Harbinger/52

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."