”My master, we have seized all the Daelaam ships!” Inside the bridge of one of the captured carriers, an ascendant knelt down and reported. A fractured golden armor was lying under his right leg. It belonged to the previous owner of the carrier.
All the ascendants Nyon sent to take the ships were his supplicants. He had no intention of taking two dozen ships just so other ascendants could own it.
“Join my fleet. We will modify these ships after we return to Slayn. The gold color of the Firstborn disgusts me.” Nyon was complaining, but deep down he was smiling. In usual looting, especially against Daelaam fleets, it was difficult for the Tal’darim to take all the enemy ships. In fact, sometimes the Tal’darim would be forced to destroy all the enemy ships and return with nothing but a handful of wounded ships.
Something like this, taking all 24 enemy capital ships and adding them to his fleet, was a miracle.
The whole process seemed easy, but it was actually extremely demanding in term of the schedule. If the stasis was a second too late... If the stasis didn’t catch all the Daelaam fleet... If the Tal’darim boarding parties weren’t strong enough...Thankfully, none of that happened, and the Tal’darim came out on top.
Even Fifth Ascendant Ji’nara only had a hundred or so ships. At this point Nyon was totally capable of challenging her in terms of influence, although he might not be able to defeat her in a Rak’Shir duel.
Nonetheless, it was a great improvement.
The Sixth Ascendant eyed Jean. The girl helped him, and it was time to repay the favor.
“All ships move descend upon the Daelaam facility. Obliterate their orbital defenses but leave the facility itself intact. Deploy war prisms. When they are in place, warp in supplicants. Kill all the Daelaam.”
“Don’t forget to post patrols to look out for the Golden Armada.” Jean reminded.
“Send out scouts and phoenixes. Patrol the perimeter. If the Golden Armada arrives, do all you can to delay them even it means sacrificing your lives.”
“Yes my master.”
As the Tal’darim fleet descended and started exchanging fire with the orbital cannons, Nyon turned to the hologram of Jean once again. “I assume you want to be in the facility yourself. I will notify you when my warriors take out all the Daelaam. I have given them a strict order to comply with everything you want. You did your part and helped me, and now I will do my part.”
Inside her dropship, Jean nodded in acknowledgment. She didn’t really trust Nyon, but she did know he still needed her. As long as she still had value, Nyon wouldn’t betray her, and through the tactical advises she has repeatedly proven her value.
When the Special Forces dropship hit the ground, the Daelaam were nothing but broken armors, ownerless weapons, and speckles of psionic energy.
Two Tal’darim supplicant zealots see Jean walking out, but they didn’t do anything drastic. Nyon had ultimate control over his supplicants. This control was enough to overcome the Tal’darim’s desire to kill any living being they see that wasn’t one of them.
Jean walked deeper and deeper into the facility. The helmet of her Dominion marine CMC armor was sealed shut as the facility, designed for protoss, didn’t hold any oxygen. Walking by a fried psionic blade generator, Jean stopped in front of a control panel.
She quickly realized a problem.
She didn’t understand the protoss language…
Everything about protoss was so mysterious to terran, whether it was their technology, their culture, their biological structure, or their words. There might be a translation between the protoss language and that of terran somewhere in the Umojan Protectorate or the Terran Dominion, but Jean has never had access to that translation.
Thankfully, she had the backup of an army of protoss.
She waved her hand at one of the Tal’darim zealots. The warrior groaned. It took all his loyalty to Nyon to stop himself from slicing the terran weakling to pieces. There was no way he would do her biddings. Then he remembered Nyon told all his supplicants to obey Jean’s orders, and it took two seconds for the zealot to make up the decision to comply.
“Translate everything in this console to terran language and give me a copy.”
Jean ordered explicitly, not bothering with politeness. The Tal’darim culture meant that politeness wouldn’t matter at all. If the zealot was going to help her, being polite would be pointless. If he wasn’t helping her, she saying thank you couldn’t change his opinion.
The brute glanced at the console before turning to Jean blankly. “Manufacturing and technology is the work of the weak.”
Which is your way of saying you don’t understand these information...Jean frowned and took out the communicator with Nyon.
“I need you to send me a phase smith.”
“Why?” Nyon, laying back in his throne, frowned. Jean explained her obstacle to him, and the Sixth Ascendant nodded. Seconds later, a light beam solidified, and a Tal’darim in a light armor walked out. Jean keenly noticed the zealot that talked to her smirking.
In a society like the Tal’darim, knowledge wasn’t appreciated. As far as the zealots could see, only weaklings bothered with making weapons and ships. Oddly, this was similar inside the Daelaam. Phase smith that could develop weapons powerful enough to change the tide of war were treated like servants.
“How may I serve?” The phase smith asked nicely. While Nyon’s elite supplicant warriors were too proud to serve a human being, the phase smith was less confident, especially when the Sixth Ascendant himself came to him and issued the order.
“Translate everything in this console to terran language and give me a copy.”
The phase smith checked out the console and started working. While he was working, Jean turned back to the supplicant zealot. “Summon your warriors and search the facility. Locate a vessel called the Megalith.”
The zealot nodded slowly and departed. He might not be the wisest protoss in the room, but he might just be the strongest.
Purifiers were ancient protoss mechanical warriors created by the conclave for one purpose: War. Some of the Purifiers held the AI personalities of famous protoss warriors fallen in battle. Others held simple Artificial Intelligences that allowed them to fight in battle as efficiently as possible. The mechanical nature of the Purifiers meant they could be produced in the millions. With swarming numbers, impenetrable metal bodies, and centuries of experience, the Purifiers were the sharpest blade of the Protoss Empire.
If the Purifiers were still active during the Brood War, then the swarm might be the ones swarmed.
Unfortunately, a war broke out between the Purifiers and the Khala centuries before the Brood War. The Daelaam deemed the Purifiers, without nerve cords and therefore lacking connection with the Khala, untrustworthy. The Purifiers were tired of being treated as slaves instead of warriors.
In the end, the Purifiers were defeated. The Great Fleet of the Khala destroyed the Purifier fleet. However, instead of slaughtering the Purifiers to the last, the Conclave decided to seal the Purifier army inside an ultimate vessel called the Cybros and put the Cybros in stasis above the planet of Endion. If a threat arose for the protoss civilization, the Purifiers could be reactivated.
The protoss were seriously afraid of facing an apocalypse. First they sealed off three arkships under the surface of Aiur and stored armies and armies of elite templars in stasis in the ships. Then they sealed the Purifiers above Endion in case something went wrong.
These measures might just save the protoss race, but it appeared like today Jean would be the one benefiting from the conclave’s caution.
In order to activate Purifiers, Jean needed to turn off the stasis field of Cybros first. The only device that could do that was a vessel called Megalith. Jean knew from her memory the Megalith was stored in this facility. The research information was good, but if she could find the Megalith, she could go to Endion and release the Purifiers.
With the Purifiers in stasis, Jean could make some alterations and hopefully make them her puppet.
“Terran female,” A few minutes later, the phase smith walked to Jean. He didn’t know her name, so she referred to her race and sex. He handed her a disk, which Jean plugged into her armor. The content was projected to the inside of her helmet.
The disk contained information about two types of units. Sentinels and instigators.
After the fall of Aiur and after Artanis took power, he considered reactivating the Purifiers. Unfortunately, he encountered heavy resistance. Older templars didn’t trust the Purifiers, and most of the Daelaam felt like the Golden Armada was enough to take back Aiur. The Daelaam was at a low point, but it wasn’t so low that they needed to risk using the Purifiers and risk having them turn against the Daelaam.
So Artanis went to the second best thing. In the facility of Glacius, he ordered certain khalai to use sealed data kept in the Daelaam archive to create a brand new Purifier army. Something as large as activating the Purifiers needed the consent of the twilight council, but setting up a research facility didn’t.
Sentinels were Purifier zealots. They weren’t nearly as powerful as ancient Purifier legionnaires, extremely mighty melee warriors that could almost certainly defeat a Daelaam zealot in a fair fight. In fact, these sentinels were barely a match for Daelaam zealots. However, the sentinels had their own advantages. Their mechanical nature meant they could reconstruct their bodies and repair most damage. Unless their bodies were completely destroyed, like being stomped on by an Ultralisk or melted by a hellbat, the sentinels could keep on fighting. Even if their heads were taken off, they could keep on charging.
When Artanis first saw information about this unit, he considered it a critical weapon capable of changing the tide of war. One of the limiting features that kept the Daelaam from forming an army of billions of zealots was the lack of protoss population. The Daelaam had enough resource to arm tens of millions of warriors, but they simply didn’t have the warriors to arm.
A protoss took centuries of training and experience to become a zealot. This meant there was hardly any regeneration in population during the four years of peace after the Brood War. Every protoss that died in battle meant one less protoss in the sector. Even with all the emergency warping systems and dragoons and immortals, the Daelaam population was still continuously declining. If they kept on trading precious warriors with cheap zerg and terran units who took a relatively short time to grow, the Daelaam would be gone before the war ever ends.
But if the Daelaam could turn all the minerals they had into sentinels that could fight the moment they have been assembled, the Daelaam will have enough to swarm over any enemy.
That was why despite facing intense resistance, Artanis still ordered the development of these units. With sufficient support and resource, the Khalai on Glacius has already came up with a near complete unit profile. Anyone with the information and sufficient resources could start making these sentinels.
This was designed so the Daelaam could have an army of sentinels as soon as possible, but now everything has became the property of Jean.
Instigators were similar to sentinels in that they were also capable of being mass produced. They were Purifier stalkers. Their mechanical body allowed them to blink multiple times, therefore giving them incredible maneuverability. Just like the sentinels, they weren’t the strongest unit in the field, but they were certainly one of the easiest to produce.
Jean nodded at the Tal’darim phase smith. One of her two goals was complete. Now all she needed was the Megalith, and she could leave this planet and head for Endion.
A couple minutes later, a squad of twenty zealots brought a giant vessel over. Its yellow theme was that of the Purifiers.
It was Jean’s key to the Purifiers.
For a moment Jean wondered why Artanis left both information about the sentinels and instigators and the Megalith in somewhere as defenseless as this facility. Two fleets could shut down most aggressions, but if anyone knew about the significance of this place, they would certainly have enough ships to wipe out the defense fleets. If Jean was in Artanis’ position she would keep these key components in the safest place possible.
Jean didn’t know Artanis was forced to keep these objects in a relatively remote area. Artanis knew how important the Megalith was, but as the hierarch, he was more of a military commander than an overall leader. He needed to comply with the will of his people. Plus, the Golden Armada was already on heavy duty. It needed to defend the Tal’darim, the Swarm, the Dominion, and all the planets that belonged to the Daelaam. Two fleets were the most Artanis could spare. If he kept more ships around Glacius and, as a consequence, protoss territories were taken and protoss people were slaughtered, Artanis would have a civil conflict at hand.
Then again, it’s not that any of this mattered. Jean was able to return to her dropship and lift off with everything she came here for. When she was gone, so was the Tal’darim. As they left, Nyon cruelly ordered an orbital bombardment. Her motherships’ displacement beams melted the entire facility and destroyed whatever information or research that were left.
The Tal’darim didn’t need this information, but they wouldn’t miss a chance to hurt others, even if the action couldn’t help them. Jean might leave the unit info to the Daelaam after making a copy, but Nyon just wanted to see the world burn at his command.
In one of the chambers, a prototype Purifier was melted.
Half an hour after Glacius was destroyed, the Golden Armada reinforcement, under Executor Selendis, finally arrived.
They didn’t like what they saw.
