Harbinger/40

Power in Perspective
((Thank goodness they have come!)) Daniel turned to look at the hologram and saw that a handful of golden blips had appeared, right in the middle of the fray. The Protoss immediately broadcast in human language across the entire communications spectrum so that everyone would hear their ultimatum: "We are the Protoss. You will make peace with each other. Resistance is futile."

To which General Duke replied, "We are the Dominion. You have violated Dominion space and must either surrender control of your ships or face destruction."

To which the Protoss replied, "The young are ever so insolent."

Daniel activated a viewscreen so that he could watch the unfolding battle. A solid golden carrier stood resplendent in space and over a hundred interceptors blossomed forth, lashing at the Dominion forces with the bluish spheres of photon torpedoes. Any Wraith the torpedoes struck immediately vanished into a cloud of brilliant debris, whereas laser beams and even missiles impacted harmlessly across the golden starfighters' deflector shielding. Only under intense concentrated fire from many attacks did the shields of only a few of them give out. In this way they quickly cleared the neighboring region of the startled Dominion starfighters.

Beside the carrier were six golden needleships, their three thin, long legs bundled together around their solitary ion cannon. Immediately they fired endless beams of energy so concentrated one could see their paths from the side. The ion cannons flashed across the sky, brilliant white lines of obliteration. No matter what evasive action the starfighters' pilots took, any that the needleships decided to strike at were instantly flash-vaporized. One frigate, which had shrugged off hundreds of hits from Combine lasers and turbolasers, gave out in five seconds and detonated under fire from a single ion beam which had gone right through the ship and out the other end. The needleship then dragged its deadly beam across the skies, hunting for more targets and vaporizing all it touched. Other frigates likewise detonated shortly after ion cannons slashed across them, easily burning right through the thick plating and burning holes into the delicate fusion reactors on board.

Also present was a solitary golden dreadnought, resembling a giant flying saucer significantly larger than a battlecruiser. At the center of the saucer was a beaming device surrounded by ten ion cannons, all pointing inward toward it. The ion cannons lit up simultaneously, and the beaming device glowed breathtakingly prettily. The next moment the focused beam of the ion cannon array had struck out at an oblique angle at a Dominion battlecruiser. In a split second, it had cleanly cut through the vessel, causing them to instantly split into white-hot halves that then promptly erupted into spectacular fireballs. The armor gave away as if it didn't even exist; the ion beam cut through the ship like a knife cuts through butter. A second later, the ion cannon array fired again, its super-intense ray delivering the same fate to a second ship as it had given to the first. Like all the other Protoss vessels, the dreadnought's shielding easily deflected any threat directed its way.

The Dominion vessels abruptly stopped firing, turned and fled back the way they came using their by comparison painstakingly slow gravitic drives. The combined Terran-Protoss fleet tagged along right after them, none of them firing any more.

General Duke sent out on a basic frequency, "What is it you want?" Daniel could tell from the somewhat toned-down haughtiness that the big man had been humbled. The Protoss set up a four-way channel.

"We merely want you to stop fighting each other," came the transmission from the Protoss Pride of Aiur. It was Ariel's voice.

"Yeah, well, you've persuaded us all right," muttered Edmund.

"Humanity should work together to defeat its common threat."

"That's exactly what Emperor Mengsk wants to do!"

"True, but only after he FIGHTS and crushes all resistance to his rule. And as we all know, a tyranny is highly unstable. That would only be helping the Zerg."

"I believe that what Mengsk wants to accomplish is right."

"And you also believed that you could walk all over Moria. Things just don't turn out the way they apparently would. Here, why don't the three of you make friends, and we'll moderate?"

"Well, Johnson, I can be quite sure that our two groups are now in an alliance, aren't we?" asked Daniel.

"You bet."

"I cannot speak for the emperor. I also believe that it will take a while for him to decide if, when, and how we are to establish a truce. You will just have to wait."

"You must come together in the end. As a sign of good faith we hereby are establishing a blinking drive on one of your ships," said Ariel.

"WHAT!?! How can you do that?" Daniel exclaimed. Giving the enemy a blinking drive could very easily make matters worse.

"You've done what? Oh no, you've tampered with my ship!" protested Edmund rather helplessly.

"Would you rather we blew it to smithereens?" Ariel asked rhetorically, to which Edmund shut up.

"But Ariel, why?!?"

"It is not every day that the Protoss encounter a new technology we have not developed ourselves. The hyperspace inhibitor is a marvel and certainly has important strategic consequences. We have now assimilated it."

"Oh no you did not just steal our hard-earned techs!" exclaimed Edmund in dismay.

"Think of this as a just trade: the blinking drive is far more useful to you than the hyperspace inhibitor is to us. Besides, we do have the advantage of being the premier race around here. I suggest you don't try to get on our bad side," Ariel threatened. Edmund gulped, then terminated the connection.

"Ariel... why?"

"Well, one way to help facilitate a truce and mutual cooperation is to present a gift to the other party. Surely you must know of that psychology?"

"Damn it, Ariel, I've met Mengsk before, and he isn't that kind of person! He is crafty and will certainly see in the blinking drive a way to continue fighting. Now he's going to do what any sensible person in his position would do: congregate all his fleets together into one large Imperial Fleet with the blinking drive at its core."

"There's really no need to worry, Daniel. You trust in our ability to protect you, do you not? Our fleets are many, many magnitudes more powerful than all the forces of the Dominion combined."

"No, thank you, I would rather trust in myself and my own abilities and commands. You know, it's the human way of doing things."

"Right. I see you want to have something to help protect your fleet against the relatively overwhelming might of the Dominion fleets. That's fine. With this new hyperspace inhibitor technology added to our arsenal, we figured that it is okay to give you another gift. You shall now have your personal Protoss guardian starship."

Right before his eyes Daniel saw a new ship come out of hyperspace. Easily larger than the Hyperion, the Guardian too was a golden vessel, but shaped like a butterfly, with a long and slender main section and two symmetric pairs of what could only be called the starship's wings.

((((How do I control this thing?))))

((((Telepathically, as usual. You already know how to use the Guardian. Just tell it to do what you want it to do, and it will do it. We have also already applied the recently assimilated interdiction technology into the Guardian, so that now you can use it to trap ships in normal space indefinitely.))))

Daniel tested a command, ((((Bubble shield!))))

The Guardian's wings shifted position. Something happened which could not be seen, and the next moment Daniel's fleet was wrapped from top down in the translucent, incredibly resilient spherical shield, with a radius of up to two hundred kilometers, that gave this ship class its name. At the same time, he felt something warm swell up within him. He looked down and saw his Khaydarin amulet shining a resplendent rich violet.

"I can get used to this..." Daniel said to himself with a smile.

Daniel spoke to the adjutant, "All right, everything resolved here. I want us back home immediately and a report of battle damage written within the hour." He stood up and left the room, just as the space around him flickered as they entered hyperspace.

Loomings
After the confrontation, the Harbinger Fleet had most of its ships still functional - and repairs had already been initialized by the engineering crews on each of the vessels. But at the moment, whatever functionality the human ships had were absolutely useless.

Daniel seated at the admiral's seat in the well-fortified, well-lit bridge, a hologram of his fleet in right front of him. On the far wall was the main viewscreen, depicting the spectacle happening outside.

His ships were arrayed in wall formation, all of them pointed at a Wraith starfighter in close proximity to a solitary golden vessel, one that looked remarkably like a titanic angel. Interspersed around the fleet's attacking starships were Wraith starfighters, not moving but merely hovering in space where they were. From each of the Wraiths' three burst laser turrets came intermittent bursts of intense light; from the many large turrets on the starships shot forth the much more powerful turbolasers as well as complements of Halo rockets and Apollo missiles. The brilliant red spheres of Yamato Guns shot at their targets as well. An endless barrage of explosions filled the center of the screen and all around the golden vessel, as a perfectly spherical shield continued to flicker with a light blue glow around the target ship, protecting the otherwise vulnerable wraith from all harm. Out from the surface of this shielding erupted the explosions of innumerable weapons detonations, causing glowing white and yellow fireworks all around it. The two vessels was not returning fire of any kind; the golden one seemed to have no ability other than to generate its many-kilometer-wide shield.

And yet, that one shield had the entire Harbinger Fleet stumped. Neither laser nor explosive could get through, and the stalemate had been ongoing for a full minute now.

"Admiral, the Guardian reports its shielding have only been drained by 15 percent. At this rate it will take our combined fleet another five minutes to break through," said the adjutant.

"Understood. If the Guardian's shielding ever falls to below 10 percent I want all fire on it to stop immediately. Judging by its shield capacity, there's no telling how much damage we will do to our prize if we let a single hit get through that shield, and we do not have the technology to repair or reproduce any part of that vessel," ordered Daniel. He had already lost interest in watching the attrition continue - it was quite evident that this solitary ship - HIS ship - would be a tide-turner in any battle to come. If he were to engage all of Mengsk's fleets now, he could easily destroy them all in the time it took for them to drain the Guardian of its shields...

The moment Daniel had realized that he would be in command of Guardian he had devised the course of action that had resulted in this. He already knew that a Guardian had tremendous protective powers, but he needed to gauge just how much so in real situations. Even losing a Guardian - which to the Harbinger Fleet was one of a kind - paled in comparison to learning of any weaknesses the Guardian might have, especially since it was possible he may encounter a Protoss fleet led by the Dark Ones. Intrigued by the way Daniel was treating a gift and the most prized ship in his fleet, Ariel stood mute on the bridge.

Daniel turned to Christopher. "Imagine that this Guardian and its Wraith is an enemy vessel. In this time that one Wraith could have put one or two Valkyries out of commission, and in another five, it could knock out all three of our Hyperion-class battlecruisers. I want these shields drained in less than five minutes. See if you can come up with any effective strategy."

Christopher nodded, then spoke into his comlink, "Christopher speaking. All vessels hold your fire. Squadron One, on my mark, fire one nuke, set to detonate right in front of the bubble shield, then take evasive maneuvers... Mark!"

"You're going to use a nuke?" Daniel asked, alarmed.

"Against that kind of resilience, it's our best hope."

From the bow of the Flannum's Legacy shot out a warhead. It exploded, sending vaporized, hotter-than-a-star metallic fragments through space in all directions. Roughly half of them struck the quantum shielding, causing the bubble shield to suddenly go entirely white - as if there were a temporarily new star right there. The hundreds of other fragments came right back at the assembled fleet, which quickly picked up the projected paths of each fragment and maneuvered themselves to avoid taking damage. One palm-sized fragment - it would be more accurate to describe it as a spray of energy - slightly touched one moderately damaged Valkyrie on the side. The next instant the entire ship had been vaporized into a similar but much larger spray of energy, drifting aimlessly and lifelessly in space.

"We lost a Valkyrie," reported the adjutant.

"You just can't compare the chemical energy with nuclear power," stated Sarlena.

"How much damage did we do?"

"The nuclear blast did not penetrate. The Guardian's power reserves have fallen to 70 percent."

"Good God!"

"Yeah, it seems this 'angel ship' is indestructible, doesn't it? Only fifteen percent. Fire two more nukes."

"Bombs away." Another two nukes launched toward their target, erupting likewise. The bubble shielding flared brilliantly.

"Negative. Still no signs of penetration. The Guardian's power reserves have fallen to 69 percent."

That last number left everyone stunned. "That... barely made a dent," muttered James. It was one thing to think one would need seven nukes to drain such a vessel. It was another matter entirely to think one would need over hundred of them.

"It seems the ship's automated response and resistance is unbelievably swift," remarked Daniel. "In the future, if we were to engage an enemy fleet with such vessels we will need to deploy seven nukes to each of them and detonate simultaneously if we are to have any hope of success."

"Why don't we try using Shockwave?" asked Christopher.

"Good idea; let's do it, Chris!"

"Chris again. Bring up that Explorer science vessel we have, and deploy a Shockwave device." On the viewscreen, one such vessel rapidly propelled itself up to get a good view of the Guardian, then released what clearly resembled a missile. Only in this case, it detonated a little distance away from the target vessel, releasing an expanding ring of destabilizing quantum energy. For a split second the Guardian's quantum shielding became an opaque light blue as the shockwave traversed the surface area of the bubble shield. "Results?"

"Guardian's shields down to 62 percent and holding," stated the adjutant.

"All right, hurry up and deploy ten more," ordered Chris. Ten more distortionary eruptions took place right at point-blank to the ship.

"It's just like with the nukes, sir! Shielding still at 60 percent." Several of the officers groaned in dismay. They were now clearly out of ideas.

"Everyone, this is Daniel. Cease firing. Chris, let's try a cloaked warhead. Perhaps this is a ship without adequate detection capabilities." Daniel then turned to Ariel. "Fine ship," he commended, though the compliment was really intended for the Protoss which he knew could listen to him through her.

"Why thank you," Ariel replied with a gracious smile.

"Tell me, if the Protoss have THAT kind of power, why can't they clear out all the Zerg?"

"I thought I told you this before; there are simply too many of them, and they are spread too thinly for us to hunt them down effectively."

"The things I have seen today... I mean, I knew ever since I saw the Protoss over Antiga that they were powerful, but this... this is entirely imbalanced."

"How do you say it? War is not fair."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's that?" queried Raynor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So here comes retribution."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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