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Chapter 1
"Our conflict with the terrans was inevitable, even if neither side predicted it would be on neither of our terms. I made the best choices I could with the intelligence available to me. I regret only that I did not foresee the enemy that came from within our own ranks."
—Last Testament of Judicator Assmael
Deep within the Protoss Empire, sometime in the early-mid 2490s A.D.
The shuttle ride was uneventful. Tassadar took a moment to admire the sights. Work had been so hectic recently that he had rarely enjoyed the simple pleasures. The shuttle passed dozens of golden skyscrapers that extended for hundreds of meters into the skies of Seventh Aiur. It was a core world of the Protoss Empire, part of the Jeweled Stars in fact, but the most exciting thing that ever happened was paperwork… mountains and mountains of paperwork that took centuries to complete.
"Destination reached," the shuttle's speech synthesizer said. "Please exit the vehicle. The Judicator is awaiting your arrival."
Tassadar stepped out and came face to face with the Great Observatory of Khaji Da. It was an imposing edifice of golden arches and glowing psi-crystals that rose for hundreds of kilometers into the sky, but Tassadar merely blinked the sleep from eyes.
He made his way inside, the dozens of automatic doors opening for him with but a thought. He passed numerous robed and armored figures that incessantly talked and tapped on psi-crystal slates without regard for his presence.
After navigating a maze-like assortment of rooms, Tassadar found himself entering the one he was looking for. As with every other room, its interior was decorated with elaborate designs of gold and other precious metals. However, what immediately drew Tassadar's gaze was a strange, tentacled creature floating in a stasis pod.
Zekrath was already waiting for him, wearing his typical baroque headdress (complete with wind chimes) and flowing sable robes. As a member of the Shelak tribe, specifically a hyperborean bloodline, his dark robes contrasted starkly against his bone white skin and orange eyes.
Beside the Judicator was the less memorable Forthum, who wore a more modest tunic—albeit elaborately embroidered and gilded. The grey fabric stood out against his pale green skin and lime green eyes, a relic of his Furinax bloodline, but nowhere near as much as his companion.
Tassadar knew his unenlightened silver-skinned ancestors had always found the pallid faces creepy, but by the grace of the Khala he had long overcome his species' inherent tendency toward racism. Whether one's skin was green or white, one was still protoss and worthy of respect.
Tassadar bowed, as was customary. "I am at your disposal, Judicator Zekrath, Master Khalai Forthum," he greeted.
"Your presence inspires feelings of safety already, Executor Tassadar. Rise honored warrior, there is no need for formality here," said the Judicator.
Tassadar rose. He gestured to the cell and asked, "This creature… I assume you have a full report ready?"
Forthum nodded. "The report was uploaded to your personal computer. However, I believe what I am about to show you will convey far more than words and pictures."
The Master Khalai held up a psi-crystal. The psi-crystals, as all-purpose superconductors and computing substrate depending on how they were prepared, were ubiquitous in protoss technology. The psi-crystal in the Master Khalai's hand was cut and inset for use as a personal communicator.
"Listen to it," he said.
Tassadar frowned but focused his third eye on the psi-crystal. "Third eye" was a misnomer, as the nerve cords used for telepathy and second sight did not resemble eyes at all, but using them felt very similar to using an eye in many ways. Unlike a real eye, however, the third eye "saw" by emitting psychic waves which bounced off compatible targets and then back to the third eye to give the illusion of sight.
The communicator was emitting a regular series of pulses, which he quickly recognized as speech of some kind. "Find Humanity, Eradicate, Learn, Evolve… Find Humanity, Eradicate, Learn, Evolve…" The message repeated in an endless loop.
The templar gasped in shock and glanced at the cell. Sure enough, the revolting ruddy creature floating serenely in the cell was releasing psychic waves. It was looking at him, and he was sure it had been since he entered the room.
The Executor glanced over and noticed a similar expression on the Judicator.
"How is this possible?" asked Zekrath. "It looks like a mere animal! How is this creature able to use psi-crystals as easily as we do? Where did you find it?" He would have known, as his librarian kinsmen specialized in experimentation on psi-crystal technology.
Tassadar wiped invisible dust off his shoulder to conceal his composure and replied. "The Venatir scouts found a number of these creatures drifting on the borders of our space. At first we considered them nothing more than a curiosity, but then one of the scouts noticed that the creatures always maintained a distance from the border and never entered our space."
The Executor was the leader of an exploratory fleet from aboard his flagship Gantrithor. As mandated by the Great Stewardship, it was his sacred duty to discover new worlds and new civilizations that could be annexed for the glory of the empire.
Forthum interjected and continued for him, "Given that they can utilize psi-crystals, I suspect they are some kind of deep space probe. Detailed observations and conjecture are recorded in the full report."
The Judicator shrugged in disbelief. "Probes? I know of no species that sends probes like these. I can name the number of species that utilize psi-crystals on the fingers of one hand," he said.
"I do not believe they are xel'naga, if that is what you fear, Judicator," explained Forthum. "They match no confirmed design of xel'naga technology, nor any of the myths surrounding them. In all likelihood, the designers either reverse engineered xel'naga relics or—"
"Were engineered by the xel'naga themselves?" offered Tassadar.
The Xel'naga. A name that meant "first ones," "wanderers from afar" or "great teachers" depending on what language you spoke and in which time period. Their legacy was shrouded in myth and conflated with that of the Old Empire. They had been worshiped as gods in the older, now forbidden faiths. They were credited with the seeding of life in the galaxy or even its outright creation. They were credited with teaching the protoss how to use their "magic," or even claimed as their direct genetic ancestors.
This was something of a sore point among the Shelak. Their ancestors had once worshiped the xel'naga even after the Departure and through the Aeon of Strife; indeed, they were among the most zealous factions during the Tal'darim Crusades. To add insult to injury, they were uniquely permitted access to the forbidden xel'naga teachings after the institution of the Khala's Law under the restriction that they gave up their faith. What choice did they have?
"Possibly," began the Judicator, suddenly calming. He looked upward in thought and tapped his chin absently. "Contrary to popular belief, the xel'naga were not gods and they did not create life. Those myths were promulgated—"
The Executor crossed his arms and frowned. "While I would love to have a history lesson, Judicator, I do not believe this is the right time," he said, interrupting.
Zekrath raised his shaven eyebrows and rubbed his hands together. "My apologies, Executor. I am a librarian, after all," he added. That did not actually explain anything; it was almost like he loved the sound of his own voice.
The Executor nodded and glanced back at the cell. "They recently began migrating, but I did not stay to chart their course. Can we track them?" he asked.
The Master Khalai nodded and his green eyes briefly flashed. "Already done, Executor. A concentration of probes was detected heading in the direction of Koprulu sector."
"Koprulu? Forgive me if I do not recognize the name."
"The Koprulu sector is on the frontier of the empire. Point of fact, it is well within the estimated territory of the Old Empire and was marked for the Reconquista yet never reclaimed. Blame the vagaries of the bureaucracy, I suppose." The Master Khalai shrugged as he said the last words.
Tassadar narrowed his eyes. "What do we know of this humanity species? I assume they live in the sector?"
Forthum beamed. "A fair amount, actually," he began. "The Koprulu sector is located in the outer rim, and contains colonies of humanity. Although they call themselves "terrans," but I am not sure what the names connote at this time." He waved a hand absently.
At this point the Master Khalai went silent for a moment then continued in a much quieter manner. "This species is warlike in the extreme. The most recent records date back to centuries ago, when they first arrived in the Koprulu sector. However, the local bureaucrats were able to decrypt their technology and send an incomplete copy of the terran's own historical records. But…"
"Master Khalai?"
"The terrans have industrialized atrocity. They… they built camps and facilities for the sole purpose of slaughtering their own kind, of committing rape and—"
"Enough!" cried Tassadar. He could feel the Judicator's mounting horror and revulsion through the Khala's Light. The feeling made his skin crawl.
Forthum shuddered then continued with a lighter tone. "They are greedy and destructive. They claim planets for mining and ruin the native ecosystems with reckless abandon. Eventually, I suspect they may try to claim our worlds."
"Then they will fail and rue their mistake," said Tassadar. He turned to the doorway. "Come, Judicator. I suspect the Conclave will want to hear of this, if they have not already."
"They have already prepared your orders," said Zekrath.
The Executor glanced back at the Judicator, wide-eyed and sputtering. Multiple accusations came to the forefront of his. Had Zekrath gone over his head? Was he only notified after the fact? Did the Conclave send for him after Forthum had made his report?
The Judicator looked down at the floor as he continued, "It has not been finalized yet, but from what I overheard… they want you to lead—well, they want your Gantrithor to join an expedition into terran space to investigate the destination of the probes. You should be honored, Executor."
Meanwhile, on the Terran/Protoss border...
"En Taro Adun, Master Khalai Menbellir."
The Master Khalai bowed to the Executor as the latter entered the observatory in her typically gaudy golden armor. It had been recently warped onto the remote moon to help monitor the transmissions of the terrans across the other side of the Koprulu border. As Executor and Master Khalai of the border patrol fleet, the thankless task of spying on lesser species fell to them.
"En Taro Adun, Executor Andinunn," he greeted.
Andinunn waved her hand in dismissal. "There is no need for such formality, Master Khalai. We are all Protoss here. Now what was this matter of strategic value you wished to discuss?" she asked.
Menbellir rose and wiped imaginary dust from his simple though elaborately embroidered tunic. He prodded a sheet of psi-crystal clutched in one rosy-skinned hand, moving twinkling numbers across the display. He started pacing around the observatory, blinking his white eyes and turning his ornately adorned head from side to side as the gears in his mind worked overtime.
"I noticed something very odd recently, but then that would make sense since this point on the psionic matrix is new. But I digress… my instruments both here and at other listening posts have detected an unusual amount of psychic traffic," he explained.
Andinunn frowned. "How is it so? The terrans do not communicate on psychic wavelengths," she said.
Menbellir paused in his step. He turned towards a device in the middle of the room and waved at it. Immediately, a projection of star systems appeared above the device. Several labels appeared at certain systems and the display zoomed on one in particular, a moon on the outer fringe of terran territories near the far edge of the border.
"Few of them possess any measurable degree of telepathy, but they do build devices capable of sending and receiving on psychic wavelengths. On a number of remote planets, like this one," he gestured to the projector, "they seem to be sending indiscriminate psychic signals, probably with artificial signal boost. For whatever reason, I cannot hazard a guess."
"Furthermore," he continued as the projector changed to another planet, this one labeled MINING COLONY, FORMER KMC, "there is an unusual amount of psychic traffic on a few of the outermost mining colonies, but it does not match terran brain waves. At the same time, conventional communication signals had steadily decreased…"
The image suddenly zoomed in, focusing on a spherical metal object in high orbit. "Aside from a science vessel believed to belong to the Confederate military organization Epsilon Squadron. They constantly change their encryption and release misinformation to prevent the rebels from interfering, so I cannot verify the accuracy. What is particularly strange is that the vessel is jamming communications and travel to and from the planet."
Andinunn shook her head and sighed. "Not strange at all. You remember what happened to Korhal?"
The two shuddered in unison.
The Executor stroked her gold-painted chin with a pale-green hand, her gold-painted claws clicking slightly. "It is perfectly in keeping with the Confederacy to engage in unethical experiments," she mused. "You heard the rumors? Supposedly they were eying our worlds on the other side of the border."
The Koprulu sector had been part of the Old Empire during the Lost Age prior to the Aeon of Strife. It had remained outside of protoss hands for millennia and so had been marked as part of the Reconquista centuries prior. Unfortunately, since then the sector had been claimed by the rapidly expanding terrans. The Great Stewardship had forbid direct intervention with species that did not meet their criteria as potential trading partners, despite the insult made by stealing their territory. Given their warlike, greedy and self-destructive nature, the terrans did not qualify.
"Degenerates," said Menbellir.
Andinunn held up a meticulously manicured hand. As an Aurigan, the thrill of discovery was something she understood all too well. "It is not our place to judge them, Master Khalai, only keep them in check should they forget their place. Nonetheless, I believe this deserves to be investigated. I trust you know what to do?"
Menbellir glanced down and tapped a few times on his psi-crystal sheet, then glanced back at the Executor.
"More observers have been dispatched to the areas of interest, with instructions to answer directly to your command. They may not breathe or feel, but they are my children nonetheless. Use them wisely."
She turned toward the entrance to the chamber, the door opening at her telepathic command.
"Executor, when do you plan on alerting our most esteemed judicator? If my suspicions are correct this could extend our tour on the border for months, perhaps indefinitely," he added.
Andinunn did not turn around.
"The Most Esteemed Nuun-Min will be informed once we have discovered something worth bothering her about," she answered after a moment. "She already dislikes the terrans more than you do."
"For good reason, I might add," said a third voice.
Andinunn's eyes bulged. Nuun-Min was standing on the other side of the doorway, arms crossed over her chest.
"Ah yes, the infamous templar confidence," the judicator started as she glided into the room, her eye-searing robes rustling melodramatically. "I appreciate the effort, Executor, but you know I did not choose an assignment in the backwaters of the galaxy—many tens of thousands of light years away from home—out of simple charity. We have no idea how many artifacts of the Old Empire or forgotten weapons from the Aeon of Strife are buried across the sector, nor how many the ignorant terran archaeologists are uncovering without understanding of their purpose or danger. If you even suspect they are planning something remotely…" she paused for dramatic effect, "unsightly, then I should be the first to know about it. Especially if it might extend our stay."
While travel by warp gate (mediated through the psionic matrix) would have allowed the fleet to travel to Aiur more or less instantly compared to years of travel by warp drive, in practice the resources required to build and sustain the whole affair as well as the bureaucratic red tape involved meant that the entire process would most likely take weeks or months at the least.
The Executor resisted the urge to sigh. "Your pardon, Judicator, but I said that we might set course for Aiur within the month, not—"
"Yes," the judicator interrupted, "barring new sightings. I said as much in my last report to the Conclave, as well as the fact that our present forces are, and I quote, more than capable of dealing with any conceivable threat."
Andinunn shrugged. "If I may be so bold to suggest it, the terrans are hardly a threat," she said.
"To us, the gardeners of the galaxy," Nuun-Min replied. "But our garden cannot defend itself. Any life that does not follows our laws or grows out of our control—"
"Is a problem to be solved… or eliminated," the executor finished. "As the good book says," she added.
The judicator nodded.
Menbellir silently watched the exchange and gave an internal sigh. This was why he was glad that the Khalai were not required to attend courses in the political sciences. It was such a headache...
On the outskirts of the Uilila System, Koprulu sector
On the bridge of her command carrier, the Balance of Judgment, Executor Andinunn stared at the former Kel-Morian mining colony through the observation window. The carrier was not actually in orbit of the planet, but receiving telemetry from a nearby observer while hiding in the shadow of a moon on the edge of the system.
The fourth planet of the star christened Uilila by the terrans, it had a storied history. It was first settled by independent mining guilds decades previous, and then the Kel-Morian Combine arrived and started competing with their supposedly secure mining claims. One miner, Usagi Hidalgo, was so incensed that he was seemingly killed by the unintentional detonation of a nuclear device he had acquired for the presumed purpose of revenge. The twenty megaton explosion caused little physical damage to the rest of the planet, but the fallout caused by inferior construction resulted in severe climatic shifts. Not that this was much of a problem, since the planet was uninhabitable to begin with, only barely habitable after years of terraforming, and only needed enough habitability to support the few mining settlements that dotted the surface. Indeed, most mining was done on the asteroids and uninhabited planets of the system.
After the Guild Wars in the first half of the 80s, the planet and its affiliated guilds were confiscated by the Confederacy. During the late 80s, a cholera pandemic broke out across the fringe worlds and provoked the largest humanitarian crisis in history. Although media reports claimed the pandemic was caused by improperly sanitized water treatment equipment manufactured by a now bankrupt interstellar corporation, Andinunn suspected that the truth was far more sinister in light of recent events.
Most of Uilila IV was evacuated to temporary housing and had yet to resettle the planet. The few who remained were members of survivalist groups that avoided the outbreak by carefully controlling their water sources and treatment process. Despite their supposed presence on the planet, Uilila IV and many other worlds affected by the outbreak were still placed under quarantine. Ostensibly this was to protect ongoing sanitation efforts and ensure that the outbreak did not recur, but the token military presence and mobile minefield in orbit of the planet put all of the Executor's lingering doubts to rest.
In addition to the minefield a series of relay buoys continually broadcast a jamming signal across orbit, preventing communication with the planet save by tight-beam. It was reasonable to assume that the buoys communicated with one another, the mines and the science vessel through high-powered lasers.
The mines were not simple bombs left floating in space. The mines maintained a constant, regular holding pattern around the planet, occasionally releasing jets of exhaust to maintain their position. If any unidentified craft tried to approach the planet, these smart mines would probably seek them out before exploding to maximize the damage inflicted.
Although observers of sufficient size could be fit with warp drives, the minefield was too close to the planet's gravity well for said observers to jump around it without an unacceptably high risk of swerving and crashing into the surface… or worse, emerging inside and thus fusing with it. That would be a needless waste of a perfectly good observer.
The Executor considered her options. Behind her stood Nuun-Min on her left and Menbellir on her right. The Master Khalai tapped at a blinking crystal sheet, presumably evaluating the possibilities. The Judicator hovered silently, her pallid face and burning eyes remaining stony. Though the Executor and the Judicator bore little resemblance to one another, they were both part of the Auriga tribe—albeit different clans within it.
After the Aeon of Strife had scattered the tribes across the Known Worlds, their bloodlines continued to divide just as they had on ancient Aiur. During the Reconquista, many tribes and clans were assimilated into others with whom they founded shared special interests. Though the Khala's Law stressed that tribes, clans and bloodlines should not stand in the way of protoss' unity, its influence could not simply undo centuries of pride and nationalism even if it could create cripplingly painful, war-ending empathy overnight. Negative emotions were always much greater motivators than positive ones. So they remained a cornerstone of the Empire's multicultural populace, crafting an elaborate web of loyalties and filial piety.
Nuun-Min could have passed for a hyperborean Shelak, but the same could be said for many hyperborean bloodlines. Given the importance of solar radiation in the synthesis of calcium-absorbing vitamins, tribes that settled in the Polar Regions either became more efficient in using what they had or else lost pigmentation to better absorb sunlight. Both approaches had merit and drawbacks, but with the advent of the Psionic Matrix to power their technology and transfer nourishment directly to their bodies, tribes no longer had to deal with such difficulties of daily living. Nonetheless, the phenotypical differences remained and many clans took great pride in their uniqueness.
Indeed, there was still a fair amount of resistance to interracial marriages even after centuries of unity. Andinunn still struggled to avoid losing her composure whenever someone was shocked by her admission that her sister—her own sister—was wed to a hyperborean judicator. And he was of the same tribe! Even the caste system was struggling to remain relevant, as more and more people were changing their caste. The castes were originally devised to be hereditary and centuries past the idea of changing one's caste was utterly alien, unless one was an elder and initiated as an honorary judicator. That in itself was only a compromise to ensure that every tribe had a voice on the Judicator Assembly and the Conclave that oversaw governance of the Empire, but it was still an admission by Khas himself that his divine mandate was less than perfect.
Despite the fact that they were probably twenty-third cousins by marriage, Andinunn did not appreciate the judicator's entitlement. Indeed, the fact that they were part of the same tribe made her even less tolerant. How dare that brat talk back to her in such a manner! In front of the Master Khalai no less! Menbellir had served the fleet long before she was born and to be treated like that in front of him… it did not help that, when she had been protégé to the previous executor, she had nursed a crush on the older werman for almost a century. It was probably those huge eyebrows, that thick beard, the detailed engineering knowledge…
She took a moment to clear her thoughts and turned around to face them.
"Master Khalai, what stands in our way?" she asked.
"As I surveyed through the observers, a fair amount. The minefield limits our deployment to stealth craft and the jamming signals forces us to rely on tight-beam or gate-based communication. There is nothing preventing us from sending my observers directly to the planet, but we cannot receive their telemetry without such workarounds or waiting for them to return with recordings. There is no guarantee they will return, for that matter."
Nuun-Min started to say something, but stopped. Andinunn noticed the judicator glance at her sideways, but only for a moment. The executor suspected that her frustration had not been lost on her would-be advisor. Thank the Khala and all the ancestors resting in the Seven Winds for small mercies.
"Do you have a suggestion, Judicator?"
(Nuun-Min did have a suggestion, but she did not want to overstep her bounds. She had already made the misstep of letting her emotions dictate her actions. Damn her impatience! It was a huge inconvenience to stay in Koprulu after she had entertained the delusion that she would return home to her husband and son, but that gave her no right to take out her frustration on the Executor and especially not under the gaze of the great and respectable Master Khalai. There was the very real possibility he would be eligible for initiation into the Judicators within the near future, perhaps even the Assembly, but that was beside the point. The Khalai were the backbone of the Empire, the four columns of heaven and earth, the lifeblood of their people. Out of every werman, wifman, woman and child within the Empire, why had she been born to a judicator family? What dishonor was she guilty of in a past life?
She cast her caution to the Seven Winds once again and answered the question.)
"I do, Executor. Given that this is, as the terrans say, a black operation, I believe I know Templar who are more than qualified to carry out the necessary reconnaissance." Taking the Executor's silence as a tacit agreement, she continued, "My Sargas bodyguards should not have any problem taking your orders and overseeing the observers on your behalf."
The Sargas tribe served the Judicators as loyal enforcers and assassins of the highest order. Yet they concealed a dark and sordid history. Along with other infamous tribes, they steadfastly resisted the homogenizing influence of the Khala and continue to practice and even exaggerate their ancient cultural traditions. During the crisis of the rogue tribes, when the very future of their species was put to the test by apocalyptic psychic storms, they were infamous for the relatively high number of rogues that were drawn from their clans. This placed the Sargas squarely in the path of the Judicators' wrath, but somehow they were able to not only redeem themselves for the sins of their brethren but claim a highly coveted position near the heart of the Empire's politics. Even the similarly guilty Venatir tribe somehow laid claim to a near-monopoly on the Great Fleet's reconnaissance operations that the Auriga, who themselves held a near-monopoly on aerospace operations across the Empire save in this regard, never found reason to question.
Wondering why the Protoss would require assassins was difficult to contemplate, united as they were by the Khala. It was easy enough to assume that the assassins were sent only after the unenlightened leaders of other species whose governments needed to be toppled with the utmost subtlety. By the same token, the Judicators were known to train themselves influencing the minds of others and in extreme cases rewriting memories. Such manipulations against their own kind would be transparent under the Khala's Light, but other species were not so lucky. Andinunn refused to pursue the implications of such thought further.
"I do not question the soundness of your judgment, Judicator," the Executor began, "but would it not be more prudent to sent the Venatir? Their stealth vessels would come quite handy here."
"Why not both? Forgive me for interrupting, but their diversity is our strength, would you not agree, Executor?" interjected Menbellir.
Andinunn and Nuun-Min nodded. "Continue," said the Executor.
"Both excel in stealthy travel, yes, but under different circumstances if I recall correctly. The Venatir could slip past the terrans' quarantine while the Sargas could oversee the observers' movements on the surface. Each could anticipate any dangers we could not see from space without worrying about a lack of flexibility."
(It was a deliberate, calculated move on his part. Menbellir did not believe the two would come into conflict over something this minor, but given his past experiences he supposed he could never be too careful.)
"Spoken like a true engineer, Master Khalai. I could not have said so better," the judicator said quickly.
The executor glanced sideways at the judicator, then said, "Indeed. We shall assemble our teams and meet in the hangar in two days to finalize the mission. I assume that will be plenty of time to prepare?"
"Plenty. The Sargas are never caught off-guard."
"My observers are already at your command, Executor."
"Very well then. Dismissed."
As they left, Andinunn turned back to the observation window. Whatever the wily terrans were plotting, she would get to the bottom of it. The Empire had tarried too long in its duties. So help her, a repeat of the Korhal Genocide or the Guild Wars would not happen under her burning gaze. So what if they were a lesser species? That gave them no right to commit atrocities against each other, and it was a betrayal of the Great Stewardship to simply stand by while innocents were butchered like cattle. Out of all the dozens upon dozens of civilizations the Protoss had encountered, the terrans were by far the most vicious and destructive.
Nuun-Min was right, she thought. To ignore their behavior and their trespass on the Empire's hallowed soil was the height of foolishness. There was that, but Andinunn would be lying if she said she was not itching for a fight. One did not train in the art of war for centuries and expect to sit back and watch.
—Last Testament of Judicator Assmael
Deep within the Protoss Empire, sometime in the early-mid 2490s A.D.
The shuttle ride was uneventful. Tassadar took a moment to admire the sights. Work had been so hectic recently that he had rarely enjoyed the simple pleasures. The shuttle passed dozens of golden skyscrapers that extended for hundreds of meters into the skies of Seventh Aiur. It was a core world of the Protoss Empire, part of the Jeweled Stars in fact, but the most exciting thing that ever happened was paperwork… mountains and mountains of paperwork that took centuries to complete.
"Destination reached," the shuttle's speech synthesizer said. "Please exit the vehicle. The Judicator is awaiting your arrival."
Tassadar stepped out and came face to face with the Great Observatory of Khaji Da. It was an imposing edifice of golden arches and glowing psi-crystals that rose for hundreds of kilometers into the sky, but Tassadar merely blinked the sleep from eyes.
He made his way inside, the dozens of automatic doors opening for him with but a thought. He passed numerous robed and armored figures that incessantly talked and tapped on psi-crystal slates without regard for his presence.
After navigating a maze-like assortment of rooms, Tassadar found himself entering the one he was looking for. As with every other room, its interior was decorated with elaborate designs of gold and other precious metals. However, what immediately drew Tassadar's gaze was a strange, tentacled creature floating in a stasis pod.
Zekrath was already waiting for him, wearing his typical baroque headdress (complete with wind chimes) and flowing sable robes. As a member of the Shelak tribe, specifically a hyperborean bloodline, his dark robes contrasted starkly against his bone white skin and orange eyes.
Beside the Judicator was the less memorable Forthum, who wore a more modest tunic—albeit elaborately embroidered and gilded. The grey fabric stood out against his pale green skin and lime green eyes, a relic of his Furinax bloodline, but nowhere near as much as his companion.
Tassadar knew his unenlightened silver-skinned ancestors had always found the pallid faces creepy, but by the grace of the Khala he had long overcome his species' inherent tendency toward racism. Whether one's skin was green or white, one was still protoss and worthy of respect.
Tassadar bowed, as was customary. "I am at your disposal, Judicator Zekrath, Master Khalai Forthum," he greeted.
"Your presence inspires feelings of safety already, Executor Tassadar. Rise honored warrior, there is no need for formality here," said the Judicator.
Tassadar rose. He gestured to the cell and asked, "This creature… I assume you have a full report ready?"
Forthum nodded. "The report was uploaded to your personal computer. However, I believe what I am about to show you will convey far more than words and pictures."
The Master Khalai held up a psi-crystal. The psi-crystals, as all-purpose superconductors and computing substrate depending on how they were prepared, were ubiquitous in protoss technology. The psi-crystal in the Master Khalai's hand was cut and inset for use as a personal communicator.
"Listen to it," he said.
Tassadar frowned but focused his third eye on the psi-crystal. "Third eye" was a misnomer, as the nerve cords used for telepathy and second sight did not resemble eyes at all, but using them felt very similar to using an eye in many ways. Unlike a real eye, however, the third eye "saw" by emitting psychic waves which bounced off compatible targets and then back to the third eye to give the illusion of sight.
The communicator was emitting a regular series of pulses, which he quickly recognized as speech of some kind. "Find Humanity, Eradicate, Learn, Evolve… Find Humanity, Eradicate, Learn, Evolve…" The message repeated in an endless loop.
The templar gasped in shock and glanced at the cell. Sure enough, the revolting ruddy creature floating serenely in the cell was releasing psychic waves. It was looking at him, and he was sure it had been since he entered the room.
The Executor glanced over and noticed a similar expression on the Judicator.
"How is this possible?" asked Zekrath. "It looks like a mere animal! How is this creature able to use psi-crystals as easily as we do? Where did you find it?" He would have known, as his librarian kinsmen specialized in experimentation on psi-crystal technology.
Tassadar wiped invisible dust off his shoulder to conceal his composure and replied. "The Venatir scouts found a number of these creatures drifting on the borders of our space. At first we considered them nothing more than a curiosity, but then one of the scouts noticed that the creatures always maintained a distance from the border and never entered our space."
The Executor was the leader of an exploratory fleet from aboard his flagship Gantrithor. As mandated by the Great Stewardship, it was his sacred duty to discover new worlds and new civilizations that could be annexed for the glory of the empire.
Forthum interjected and continued for him, "Given that they can utilize psi-crystals, I suspect they are some kind of deep space probe. Detailed observations and conjecture are recorded in the full report."
The Judicator shrugged in disbelief. "Probes? I know of no species that sends probes like these. I can name the number of species that utilize psi-crystals on the fingers of one hand," he said.
"I do not believe they are xel'naga, if that is what you fear, Judicator," explained Forthum. "They match no confirmed design of xel'naga technology, nor any of the myths surrounding them. In all likelihood, the designers either reverse engineered xel'naga relics or—"
"Were engineered by the xel'naga themselves?" offered Tassadar.
The Xel'naga. A name that meant "first ones," "wanderers from afar" or "great teachers" depending on what language you spoke and in which time period. Their legacy was shrouded in myth and conflated with that of the Old Empire. They had been worshiped as gods in the older, now forbidden faiths. They were credited with the seeding of life in the galaxy or even its outright creation. They were credited with teaching the protoss how to use their "magic," or even claimed as their direct genetic ancestors.
This was something of a sore point among the Shelak. Their ancestors had once worshiped the xel'naga even after the Departure and through the Aeon of Strife; indeed, they were among the most zealous factions during the Tal'darim Crusades. To add insult to injury, they were uniquely permitted access to the forbidden xel'naga teachings after the institution of the Khala's Law under the restriction that they gave up their faith. What choice did they have?
"Possibly," began the Judicator, suddenly calming. He looked upward in thought and tapped his chin absently. "Contrary to popular belief, the xel'naga were not gods and they did not create life. Those myths were promulgated—"
The Executor crossed his arms and frowned. "While I would love to have a history lesson, Judicator, I do not believe this is the right time," he said, interrupting.
Zekrath raised his shaven eyebrows and rubbed his hands together. "My apologies, Executor. I am a librarian, after all," he added. That did not actually explain anything; it was almost like he loved the sound of his own voice.
The Executor nodded and glanced back at the cell. "They recently began migrating, but I did not stay to chart their course. Can we track them?" he asked.
The Master Khalai nodded and his green eyes briefly flashed. "Already done, Executor. A concentration of probes was detected heading in the direction of Koprulu sector."
"Koprulu? Forgive me if I do not recognize the name."
"The Koprulu sector is on the frontier of the empire. Point of fact, it is well within the estimated territory of the Old Empire and was marked for the Reconquista yet never reclaimed. Blame the vagaries of the bureaucracy, I suppose." The Master Khalai shrugged as he said the last words.
Tassadar narrowed his eyes. "What do we know of this humanity species? I assume they live in the sector?"
Forthum beamed. "A fair amount, actually," he began. "The Koprulu sector is located in the outer rim, and contains colonies of humanity. Although they call themselves "terrans," but I am not sure what the names connote at this time." He waved a hand absently.
At this point the Master Khalai went silent for a moment then continued in a much quieter manner. "This species is warlike in the extreme. The most recent records date back to centuries ago, when they first arrived in the Koprulu sector. However, the local bureaucrats were able to decrypt their technology and send an incomplete copy of the terran's own historical records. But…"
"Master Khalai?"
"The terrans have industrialized atrocity. They… they built camps and facilities for the sole purpose of slaughtering their own kind, of committing rape and—"
"Enough!" cried Tassadar. He could feel the Judicator's mounting horror and revulsion through the Khala's Light. The feeling made his skin crawl.
Forthum shuddered then continued with a lighter tone. "They are greedy and destructive. They claim planets for mining and ruin the native ecosystems with reckless abandon. Eventually, I suspect they may try to claim our worlds."
"Then they will fail and rue their mistake," said Tassadar. He turned to the doorway. "Come, Judicator. I suspect the Conclave will want to hear of this, if they have not already."
"They have already prepared your orders," said Zekrath.
The Executor glanced back at the Judicator, wide-eyed and sputtering. Multiple accusations came to the forefront of his. Had Zekrath gone over his head? Was he only notified after the fact? Did the Conclave send for him after Forthum had made his report?
The Judicator looked down at the floor as he continued, "It has not been finalized yet, but from what I overheard… they want you to lead—well, they want your Gantrithor to join an expedition into terran space to investigate the destination of the probes. You should be honored, Executor."
Meanwhile, on the Terran/Protoss border...
"En Taro Adun, Master Khalai Menbellir."
The Master Khalai bowed to the Executor as the latter entered the observatory in her typically gaudy golden armor. It had been recently warped onto the remote moon to help monitor the transmissions of the terrans across the other side of the Koprulu border. As Executor and Master Khalai of the border patrol fleet, the thankless task of spying on lesser species fell to them.
"En Taro Adun, Executor Andinunn," he greeted.
Andinunn waved her hand in dismissal. "There is no need for such formality, Master Khalai. We are all Protoss here. Now what was this matter of strategic value you wished to discuss?" she asked.
Menbellir rose and wiped imaginary dust from his simple though elaborately embroidered tunic. He prodded a sheet of psi-crystal clutched in one rosy-skinned hand, moving twinkling numbers across the display. He started pacing around the observatory, blinking his white eyes and turning his ornately adorned head from side to side as the gears in his mind worked overtime.
"I noticed something very odd recently, but then that would make sense since this point on the psionic matrix is new. But I digress… my instruments both here and at other listening posts have detected an unusual amount of psychic traffic," he explained.
Andinunn frowned. "How is it so? The terrans do not communicate on psychic wavelengths," she said.
Menbellir paused in his step. He turned towards a device in the middle of the room and waved at it. Immediately, a projection of star systems appeared above the device. Several labels appeared at certain systems and the display zoomed on one in particular, a moon on the outer fringe of terran territories near the far edge of the border.
"Few of them possess any measurable degree of telepathy, but they do build devices capable of sending and receiving on psychic wavelengths. On a number of remote planets, like this one," he gestured to the projector, "they seem to be sending indiscriminate psychic signals, probably with artificial signal boost. For whatever reason, I cannot hazard a guess."
"Furthermore," he continued as the projector changed to another planet, this one labeled MINING COLONY, FORMER KMC, "there is an unusual amount of psychic traffic on a few of the outermost mining colonies, but it does not match terran brain waves. At the same time, conventional communication signals had steadily decreased…"
The image suddenly zoomed in, focusing on a spherical metal object in high orbit. "Aside from a science vessel believed to belong to the Confederate military organization Epsilon Squadron. They constantly change their encryption and release misinformation to prevent the rebels from interfering, so I cannot verify the accuracy. What is particularly strange is that the vessel is jamming communications and travel to and from the planet."
Andinunn shook her head and sighed. "Not strange at all. You remember what happened to Korhal?"
The two shuddered in unison.
The Executor stroked her gold-painted chin with a pale-green hand, her gold-painted claws clicking slightly. "It is perfectly in keeping with the Confederacy to engage in unethical experiments," she mused. "You heard the rumors? Supposedly they were eying our worlds on the other side of the border."
The Koprulu sector had been part of the Old Empire during the Lost Age prior to the Aeon of Strife. It had remained outside of protoss hands for millennia and so had been marked as part of the Reconquista centuries prior. Unfortunately, since then the sector had been claimed by the rapidly expanding terrans. The Great Stewardship had forbid direct intervention with species that did not meet their criteria as potential trading partners, despite the insult made by stealing their territory. Given their warlike, greedy and self-destructive nature, the terrans did not qualify.
"Degenerates," said Menbellir.
Andinunn held up a meticulously manicured hand. As an Aurigan, the thrill of discovery was something she understood all too well. "It is not our place to judge them, Master Khalai, only keep them in check should they forget their place. Nonetheless, I believe this deserves to be investigated. I trust you know what to do?"
Menbellir glanced down and tapped a few times on his psi-crystal sheet, then glanced back at the Executor.
"More observers have been dispatched to the areas of interest, with instructions to answer directly to your command. They may not breathe or feel, but they are my children nonetheless. Use them wisely."
She turned toward the entrance to the chamber, the door opening at her telepathic command.
"Executor, when do you plan on alerting our most esteemed judicator? If my suspicions are correct this could extend our tour on the border for months, perhaps indefinitely," he added.
Andinunn did not turn around.
"The Most Esteemed Nuun-Min will be informed once we have discovered something worth bothering her about," she answered after a moment. "She already dislikes the terrans more than you do."
"For good reason, I might add," said a third voice.
Andinunn's eyes bulged. Nuun-Min was standing on the other side of the doorway, arms crossed over her chest.
"Ah yes, the infamous templar confidence," the judicator started as she glided into the room, her eye-searing robes rustling melodramatically. "I appreciate the effort, Executor, but you know I did not choose an assignment in the backwaters of the galaxy—many tens of thousands of light years away from home—out of simple charity. We have no idea how many artifacts of the Old Empire or forgotten weapons from the Aeon of Strife are buried across the sector, nor how many the ignorant terran archaeologists are uncovering without understanding of their purpose or danger. If you even suspect they are planning something remotely…" she paused for dramatic effect, "unsightly, then I should be the first to know about it. Especially if it might extend our stay."
While travel by warp gate (mediated through the psionic matrix) would have allowed the fleet to travel to Aiur more or less instantly compared to years of travel by warp drive, in practice the resources required to build and sustain the whole affair as well as the bureaucratic red tape involved meant that the entire process would most likely take weeks or months at the least.
The Executor resisted the urge to sigh. "Your pardon, Judicator, but I said that we might set course for Aiur within the month, not—"
"Yes," the judicator interrupted, "barring new sightings. I said as much in my last report to the Conclave, as well as the fact that our present forces are, and I quote, more than capable of dealing with any conceivable threat."
Andinunn shrugged. "If I may be so bold to suggest it, the terrans are hardly a threat," she said.
"To us, the gardeners of the galaxy," Nuun-Min replied. "But our garden cannot defend itself. Any life that does not follows our laws or grows out of our control—"
"Is a problem to be solved… or eliminated," the executor finished. "As the good book says," she added.
The judicator nodded.
Menbellir silently watched the exchange and gave an internal sigh. This was why he was glad that the Khalai were not required to attend courses in the political sciences. It was such a headache...
On the outskirts of the Uilila System, Koprulu sector
On the bridge of her command carrier, the Balance of Judgment, Executor Andinunn stared at the former Kel-Morian mining colony through the observation window. The carrier was not actually in orbit of the planet, but receiving telemetry from a nearby observer while hiding in the shadow of a moon on the edge of the system.
The fourth planet of the star christened Uilila by the terrans, it had a storied history. It was first settled by independent mining guilds decades previous, and then the Kel-Morian Combine arrived and started competing with their supposedly secure mining claims. One miner, Usagi Hidalgo, was so incensed that he was seemingly killed by the unintentional detonation of a nuclear device he had acquired for the presumed purpose of revenge. The twenty megaton explosion caused little physical damage to the rest of the planet, but the fallout caused by inferior construction resulted in severe climatic shifts. Not that this was much of a problem, since the planet was uninhabitable to begin with, only barely habitable after years of terraforming, and only needed enough habitability to support the few mining settlements that dotted the surface. Indeed, most mining was done on the asteroids and uninhabited planets of the system.
After the Guild Wars in the first half of the 80s, the planet and its affiliated guilds were confiscated by the Confederacy. During the late 80s, a cholera pandemic broke out across the fringe worlds and provoked the largest humanitarian crisis in history. Although media reports claimed the pandemic was caused by improperly sanitized water treatment equipment manufactured by a now bankrupt interstellar corporation, Andinunn suspected that the truth was far more sinister in light of recent events.
Most of Uilila IV was evacuated to temporary housing and had yet to resettle the planet. The few who remained were members of survivalist groups that avoided the outbreak by carefully controlling their water sources and treatment process. Despite their supposed presence on the planet, Uilila IV and many other worlds affected by the outbreak were still placed under quarantine. Ostensibly this was to protect ongoing sanitation efforts and ensure that the outbreak did not recur, but the token military presence and mobile minefield in orbit of the planet put all of the Executor's lingering doubts to rest.
In addition to the minefield a series of relay buoys continually broadcast a jamming signal across orbit, preventing communication with the planet save by tight-beam. It was reasonable to assume that the buoys communicated with one another, the mines and the science vessel through high-powered lasers.
The mines were not simple bombs left floating in space. The mines maintained a constant, regular holding pattern around the planet, occasionally releasing jets of exhaust to maintain their position. If any unidentified craft tried to approach the planet, these smart mines would probably seek them out before exploding to maximize the damage inflicted.
Although observers of sufficient size could be fit with warp drives, the minefield was too close to the planet's gravity well for said observers to jump around it without an unacceptably high risk of swerving and crashing into the surface… or worse, emerging inside and thus fusing with it. That would be a needless waste of a perfectly good observer.
The Executor considered her options. Behind her stood Nuun-Min on her left and Menbellir on her right. The Master Khalai tapped at a blinking crystal sheet, presumably evaluating the possibilities. The Judicator hovered silently, her pallid face and burning eyes remaining stony. Though the Executor and the Judicator bore little resemblance to one another, they were both part of the Auriga tribe—albeit different clans within it.
After the Aeon of Strife had scattered the tribes across the Known Worlds, their bloodlines continued to divide just as they had on ancient Aiur. During the Reconquista, many tribes and clans were assimilated into others with whom they founded shared special interests. Though the Khala's Law stressed that tribes, clans and bloodlines should not stand in the way of protoss' unity, its influence could not simply undo centuries of pride and nationalism even if it could create cripplingly painful, war-ending empathy overnight. Negative emotions were always much greater motivators than positive ones. So they remained a cornerstone of the Empire's multicultural populace, crafting an elaborate web of loyalties and filial piety.
Nuun-Min could have passed for a hyperborean Shelak, but the same could be said for many hyperborean bloodlines. Given the importance of solar radiation in the synthesis of calcium-absorbing vitamins, tribes that settled in the Polar Regions either became more efficient in using what they had or else lost pigmentation to better absorb sunlight. Both approaches had merit and drawbacks, but with the advent of the Psionic Matrix to power their technology and transfer nourishment directly to their bodies, tribes no longer had to deal with such difficulties of daily living. Nonetheless, the phenotypical differences remained and many clans took great pride in their uniqueness.
Indeed, there was still a fair amount of resistance to interracial marriages even after centuries of unity. Andinunn still struggled to avoid losing her composure whenever someone was shocked by her admission that her sister—her own sister—was wed to a hyperborean judicator. And he was of the same tribe! Even the caste system was struggling to remain relevant, as more and more people were changing their caste. The castes were originally devised to be hereditary and centuries past the idea of changing one's caste was utterly alien, unless one was an elder and initiated as an honorary judicator. That in itself was only a compromise to ensure that every tribe had a voice on the Judicator Assembly and the Conclave that oversaw governance of the Empire, but it was still an admission by Khas himself that his divine mandate was less than perfect.
Despite the fact that they were probably twenty-third cousins by marriage, Andinunn did not appreciate the judicator's entitlement. Indeed, the fact that they were part of the same tribe made her even less tolerant. How dare that brat talk back to her in such a manner! In front of the Master Khalai no less! Menbellir had served the fleet long before she was born and to be treated like that in front of him… it did not help that, when she had been protégé to the previous executor, she had nursed a crush on the older werman for almost a century. It was probably those huge eyebrows, that thick beard, the detailed engineering knowledge…
She took a moment to clear her thoughts and turned around to face them.
"Master Khalai, what stands in our way?" she asked.
"As I surveyed through the observers, a fair amount. The minefield limits our deployment to stealth craft and the jamming signals forces us to rely on tight-beam or gate-based communication. There is nothing preventing us from sending my observers directly to the planet, but we cannot receive their telemetry without such workarounds or waiting for them to return with recordings. There is no guarantee they will return, for that matter."
Nuun-Min started to say something, but stopped. Andinunn noticed the judicator glance at her sideways, but only for a moment. The executor suspected that her frustration had not been lost on her would-be advisor. Thank the Khala and all the ancestors resting in the Seven Winds for small mercies.
"Do you have a suggestion, Judicator?"
(Nuun-Min did have a suggestion, but she did not want to overstep her bounds. She had already made the misstep of letting her emotions dictate her actions. Damn her impatience! It was a huge inconvenience to stay in Koprulu after she had entertained the delusion that she would return home to her husband and son, but that gave her no right to take out her frustration on the Executor and especially not under the gaze of the great and respectable Master Khalai. There was the very real possibility he would be eligible for initiation into the Judicators within the near future, perhaps even the Assembly, but that was beside the point. The Khalai were the backbone of the Empire, the four columns of heaven and earth, the lifeblood of their people. Out of every werman, wifman, woman and child within the Empire, why had she been born to a judicator family? What dishonor was she guilty of in a past life?
She cast her caution to the Seven Winds once again and answered the question.)
"I do, Executor. Given that this is, as the terrans say, a black operation, I believe I know Templar who are more than qualified to carry out the necessary reconnaissance." Taking the Executor's silence as a tacit agreement, she continued, "My Sargas bodyguards should not have any problem taking your orders and overseeing the observers on your behalf."
The Sargas tribe served the Judicators as loyal enforcers and assassins of the highest order. Yet they concealed a dark and sordid history. Along with other infamous tribes, they steadfastly resisted the homogenizing influence of the Khala and continue to practice and even exaggerate their ancient cultural traditions. During the crisis of the rogue tribes, when the very future of their species was put to the test by apocalyptic psychic storms, they were infamous for the relatively high number of rogues that were drawn from their clans. This placed the Sargas squarely in the path of the Judicators' wrath, but somehow they were able to not only redeem themselves for the sins of their brethren but claim a highly coveted position near the heart of the Empire's politics. Even the similarly guilty Venatir tribe somehow laid claim to a near-monopoly on the Great Fleet's reconnaissance operations that the Auriga, who themselves held a near-monopoly on aerospace operations across the Empire save in this regard, never found reason to question.
Wondering why the Protoss would require assassins was difficult to contemplate, united as they were by the Khala. It was easy enough to assume that the assassins were sent only after the unenlightened leaders of other species whose governments needed to be toppled with the utmost subtlety. By the same token, the Judicators were known to train themselves influencing the minds of others and in extreme cases rewriting memories. Such manipulations against their own kind would be transparent under the Khala's Light, but other species were not so lucky. Andinunn refused to pursue the implications of such thought further.
"I do not question the soundness of your judgment, Judicator," the Executor began, "but would it not be more prudent to sent the Venatir? Their stealth vessels would come quite handy here."
"Why not both? Forgive me for interrupting, but their diversity is our strength, would you not agree, Executor?" interjected Menbellir.
Andinunn and Nuun-Min nodded. "Continue," said the Executor.
"Both excel in stealthy travel, yes, but under different circumstances if I recall correctly. The Venatir could slip past the terrans' quarantine while the Sargas could oversee the observers' movements on the surface. Each could anticipate any dangers we could not see from space without worrying about a lack of flexibility."
(It was a deliberate, calculated move on his part. Menbellir did not believe the two would come into conflict over something this minor, but given his past experiences he supposed he could never be too careful.)
"Spoken like a true engineer, Master Khalai. I could not have said so better," the judicator said quickly.
The executor glanced sideways at the judicator, then said, "Indeed. We shall assemble our teams and meet in the hangar in two days to finalize the mission. I assume that will be plenty of time to prepare?"
"Plenty. The Sargas are never caught off-guard."
"My observers are already at your command, Executor."
"Very well then. Dismissed."
As they left, Andinunn turned back to the observation window. Whatever the wily terrans were plotting, she would get to the bottom of it. The Empire had tarried too long in its duties. So help her, a repeat of the Korhal Genocide or the Guild Wars would not happen under her burning gaze. So what if they were a lesser species? That gave them no right to commit atrocities against each other, and it was a betrayal of the Great Stewardship to simply stand by while innocents were butchered like cattle. Out of all the dozens upon dozens of civilizations the Protoss had encountered, the terrans were by far the most vicious and destructive.
Nuun-Min was right, she thought. To ignore their behavior and their trespass on the Empire's hallowed soil was the height of foolishness. There was that, but Andinunn would be lying if she said she was not itching for a fight. One did not train in the art of war for centuries and expect to sit back and watch.
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Chapter 2, part 1
"Do your worst! My ghost shall spit upon you from the side of the xel'naga."
"Your xel'naga are a myth, a delusion created by your ancestors to absolve themselves of responsibility for their crimes."
"Those words are blasphemy! Do not blaspheme! Do not blas—"
*thud sound*
"Be silent, heretic. You there! Chop the wood for burning!"
—Exchange between Inquisitor Varys of Ara and condemned Tal'darim, circa XIVth Crusade
In close proximity to Uilila IV
In theory, the mission was simple.
The specialized stealth shuttle, courtesy of the Venatir Scouts, carefully maneuvered through the orbital minefield. The cloaking field should have allowed it to travel safely past the gaze of the mines, but one could never be too careful. An arbiter was standing by to recall the shuttle should the cloak prove ineffective. The momentary distress call would reveal their position, but by the time the terrans could investigate they would be long gone.
Sitting safely in the cargo hold were the observers, designated Witnesses I through IV. They were small models, lacking warp drives but almost certainly capable of slipping through the tight spaces that would no doubt dominate this mission. They were quiescent, hopefully not for too much longer.
The pilot carefully controlled his breathing when he saw a mine pass by the windshield. He had trained in stealth piloting for decades, like everyone else in his family. The mine probably could not detect his breath, but the exercises themselves helped to keep him calm. Still, he could barely suppress the hint of excitement that marched through his veins. The terran vessels were covered in thrusters that adjusted their position by releasing jets of gas here and there. The protoss shuttle, by contrast, moved without any apparent release of thrust. He found the dangerous explosive devices almost quaint in their simplicity.
Once the shuttle passed through the minefield, he breathed easily again. It took an hour or two, but the shuttle reached one of the terran settlements visible on the far horizon. At least, one of the few that was believed to still be inhabited by the survivalists despite the quarantine. Though the pilot suspected it was debatable if they were still alive. Unfortunate if that were the case, he thought, since survivalist factions were supposedly some of the best fighters among the terrans. Even rivaling the sangheili, he had been told, though he suspected that was only hyperbole. Sadly it was not to be. He would have liked to play a mock sortie if the two races had open relations. Perhaps once his tour was over, he could see if the pod races on Tatooine had a spot for him.
Master Khalai Menbellir's observers had mapped the locations of sensor towers planted near several of the inhabited settlements. Executor Andinunn judged that those settlements would be the best targets for reconnaissance, based on the high probability that they were the test sites. The templar judged it highly unlikely that the Confederacy would be employing active sensors to find cloaked vessels on the planet's surface, but nonetheless the pilot kept glancing at his passive sensors just in case something came up.
He did not risk arriving too closely, for fear that the sensor tower might pick up his ship even behind the cloak. The horizon seemed about right, considering that the radar dish was pointed upward and toward the science vessel waiting in orbit.
By thought alone, the pilot activated the tight beam sensors as he had been ordered to. The shuttle would maintain tight beam communication with the observer already in orbit, directly overhead. That observer would relay communications back to the Balance of Judgment through another series of observers.
Now came the trickiest and most dangerous part of the mission, or so he thought at the time. The pilot opened his computer's menu and activated Witness I. The cargo bay of the shuttle opened and the observers glided out into the desert, invisible save for the barest hint of distortion in the air indistinguishable from a normal heat wave.
The pilot waited with bated breath as Witness I approached the sensor tower. "Praemonitus, praemunitus," he whispered. Forewarned is forearmed, translated the ancient proverb.
The observer paused on the outskirts of the settlement. The Witness's AI did not detect any active scanning, so it continued onward. As it moved toward its target, its optics took in the settlement. It identified two oddities of principal importance. The first oddity was the emptiness. The rickety buildings were oddly quiet, and there was no hint of life save for a tumbleweed blowing through the town square. There were no laughing running children, no strapping men on horseback, no women of the night gesturing with fans, no watchful sheriff making sure everything was in order. The second oddity was the mold. The optics observed the presence of a grey mold growing in large mats on the sides of a couple of the structures, which matched none of the life known to live in the terran ecology in this region. Nor any other region surveyed. The AI filed this observation away for its masters' review.
Finally, the AI hovered in front of the sensor tower. This monstrosity of steel and plastic towered over the other buildings, and a series of cables snaked along the ground and into the nearby buildings and into hastily constructed manholes. There were even orange traffic cones here and there and painted symbols on the ground. Clearly the tower was monitoring… something.
The observer's optics looked over the tower, searching for its target. It settled on a grill from which hot air shot forth and mechanical whirring sounds echoed. Without once breaking its camouflage, the observer glided toward the vent at the same time it opened a panel on its underside and unfolded a golden robotic arm. At the tip of the arm was a set of grasping appendages and needle-like protrusions. The limb pointed itself at the exhaust vent, and a jet of sand sprayed out of the tip. This was normal sand it had taken from the ground along the way.
The observer kept spraying sand into the vent until the mechanical whirring ceased. It looked over the sensor tower again, making sure there were no other exhaust vents to replace the function of this one. Its optics glanced over the sensor tower again, looking through the invisible spectrums for any signs of communication. There was none. Satisfied that the tower was no longer functioning, Witness I opened a channel back to the shuttle.
Sandstorms were quite common on the planet owing to the lack of vegetation to anchor the fine soil. The terrans would almost certainly consider this malfunction to be a routine problem rather than sabotage. Even so, the spies had only a limited window before the terrans sent a maintenance team. Two hours was judged to be the optimum time for them to get in and out.
The pilot confirmed that Witness I's part of the mission was complete. He pressed one of the windows on his console and the image shifted to reveal the sand just underneath the shuttle. In a flash of light, his passengers were transformed from digital signatures into creatures of flesh and blood. This technology was so advanced that he could not begin to understand how it worked. Perhaps if he were khalai caste…
While terran artists depicted them as having essentially human anatomy, the truth was that protoss had barely any resemblance to humans beyond having two arms, two legs, a torso and a well-defined head. The differences were readily apparent upon even the most casual of scrutiny. To put it simply, the protoss were as grotesque as they were gorgeous.
The protoss head was shaped like an ice cream cone, to which the neck attached at an odd angle. From the top sprouted a mass of long dark tendrils that cascaded down the back almost like hair, but the texture was too smooth and leathery to be hair. Across the forehead lay a pair of overlapping plates, which sometimes flared up as if to signal a cue in their alien body language. Here and there were a few raised edges of hardened skin that humans would recognize as brow, cheekbone and jawline, but that was merely an artifact of the human brain's tendency to recognize faces where they did not exist.
Protoss did not have faces comparable to those of humans. Whatever their ancestors were, they clearly were as closely related to humans as humans were to the humble jellyfish. Which is to say: not at all. Upon dissection of this hideous skull, even the greenest medical student would notice a lack of distinction between skin, muscle and bone. A protoss head left to rot in the sun for weeks would appear identical to that of a living specimen aside from the bleaching; the eyes would continue to glow for a long time after death.
These glowing eyes were not eyeballs in recessed sockets, but solid mineral lenses growing out of the skin (akin to those of the marine chiton). There was no nose or jaw or any evidence of a mouth; no, the lower half of the protoss head more closely resembled the trunk of a space jockey, the beak of a plague doctor or some unholy fusion of the two. Perpendicularly across this freakish proboscis there carved a series of fine ridges, which occasionally released jets of fine mist in tune with the rise and fall of the alien's chest. Presumably these were the alien's breathing orifices, and the only apparent orifices on their entire body.
Their bodily proportions were similarly inhuman. The torso was impossibly gaunt compared to a human's, almost as though the alien was devoid of viscera. The shoulders were at least thrice as wide as the hips, while the arms extended past the knees if held perfectly straight. These limbs terminated in extremities with a set of four freakingly long and clawed digits like a pair of spiders coupling. These monstrous hands had two fingers and two thumbs each, arranged symmetrically, and each digit had a few more knuckles than the typical human did. The legs were similarly freakish, at least twice the length of the torso, and the feet were elongated to the same length as the thighs and shins. The alien walked on the tips of its four toes, which hardened into cloven hooves like the imagined demons of terran myth.
The team of three spies were crouched, their legs set in a painful looking Z-shape. Suddenly they rose, their legs straightening in nearly perfectly lines. When fully erect they stood easily three meters in height, or twice as tall as the average human being.
They had spent years training their psychic powers to enhance their physical strength and speed. When they moved with their uncanny grace, the overall effect looked like a troupe of marionettes that had learned to perform ballet a thousand times greater than the most skilled human ballerina. To the imaginary human observer, they could not be creepier than if they had consciously tried.
In the blink of an eye, they vanished from sight. Neither visible nor psychic light could illuminate them.
Borrowing a trick from their dark kin, these "avengers" of the Sargas tribe hid themselves behind literal invisibility cloaks. The fabric of these cloaks interacted with light in strange ways, making the avengers appear almost perfectly invisible. The only sign a foe would have before death took them would be the slightest ripple in the air, like the distortions caused by heat waves.
The pilot signaled Witnesses II through IV. The small machines floated out of the shuttle. As one, the three witnesses and three avengers made all due haste toward the ghost town.
As soon as they arrived, the avengers quickly searched the town for anything out of the ordinary that could be investigated further. The first object of interest was the communication tower. One of them looked at the cables connecting the tower to the rest of the buildings.
"Brothers, come look at this," he called.
The other two walked up to him and followed the First's gaze as he pointed first to the cable and then traced its length. It stopped at the back wall of the town saloon. Rather than going into the building itself, it attached to a set of conduits that traveled beneath the building presumably to a basement of some kind.
"Underground complex?" asked the Second.
"Survivalists," said the Third. "The Confederacy must be tapping their internal security."
"Activating soil sweep," the First thought aloud as he tapped his communicator. At once, a three-dimensional projection appeared in front of his face. It detailed a series of boxes and rectangles, the town as seen from above. Then the image shifted, changing into a series of boxes connected by lines across multiple vertical levels.
The three looked at the projection. The First followed one of the lines which connected to the surface level. He tapped the access point. They glanced at each other and nodded in unison. The First dismissed the projection and sent a command to the observers. The four devices, which had been scanning the rest of the area, stopped their current action and floated over to the avengers.
The three made their way to the access point. Sitting in an out of the way spot in the alley between two buildings, an innocuous manhole lid covered access to the survivalist group's secret underground bunkers. The Third of them bent down and lifted it easily. Conveniently, the observers were just small enough to fit through the passage.
The four witnesses were the first to go down and scout the bunker. Watching the telemetry from just above, the avengers were astonished to see that the interior of the first room was completely covered by the organic mat that Witness I had previously observed on some of the buildings. Not only that, but underground the grey substance was much more… mature was the only word they could think of. Where the mass on the surface looked like an unremarkable lichen, that just below was quite fleshy.
Unperturbed, the three jumped down the manhole one by one. Such was their athleticism compared to puny humans that they had no need for the ladder. Immediately, all three of them feel an eerie, crawling feeling through their shoes. The mat squirmed and squelched under their steps. Still, they did not let this stop them.
The bunker complex was set up like the town above. There was a diner, residences, ammunition storage, and more. All of the evidence, the signs and windows, was obscured by the growth of the grey mat. Here and there could be seen massive pustule- or tumor-like growths of the organism whose function could not be easily discerned. The very air was filled with dust-like particles visible to the naked eye, continually expelled at regular intervals by living siphons growing from corners of the ceiling. Something was very, very wrong here.
As they traveled deeper into the bunker complex, the witnesses picked up psychic traffic. It was on neither protoss frequencies nor those used by the terrans' clandestine science experiments. The avengers could not hear it at first, since the witnesses were vastly more sensitive, but as they traveled deeper the avengers started to feel it in the back of their minds. Though they did not understand it, they thought it sounded like insects buzzing at night. It grew louder as they approached what appeared to be the source, within what appeared to be the local school.
On the upside, the different frequency meant that whatever was producing it probably was not looking for their frequencies. If they played their songs carefully, they could speak without being overheard.
The witnesses catalogued everything under their dispassionate gaze. No children played here. Not teacher taught. Other than the squelching beneath their fleet and psychic buzzing, the building was silent as the grave. They passed a few doors to empty classrooms before find the one they were looking for. The three took deep breaths, opened the door and entered.
What a sight it was. Attached to the wall, opposite the door, by some kind of resin was what might have once been a young man. He had been… mutilated? Mutated? His skeleton was horrifically distorted: the right half of his ribcage was grotesquely oversized, one of his legs was an insect-like hoof, and both of his arms were replaced by asymmetrical crab-like claws. His face was even worse: the top half was recognizable as human, but his jaw was missing and a mass of red tendrils had burst out of his mouth.
Mercifully, the thing that was once a man was silent, milky eyes staring blankly into eternity. Whatever had been done to him had killed him, ending his torment. The three avengers simultaneously made the sign of the aquila and prayed that his soul rest peacefully on the Seven Winds.
Their genuflection was interrupted when they heard a cracking sound in another corner of the room. It was on the same wall as the door, so they missed it upon their entrance. A gigantic cocoon was rippling and something underneath it roused to life. The avengers quickly took up positions around the room, in case events turned violent. Hopefully they would not need to play their hand so early.
The cocoon burst open in a spray of amniotic fluid. The creature that emerged… it was entirely unlike the poor man just a few meters away. It was symmetrical, even beautiful in the eyes of an entomologist. It had the triangular head of a gigantic insect, the clawed extremities and armored carapace of one as well. As for the forearms, the thighs, the belly and sides of the back… these betrayed the hideous truth: this thing might have been human once upon a time or at least had a parent who was human. Whatever it was now, it was not human.
The grey mat was not what it seemed. There was intelligence behind it. All this was the result of deliberately genetic engineering? Who were the engineers? What horror were they planning?
Then the beast spoke, clicking like some kind of demented parrot. "I live to serve," it rasped. It paused, then spoke again, "I arrive momentarily."
The beast had stood erect as it was born, but now fell to all fours. With a grace and speed unknown to the human species, it scuttled across the room and out the door. It never knew that it was being watched.
"Your xel'naga are a myth, a delusion created by your ancestors to absolve themselves of responsibility for their crimes."
"Those words are blasphemy! Do not blaspheme! Do not blas—"
*thud sound*
"Be silent, heretic. You there! Chop the wood for burning!"
—Exchange between Inquisitor Varys of Ara and condemned Tal'darim, circa XIVth Crusade
In close proximity to Uilila IV
In theory, the mission was simple.
The specialized stealth shuttle, courtesy of the Venatir Scouts, carefully maneuvered through the orbital minefield. The cloaking field should have allowed it to travel safely past the gaze of the mines, but one could never be too careful. An arbiter was standing by to recall the shuttle should the cloak prove ineffective. The momentary distress call would reveal their position, but by the time the terrans could investigate they would be long gone.
Sitting safely in the cargo hold were the observers, designated Witnesses I through IV. They were small models, lacking warp drives but almost certainly capable of slipping through the tight spaces that would no doubt dominate this mission. They were quiescent, hopefully not for too much longer.
The pilot carefully controlled his breathing when he saw a mine pass by the windshield. He had trained in stealth piloting for decades, like everyone else in his family. The mine probably could not detect his breath, but the exercises themselves helped to keep him calm. Still, he could barely suppress the hint of excitement that marched through his veins. The terran vessels were covered in thrusters that adjusted their position by releasing jets of gas here and there. The protoss shuttle, by contrast, moved without any apparent release of thrust. He found the dangerous explosive devices almost quaint in their simplicity.
Once the shuttle passed through the minefield, he breathed easily again. It took an hour or two, but the shuttle reached one of the terran settlements visible on the far horizon. At least, one of the few that was believed to still be inhabited by the survivalists despite the quarantine. Though the pilot suspected it was debatable if they were still alive. Unfortunate if that were the case, he thought, since survivalist factions were supposedly some of the best fighters among the terrans. Even rivaling the sangheili, he had been told, though he suspected that was only hyperbole. Sadly it was not to be. He would have liked to play a mock sortie if the two races had open relations. Perhaps once his tour was over, he could see if the pod races on Tatooine had a spot for him.
Master Khalai Menbellir's observers had mapped the locations of sensor towers planted near several of the inhabited settlements. Executor Andinunn judged that those settlements would be the best targets for reconnaissance, based on the high probability that they were the test sites. The templar judged it highly unlikely that the Confederacy would be employing active sensors to find cloaked vessels on the planet's surface, but nonetheless the pilot kept glancing at his passive sensors just in case something came up.
He did not risk arriving too closely, for fear that the sensor tower might pick up his ship even behind the cloak. The horizon seemed about right, considering that the radar dish was pointed upward and toward the science vessel waiting in orbit.
By thought alone, the pilot activated the tight beam sensors as he had been ordered to. The shuttle would maintain tight beam communication with the observer already in orbit, directly overhead. That observer would relay communications back to the Balance of Judgment through another series of observers.
Now came the trickiest and most dangerous part of the mission, or so he thought at the time. The pilot opened his computer's menu and activated Witness I. The cargo bay of the shuttle opened and the observers glided out into the desert, invisible save for the barest hint of distortion in the air indistinguishable from a normal heat wave.
The pilot waited with bated breath as Witness I approached the sensor tower. "Praemonitus, praemunitus," he whispered. Forewarned is forearmed, translated the ancient proverb.
The observer paused on the outskirts of the settlement. The Witness's AI did not detect any active scanning, so it continued onward. As it moved toward its target, its optics took in the settlement. It identified two oddities of principal importance. The first oddity was the emptiness. The rickety buildings were oddly quiet, and there was no hint of life save for a tumbleweed blowing through the town square. There were no laughing running children, no strapping men on horseback, no women of the night gesturing with fans, no watchful sheriff making sure everything was in order. The second oddity was the mold. The optics observed the presence of a grey mold growing in large mats on the sides of a couple of the structures, which matched none of the life known to live in the terran ecology in this region. Nor any other region surveyed. The AI filed this observation away for its masters' review.
Finally, the AI hovered in front of the sensor tower. This monstrosity of steel and plastic towered over the other buildings, and a series of cables snaked along the ground and into the nearby buildings and into hastily constructed manholes. There were even orange traffic cones here and there and painted symbols on the ground. Clearly the tower was monitoring… something.
The observer's optics looked over the tower, searching for its target. It settled on a grill from which hot air shot forth and mechanical whirring sounds echoed. Without once breaking its camouflage, the observer glided toward the vent at the same time it opened a panel on its underside and unfolded a golden robotic arm. At the tip of the arm was a set of grasping appendages and needle-like protrusions. The limb pointed itself at the exhaust vent, and a jet of sand sprayed out of the tip. This was normal sand it had taken from the ground along the way.
The observer kept spraying sand into the vent until the mechanical whirring ceased. It looked over the sensor tower again, making sure there were no other exhaust vents to replace the function of this one. Its optics glanced over the sensor tower again, looking through the invisible spectrums for any signs of communication. There was none. Satisfied that the tower was no longer functioning, Witness I opened a channel back to the shuttle.
Sandstorms were quite common on the planet owing to the lack of vegetation to anchor the fine soil. The terrans would almost certainly consider this malfunction to be a routine problem rather than sabotage. Even so, the spies had only a limited window before the terrans sent a maintenance team. Two hours was judged to be the optimum time for them to get in and out.
The pilot confirmed that Witness I's part of the mission was complete. He pressed one of the windows on his console and the image shifted to reveal the sand just underneath the shuttle. In a flash of light, his passengers were transformed from digital signatures into creatures of flesh and blood. This technology was so advanced that he could not begin to understand how it worked. Perhaps if he were khalai caste…
While terran artists depicted them as having essentially human anatomy, the truth was that protoss had barely any resemblance to humans beyond having two arms, two legs, a torso and a well-defined head. The differences were readily apparent upon even the most casual of scrutiny. To put it simply, the protoss were as grotesque as they were gorgeous.
The protoss head was shaped like an ice cream cone, to which the neck attached at an odd angle. From the top sprouted a mass of long dark tendrils that cascaded down the back almost like hair, but the texture was too smooth and leathery to be hair. Across the forehead lay a pair of overlapping plates, which sometimes flared up as if to signal a cue in their alien body language. Here and there were a few raised edges of hardened skin that humans would recognize as brow, cheekbone and jawline, but that was merely an artifact of the human brain's tendency to recognize faces where they did not exist.
Protoss did not have faces comparable to those of humans. Whatever their ancestors were, they clearly were as closely related to humans as humans were to the humble jellyfish. Which is to say: not at all. Upon dissection of this hideous skull, even the greenest medical student would notice a lack of distinction between skin, muscle and bone. A protoss head left to rot in the sun for weeks would appear identical to that of a living specimen aside from the bleaching; the eyes would continue to glow for a long time after death.
These glowing eyes were not eyeballs in recessed sockets, but solid mineral lenses growing out of the skin (akin to those of the marine chiton). There was no nose or jaw or any evidence of a mouth; no, the lower half of the protoss head more closely resembled the trunk of a space jockey, the beak of a plague doctor or some unholy fusion of the two. Perpendicularly across this freakish proboscis there carved a series of fine ridges, which occasionally released jets of fine mist in tune with the rise and fall of the alien's chest. Presumably these were the alien's breathing orifices, and the only apparent orifices on their entire body.
Their bodily proportions were similarly inhuman. The torso was impossibly gaunt compared to a human's, almost as though the alien was devoid of viscera. The shoulders were at least thrice as wide as the hips, while the arms extended past the knees if held perfectly straight. These limbs terminated in extremities with a set of four freakingly long and clawed digits like a pair of spiders coupling. These monstrous hands had two fingers and two thumbs each, arranged symmetrically, and each digit had a few more knuckles than the typical human did. The legs were similarly freakish, at least twice the length of the torso, and the feet were elongated to the same length as the thighs and shins. The alien walked on the tips of its four toes, which hardened into cloven hooves like the imagined demons of terran myth.
The team of three spies were crouched, their legs set in a painful looking Z-shape. Suddenly they rose, their legs straightening in nearly perfectly lines. When fully erect they stood easily three meters in height, or twice as tall as the average human being.
They had spent years training their psychic powers to enhance their physical strength and speed. When they moved with their uncanny grace, the overall effect looked like a troupe of marionettes that had learned to perform ballet a thousand times greater than the most skilled human ballerina. To the imaginary human observer, they could not be creepier than if they had consciously tried.
In the blink of an eye, they vanished from sight. Neither visible nor psychic light could illuminate them.
Borrowing a trick from their dark kin, these "avengers" of the Sargas tribe hid themselves behind literal invisibility cloaks. The fabric of these cloaks interacted with light in strange ways, making the avengers appear almost perfectly invisible. The only sign a foe would have before death took them would be the slightest ripple in the air, like the distortions caused by heat waves.
The pilot signaled Witnesses II through IV. The small machines floated out of the shuttle. As one, the three witnesses and three avengers made all due haste toward the ghost town.
As soon as they arrived, the avengers quickly searched the town for anything out of the ordinary that could be investigated further. The first object of interest was the communication tower. One of them looked at the cables connecting the tower to the rest of the buildings.
"Brothers, come look at this," he called.
The other two walked up to him and followed the First's gaze as he pointed first to the cable and then traced its length. It stopped at the back wall of the town saloon. Rather than going into the building itself, it attached to a set of conduits that traveled beneath the building presumably to a basement of some kind.
"Underground complex?" asked the Second.
"Survivalists," said the Third. "The Confederacy must be tapping their internal security."
"Activating soil sweep," the First thought aloud as he tapped his communicator. At once, a three-dimensional projection appeared in front of his face. It detailed a series of boxes and rectangles, the town as seen from above. Then the image shifted, changing into a series of boxes connected by lines across multiple vertical levels.
The three looked at the projection. The First followed one of the lines which connected to the surface level. He tapped the access point. They glanced at each other and nodded in unison. The First dismissed the projection and sent a command to the observers. The four devices, which had been scanning the rest of the area, stopped their current action and floated over to the avengers.
The three made their way to the access point. Sitting in an out of the way spot in the alley between two buildings, an innocuous manhole lid covered access to the survivalist group's secret underground bunkers. The Third of them bent down and lifted it easily. Conveniently, the observers were just small enough to fit through the passage.
The four witnesses were the first to go down and scout the bunker. Watching the telemetry from just above, the avengers were astonished to see that the interior of the first room was completely covered by the organic mat that Witness I had previously observed on some of the buildings. Not only that, but underground the grey substance was much more… mature was the only word they could think of. Where the mass on the surface looked like an unremarkable lichen, that just below was quite fleshy.
Unperturbed, the three jumped down the manhole one by one. Such was their athleticism compared to puny humans that they had no need for the ladder. Immediately, all three of them feel an eerie, crawling feeling through their shoes. The mat squirmed and squelched under their steps. Still, they did not let this stop them.
The bunker complex was set up like the town above. There was a diner, residences, ammunition storage, and more. All of the evidence, the signs and windows, was obscured by the growth of the grey mat. Here and there could be seen massive pustule- or tumor-like growths of the organism whose function could not be easily discerned. The very air was filled with dust-like particles visible to the naked eye, continually expelled at regular intervals by living siphons growing from corners of the ceiling. Something was very, very wrong here.
As they traveled deeper into the bunker complex, the witnesses picked up psychic traffic. It was on neither protoss frequencies nor those used by the terrans' clandestine science experiments. The avengers could not hear it at first, since the witnesses were vastly more sensitive, but as they traveled deeper the avengers started to feel it in the back of their minds. Though they did not understand it, they thought it sounded like insects buzzing at night. It grew louder as they approached what appeared to be the source, within what appeared to be the local school.
On the upside, the different frequency meant that whatever was producing it probably was not looking for their frequencies. If they played their songs carefully, they could speak without being overheard.
The witnesses catalogued everything under their dispassionate gaze. No children played here. Not teacher taught. Other than the squelching beneath their fleet and psychic buzzing, the building was silent as the grave. They passed a few doors to empty classrooms before find the one they were looking for. The three took deep breaths, opened the door and entered.
What a sight it was. Attached to the wall, opposite the door, by some kind of resin was what might have once been a young man. He had been… mutilated? Mutated? His skeleton was horrifically distorted: the right half of his ribcage was grotesquely oversized, one of his legs was an insect-like hoof, and both of his arms were replaced by asymmetrical crab-like claws. His face was even worse: the top half was recognizable as human, but his jaw was missing and a mass of red tendrils had burst out of his mouth.
Mercifully, the thing that was once a man was silent, milky eyes staring blankly into eternity. Whatever had been done to him had killed him, ending his torment. The three avengers simultaneously made the sign of the aquila and prayed that his soul rest peacefully on the Seven Winds.
Their genuflection was interrupted when they heard a cracking sound in another corner of the room. It was on the same wall as the door, so they missed it upon their entrance. A gigantic cocoon was rippling and something underneath it roused to life. The avengers quickly took up positions around the room, in case events turned violent. Hopefully they would not need to play their hand so early.
The cocoon burst open in a spray of amniotic fluid. The creature that emerged… it was entirely unlike the poor man just a few meters away. It was symmetrical, even beautiful in the eyes of an entomologist. It had the triangular head of a gigantic insect, the clawed extremities and armored carapace of one as well. As for the forearms, the thighs, the belly and sides of the back… these betrayed the hideous truth: this thing might have been human once upon a time or at least had a parent who was human. Whatever it was now, it was not human.
The grey mat was not what it seemed. There was intelligence behind it. All this was the result of deliberately genetic engineering? Who were the engineers? What horror were they planning?
Then the beast spoke, clicking like some kind of demented parrot. "I live to serve," it rasped. It paused, then spoke again, "I arrive momentarily."
The beast had stood erect as it was born, but now fell to all fours. With a grace and speed unknown to the human species, it scuttled across the room and out the door. It never knew that it was being watched.
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Chapter 2, part 2
Then the beast spoke, clicking like some kind of demented parrot. "I serve," it rasped. It paused, and then spoke again, "I arrive."
The beast had stood erect as it was born, but now fell to all fours. With a grace and speed unknown to the human species, it scuttled across the room and out the door. It never knew that it was being watched.
The grey mat was not what it seemed. There was intelligence behind it.
It was only a matter of time before the terrans sent a team to investigate and repair the transmitter. The three knew they had to be quick about this before their escape window closed. With light steps or smooth gliding, the avengers and observers followed after the wretched creature as it unwittingly guided their path.
As they followed, the buzzing only multiplied.
The creature skittered past the shells of buildings, seemingly toward the center of the underground complex. The town above was a ghost, and the outskirts of the underground had been deserted, but as the protoss walked these streets they were alarmed to see more cocoons. Most were empty, split open and spilling foul-smelling amniotic fluid. A few were closed, writhing with an unholy life within. Others were decaying, the twisted remains of what had once been citizens festering.
The Second caught a glimpse in the corner of his vision and briefly glanced at it, then immediately wished he had not. The ragged forequarters of a four-footed beast hung from one of the cocoons: its yellow fur was matted with scarlet, its blackened tongue lolled from a broken jaw, and its formerly bright blue collar was now mostly stained a dark, dull brown. The poor dear had probably once been someone's pet… what was it, a "chocolate labrador?" No, that could not be the name, but then the spy did not keep track of such trivialities.
Here the spies saw their first glimpse of another organism. Tentacled maggot-like creatures, the size of small dog, slithered across the cocoons and chewed at the remains of the poor wretches. The vermin constantly chirped and chattered like cicadas in the night.
The Third briefly strained himself trying to listen for anything useful. Click click clack. Click click clack. All he could determine was that the buzz was not random. There was a pattern to it, a direction. There was no doubt they were walking right into the nexus.
The avengers again made the sign of the aquila, then the sign of the scorpio, and silently prayed that the lost souls would find peace. They pressed on.
Rather conveniently, their guide was skittering towards the physical and social center of the complex, the town hall and associated institutions. They passed shop and diner windows, empty of life and steadying eroding under the unrelenting growth of the grey mat. If the survivalists had put up a fight when the mass came for them, all evidence had been covered by it.
Once the town hall was in sight, the avengers saw their third organism. Since they arrived the air had been filled with strange, dust-like particles. Initially they saw miscellaneous orifices producing the pollen, but now they saw freakish, tree-like growths pumping the pollen from transparent sacks of nauseating greenish fluid. Rather than branches the alien trees were crowned by strange anatomy loosely resembling a gun barrel, from which issued the alien pollen.
These xenomorphs ("strange shapes") were xenoforming the environment to suit themselves. All this was the result of deliberate genetic engineering. The truth could not be otherwise. Who were the engineers? What horror were they planning?
The observers cataloged everything without bias or judgment, their thousand tiny eyes scanning across the vaulted ceilings and cracking streets. Truly they were blessed, these children of the Khalai, for their form of intelligence was beyond such reproach.
The street had collapsed in front of their party, leaving a large hole through which the grey mat extended thick roots to unknown ends. The avengers saw only a empty, yawning void, and heard only more buzzing, yet they felt the barest hint of something... hungering. The ex-human paused to examine the hole, then jumped down into the darkness.
The avengers glanced at each other. One of the observers descended into the hole. After a few moments of silence, the First jumped into the breach after it. The Second and Third followed with all due haste.
As they traveled, they heard the psychic chattering steadily give way to… not words, exactly, but something they could understand a bit better. Their psi-crystals were able to translate the alien signals into something recognizable, though they had no idea how.
Explore terran colony.
The creature moved quickly, almost skating across the organic mat. The avengers were faster, using the walls and ceiling as jumping points, following after the thing with all the grace of ballet dancers in an opera play.
Where the bunker town was vast and still lit by flickering lights, this tunnel was narrow and pitch black. That did not stop the avengers, who saw through the darkness with ease. Though there was no visible light, there was plenty of infrared light being given off by the mat and the very air itself. The three could easily orient themselves by watching the glowing currents.
Expand nydus network.
Suddenly the tunnel gave way to yet another chamber. As the protoss glanced around, they saw an egg-shaped chamber. The walls were covered in the grey mat and dotted with large holes. Their quarry scurried through one of these, vanishing from their sight.
Their gaze was drawn to a purple crystal set into the middle of the chamber, wrapped in dripping tendrils. It was at least a few meters tall, and the base was adorned with naked, grinning human skulls. They could see, with their third eyes, that the crystal was a wireless transmitter.
The floor of the chamber was dotted with a handful of large plant-like organisms. The plants each had three branches, arranged in a manner vaguely resembling a pitchfork. Each branch was shaped like a series of nested bells, possibly flower blossoms of some kind.
Exploit indigenous life.
The Third slowly stepped forward to examine the crystal with better clarity. His elbow brushed one of the plants, which suddenly shuddered. Its blossoms shook, producing a barely audible rattling noise.
The three avengers froze as one.
The plant shrieked. It was a shrill, horrible sound, like someone in unimaginable and unnameable torment.
All of the plants shrieked. One could be forgiven for thinking that this horrid cry was the trumpets of the apocalypse or the wails of the damned in the deepest pits of the manifold hells.
Exterminate intruders.
The avengers knew their time was up. With lightning speed they turned around and fled the same way they came. They danced across the walls and ceiling, their parkour making the mightiest human athlete look like a child by comparison. The observers followed silently beside them.
The tunnels started shaking, and audible chattering could be heard behind them. Thumping sounds echoed behind them, as a horde of hellish indescribable things skittered toward them.
They had already mapped the path they took, so they never lost their way. The map displayed itself across the very surface of their eyes. They never looked back, nor grew distracted by the multiple inputs. They only ran.
By the time they scrambled out of the manhole and into the blessed light of the sun, a terran shuttle was already landing a short distance from the communications tower. The avengers took no heed of this and merely ran toward their own shuttle.
Secrecy was less of a concern now, so the First quickly send a quick message to the Pilot to rendezvous at another position and prepare to leave the planet. Back in the shuttle, the Pilot stilled his startle and did as he was bid. He could feel the unease from the First's message.
Almost as soon as they passed the outskirts of the settlement, the three heard very human screams of terror. They did not look back. This was none of their concern, as the mission was over.
Outskirts of Uilila system
Back aboard the Balance of Judgment, the First bowed his head in supplication to Nuun-Min. The cool blue lights of the briefing room did nothing to lessen the severity of the horror playing repeatedly on the holographic screen across the far wall.
"My sincerest apologies, Most Esteemed Judicator," he began. "We were unable to follow the creature within the time limit. We accept any punishment—"
"That will be all, enforcers," she said. "Dismissed."
"At once, Most Esteemed."
As the three Sargas enforcers politely stepped backward before turning to leave, she added, "Take some time off. You earned it."
After the door closed behind them, Executor Andinunn let loose the breath she had been holding. Within the briefing room, nobody else would hear them if they did not wish it. She stepped toward the screen and lifted a hand to vainly grasp at the image. She thought aloud, "These findings… merciful ancestors, I cannot begin to describe nor scarcely imagine the implications. There is no possible way this is the work of the terrans' own sciences. This is far beyond them."
She glanced at the judicator. Nuun-Min had remained silent, stony, as the executor confessed her horror. "These xenomorphs have infested the settlements, visited horrors upon their citizens. An invasive species if ever there was one. What do you suggest, Judicator?" she asked, voice cold and firm.
Seeking counsel was unnecessary. The executor was well within her bounds to make decisions without seeking validation from the Assembly's functionary. She spoke these words only out of politeness, even if it wasted here in the hinterlands of the frontier.
"Purify the world from orbit. That is the only way to be sure."
The executor paused for a moment of reflection, then laughed. "Indeed?" she began. "What of the other worlds? How far do you think this contagion has spread? Knowing the terrans, this is hardly their only experiment."
The judicator did not answer. If she did, it would have been no different.
"You would condemn the terrans to extinction? You would so brazenly mock the dictates of the Great Stewardship?"
Andinunn thought little of the puny earthlings, but she could not stop the image of that empty school from flashing through her thoughts. Colorful streamers hung from the walls, crayon drawings hung from corkboard by thumbtack. Where were the children?
"The Great Stewardship is more guideline than ironclad rule. Spirit over word. Any life that does not fit our standards of perfection, that grows out of our control, is to be put to the sword and flame. Need I remind you of the Kalathi, Krogan, or Tagal?"
Andinunn's eyes glowed with scarlet flames and her feet rose several inches above the floor. "Choose your next words very carefully, Judicator," she warned. It would be easy for her, trained as a high templar, to rip the other woman to shreds without even crossing the distance between them. In her heart of hearts she longed to rip that smirking face from the other's shoulders and baptize herself in the blue blood as it sprayed like a fountain from the stump of the neck. It would be so easy to do that, but it would be so wrong.
If Nuun-Min was afraid on some level of consciousness, the Khala's Light illuminated no sign of it. The judicator merely nodded her head and raised her palms in a gesture of supplication. "Come now, Executor," she began. "I understand your feelings as well as you do. How could I not?" The judicator glided to the screen and caressed the image of the grotesquery from the bunker. "Would you prefer the terrans die as themselves, or be consigned to eternity as whatever in the Seven Winds this abomination is?" Nuun-Min glanced at the executor and locked their gazes. "Do you remember the horrors of the Ghoul Stars campaign? When living nightmares would walk through ship's hulls like air, flay their victims before the eyes of their compatriots and turn the witnesses into pillars of salt?"
The executor floated to the floor and her eyes dimmed to a warm yellow. "I never partook in the campaign, but I heard stories of Executor Oong's courage and valor, of his many sacrifices. I have long desired to emulate his heroism…"
The judicator nodded. "Yet you fear you might make some terrible mistake?" she asked rhetorically. "I am not some lunatic urging you on a genocidal rampage. We have precious little information concerning these xenomorphs, save that they are some manner of pathogen and the terrans find them of great interest."
Andinunn's perfectly manicured nails clicked as her heart suddenly sped up for a moment. Their ancestors were among the first of their kind to build ships to sail the seas. They may not have been Furinax or Shelak, but a hunger to discover and tame the unknown was in their blood.
"Sever a head of the water serpent, two more grow in its place," she said.
"Yet the last is immortal: find and bury it on land, the beast troubles you no more," Nuun-Min finished for her.
The couplet sounded better in the original language.
The executor sighed, lowering her shoulders as if under a heavy weight. "Let us retire for the evening, Judicator," she began. "Menbellir is studying the samples retrieved by the observers. When his studies yield fruit he shall brief us. Thus informed, only then shall we make the decision how next we proceed."
"By your command, Executor. I defer to your judgment in all ways of warcraft."
The beast had stood erect as it was born, but now fell to all fours. With a grace and speed unknown to the human species, it scuttled across the room and out the door. It never knew that it was being watched.
The grey mat was not what it seemed. There was intelligence behind it.
It was only a matter of time before the terrans sent a team to investigate and repair the transmitter. The three knew they had to be quick about this before their escape window closed. With light steps or smooth gliding, the avengers and observers followed after the wretched creature as it unwittingly guided their path.
As they followed, the buzzing only multiplied.
The creature skittered past the shells of buildings, seemingly toward the center of the underground complex. The town above was a ghost, and the outskirts of the underground had been deserted, but as the protoss walked these streets they were alarmed to see more cocoons. Most were empty, split open and spilling foul-smelling amniotic fluid. A few were closed, writhing with an unholy life within. Others were decaying, the twisted remains of what had once been citizens festering.
The Second caught a glimpse in the corner of his vision and briefly glanced at it, then immediately wished he had not. The ragged forequarters of a four-footed beast hung from one of the cocoons: its yellow fur was matted with scarlet, its blackened tongue lolled from a broken jaw, and its formerly bright blue collar was now mostly stained a dark, dull brown. The poor dear had probably once been someone's pet… what was it, a "chocolate labrador?" No, that could not be the name, but then the spy did not keep track of such trivialities.
Here the spies saw their first glimpse of another organism. Tentacled maggot-like creatures, the size of small dog, slithered across the cocoons and chewed at the remains of the poor wretches. The vermin constantly chirped and chattered like cicadas in the night.
The Third briefly strained himself trying to listen for anything useful. Click click clack. Click click clack. All he could determine was that the buzz was not random. There was a pattern to it, a direction. There was no doubt they were walking right into the nexus.
The avengers again made the sign of the aquila, then the sign of the scorpio, and silently prayed that the lost souls would find peace. They pressed on.
Rather conveniently, their guide was skittering towards the physical and social center of the complex, the town hall and associated institutions. They passed shop and diner windows, empty of life and steadying eroding under the unrelenting growth of the grey mat. If the survivalists had put up a fight when the mass came for them, all evidence had been covered by it.
Once the town hall was in sight, the avengers saw their third organism. Since they arrived the air had been filled with strange, dust-like particles. Initially they saw miscellaneous orifices producing the pollen, but now they saw freakish, tree-like growths pumping the pollen from transparent sacks of nauseating greenish fluid. Rather than branches the alien trees were crowned by strange anatomy loosely resembling a gun barrel, from which issued the alien pollen.
These xenomorphs ("strange shapes") were xenoforming the environment to suit themselves. All this was the result of deliberate genetic engineering. The truth could not be otherwise. Who were the engineers? What horror were they planning?
The observers cataloged everything without bias or judgment, their thousand tiny eyes scanning across the vaulted ceilings and cracking streets. Truly they were blessed, these children of the Khalai, for their form of intelligence was beyond such reproach.
The street had collapsed in front of their party, leaving a large hole through which the grey mat extended thick roots to unknown ends. The avengers saw only a empty, yawning void, and heard only more buzzing, yet they felt the barest hint of something... hungering. The ex-human paused to examine the hole, then jumped down into the darkness.
The avengers glanced at each other. One of the observers descended into the hole. After a few moments of silence, the First jumped into the breach after it. The Second and Third followed with all due haste.
As they traveled, they heard the psychic chattering steadily give way to… not words, exactly, but something they could understand a bit better. Their psi-crystals were able to translate the alien signals into something recognizable, though they had no idea how.
Explore terran colony.
The creature moved quickly, almost skating across the organic mat. The avengers were faster, using the walls and ceiling as jumping points, following after the thing with all the grace of ballet dancers in an opera play.
Where the bunker town was vast and still lit by flickering lights, this tunnel was narrow and pitch black. That did not stop the avengers, who saw through the darkness with ease. Though there was no visible light, there was plenty of infrared light being given off by the mat and the very air itself. The three could easily orient themselves by watching the glowing currents.
Expand nydus network.
Suddenly the tunnel gave way to yet another chamber. As the protoss glanced around, they saw an egg-shaped chamber. The walls were covered in the grey mat and dotted with large holes. Their quarry scurried through one of these, vanishing from their sight.
Their gaze was drawn to a purple crystal set into the middle of the chamber, wrapped in dripping tendrils. It was at least a few meters tall, and the base was adorned with naked, grinning human skulls. They could see, with their third eyes, that the crystal was a wireless transmitter.
The floor of the chamber was dotted with a handful of large plant-like organisms. The plants each had three branches, arranged in a manner vaguely resembling a pitchfork. Each branch was shaped like a series of nested bells, possibly flower blossoms of some kind.
Exploit indigenous life.
The Third slowly stepped forward to examine the crystal with better clarity. His elbow brushed one of the plants, which suddenly shuddered. Its blossoms shook, producing a barely audible rattling noise.
The three avengers froze as one.
The plant shrieked. It was a shrill, horrible sound, like someone in unimaginable and unnameable torment.
All of the plants shrieked. One could be forgiven for thinking that this horrid cry was the trumpets of the apocalypse or the wails of the damned in the deepest pits of the manifold hells.
Exterminate intruders.
The avengers knew their time was up. With lightning speed they turned around and fled the same way they came. They danced across the walls and ceiling, their parkour making the mightiest human athlete look like a child by comparison. The observers followed silently beside them.
The tunnels started shaking, and audible chattering could be heard behind them. Thumping sounds echoed behind them, as a horde of hellish indescribable things skittered toward them.
They had already mapped the path they took, so they never lost their way. The map displayed itself across the very surface of their eyes. They never looked back, nor grew distracted by the multiple inputs. They only ran.
By the time they scrambled out of the manhole and into the blessed light of the sun, a terran shuttle was already landing a short distance from the communications tower. The avengers took no heed of this and merely ran toward their own shuttle.
Secrecy was less of a concern now, so the First quickly send a quick message to the Pilot to rendezvous at another position and prepare to leave the planet. Back in the shuttle, the Pilot stilled his startle and did as he was bid. He could feel the unease from the First's message.
Almost as soon as they passed the outskirts of the settlement, the three heard very human screams of terror. They did not look back. This was none of their concern, as the mission was over.
Outskirts of Uilila system
Back aboard the Balance of Judgment, the First bowed his head in supplication to Nuun-Min. The cool blue lights of the briefing room did nothing to lessen the severity of the horror playing repeatedly on the holographic screen across the far wall.
"My sincerest apologies, Most Esteemed Judicator," he began. "We were unable to follow the creature within the time limit. We accept any punishment—"
"That will be all, enforcers," she said. "Dismissed."
"At once, Most Esteemed."
As the three Sargas enforcers politely stepped backward before turning to leave, she added, "Take some time off. You earned it."
After the door closed behind them, Executor Andinunn let loose the breath she had been holding. Within the briefing room, nobody else would hear them if they did not wish it. She stepped toward the screen and lifted a hand to vainly grasp at the image. She thought aloud, "These findings… merciful ancestors, I cannot begin to describe nor scarcely imagine the implications. There is no possible way this is the work of the terrans' own sciences. This is far beyond them."
She glanced at the judicator. Nuun-Min had remained silent, stony, as the executor confessed her horror. "These xenomorphs have infested the settlements, visited horrors upon their citizens. An invasive species if ever there was one. What do you suggest, Judicator?" she asked, voice cold and firm.
Seeking counsel was unnecessary. The executor was well within her bounds to make decisions without seeking validation from the Assembly's functionary. She spoke these words only out of politeness, even if it wasted here in the hinterlands of the frontier.
"Purify the world from orbit. That is the only way to be sure."
The executor paused for a moment of reflection, then laughed. "Indeed?" she began. "What of the other worlds? How far do you think this contagion has spread? Knowing the terrans, this is hardly their only experiment."
The judicator did not answer. If she did, it would have been no different.
"You would condemn the terrans to extinction? You would so brazenly mock the dictates of the Great Stewardship?"
Andinunn thought little of the puny earthlings, but she could not stop the image of that empty school from flashing through her thoughts. Colorful streamers hung from the walls, crayon drawings hung from corkboard by thumbtack. Where were the children?
"The Great Stewardship is more guideline than ironclad rule. Spirit over word. Any life that does not fit our standards of perfection, that grows out of our control, is to be put to the sword and flame. Need I remind you of the Kalathi, Krogan, or Tagal?"
Andinunn's eyes glowed with scarlet flames and her feet rose several inches above the floor. "Choose your next words very carefully, Judicator," she warned. It would be easy for her, trained as a high templar, to rip the other woman to shreds without even crossing the distance between them. In her heart of hearts she longed to rip that smirking face from the other's shoulders and baptize herself in the blue blood as it sprayed like a fountain from the stump of the neck. It would be so easy to do that, but it would be so wrong.
If Nuun-Min was afraid on some level of consciousness, the Khala's Light illuminated no sign of it. The judicator merely nodded her head and raised her palms in a gesture of supplication. "Come now, Executor," she began. "I understand your feelings as well as you do. How could I not?" The judicator glided to the screen and caressed the image of the grotesquery from the bunker. "Would you prefer the terrans die as themselves, or be consigned to eternity as whatever in the Seven Winds this abomination is?" Nuun-Min glanced at the executor and locked their gazes. "Do you remember the horrors of the Ghoul Stars campaign? When living nightmares would walk through ship's hulls like air, flay their victims before the eyes of their compatriots and turn the witnesses into pillars of salt?"
The executor floated to the floor and her eyes dimmed to a warm yellow. "I never partook in the campaign, but I heard stories of Executor Oong's courage and valor, of his many sacrifices. I have long desired to emulate his heroism…"
The judicator nodded. "Yet you fear you might make some terrible mistake?" she asked rhetorically. "I am not some lunatic urging you on a genocidal rampage. We have precious little information concerning these xenomorphs, save that they are some manner of pathogen and the terrans find them of great interest."
Andinunn's perfectly manicured nails clicked as her heart suddenly sped up for a moment. Their ancestors were among the first of their kind to build ships to sail the seas. They may not have been Furinax or Shelak, but a hunger to discover and tame the unknown was in their blood.
"Sever a head of the water serpent, two more grow in its place," she said.
"Yet the last is immortal: find and bury it on land, the beast troubles you no more," Nuun-Min finished for her.
The couplet sounded better in the original language.
The executor sighed, lowering her shoulders as if under a heavy weight. "Let us retire for the evening, Judicator," she began. "Menbellir is studying the samples retrieved by the observers. When his studies yield fruit he shall brief us. Thus informed, only then shall we make the decision how next we proceed."
"By your command, Executor. I defer to your judgment in all ways of warcraft."
History lesson
This story generally ignores the many retcons that have been made to Starcraft lore since its inception. For those who had difficulty understanding the many, many divergences from the most recent iteration of the lore, the original manual is available on the Blizzard servers.
http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/misc/StarCraft.PDF
That book contains an overview of the setting's history and factions. That is the version of the lore which takes precedence in this story. However, I will be pilfering the expanded universe (explained on the starcraft wiki) for material. For example, this fanfic has already mentioned the tal'darim exist in some form and featured the protoss avenger.
I can write a FAQ if anyone asks questions.
http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/misc/StarCraft.PDF
That book contains an overview of the setting's history and factions. That is the version of the lore which takes precedence in this story. However, I will be pilfering the expanded universe (explained on the starcraft wiki) for material. For example, this fanfic has already mentioned the tal'darim exist in some form and featured the protoss avenger.
I can write a FAQ if anyone asks questions.