four spindly legs, much like a spider. ((((This is a Dragoon, the standard ranged ground unit.)))) Another contraption that seemed like a very, very overblown pill bug the size of a room. ((((Reavers construct and direct drones that discharge massive amounts of damage against ground enemies in crowds.)))) They continued to a parked Protoss flier, looking much more like a Wraith fighter than anything else. ((((Scouts are standard airborne units. I am a High Templar, trained in manipulation of psionic energies. We can unleash a powerful, deadly electromagnetic storm in a limited space, or create highly realistic but immaterial hallucinations of any units for limited period of time. Arbiters like the one that brought you here can trap a region in its own time continuum, essentially freezing everything within in place. They also hold Recall generators. Carriers build, hold, and direct interceptors that aid Scouts in fighting the enemy. Observers are permanently cloaked fliers that provide constant detection wherever they are.))))

((((Quite a mouthful right there, for one without a mouth,)))) Daniel joked.

((((Unfortunately for us, within half a day Aiur's remaining Protoss settlements will have entirely fallen into the planet's psionic umbra, allowing the Zerg to overrun our defenses. Time is now of the essence. Only someone highly adaptable such as you stand any chance of using our military to significant effect. If you cannot we fail here.))))

((If you cannot, we fail here,)) the thought echoed in Daniel's head. ((((Well of course I'm not going to fail! --))))

((((Bold words from a man who has done bold things. I wish you well.))))

Back on Aiur, Sarlena worriedly asked Jaxtor, "do you think we're going to lose Daniel?"

"Hush, we won't lose either," he promised, not wanting to break her heart about Christopher's future. "Though if you want to, there is a way to increase the chances that he'll make it out alive."

"Oh, please tell!"

"Daniel told us earlier that Tealdarin, and most of the Protoss around here, are against the idea of teaming up with Tassadar, for he has the taint of the Dark Templar. If we could come up with a way to get them to trust the Dark Templar, who Daniel seems to trust, then that would better the odds of all of us making it out alive."

"How are we going to go about doing all this?"

"Your major is in semantics, correct?" asked Jaxtor.

"Yes?" replied Sarlena.

"Well, my major is in psychology. Let me see if I can pull off this stunt on Tealdarin."

"Uh, I don't think this is going to work, the Protoss can mind read, after all."

"Yeah, well what I'm about to tell him isn't lying, so I have little to fear."

"Don't you think whatever you can say, the collective voices of the Protoss Khala will have already covered?"

"I doubt that they have used psychology much, considering how they communicate their deepest throughts through telepathy. Ever heard of cognitive dissonance theory?"

"Cognitive difference? What's that?"

To which, Jaxtor merely smiled, before he exited the operations center and found the room where Tealdarin frequented.

The Templar looked up and entered Jaxtor's mind, quickly finding out the reason for his visit, and proving to Jaxtor that the Protoss were vulnerable to this kind of manipulation when he typed out the words "We don't want to hear things that would go against our philosophy."

Jaxtor sat down and typed so that the words came up on the screen in front of Tealdarin. "Do you know what an ostrich is?"

"A very large bird."

"Correct. It is so large it can't hide from predators. Instead, it sticks its head in the sands. What do you think of that?"

"It is stupid. The correct thing to do would be to face the facts directly and take protective action."

"Exactly. Would you then agree that just ignoring problems will not solve them?"

"We agree."

"Would you then agree that when one suspects a problem, one should take actions to resolve it?"

"We agree."

Jaxtor smiled; his line of reasoning was going to drive the Protoss into a corner and then into the wall very soon. "Would you then agree that the difference in viewpoints between human and Protoss is a problem that needs resolving through communication?"

"We agree."

"So then let's talk about those ideas that generally go against Protoss philosophy."

If Jaxtor were telepathic, he would have been able to sense the unease that Tealdarin was emitting, but of course he could not. The representative gave in, for as an intelligent, sentient individual, it would be nigh impossible for him to contradict what followed from his own arguments. In other words, it would have felt Awful not to agree to that last prompt after what Tealdarin had just said about having to face problems head on. "Continue."

"Do you believe that the issue regarding lack of acceptance of Tassadar and the Dark Templar to also be a problem that needs resolving?"

"We agree."

"Do you trust Daniel?" Key question.

No reply.

"Do you trust Daniel, after all of the many things he has done to help combat the Zerg so whole-heartedly?"

"Yes." Jaxtor took a sigh of relief.

"Then you trust his actions?"

"Yes."

"Is his communicating with Tassadar an action of his?"

"Yes."

"So then you trust that whatever outcome comes out of his meeting with Tassadar to be for the best?"

"Yes."

"Has he made it clear to you that his meeting with Tassadar will very likely end with the two sharing the common viewpoints and returning to help us and the Protoss and each other?"

"Yes."

"Since that is an outcome, then you trust that his coming back with Tassadar and company will be for the good of the Protoss?"

"Yes."

"If that is for the good of the Protoss, then do you think you should be sending reinforcements to make it happen?"

"No, not if it means dealing with Tassadar or the Dark Templar with which he frequents."

"But you already agreed that their working together will be for the good of the Protoss, so it does not make logical sense for you not to help make that happen."

"True, you are correct but we do not want to consider this subject any more."

"But you already agreed that this is a problem that needs facing, so you cannot logically simply decide not to consider it any more."

"That is true also..."

"So let us finish. Since Daniel and anyone he works with is out for the Protoss good, then it would benefit the Protoss to help him and anyone he works with."

"Yes."

"Tassadar is someone he works with, so you should help him."

A very long pause, so long Jaxtor thought Tealdarin had died or fallen asleep. "Yes."

Jaxtor sighed, relieved at having achieved so much. "The Dark Templar with Tassadar, so if you help Tassadar, then you should help the Dark Templar."

"Yes, but that does not mean that we will be helping the Dark Templar."

"But you already said that you will be helping Tassadar, so it only makes sense if you also help the Dark Templar."

"True, but resources are limited."

"The battle is not going well as it is, and if we keep this up the Protoss will lose."

Another long pause. "True."

"Then in order for the battle to be won somehow, a different method must be found and used."

"We concur."

"Is that the Conclave speaking through you?"

"Yes. We have all been listening in on this conversation."

Jaxtor whistled to himself when he saw that show up on the screen. "Daniel, Tassadar, and the Dark Templar represent a different method which has been found."

"We concur."

"Since we need to try different methods, and this is a different method, then we should try it out."

"We already did against a Cerebrate earlier, and it was a dismal failure."

"That was not the different method of which I speak. Daniel, Tassadar, and the Dark Templar have a different method, and the one performed against the Cerebrate was the same method as that used by the Protoss throughout the centuries, namely, physical destruction."

"We concur."

"So we should try Daniel, Tassadar, and the Dark Templar's different method."

Another long pause, probably during which the Conclave debated amongst itself. However, Jaxtor's arguments had driven them into a corner, and now it was hard to refuse.

Jaxtor continued typing, switching to a different argument. "The Protoss have already given help to Daniel on the quest for this different method."

"True."

"If this different method was not so likely of bringing about success, then the Protoss, with its limited resources, would have chosen not to help Daniel on the quest."

"We concur."

"So if the Protoss decided to help Daniel on this quest, it must be because said quest is likely of bringing about success."

"We concur."

"A quest or different method likely to bring about success should be endorsed by the Protoss, regardless of other considerations."

A pause; but by then it was hard to refuse. "Yes."

"Endorsing the different method means not interfering with it, and means helping to make it happen."

"True."

"Not interfering with it includes putting aside centuries-old discrimination against the Dark Templar, who are critical to the different method."

"True."

"So the Protoss should not consider the pasts or social groupings of the Dark Templar when making its decisions."

"We concur." ((Great, so that problem was solved)), thought Jaxtor.

"Helping to make it happen means lending a fleet or several fleets to support Daniel, Tassadar, and the Dark Templar with firepower against any enemies that stand in their way."

"We concur, and will be sending a fleet to Char at the earliest opportunity." ((Well now, wasn't that efficient? I just convinced billions of Protoss of everything I wanted to convince them of,)) Jaxtor thought to himself quite delightedly.

Thank goodness there was such a thing as psychology.

On the surface, the shuttle holding Christopher finally landed in the midst of a protoss base, gleaming all over from the metallic golden tint and bluish crystals which he could only guess as Khaydarin. Over half of the people in the shuttle's holding bay had not returned; he guessed those were the ones who had died fighting at the edge of the hemisphere. Meanwhile, with the slowness of Aiur's rotation and because of the 'space-travel problem', it was bright daylight on this side when he should have been deep in slumber. The cramped cell afforded him no room to sleep, nor did he want to, considering there was still the fire of killing the Zerg directly.

His cell opened up, and Daniel stared passively into the eyes of a Templar, both sides unable to communicate with each other. Yet the Protoss knew how to beckon him to follow, and follow he did, over to the Viking that was still docked to the shuttle. On it were electronically displayed words saying "The Conclave has decided that you are allowed to help the cause with fighting this war. We are giving you your Viking back and giving you coordinates for your first assignment. Once you enter this craft we will Recall you to a safe base near target position. Scans reveal that you are very sleepy; we advise that you first obtain a good rest.

"Good rest? I don't need a rest, I need to make a few kills to get the sense of entrapment out of my system," Christopher said out loud to no one in particular. He turned around, slightly embarrassed, when he noticed that the Templar had already left. "Oh well, I've kind of been waiting for this my whole life, haven't I? Time to put my own designs to the test." And with that, he hopped into his craft, the world about him dissolved into a swirl of blue, and he found himself launching from the tarmac of one of the Protoss bases, the scorched regions expanding endlessly before him.

The Dark Templar
Back on Char, Daniel watched the projector in his dropship as the portrait of Edmund Duke formed. "Ye fringe world scum! What do you think you're doing here, eh? Coming to this hell-blasted world with scarcely a tenth of the forces at my disposal? I'll give you one opportunity to surrender yourselves, and maybe I'll let you live."

"Oh, it's you," a wearied Daniel, lines trailing over his prematurely sagging face from his lack of sleep, looked at the image. "I would have thought the human opposition on this world would have been led by someone of great ability to have held out this long against the Zerg and even manage to capture a Protoss force. How'd that someone turn out to be you is beyond me."

A snarl crept up on Edmund's face. "How dare you underestimate me?! That will be your downfall! I, Edmund Duke, am in control of this planet and--"

"You forgot the Zerg," mused Daniel out loud.

"What did ye say? Look, I don't have time to play games with you. Either come out now with your hands empty and surrender, or prepare to die a very nasty death."

Daniel snickered with his reddened, bloodshot eyes. "You got to be kidding me, right? Flee from my wrath, and let me get a good night's sleep!"

"Huh?" was the last word Edmund managed to add in before Daniel turned off the communication. "Well guys, it looks like it's our old pal Duke again. I say let's give them hell!"

"Hoorah!" shouted his men on the intercom in unison.

Minutes later the main force under Daniel had closed much of the gap between them and Duke's base and prison compound, while the Arbiter sped one way, the televista satellite took a Recall generator and changed directions, and a dropship was installed with the other generator. Overhead, four Vikings in flier form traversed the skies alongside the lone dropship through the yellowish-orange cloud cover reminiscent of Venus's atmosphere.

On the monitor, the screen showed Duke's flagship, the battlecruiser Norad III steadily move toward them. "Bastard's rich connections got him a new toy," Daniel remarked to himself, much to the other marines' delight. "Too bad we won't be staying around to play." He turned around to the warrant officer running the operation. "Pilot, have the generator aboard the other dropship Recall us over in fifteen seconds," he ordered as they closed in on the Norad III's maximum range.

"Incoming transmission." The picture flared up on the screen, revealing the nicely kept face of Admiral Duke contorted into a taunting grin. "Well, so I see you want to play with my battlecruiser, eh? I bet you won't last long, but just for you, I'll make sure my crew doesn't end it for you in a single shot."

Daniel smiled back condescendingly. "Child's play," he replied.

And aboard the Norad III, the live video feed of the approaching strike team was suddenly encompassed in a swirl of blue, and the next moment it was gone.

"What!?! How can this be? What insane technology is this?" He roared in contemptuous anger, yet shuddered at the thought of what the consequences might be. "Locate him. Now," he ordered his own adjutant.

"Admiral, it seems Daniel's forces have reappeared at the same position and velocity as another one of the dropships which we had conveniently forgotten to track. Even now they are assaulting Base Gamma."

"Base Gamma? But there's nothing there, why would they... that's... preposterous!" He laughed to himself, oblivious of what was actually occurring.

"Admiral sir, let me remind you that before we headed over here, we were the sole garrison stationed at Gamma. There are currently no forces defending the entire base, which means that we have just turned over a hundred civilians and military crew to Daniel's strike team."

"WHAT!?!"

On Base Gamma, the unarmed military personnel all came out with their hands raised the moment Daniel's strike force arrived, raising their proverbial white flag.

"Please spare us, God knows we didn't want anything to do with Alpha Fleet and Duke's cronies," pleaded their leader.

"That is fine, we do not intend to harm fellow humans," replied a marine, wondering where the Zerg were. Had they really so totally abandoned the planet? Or did they not bother recolonizing it in the aftermath of Daniel's Armageddon in the first place?

"Hey, that's the Travincal marker!" exclaimed one of the civilians in awe. "What are they doing here?"

"We would like to have swift and safe access to the Dark Templar who are being held hostage in Base Alpha. Any of you know any way to get in and get back out really quickly?"

The people shook their heads warily. "Duke's security in Alpha is quite strong. If you want to get through, you'll have to truly defeat them on Char."

"That won't be much of a problem, considering what a bungling bloke he is," commented Daniel nonchalantly. At that, many of the civilians cheered, and were considerably more at ease. "Tell you all what - this Dominion is falling apart faster than many of you may know. I'm offering each and every one of you the opportunity to join the Travincal military instead, on fair terms, with fair treatment."

"Wow, really? What can we do for you to express our gratitude?" To which, many others nodded. Duke's regime certainly was poorly managed.

"To say the truth, there is something you can do. We have a certain generator aboard our dropship that must not be harmed. We don't want to keep it in the dropship, because its element of surprise is out, and if we plant it somewhere secret in this base, it might still be of use to us. So what do you say?"

"Why, certainly!" exclaimed the leader of the base. "We have just the place for it all..."

"And, speaking of Duke, they'll be getting here soon. What are you going to tell him, when he asks why I didn't mistreat any of you?"

"We'll just tell him that we overheard you speaking to each other about how the handful of you marines can't wage a battle and manage over a hundred prisoners, sir!"

"Good, well at least someone isn't stupid," he beamed back, before swiftly returning to the dropship and overseeing the removal of the Recall generator. Minutes later, the dropship picked itself up and strode off, amidst sporadic reports of Tassadar's forces moving into position.

As Daniel predicted, Duke's ground forces had parted Base Alpha for Base Gamma, its backbone composed of Goliath walkers and Siege tanks. "All right men, let's get into position," Daniel intoned.

Just then the pilot asked, "There seems to be a barracks slowly floating towards us. I wonder why."

"Oh, I know why, to provide cover for the siege tanks in case ours are already entrenched. But in any case, I never anticipated holding any position for long." As Daniel watched the video showing up on the wall computer within the dropship, he saw a trio of Duke's siege tanks come to a halt at the edge of a cliff, affording them considerable tactical advantage. Then, in a move that set Daniel's eyes wide open, the barracks squatted itself on top of the tanks, its thousands of tons of weight instantly crushing the armored vehicles beneath. All three of the tanks were crushed within instants. "Wow, that was incredibly stupid," noted Daniel with half an eye open as the stored Mjolnir bunker busters blew up from within the tanks, unleashing a massive conflagration as debris blocked off the notable natural ramp below.

Nevertheless, his forces were outnumbered at least ten to one at this location, and time was continuously running out. "Pilot, what's the situation for the Telsat?"

"In low orbit over Base Alpha." Daniel smiled. Soon Duke's headquarters would be infiltrated...

"And the Arbiter?"

"Currently en route to Base Beta. It seems Duke has picked up on your plan, Daniel."

He raised an eyebrow. "Oh? How so?"

"He's moved defenses from Base Alpha to Base Beta, and brought his own flagship and several wings of fighters there. So, your attempt to destroy Base Beta isn't likely to succeed."

"Who said anything about attacking Base Beta just yet?" queried Daniel rhetorically, snickering at the same time.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, it's just that my target has always been Base Alpha, where the Dark Templar are being held. And now with all those ground forces having been moved to the siege against us here, well, you should already realize the rest."

"Wow, now that's high level planning right there," remarked a dazed marine.

"Pilot, park us, and have three Vultures warped over to the televista satellite."

As the dropship landed, everyone came out except the pilots and the three Vultures and riders. Soon the spherical warp rift encompassed the vessel, while Duke's ground forces, encountering no opposition, regained Base Gamma. Daniel's mind wandered into the ether, locating Tealdarin and opening up a psionic channel with him. ((((All right, now's the time to strike at Gamma,)))) he telepathed.

Duke's forces, which had just gone to break having successfully recovered Base Gamma without a fight, did not know what had hit them when suddenly there were Dragoons in their midst and shooting blue balls of intense plasma at all the tanks and walkers, and before any of them could even take defensive action, the ground force was entirely wiped out. The only prepared forces were the ones currently being serviced by a nearby tank factory and machine shop, but soon none of them were able to fight when a single probe hovered by and set up two warp rifts that within a minute had turned into complete Protoss pylons, essentially trapping the tanks within an encirclement of buildings. In the time it took them to melt past the pylons' shielding so that they could actually be able to hit a target, the battle was already over.

Gui Montag, still in his characteristic red armored suit, was shocked to find himself staring at a trio of Protoss quadrupedal contraptions, their orbs of light beginning to glow, while eruptions resounded all around him. Words suddenly streamed across his visor. "Drop your weapons and surrender, or face annihilation. You have fifteen seconds to comply."

Gui Montag was a fierce leader and no coward, but he knew when he was defeated.

Elsewhere, a column of Siege tanks and Valkyries steadily rolled toward Base Beta. Seemingly from out of the blue (or in this case orange, as that was the color of the cloud-covered atmosphere), several Protoss shuttles under Daniel's command turned off their gravitic drives and appeared in plain view, immediately deploying Zealots with their own short-distance teleporting technology, even as the Valkyries' rockets blasted away their shielding, then sent them spinning into the ground. The Zealots, deployed adjacent to the tanks, instantly began hacking away at the armor with their psionic weapons as if they were cutting vegetables, wreaking instant havoc.

The tank gunners were totally confused as suddenly a massive crossfire ensued, with the tanks raining bunker busters onto each other and melting away scores of their own while the Zealots' heavy shielding activated. Mjolnir bombs were just too powerful, however, and so Terran and Protoss alike died in the ensuing fight. The entire armored column was put to waste.

In Base Alpha, scores of Protoss Dragoons warped in from the televista satellite orbiting overhead, using the dropship as a ferry to the surface. Soon there were many more concentrated there than was possible by even the most liberal reading of Duke's enemy recon reports. There were hundreds of these sphere-shooting crawlers, which just was not supposed to be possible. Yet there they were, and they positively stormed the now greatly weakened defensive position of Duke's tanks in several repeat assaults, rapidly recharging their shields in the interlude.

And to top things off, Duke's forces stationed at Base Beta could not rush over to reinforce the headquarters because at both chokepoints through which the ground forces could pass, there was a sacrificial marine acting as the anchor for a Stasis Field that blocked off the entire passageway. The infantry and armor could only look tantalizingly at the two time-trapped marines, unable to either bypass or destroy them while the Dragoon army was overwhelming Base Alpha.

In other words, a perfectly executed battle plan.

Duke was... no words could describe his outrage at finding out how everything had just fallen apart. He had taken the lure with the Arbiter, expecting it to Recall or reveal enemies that were never Recalled or revealed; he had been way too complacent with simply ordering his forces around; and Gui Montag - ((what a bloke)). He had been too complacent, had thought too little about the entire affair, that now it was a fiasco.

Only then did it occur to him why Daniel was here.

"Adjutant! They must be here for the Dark Templar! ((Just to spite him...)) I want each and every one of them killed, immediately, do you hear?"

"Acknowledged, Admiral."

Several Dominion troops were immediately dispatched away from the main battle at Base Alpha to execute these orders. As they walked down the alleyway, they did not notice as the tree Vultures on the other side of the natural wall, led by Jim Raynor, managed to use their hovering abilities to stack on top of each other, effectively squeezing two of the three through the supposedly-too-small gap in the wall while leaving the third behind.

The speedbike drivers immediately discharged their fragmentation grenades at them, catching them off guard. For them, it was a fatal error.

Then they continued, unhindered, past abandoned posts whose sentries had been summoned to the battle at the front lines, hurtling through the underground facility as they began their frantic search for the captive Dark Templar. Here Duke's bungling was once again evident, for there were lighted signs indicating the way to the "top secret interrogation room" which was so clearly where they were.

After that, and a very brief no-questions-asked-nor-answered meeting with Zeratul and company, Raynor and his sidekick spirited the Protoss out of the installation, back to the half-flaw in the natural wall they had entered through. Raynor then used his sidekick's Vulture as a base over which his own Vulture hovered, allowing his own speed-bike to rush through to the other side. Just as the Dark Templar found a suitable place to sit in these two Vultures' passenger seats, the prison behind them detonated, very, very belatedly.

"Daniel, this is Raynor. The caged birds are out and about. Over."

The Final Solution
Daniel was directing the battle between the Dragoons and the Siege Tanks when Raynor and his two speed bikes pulled up with the rescued Dark Templar. ((WHEW.)) "Congratulations on your success, Jimmy!" Daniel said, eagerly patting him on the back. "Now our main task is done."

"We can pull out now, right?"

"I said our Main task was done."

"Well then, what's the second one? Because I'm tired of seeing people slaughter each other, so if we can avoid it--"

Daniel turned to face Raynor with eyes half-open; he was so tired he must have been able to fall asleep on the spot. Yet he was still facing the task before him, which was subduing the Dominion presence on Char. "One word: Duke."

"Edmund? That snake... Why is he any of your concern?"

Daniel didn't answer immediately, for suddenly there was a feeling of a twisting in his heart, and a feeling of sudden, incredible loneliness. It seemed to him as if it was the end of the world, and what a sickening feeling that was! If he wasn't so engrossed in his duties, perhaps he would have even taken the gun to himself--

And the feeling only gradually eased, leaving him a stricken man who could barely respond, "Well, let's just say that without him punished, I can't stand to do much anything else."

"Daniel, you Do realize that taking him out will do nothing to contribute to the war effort, right?"

"Actually, Jimmy, that's not true. The future success of Travincal - the base and those who swear allegiance to it - depends on our showing our might fully. We cannot give any opponent the chance of recovery. Duke posed a significant threat to us back on Antiga Prime, and we let him live, even allowed him to retain his rank. And look what happens now: he was a threat to us once again. This man has powerful friends in the Confederacy, and with him as our puppet, we will be able to pull a lot of strings. If he is allowed to go free, he will return with a Norad IV and twice as many forces as we've ever seen him with. Wouldn't that be bad?"

"Yes, it would, but don't you remember? Once Aiur finishes its half rotation, it's done for! Already fully seventy percent of the planet is scorched by the Swarm. Do you really have the time for all this?"

"Now I do."

"Err..." Raynor scratched his head in confusion.

Just then, swirls of blue appeared in the skies above them as a massive Protoss fleet gradually Phased in. From the carriers poured the miniature golden interceptors; Scouts soared ahead as the vanguard of the battle; reavers, Templar, and more poured forth from the shuttles. Suddenly, a four to one ratio in favor of Duke's forces had changed to a 10 to 1 ratio in favor of the Protoss fleet, which opened up a massive bombardment upon Duke's entrenched position, carefully leaving Travincal and Protoss Expeditionary Fleet forces unscathed.

"How the... how did you predict That was going to happen?" Then he smacked his head. "Duh! Forgot yet again that you're a psychic. That stuff is getting to me..."

"Funny the Protoss should choose now to show up, when it is quite obvious that I have triumphed and would continue to do so," Daniel muttered with disgust as he spit on the ground. "At any rate, Duke should be surrendering any time now, that is, if he isn't already dead."

The two walked into the dropship, where the pilot-turned-temporary-adjutant stated, "Protoss interception detected; call signals friendly. You have a transmission awaiting you."

"Ah, there we go, Duke is getting his behind owned by our mute friends," surmised Daniel as he pressed play.

The video turned out to be a a recording from a camera on Bounty, right next to the giant Psi Emitter. At first, there was nothing. And then the very skies blackened as an endless cloud of aliens descended. Suddenly, explosions were everywhere. Then, nothing but static; the transmission was over.

Raynor was shocked. ((How could the Zerg have moved that fast? Even with our standard Quantradyne engine we can barely cover that distance in two months! Could it be that the Zerg have superior physics technologies than we? But... that's preposterous for a race of organic creeps! And that death-deserving Edmund...))

Just then Daniel remembered how there was a ditto of him, and Christopher, and Sarlena, and Michael, and virtually all the other officials who served with him, back on that planet. He remembered all the jovial times they had had before--

And now they were gone. Truly gone. There was now only one copy of himself, only one copy of Christopher, only one copy of Sarlena... and Michael was gone altogether.

Gone.

Not coming back.

Daniel drowned himself in a rising sea of sorrows as that realization - one that he had been so easily able to ignore earlier - set in.

And not to mention that, but he felt himself considerably more mortal in the process.

What if--?

"Incoming transmission, sir. Sir? Are you all right?"

"Hit me."

The portrait of Edmund Duke appeared. "All right, Daniel, you win, I-- what's wrong with you?"

"Oh shut up."

"Did I call at a bad time? Were you sleeping?" For Duke, even his situation couldn't stop him from sneering at him. "Not even willing to surrender will make you happy?"

"I feel like half of my soul was ripped away, and you tell me to be happy. My, but don't you know how to shoot a final arrow of pain into your enemies' hearts."

"I'm SORRY, but if you accept our surrender we're going to get torn to shreds by the Protoss you summoned, and I don't want to die!"

Raynor's anger overflowed, as he clenched his fist in front of the camera, teeth showing in his snarl. "You son of a bitch, you tried to fucking kill me!" And then he proceeded to punch the screen at where the image of the man's nose was. "D-ow! Bastard!"

"He tried to do WHAT!?!" Daniel whirled around at Raynor, seething. "That's it, Duke. You've passed the last straw. I'm in no mood to accept your terms of surrender, no matter how unconditional they are. You want to make me happy? Go eat a phase disruptor blast in the face."

"What!? No, you can't, you-- NO!!!" The end of which was blocked out by Daniel turning off the computer and collapsing on the cold metallic floor of the dropship, trying to come to terms with the fact that half of himself had just died a dismal and forlorn death somewhere trillions of light years away.

And then, just as suddenly, that part of him seemed to have been replaced - his other half soul was rediscovered and instantaneously stitched back together with his former self. Suddenly, that stricken, half-nostalgic, half-philotic feeling ebbed and faded away, leaving him alive and - very well. He opened his eyes.

And stared into those of Tealdarin.

Daniel jumped to his feet. ((((What are you doing here? How did you get here? What did you do?)))) The stream of questions came pouring out.

Tealdarin answered just as quickly, even though it was far longer: ((((We are here to see to it that you remain safe following the loss of your double and a change in the official position of the Conclave. We arrived through Phasing here, so the Protoss Templar you see before you is not exactly the same individual as the one you are familiar with, but close enough. We Phased you back aboard your ship the Hyperion, which remains in high orbit around Aiur, thereby creating a second you who, by connecting with you philotically, filled in the gap that the death of Daniel(Bounty) had opened up.))))

((((Whoa. Now that's quite a bit to take in. You said... what? That there has been an official change in the position of the Conclave?))))

((((Yes. Your friend Jaxtor seems to have a talent for convincing billions of Protoss to see the world from his perspective in under ten minutes.))))

((((Whaaatt?? This just gets weirder and weirder... Well, I guess I'll have to thank him now.))))

((((No need; Daniel(Aiur) has already done just that - thanked him for you. It's what you would have done had you been in the same position as... well, you, just the other one.))))

((((Ugh, now you're giving me a headache...))))

((((I'm not exactly done yet. Indeed, the Conclave does not support Jaxtor's highly persuasive line of reasoning entirely. Nothing alone can toss out a millennium of tradition and distaste for the Dark Templar. Now, there are certainly steps that can be taken in that direction, but in the meantime, dissent is forming in the ranks of the Conclave. Meanwhile, not everyone amongst the Dark Templar are happy with this turn of events, least of all their matriarch Raszagal. I advise that you be careful about where you tread.))))

((((Point taken. And... what about Duke?))))

((((Thanks to your selfishness and cold-heartedness, he was killed by a Templar serving under Artanis.))))

Daniel mused in thought at this. ((Well, he was a beast while he was alive, but did he have to die? And furthermore, this would be bad for politics regarding both Dominion and Confederacy. Argh! What's wrong with me? Why can't I make more reasonable decisions any more? Oh, look at me, now. This I would never have expected a mere ten minutes ago, sympathizing with that scoundrel. I guess things really do change quickly now. Who's this?))

Just then, another Templar, this one with highly frayed nerve cords at the back of its head, entered the room. ((((I am Zeratul, Prelate of the Dark Ones. Since our banishment long ago, we have never failed in our responsibility to Aiur. Though it shall cause us great pain to see our homeland once more, we shall return with you. We will do what we can.))))

((((Perfect, it's about time we showed your faction's worth to the Conclave.))))

((((You shall be safe directing such thoughts to me, Whisperer, but rest assured, that there are elements in both factions that should like nothing more than to fight each other and tear our race to shreds, including you if you stand in their way.))))

((((Are those elements few or many?))))

((((More than you can count.))))

((((I never believed that they would go so far. In the face of total annihilation they still cling to their failing traditions!)))) Turning to the ansible, Daniel communicated to Sarlena back on Aiur. "All right, bring us back, we are sending our coordinates to you presently."

Seconds later, their dropship appeared docked to the Hyperion. As they returned to their ship, Zeratul complimented, ((((You have indeed learned much about the ways of the Firstborn. May you continue in your zeal to aid our race in ridding it of its greatest scourge.))))

Sarlena turned to face them as they entered the operations center, then burst out of her chair to run toward them, encompassing Daniel in her arms. "Oh, thank goodness you're back, I've been waiting for so, so long, and during that entire time I thought... I thought you were..."

"Quiet, Sarlena, and disentangle yourself. You're embarrassing me in front of Protoss representatives. And besides, what would Chris say if he saw you embracing me, eh? What say you to that?"

Sarlena immediately backed off, responding with a sheepish grin, but not really caring about much anyone else. "Promise me you won't go off masquerading as a sergeant again," she begged. "After Christopher, you're the closest person I have now."

"Well, I can't make promises I might not be able to keep," Daniel replied with absolutely no reassurance whatsoever. ((((Come now, please excuse my overexcited rear admiral,)))) he telepathed to the Protoss entering behind him. ((Hmm... Looks like Christopher is still out there. That big idiot. War is not for the faint of heart, but that doesn't mean those who are strong of heart should go to war.))

((((We thank you for having brought us out of captivity. For that, we are forever indebted to you,)))) communicated Zeratul. ((((The human practice of abduction and interrogation seem particularly alien to us.))))

((((Well... naturally,)))) agreed Daniel with a faint smile. He knew he couldn't hold out for much longer; he had gone nearly thirty six hours without sleep...

Daniel, Tealdarin, Tassadar, and Zeratul sat down at a square, utilitarian table, each with a computer monitor which raised itself out of the desk surface, showing blips marking Terran, Protoss and Zerg contingents.

Daniel began the conversation. ((((Okay, so right now our task is four-fold. One: Kill the Overmind. The Overmind is too densely protected, so that there is no way we can break past its defenses without first weakening it somehow, or at least weakening the Swarm located there. In order to do that, we need to kill the various broods led by the Cerebrates. That is where the Dark Templar come in. That would also prove to the dissident elements of your race that the Dark Templar can deliver. Third, we need to neutralize the threat from the Conclave and from this... Raszagal, you thought?))))

((((She is our matriarch,)))) explained Zeratul. ((((It is best not to speak of her in such a way. We do the bidding of our matriarch without fail, only she has yet to make a decision about diplomacy with your race.))))

((((Hmm. Well, we shall see. And finally, the destruction of Red Herring means that no longer are the Zerg constrained to the psionic shadow of the planet. As you can see, the Zerg are already spreading. Yes, indeed - I too can experience the suffering of your dying fellow warriors through the Khala. Not all of your race on Aiur are warriors; your Khalai and Judicator caste need protection. If there is a way, I recommend getting them out of harm's way at the earliest opportunity.))))

((((There is one more.))))

((((Another task? What would that be?)))) asked Daniel.

((((Sarah Kerrigan, this self-styled Queen of Blades. She must be rid of before the path is clear, for if she outlives the Overmind, she shall become the sole ruler of the Swarm. Seeing how ingenuitive you humans can be, that would make matters worse for all of us a hundredfold.))))

Daniel smiled. ((((Ah, she might be in line for a Zergian succession, but what is she but a human? A human has human flaws, and being one I know plenty of those flaws. Trust me, when I say that I'll remove her from the affairs of this universe.))))

((((Bold words,)))) remarked Zeratul.

((((From a bold man,)))) added Tassadar. ((((Oh, how I remember the days when I longed for combat! Now I am wearied of it. Back then Aiur was the fertile homeland we have always known it to be. Since when did this become naught but nostalgia? No, don't tell me; I already know. The Zerg are at fault. They have always been at fault for the duration of this War. I shall see to it personally that the Overmind is killed. And believe me: for I NEVER go back on my words.))))

Baptism by Fire
Christopher had managed to catch a nap before even getting into battle; he simply needed it. Even though he held out for three hours after he had been released, constantly wanting the thrill of war, he still had not tasted any. The Protoss had promised him an engagement immediately, then set that back, saying that the offensive would be delayed; then he was sent on a mission to a different base, only shortly afterward finding out that the first base he had been posted to was overrun. And the offensive here was delayed too. Something about a pylon matrix faltering, whatever that meant. He made a mental note to self: when he got back aboard the Hyperion, he would ask Sarlena what that was all about, because it was quite evident none of the Protoss on the surface seemed to trust him. They were entirely different from what he knew Tealdarin to be like.

But then he had been awoken from a thirty-minute slumber by the sound of a klaxon wailing. He hurriedly rushed to his Viking, where he found out that the base was for some reason suddenly under attack. ((This doesn't make any sense,)) he thought; ((by their own calculations the Zerg can't strike this location for another three human-hours!)) And yet, there they were, and the sounds of battle could be heard in the distance.

The Viking took off into the soft, Aiurian morning: a hazy dark violet sky. For some reason the light from the sun was considerably darker than it was yesterday, despite complete lack of cloud cover. He knew enough to be able to guess that it was the result of the Swarm scattering all its light from space.

"LET'S DO THIS!" Christopher shouted to himself as his Viking soared off into the dawn and surveyed the scene of battle. Off in the distance, mutalisks chased their prey, turning impossibly fast as they performed their strafing runs, while a battered Dragoon force dispensed more and more spheres of bluish plasma from their photon cannons, while Zealots fought against the combined might of huge, lumbering Ultralisks and ranged Hydralisks.

His craft swiftly plunged in on his targeted foe, and opened fire. Yet against the mutalisk, his attacks consistently missed, as they took incredibly unpredictable paths. Then a second later, the computer AI warned him, "WARNING: hostile at six o'clock." ((Crap, there's a muta on my tail?)) Immediately he ejected a plume of chaff and flares, many of them being destroyed as a glaive shot forth from the Zerg flier into the decoy and exploded into a shower of acid and flame.

"Hello? Anyone here? I need backup!" shouted Christopher into the intercom, not knowing if anyone would be able to understand him. Needless to say, there was no reply; as far as he was concerned, he was fighting this battle all by himself.

The mutalisk in front of him, meanwhile, had plenty of allies. It swerved once again, and Christopher strained himself to place it back in his crosshairs. He launched a missile.

And watched in dumbfounded amazement as the mutalisk proved far more agile, instantly falling behind the contraption and exploding it with an accurate hit from another glaive.

He was now going strictly vertical - upward. "WARNING: Stalling." "Damn it, just when I least needed that!" The next moment he had brought his craft to an angle, while still pursuing his foe, now lost in the three-dimensionality of aerial warfare.

Unbeknownst to him, Sarlena was using a televista satellite far above them to monitor his every twist and turn, staring at a computer screen with several fingers squeezed by her teeth, her worry and anxiety about to explode at any moment, while Jaxtor could only look on with sadness.

That mutalisk was proving to be a very challenging foe, Christopher realized; however, the mutalisk tailing him was now nowhere to be seen. He regained his target in his crosshairs and this time shot out bolts of laser, yet even their constant stream failed to hit his target. That mutalisk was a pest indeed.

Then it broke out into a turn to the right. He eagerly gave chase, now flying at an oblique angle thirty degrees from the horizontal. As they went, the signature of the mutalisk became slightly larger; that gave him a greater chance of hitting his target with pinpoint laser fire. Yet it continued to dodge, never entering the crosshairs exactly, even as it then veered sharply to the left.

((Trying to lose me, eh?)) Christopher smirked, then realized with a start that the hologram before him showed another mutalisk coming at him from his side - the angle from which he would have the largest signature, since he was currently turning and had wings tilted - realized that he had been caught by the two mutalisks' figure-S maneuver. And it was firing.

At him.

At first he didn't believe it. Then he did, and was filled with worry, trying his best to get out of the way, pouring out chaff and flares once again. But that glaive came ever closer; it was definitely locked on him.

(((No, it can't be, I hadn't even made a kill yet, it isn't the right time, I can't die--NOOO!!!!!!!!!)))

Then he and his craft shattered into a million molten pieces as the glaive detonated, a burning fireball spiraling through the heavy atmosphere.

At that exact moment, Sarlena was so frightened for his safety that she was praying more diligently than she had ever done in her life, with palms pressed before her and lips muttering at a frantic pace, sweat rolling down her youthful face.

She never saw her fiancé vaporize.

All she saw was a flying fireball of a wreck where there should have been a Viking craft.

((What!?! No, it can't be!! It can't be-- but it is-- my adored one, my Chris! Could he truly be gone? But if he is not, then were is he? No, I absolutely refuse to believe that he is dead! Use your brain, Sarlena, he's dead. No, shut up, the other me! I won't allow that to happen! There's no way he could have died, I was praying fervently, God wouldn't have allowed the unthinkable to happen! It didn't! Yes it did, you saw it happen -- No, I did not! Stop deceiving yourself! Stop telling me lies! I shall see him return to me, and we... we will live happily ever after! That's impossible! Sarlena, take a hold of yourself, and see what's going on! He's just not there any more, your beloved Chris, he's gone, and there's no way he is coming back, and the other Chris on Bounty is already a cold meat bag, or several pieces of it, and -- shut out that thought! He is not dead! I wouldn't have allowed to happen, the heavens know I wouldn't have! No, he is still alive and well, and I shall find him, and end this torment! Oh really? Then where is he? Well, he,... I... I don't know. Exactly. So stop presuming that he's still miraculously alive. Oh, but how can I live without him?! This is hell on earth! Well, not exactly earth, but... What am I going to do now? What can I do, now that he's gone? This can't possibly be happening to be, it is not, my eyes must have been playing tricks on me, I have no proof he's dead -- There's never proof when it all goes up in a fireball, self! He was so nice to me, there's no way in hell he could just go out there and never come back! Why, how can he, when he knows that I'm still here, faithfully waiting for his return? I Have been faithful, haven't I? Oh God, what, is it possible that I did not do something right? Oh, damn it, all the fault belongs to me! I shouldn't have let him just leave like that, I should have restrained him, called for others to stop him - should have known it was coming! I -- I didn't even make the best of what time we did have together, didn't even tell him that burning desire in my heart, promise him that I'd marry him at the earliest opportunity! And now, he's in heaven, yet it will still be like hell for he will still not have heard my heartfelt words 'I do', and he will never know the true extent of my feelings! Oh, damn it all to hell! If this were all to have happened anyway, then why did I have to be the hapless maiden who fell in love with the man in the first place? And now look at yourself, myself, you're a terrible wreck of a woman, even worse off than a widow for having not spent enough time together .. Why had I been so diligent in my duties to Travincal, and neglected him? And now I shall never have the time to set things right, never be able to make things just -- It is all over for me and my weary soul! Why not just take the quick way out, see him in heaven straight away, with the gun heavy in my holster? Are you insane? Good question... Am I? Am I insane already?))

All this was only expressed in the form of an unblinking, frozen stare at the computer screen for many a long moment, before Sarlena collapsed from her own weariness and overwhelming sorrow.

"It is always one death that is a greater tragedy than all others combined," remarked Jaxtor despondently to Daniel and Raynor, as they looked at Sarlena's unconscious form.

"I hope she will come out okay," said Raynor. "Considering how crucial she is to the war effort."

"Does it look like she will be okay? Damn the Zerg for having access to that technology that allows them to traverse hyperspace and get to Bounty so quickly, or else it would have been just a matter of simple request for the Protoss to create another Christopher while he was still alive. Now all that's gone... And yet, we have to push on. Make sure Sarlena gets a good rest. If she resists, drug her. She's too critical to lose just because of the loss of a loved one."

"Yes, Daniel."

Daniel stood up and walked out of the room to finally catch a much-needed sleep.

But no matter how much he convinced himself that he needed sleeping, it would not come to him. It is not easy to sleep on the knowledge that before you get sleepy again the next day, the outcome of the greatest war any race in the galaxy had ever known would have come to an end.

He tossed and turned. Visions from the past kept recurring: the gigantic, impervious eyeball staring down at him when they had first met; his first foray into the heart of a triangular Obliterator mothership; going with Raynor to the beach for a much needed vacation; overseeing the culmination of the Zerg Swarm about Aiur; bringing about Armageddon on Char; Duke's futile scream for mercy; Kerrigan's infestation; and so much, much more.

Needless to say, he did not get much rest at all.

By now the Protoss fleets had been all but crushed, and the ground forces would not last more than a few hours against the Swarm. Templar Fenix, Tassadar's known loyal sympathizer, was on the ground, preparing battle plans, while a shuttle hovered nearby, with two Reavers held within. Further away, there were more shuttles, also filled with Reavers, as well as a cluster of Dragoons and other Zealots.

((We hope they are all loyal to me, what with all the contention about the Dark Templar and what-not,)) Fenix remarked to himself.

Moments later, the Swarm had descended from above, led by a solitary Overlord. Immediately, the Dragoons opened fire and killed the behemoth, but not before it had released a single Lurker which tunneled into the ground within a single second, vanishing. Fenix and the Zealots backed away from the unseen menace, while the wing of Mutalisks traded fire with the Dragoons. At least this time, Fenix's forces won through sheer firepower.

Fenix's psionic sense of warning made him turn around, just to see an explosively charged Reaver's drone headed straight for him. ((((Treason!!)))) he cried out, before it detonated, washing away his shields and reducing him to a pool of bluish ichor in an instant.

On the nearby shuttle, the Khalai tele-pilot immediately recognized the threat and lifted off, deploying a Reaver to single-handedly eradicate all of the clustered Dragoons positioned nearby. Then, it Recalled its Reaver back on board, even as the rogue shuttles rose off the ground.

The Khalai loyal to Fenix then warped both Reavers back onto the surface, triggering the rogue shuttles to deploy their own Reavers moments later.

Both sides fired their drones.

But while the drones all exploded harmlessly, missing the loyal Reavers - which were brought back on board at the last instant - the other drones detonated, shredding the rogue Reavers to oblivion.

The lurker had encroached in the meantime, and burrowed closer to the loyalist Reaver. The Khalai pilot then repositioned itself so it was directly over the lurker, then deployed its second Reaver.

Immediately its shielding was brought to nil from a torrent of subterranean spikes.

The next moment, a drone targeted for the Reaver detonated right after the Reaver was brought back on board.

The lurker burrowed below was not so lucky; it was instantly reduced to shreds.

The explosive drone had come from yet another shuttle, so both sides deployed their Reavers. Once again, the loyalist Khalai managed to extract its contraption without a scratch.

The other pilot Recalled in its Reaver just as the drone detonated.

There was a beautiful display of fireworks as the shuttle blossomed into an ephemeral flower of flame.

On the surface, the pair of Dark Templar moved into position, their cloaks surrounding them in a veil of invisibility, ready to assassinate the helpless, vulnerable, and oh-so-focused-on-things-far-away Cerebrates. ((((On Zeratul's command. We are in position.))))

Their Prelate's edict responded immediately. ((((Permission to go ahead with the plan.))))

Two thousand miles apart, the undercover shadow hunters thrust their warp blades into the two Cerebrates, in an instant draining away all the protective energies that once gave them such incredible resilience as to be resistant against all physical harm. The warp blades were not of the physical realm at all; they were in the psionic realm, which all Xel'Nagan creations had in common - and where the Zerg hierarchy was weakest.

((((Job done. Let the hammer fall.))))

Back aboard the Hyperion, Daniel relayed commands to a pair of ghosts to 'paint the targets' with their laser beams, drawing in two solitary hydrogen bombs with pinpoint precision.

Their worlds seemed to blow up. Those further away saw for a moment the appearance of a second and third sun before the massive puffball-shaped clouds billowed upward through the atmosphere. Moments later, the results from the orbiting Televista satellite were relayed to the Hyperion, showing the results on the surface.

The vaunted immunity of the town-sized Cerebrates had failed them this time; there was nearly no trace left of either.

Meanwhile, Tassadar turned to Zeratul. ((((What do you think about these humans?))))

((((They are... very interesting.))))

((((To say the least, they are. But we find it strange that Daniel is able to communicate with us telepathically. It indicates that humans have at least some hidden potential for such abilities, though they are much more pronounced in him than in anyone else.))))

((((Yes....... Too coincidental. And they have the ansible also, that which allows them to communicate across infinite distances instantaneously. Running on psionic technology, which they for some reason also have. Although much of what the humans have seem to be... backward and lacking....))))

((((Remember how there was supposedly a Xel'Nagan Chronicle centuries ago about their creations? How we were created first, and called the Firstborn?))))

((((Indeed. It all does seem so very strange, but... what are you getting at?)))) asked Zeratul.

((((Highly unusual. The Chronicle states very clearly that the Xel'Naga uphold three facets of any species. They are, without being in any particular order, Essence, Form, and Mind. So we wonder why they only created two species, forgetting about the Purity of Mind altogether?))))

((((Easy answer. Either the Xel'Naga never intentioned to establish a race with the third Purity, or it was still unable to do so when their Secondborn turned against them.))))

((((No, we do not think it is as you state. Remember, that the Xel'Nagan word for "Born" also means "Awakened". Perhaps that is the crucial aspect? Remember also that our creators created a lot of different things. Is it not possible for there to be more of such creations that we know little about?))))

((((You venture far into the realm of the hypothetical, Tassadar.))))

((((Hypothetical, yes. And yet, all indicators point to the same thing. Also: it has been stated that any two of their creations can be used to stop a third. In the past, there have been merely two examples of such a feat being performed. When the Zerg stumbled upon Shakuras when the war was young, they were swiftly annihilated by the activation of the main Temple located near current-day Telematros by the twin crystals Uruz and Khalis. The only other case was with Aiur: the Zerg Overmind required that the Khaydarin Crystal be obtained before it could infest itself upon the planet. Before then, the combination of our race with the crystal formations likewise kept the Zerg at bay.))))

((((Are you suggesting that we have already encountered a new Xel'Nagan creation, and that we merely do not recognize it for what it is?))))

((((No, not a new one, but a very, very old one. One that is so obvious it will shock you. Those I speak of, are the ones we refer to as Terrans.))))

((((A Purity of Mind? I see, it... it all makes sense now...))))

((((Is it not peculiar that the only thing besides us Protoss and Xel'Nagan artifacts that has stopped the Zerg have been humans? Never, through the millennia that we have charted the worlds, have we encountered a sentient species with such a powerful blessing as this one; no other species can be held responsible for contributing even an effort of a hundred magnitudes less than what we have achieved. And that, O Dark One, is a very, very tiny number.))))

((((If what you say is true, and it seems highly likely, then our friendship with the Whisperer has proven to be a monumental windfall for our race. Because if all you said turns out to be true, we may have the final weapon for destroying the hated Overmind.))))

((((Yes, that is exactly what we were getting at.))))

((((Why, then, could we not detect around them the strong psionic signals that are intimately connected with all the Xel'Nagan creations?))))

((((My guess would be, that the humans are the only sentient creations that have not been Awakened. Hence, no psionic auras of any sort, no mention in the Chronicle our race was given, and their lack of the title of Firstborn. They were probably the first that were created, because if you look into their own archives, you will find innumerable references to their own creation, more than just a few millennia ago. Their creation far predates our own. They were the first to be made, yet back then the Xel'Naga may have still lacked the ability to connect individuals together through a psionic web. If you recall, that was what the Purity of Form experiment was all about. Perhaps, they intended to go back and revise their first creations; perhaps, the Pure of Mind need no psionic potential to be just as consequential in the universe.))))

((((To think that we would live to the day when we would recognize this... The feeling we get is incredible...))))

((((Now, the main question is how we can use what we just discovered to vanquish the Overmind.))))

((((Should we tell Daniel about this revelation, perhaps? He would be interested.))))

They turned and saw him staring back at them intently, enraptured by their conversation. ((((No need. I felt every thought you shared between each other.))))

((((My, but isn't that Purity of Mind right there?)))) Tassadar remarked humorously.

Eye of the Swarm
Daniel was awake yet nearly impossibly sleepy - he had slept no more than an hour the previous night - when the unwelcome barrage from the Overmind returned.

((((Do you now see our power? The might of the Swarm is eternal; not even power a thousand times greater than your greatest of weaponry can harm the Overmind a whit. All the Protoss forces on Aiur have fallen like a row of dominoes. And we have access to Khaydarin technologies that the Protoss never even dreamed of. Do you now see the wisdom of siding with the Swarm?))))

Daniel restrained the urge to spit in the operations center. ((((Humph. And do you not think that we too have secrets that you have never dreamed of? I will KILL you today.))))

Then he touched the Khaydarin amulet he bore, and instantly the Overmind's haughty reply was banished.

((I've had enough of that beast.))

He turned to look at the hologram, which showed the continual progression of the Zerg. The Protoss had managed a proper retreat with their civilian forces through their warp gates to Shakuras, but that could not right the fact that nearly all of Aiur was now Zerg territory, and that there would be little left of Firstborn civilization on the planet at all within the hour.

Tealdarin approached him from behind. ((((That largest sector where Protoss forces remain strong holds the greatest of the ancient Protoss Temples, from before we were Awakened.))))

((((A historical relic? Interesting. But does it serve any purpose now?))))

((((Its purpose has always been religious. If you're asking if it is useful in the fight against the Zerg, unfortunately, no.))))

((((Then, I suppose you won't be troubled at its loss.))))

Daniel went through a mental checklist of what he had to do. He had to take care of Kerrigan. ((((Now, if you'll forgive me, I have a few lies to tell.))))

He felt out the strands of the psionic plane and found a channel that connected him to the Queen of Blades, and began to focus his thoughts. ((((Greetings, Sarah.))))

((((Ah, Daniel, is it not? Your powers have increased significantly since we last communicated. Nevertheless, mine is far greater.))))

((((I do not doubt that, Sarah. Anyways, I'm here to give you a, err, what do you call 'em?))))

((((Offer?))))

((((Ah yes, offer. You see, I'm working for Mengsk now, and since I'm the strongest of his Ghosts - well, not including you - I was given the assignment to tell you all about it.))))

((((Offer?))))

((((Well, says here, he wants you to destroy the Confederacy free of charge.))))

((((And why the hell would I want to do a favor for him?))))

((((Wait, that can't be right, Mengsk wouldn't-- Oh, I see, he was joking. He doesn't seem to expect you to actually do that.))))

((((Well of course not, the bungling idiot--))))

((((If you can't accept that, then could you at least accept this one other thing?))))

((((It better not be so grandiose...)))) But on Sarah's end, she was getting the feeling that she couldn't exactly refuse this much smaller request either, especially since she had already refused a very big... request. It never occurred to her that this was another of Jaxtor's manipulation schemes.

((((No... Well, he wants to meet with you in person... And wants to, what was the phrasing again? 'Dual Dominion of the Universe'.))))

Kerrigan smiled inwardly from where-ever she was. ((That fool Mengsk. Oh well, I've always wanted to rip his throat out...)) ((((He wants to meet with me, eh? Well, has he said where and when?))))

((((Strange, but from this report he seems to be at a, err, 'Protoss Temple'. If you know where that is--))))

((((Of course I do. He wants to meet with me there?))))

((((Exactly. And I'm sure you'll be willing, since you still have a part of you that's human, after all.))))

((((Do not be so quick to judge me, Daniel, though in this case I'll say you're correct.))))

((((Well Then!))))

Daniel tapped his crystal, summoning a mental wall, then walked over to Raynor. "You say you want revenge on Kerrigan?"

Raynor clutched his head in his hands. "Well, I guess all I have left is to see this through. The Zerg have taken everything from me: my home, my family, my friends. I know that nothing I do can bring those things back, but I'll be damned if I just sit on my hands and wait for the end. I want a piece of 'em, all right. I'm in." *

"Then make haste to the Protoss Temple."

On Shakuras, the most respected of Judicators came together one more time in a pristine, golden rotunda. Seats were placed about the walls, while a large, flawless crystal of Khaydarin hovered in the middle. Through the windows, they could make out the brownish spires that were a natural construct in this region, pointing up toward the perpetually twilight sky.

Aldaris began. ((((We have all seen the destruction of two Cerebrates, and the ensuing total deadness of their two broods, the minions of which have all died from a breakdown of homeostasis. We know very well that those two Dark Templar alone have been responsible for more kills than half of all the Fleets of the Khala. And I remember very well what Zeratul had said to me: 'You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities... Unto my experience, Aldaris, all that you've built here on Aiur is but a fleeting dream. A dream from which your precious Conclave shall awaken, finding themselves drowned in a greater nightmare.' Is it not best for us to acknowledge that maybe we are indeed not as perfect as a thousand years of the Khala led us to believe?)))) *

No protest, though all were pensive; the very silence seemed loud.

((((Then let us make peace with Tassadar and his stewards.)))) The Judicator reached out with his mind, and established a channel with one he once believed was his arch-enemy. ((((Tassadar. Zeratul. This comes too late to you. But the Conclave has witnessed your defeat of the Cerebrate. They know now that they cannot deny the necessity or the valiancy of your actions. We sought to punish you, while it was we who were in error. You represent what is greatest in us all, and all our hopes go with you. EN TARO ADUN, brave Sons of Aiur!)))) *

Back aboard the Hyperion, Daniel smiled grimly. ((((Wow. Does that mean they're going to send some backup for us?)))) *

((((You know very well that the Conclave is but an empty shell now,)))) Zeratul stated flatly.

((((We will return the Ganthrithor and the title of Executor to you. It is the least we can do,)))) Aldaris responded.

Meanwhile, the Prelate was holding a private communication with the once and again Executor. ((((If I die killing the Overmind, only bring me back if I fail.))))

((((Nonsense!))))

((((As an old friend, I make that request, for I have realized what the endgame is. It seems quite apparent that the means the Xel'Naga were referring to involve the combination of two individuals into one.))))

((((The creation of an Archon?))))

((((Yes. The legendary feat that only Adun was able to do. Only this time, it will be different, for we truly know little about the Terran from our interactions with them. Do you think you will be able to manage?))))

Tassadar's reply was adamant. ((((I have sacrificed all that our world might live. I have sullied my honor, I have discarded my rank and standing, and I have even broken our own most ancient traditions. But never think that I would, for one moment, regret my actions. For I am Templar, and above all else, I have sworn to protect our Homeworld 'till the end.)))) *

((((Then let us tell Daniel... no wait, we cannot.))))

((((Indeed, if we tell him what the true cost to him would be of killing the Overmind, he may think twice. And we cannot allow that to happen. He is, after all, human, and the Terran have never been Awakened, have never been able to put their all into a worthy goal to the extent that we and the Zerg are able to.))))

((((Then you should just tell him that he will be required for a ritual. That is all,)))) concluded Zeratul.

The next second, Tassadar did just that.

Moments later Daniel was distracted from his overseeing the war effort by Sarlena's clandestine attempt to extract a gun from an officer's holster unnoticed. "Guards! Stop her!" Immediately several marines in their heavy combat suits hulked over and easily pulled the woman away. Daniel peered into Sarlena's eyes, which were half expressionless, half dismal. ((Friend... Would this not have come to pass...))

"I think she was trying to commit suicide," noted Jaxtor.

"Indeed," replied Daniel as he turned away. "I cannot allow her to kill herself in her grief. Her situation is different from Michael's, for reasons I cannot explain right now. Lock her up in a cell and make sure she is well attended to, but do not under any circumstances give her any means to kill herself. If she starves herself, I want you to force-feed her. If she bangs her head against the wall, I want you to use your bodies as a buffer. If she tries to hang herself using her own clothes, strip her. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

"Yes Admiral."

"What, you can't do that!" protested Sarlena at last as she struggled futilely against the mechanized grip of the marines, the sounds of her voice quickly fading away, leaving Daniel beside himself in his dilemma.

Then he turned to Jaxtor and Raynor. "I will be aboard Tassadar's carrier soon. With Sarlena... out of the picture, you two will be responsible for running our fleet and preparing for the final showdown..." ((Maybe it's time to give them a promotion as well.)) "Rear admirals." He nodded to them, then stood beside Tassadar, silently communicating with him, as a blue vortex spirited them away to the oversized Protoss flagship.

The Protoss had been entirely eliminated from Aiur. The monolithic-looking Temple was all that was left standing, and Mengsk stood there waiting. Never mind that he couldn't have possibly gotten there; never mind that he hadn't received any message from Daniel that would cause him to go there; yet there he was. Within one of its spires, Raynor peered down at the wide apex of the ages-old structure, even as the Swarm circled leisurely overhead.

Assured of victory and having spotted Mengsk, Kerrigan tumbled out of the tendrils of a nearby Overlord. "Well met, Mengsk. And what is this you have to offer me?"

"Quick to the point, Sarah? Then I shall oblige you. Do you not still have that element of humanity within you? How can you possibly allow yourself to watch as Terran and Protoss alike are slaughtered? Come, return to me, and between us, we shall divide the Koprulu sector!" Mengsk played the role of expert diplomat and politician.

The horrifically reshaped Queen of Blades mocked him. "Yes, we shall divide Koprulu, with me getting one hundred percent of it! Now Arcturus, is that all you have to offer? Because I don't have much time to spare on you... even though we do have access to hyperspace."

"Sarah, please, you may not know this, but I still have some passion for you--"

"And yet you abandoned me on Tarsonis? You are nothing but a liar!" The next moment she had flung herself at him - and went straight through, sending her sprawling onto the stony ground. She looked up in confusion - and saw Mengsk become replaced with the image of Tassadar, and emitting a laughing vibe. ((((What - trickery is this? An illusion? Are you afraid to face me, Templar?)))) *

((((So long as you continue to be so predictable, O Queen, I need not face you at all. You are your own worst enemy.)))) *

Then the image vanished. Kerrigan picked herself up, and found herself staring into the barrel of Raynor's gun.

"Whoa there, calm down now," she said, involuntarily taking a step away, while summoning the Zerg overhead to descend and rip this man to shreds. At the same time, she flaunted her beauty - the flaw here being that Zerg beauty must have been close to the opposite of human beauty, so that it did not distract Raynor at all.

It was just the two of them, alone at the top of a massive Temple.

Raynor did not smile, so intense was his desire to complete his task. "Do you remember my vow? 'It may not be tomorrow, darlin'. It may not even happen with an army at my back. But rest assured: I'm the man who's going to kill you some day.'"

Sarah feigned fear. "Oh, you're a chivalrous, good man! You wouldn't kill me now, would you?" ((Come on Swarm, it'll only be seconds now--))

"And a good man would do this."

A rapport sounded.

The twisted woman flopped backward, a tossed rag-doll, to spend her final seconds of life in intense torture as the pain, suffocation, and light-headedness crescendoed.

The Swarm overhead quit their dive to the surface and contented themselves with circling overhead with no apparent target in sight.

On board the Hyperion, Jaxtor asked the other officers, "it seems we have half forgotten that there is a very dense... cloud of spores surrounding the Overmind, extending in every direction save underground for at least a dozen miles, including coming out of the atmosphere. We don't have the barracks we used to shelter the dropships back on Antiga when we were rescuing Duke, and at any rate there were considerably fewer unit that they ran into. Even so, the barracks was reduced to wrecks just colliding with the corrosive spores."

Raynor (already Recalled back on board) replied, "Luckily, the adjutant has already told me about that particular problem, and as such a counter has already been prepared. My plan? Recalling. Multiple times. True, a lot of vessels will be incinerated in the process, including a few of our battleships, but it is the only way."

Everyone in the room immediately tensed up, and Raynor knew enough about these people to know why. "The Hyperion is not slated for such a fate," he declared, and immediately they all relaxed, even though they then tried to hide it from his eyes.

Raynor saw it, and immediately became filled with rage. "Why you!.!. You care only about your own skins, and don't care if any- and everyone else dies in your place! OWW!--" he roared in frustration as he pulled a tendon in his jaw. "You bunch of..."

"Calm down, Raynor," said Jaxtor, unperturbed. "There's a reason we have managed to live for so long in so hostile an environment. We're commanders, not martyrs. We're not stupid." ((Like Christopher,)) he wanted to add, but shut his mouth at the last moment.

"And Daniel's stupid too?" challenged Raynor.

Jaxtor remained pacific. "The Protoss have promised me that they will see to it that Daniel will come to no harm; he is merely required for a ritual, that is all."

Tassadar gave his prepared speech to the surviving Protoss. ((((My friends, this is our final hour. Not all of us may survive the coming conflict. Yet, death may be a blessing should we fail here. We seek now to destroy a foe that has ravaged its way across the universe consuming all in its path. And now it has reached the end of its long journey. The Overmind has come to destroy all that we hold dear and assimilate us into itself. And I say to thee, this shall not come to pass! Aiur shall not fall! As Executor, I stand ready!)))) *

Daniel added, ((((As do I.))))

The Overmind was cloaked in the black night; only the occasional cloud cover reflected any light from the occluded sun, their undersides a dark shade of red. Red from fire, blood, and destruction. The surface was entirely pitch; naught could be seen, as nothing gave off a glow here the way they did in Terran and Protoss cities.

A massive whirlwind of assorted Zerg fliers unnecessarily guarded their immune charge, while the atmosphere was saturated with spores from now-destroyed spore colonies.

A solitary Arbiter dived exactly vertical toward the surface at the fastest speed possible, its shields rapidly melting away from the spores. Just before it fell apart, however, it recalled in another Arbiter as well as a Battlecruiser and a flight of Wraiths to continue the path downward.

The second Arbiter gradually fell apart too, but Recalled a third, as well as Travincal's Viking force, keeping the Swarm's minions busy while the key element continued unhindered. Then a fourth arbiter in a move that onlooking humans were beginning to call 'Recall Reloaded', alongside Valkyries; they were halfway to the surface, and now the resistance from the Swarm was becoming intense. A fifth Arbiter brought along a host of Scouts that entangled with the enemy; a sixth, a final fleet of Carriers, their interceptors passing into and out of battle. And so it was that the Ganthrithor was warped in - in pristine shape - barely half a mile from the Overmind's gigantic white eyeball in its eye socket, while five separate battles were being fought in various strata of the atmosphere and space above.

On board the Ganthrithor were most of Travincal's remaining nuclear warheads, and in the largest chamber, Tassadar and Daniel stood in the center, bluish wisps slowly emanating from the High Templar's body as the ritual Archon Meld began. Despite all the reassurances Tealdarin and Zeratul had given him, Daniel still felt unnatural amounts of fear creep upon him.

The light he produced only became more and more intense, the psionic signature more and more potent. Then the critical point had been reached; Tassadar flung his limbs over his head; the three nerve cords at the back of his head twisted together; and suddenly all of the carrier was eclipsed by the static from a sphere of living psionic potential that had replaced the two representatives of separate races.

An Archon.

((((Tassadar was right, Daniel IS a Xel'Nagan creation,)))) noted Zeratul as he and others watched from high orbit. ((((And what a fine one too.))))

The pulsing twilight star lit up the obsidian night sky, a single inextinguishable light in the midst of endless chaos, radiantly bluish-white, as it finished its plunge into the Overmind before it could attempt to transplant itself on a different planet.

The Archon had one final demand to make. ((((Remember us, Conclave. Remember what was done here today. May Adun watch over you.)))) *

There was a transient psionic shockwave so strong it took all Protoss in the galaxy into a coma for an entire day thereafter, that destroyed all instruments designed to measure influences along that plane, and - most importantly - plowed through and obliterated the immunity that had kept the Overmind immortal for so long.

Then the entire Eye of the Swarm vaporized in a heartbeat as fifty hydrogen bombs detonated over its iris simultaneously.

The Protoss may be put into a long coma, but the Zerg was dead.

Xenocide.

Full Circle
As the chaotic, swirling energies subsided, a heavy silence settled over the battlefields of Aiur. Due to Tassadar's noble sacrifice, the Overmind was now dead and the Zerg Swarms were scattered and broken. But as the heroes surveyed their once glorious homeland, they realized that their victory had cost them all but their lives. Aiur was left nothing more than a smoldering ruin. Those few Protoss who survived the final battle could only wonder what the future would hold for their race. *

Half a day had passed since the Eye had been vanquished.

Reconnaissance task forces reported that all the Zerg on not just Aiur, but all the other planets, had stopped dead in their tracks and begun to fester and decay; that the fliers had all fallen out of the sky or out of orbit. The galaxy was safe from the Swarm, and forever would be. Kerrigan was dead, which left no chance for recovery and a second War.

Already the Protoss who had fled the planet as refugees were returning as victors, Phasing in new structures from templates of bases on innumerable other worlds. Yet none of them had an even comparable amount of pylons as Aiur did in all its grandeur. The interval between each Phasing was now several times as long, for the Phasing generators were stretched and taxed to the limit; reconstruction was painstakingly slow. So far only a few paltry bases had been reestablished.

But those that were established bore a hallmark no other base had (except for the destroyed one on Bounty): Terran buildings mixed in among the Protoss structures.

Coexistence. Mutualism. Cooperation. Those were the key terms of the new society. Gone was the absurd distaste for the Dark Templar; gone was the mistrust of Terrans; gone was the secretiveness of Aiur's whereabouts; gone was the ever-pervasive threat of invasion by the Zerg.

The first and greatest of the settlements on Aiur, also the site of the new Conclave building and the embassy for the human race, was named in honor of a human: New Travincal.

And the Protoss were hailing each other with ((((En taro Tassadar!))))

Jaxtor burst into the Protoss representatives' room, an angry snarl on his face; in his hand he held a tablet with a speech-to-text converter active. "You traitors, you lied to Daniel, and now he's dead!"

Tealdarin and Zeratul looked at each other in surprised understanding, before the former began typing onto a keyboard so that Jaxtor could see what he had to say. "That's not exactly true--"

"Yes it is, and you know it! Why? Why did you do that? Never mind, I don't really want to know, it would only hurt me more. I trusted you Protoss," Jaxtor finished, a pained expression on is face, before turning around and leaving in his fit of anger.

When he sat back down at his station he saw text across it: "Remember the story you told us about the ostrich?"

That gave the rear admiral pause. Since when did others use his own tactics on him?! This was outrage! And yet... and yet, being an intelligent human being, it would not be right for him not to face this problem, so he typed back in reply. "What do you have to say?"

"Do you not consider his sacrifice to be worth it? If he had not done what he did today, the great War would have been lost. Our futures would be fated to destruction at the hands of the Zerg. Surely you cannot wish for that to pass?"

"Of course I do not. But at least you could have told him what he was getting himself into, because I don't think he would have wanted to die!"

"Exactly. If we had told him, this sacrifice would never have happened. He would have backed out, and never become the ultimate hero he is now."

Jaxtor did not know how to respond to that. ((True, Daniel didn't strike him as a typical bravado-filled marine; he always kept his cool and thought through things rationally, keeping himself out of trouble. Unlike Chris, who had to get himself killed... On the other hand, how different is Daniel's fate? Did they not both die? Christopher died in the glory of combat. Daniel? His glory might have been greater, but he had not wanted it to have happened.))

"Jaxtor, there is another great secret that we have yet to share with you."

No reply.

Tealdarin continued. "We too have lost a great leader, in our case Tassadar. Before he died, he declared that, should he succeed in his ultimate goal, he did not want to be brought back alive. Daniel never said as much. So, we shall be bringing him back - in due time."

"Can you, really?" Jaxtor could scarcely believe what his eyes were reading. ((The gift of a second life?!!!!))

"Since all of you currently on Aiur have been Phased here, the pylon matrix has a record of your bodies from back then. In addition, Daniel - another Daniel - still lives at Base Alpha on Char, which gives us the ability to capture his current biometric data. With this data, we will be able to recreate people, much like how we created the Terran fleet which now resides here."

Jaxtor might have been jumping for joy if there was a nagging part at the back of the brain that kept saying that this was too preposterous to be possible, that something was bound to go wrong.

Everything went just the way it should, however, in direct violation of Moore's Law, as mere seconds later a new Daniel appeared out of thin air.

Everyone rushed over to see if this were for real, then proceeded to bombard him with the worries they had been having of him all that time, asking what the experience of the Archon Meld was like...

"Oh oh everyone get off 'er me!" he shouted as he clambered to his feet. "I don't recall the experience of the Archon Meld, to be sincere--"

Jaxtor's ears perked up at this. "What, aren't you Daniel? The Daniel Travincal we knew so well?"

"Yep, I'm him, except a younger version," he said.

"Why, you look very tired to me, just like he was before he sacrificed himself," said an oblivious officer.

"Yeah, well that's because I Was incredibly over-strained when I entered the Ganthrithor. That must have been when the Nexus created its template of me, because I don't remember anything that happened after."

"Wait, but then that means... You weren't really revived back from the dead."

"No one can be, Jaxtor."

"But... But - the Protoss, they said--" he sputtered.

"True, I am a different Daniel than the one who died, but only fractionally so. You see, from the viewpoint of the Daniel who became the Archon, well, he's still dead, so he doesn't really have a viewpoint of speak of, eh?"

"Why, you! Give me my Daniel back!"

"Haven't I explained myself quite clearly already?" Daniel responded. "I'm still the same Daniel you have always known, except for that last part - that's where we diverge."

"But that other Daniel... he must still be dead..."

"He is, and always will be. Now, you're a psychology major, so you should at least know this: if you don't get over this slight inconsistency in me, then you'll never live the happy life you should. Just... think of me as Daniel, a Daniel from the past whose future lies with you all, but whose other identity would die in the future - that is, twelve hours ago."

"Argh! You're making my head spin!"

"Come on now, we've got other people to bring back, don't we?"

Jaxtor shot up at this. "Why, I almost forgot! Michael never had to die, we could bring him back--"

"If we did, he would still be the tormented soul we have known him to be for so long now."

"What?" ((How? But that must mean... that the earliest recorded template of Michael already was of a person psychologically irrecoverable... No...)) And then the reality of the situation sank in. This delayed Phasing process wasn't perfect by any means.

"So do you see? If we want to do Michael a favor, we will let the matter stay as it is. To do otherwise would be of no benefit to him and his soul whatsoever."

Jaxtor's fingers twitched. This entire situation was so harsh, so unforgiving, so... cold... To just leave Michael out there in the middle of nowhere, to cease to exist...

"Christopher, then?"

"Exactly," said Daniel with a grin that belied just how tired he was from having such a long run with so little sleep. From behind him materialized a new Christopher, causing everyone's already open mouths to drop still further.

"Just... don't tell Sarlena too much about these... specifics," admonished Daniel, before stepping out into the brilliant sunlight of the Aiurian day and succumbing to a nap beside a massive tree root that had miraculously managed to escape the ravages of the war unscathed.

Sarlena's face was quite a bit bruised from all the injury she had done to herself to vent her frustration and despair; and now her hands were bound to the wall in what was a very, very aching position just so that she couldn't hurt herself any more. Her mind was totally numb from all the internal tension and strife, that her stricken mind did not register for a long while as Rear Admiral Christopher entered the room, causing the guards to stagger in shock. She barely noticed when Christopher unlocked her fetters and carried her limp body in his arms, bringing her out of the desolate cell.

It was only a few minutes later, of being snuggled softly into her own bed with Christopher by her side, that she started to recover - slightly - from trauma.

"Who... are you?" she managed a disconcerted whisper.

Christopher turned around with a genuine smile. "Feeling better?" he asked softly and lovingly.

"Who are you?" Sarlena continued in her soft, weak voice.

"Chris. Do you recognize me?"

"Chris? Who's Chris..." She banged her fist on her forehead. "Christopher?" She suddenly turned around and looked at him with a dazed stare. "Chris... Christopher? The same Christopher that I fell in love with?"

"The same."

Sarlena dropped her gaze away from him as she pondered out loud. "Chris... But that can't be, you're dead, so if you're here, then that means... O, this must be heaven!"

"Yes, it is," he replied, caressing her.

"My God, I've already died!?"

"Err, no, that's not what I meant, you're still alive."

"What?" she snapped back. "Th-then you're... you're a... ghost--"

Christopher held her petite hand in his. "A ghost is neither tangible, nor warm."

"So... You're real? You've died but you're still alive?" She closed her eyes. "But, how does that work?" she asked mellowly. "But... you're dead, I saw you die with my own--"

She stopped as Christopher put two fingers over her mouth. "Hush, child. Don't think of things like that; they aren't meant for you. I didn't die in that fight," the video just lost track of me, that's all," he explained.

"Oh, I see, I knew it, I had always known it!" Sarlena's exclamations became steadily stronger and more excited as Chris's words sank in. "So all the time I thought you were gone, you were still around! You didn't die!" She instinctively reached across the bed and hugged him.

Christopher patted her back. "No, I didn't die, I didn't," he affirmed.

Sarlena was still quite suspicious, half of her mind wishing only to believe that this were true, the other half too entrenched in its belief that Christopher was definitely dead to think otherwise. ((Maybe the Protoss are playing tricks with me and my mind,)) she wondered. ((Is this really Christopher, or am I being brainwashed? Well, only the real one can know the truth.))

She hugged him even tighter, feigning complete trust, murmuring softly, "I knew you wouldn't, no, because when you left you promised that you would return no matter what..."

Christopher was about to say 'and so I have returned and fulfilled that promise', when he realized that he couldn't exactly recall that ever happening. He abruptly pushed her away, looking at her with peculiar eyes. "Say, what the heck is wrong with you, I Never said that!" ((Oops, maybe I shouldn't have hurt her so... Darn me...)) he instantly regretted it.

Sarlena was very much recovered. She looked him straight in the eye. "So, you're the real Christopher, not a fake sent by the Protoss to assuage me," she concluded.

"What the...? The Protoss would never be capable of such treachery, they're too noble for that," Christopher asserted. "...Oh, I get it now... You were testing me, weren't you?"

Sarlena looked into his eyes with a sheepish but angelic smile. "Yep, and you passed it!"

"Oh, look at you now, just started your recovery and testing me already!? Testing me, eh? Maybe I should be testing You!" he teased as he snuck up close to her.

And with delighted expressions on their faces, they tumbled over each other, falling off the bed and ending up exhausted on the floor as they traded desirous, ecstatic glances at each other while laughing helplessly.

The sunlight was beginning to fade a brilliant pink-purple as the evening sun crawled toward the horizon when Daniel finally awoke, significantly but not yet fully refreshed, and yawned with outstretched hands like he never had before, as a titillating giddiness coursed through his body. He picked himself up, and looked around. The forest here, like the forest the world over, was desecrated by the Zerg. Here and there were pulverized, splattered residues of the War, while majestically parked in front of him was the Hyperion, a massive metallic vessel stretching nearly a mile long.

((Was it all over? Had we truly won? Or at least, my other self? Is my other self truly gone, allowing me and the rest of us to live in peace?)) he pondered to himself. ((It all seemed to have been such a massive nightmare; now that it's over, it seems so surreal... No, it wasn't a nightmare. Because nightmares portray the horrible truth, while the truth isn't so horrible, and the Zerg are no longer part of that truth. It was just a really, really bad dream. Because dreams aren't true by the time one awakens from them, and they already seem to be so far away.))

((The War is over. And before us... well, let's just take that one engagement at a time.))

He opened his eyes, and thought he spied Jaxtor and others holding a picnic table.

No, that couldn't be; they were obviously hand-crafting and white-painting wooden benches. Row after row of them. Someone was working on a podium. ((Why would anyone be doing something like this?)) he asked himself. ((The War has just ended. Doesn't anyone want to take a much-deserved break?)) With a grunt, he picked himself up and walked toward the verdant hill where these constructions were being crafted.

Flowers were being adorned on an arch that was likewise made of wood and was slightly taller than the height of a man; nearby, balloons were being blown and glued to posts.

"What's going on here?" Daniel asked.

"Shh, hurry up, they're coming now," was all Raynor said in reply.

"Huh?"

Around him, everyone scrambled to move the furniture into position - and now there was a definite aisle, with a column of benches on either side, ending with the gate and podium.

"Some kind of ceremony?" Daniel wondered to himself. Probably another Protoss gimmick...

Just then Daniel led Sarlena out of the hatch of the battlecruiser from barely ten feet away - and found themselves gaping, blushing, at what had been set up. Everyone looked eagerly at the two, expectant.

The next moment Daniel had whirled on Sarlena and was down on a knee, kissing her hand. "Will you marry me?"

Sarlena was too stunned to say anything; the redness that crept up her face belied her embarrassment at being caught so totally off guard. She didn't want to answer right away; there was still some pondering she wanted to mull over...

Raynor threw up his hands. "Oh come on, we all saw what you were like when he left in that Viking, you were begging--"

Sarlena shot him a dour look that made him shut up instantly, then smiled as she recalled all the experiences she had shared with Christopher. ((Not a bad choice really. Oh stop kidding yourself, you've been waiting for this day for eternity already.))

Her lips were quivering as she prepared her reply, and as she accepted the proffered ring, she answered him:

"I do."

The End. --Yunzhong Hou 3/29/08