Chapter III – The Voice of the Ancients

"What's THAT doing here?" said Michelle, as quickly as her voice strings regained their ability to speak.

"Warping was not always so obvious for the protoss as it is now," replied Tashara, starting her explanation. She knew much more than Maeltras, as her age was ten times longer than his,"Beginnings were actually very hard. Hundreds of years ago, when from time to time the warping systems failed, they teleported things to an inappropriate place on the time line. This carrier probably dates from such times. I think it was to be an important capital ship, as it is really tough. Its shields....they did not suffer too much."

The whole four stared at the carrier with absolute awe. They never saw such a marvelously crafted vessel in their life. It was similar to a standard carrier, apart from a few key features. On its top glimmered jewels in nearly every possible color. Its lines were unusually harmonic, the emotion strengthened by additional arcs, curving from the ship's fuselage.

"Let's get in!" shouted Fenris, breaking the silence and beginning his run in the carrier's direction.

"Fenris, do not!" Maeltras warned him, but the cyborg's confidence was too strong.

"How do you get in?" Fenris wondered aloud. He decided to touch the glittering deck. His cold palm reached it and....without warning, he was brutally dragged onto it, his defensive matrices shut down and his body hanging still on the ship's wall. Then a beep sounded and Fenris got highlighted in red, as if the vessel scanned him thoroughly. After that performance it let him go, and so he fell on the sand.

"Fenris! Are you OK?" asked Michelle. The three went up and helped their kinsman to get up. Meanwhile, the carrier opened its doors and let out a platform (a golden one, of course). It halted on a dune, its grace welcoming and somewhat beckoning our heroes to get in.

"I'm...alright....jes' a bit dizzy." Fenris managed to answer, trying to regain balance.

"Shall we enter?" Maeltras threw a question, directing it to no one specific.

"What is wrong with your senses, dear? Nobody is inside." replied Tashara, making her companions aware of the fact. "It should be safe to move in. And even if it is some sort of a trap....having a capital ship at our command is most certainly worth the risk."

"Agreed." mumbled Michelle, while Maeltras and Fenris simply nodded.

They found the inside just as breathtaking as the outside. The platform lead them to something that looked like a captain's bridge. The room was not too big. An orange cylindrical stool was positioned in its center. Walls were full of screens, which were framed with golden runes of protoss writing. The biggest screen was on the wall in front of them.

"I am going down to the armory. I am fond neither of this suit nor of that weapon." said Maeltras, already walking down the stairs. Tashara went up to the largest screen, with an intention to activate it. But all of a sudden, she noticed that something is behind the stool. It was a protoss, yet it appeared to be some sort of a caricature. It was very small, barely half the average size. It had a nose and lips, just like terrans do. Its skin was pale green and its eyes....it had none, only empty space where they belonged. It opened its mouth and began to speak with an emotionless voice.

"You, who drink - to the grave with you! You, who smoke - to the grave with you! You, who let others suffer - to the grave with you! You, who are posh - to the grave with you..."

Tashara and Fenris stood in silence, amazed by the being talking. Nevertheless, Michelle found it in fact rather funny, and started giggling. The creature continued.

"You, who kill - to the grave with you! You, who are indecent - to the grave with you..." and at that point Michelle just plainly couldn't suppress and burst out with loud laughter. The alien finally reacted, switching its tone to an angry one.

"You laugh? - to the grave with you!" it cried, and vanished, as if it was only a hallucination. Michelle instantly stopped laughing. Fenris was about to say something, but it seemed that the show was not over. The main screen switched itself on. At first it presented a grid, on which a few seconds later appeared the figure of Fenris. It was him, but....when he wasn't yet a cyborg. No metal parts, only a short, purple robe covering the area around his hips. The figure was resized and moved to the left, uppermost corner of the monitor. A message was displayed beneath. What it said, was shocking.

"Owner initialized.

....

Tribe: Auriga"

Fenris swallowed, excitement mixing with fear in his mind. Who was he in reality? He mustered to read the rest of the message.

"High member of the Conclave

Judicator Danimoth."

Fenris was overwhelmed. His knees bent and the sound of them hitting the floor stayed in his head. Shortly afterwards, Michelle and Tashara fell down....

....Fenris' psi cry silenced everything....

Tashara got up as soon as she recovered her consciousness. She blinked, as she thought she saw a god in front of her. Indeed, now Maeltras almost resembled a divine being. His armor was glowing in orange, even though it seemed to look just like a standard zealot suit. All the blue gems were replaced by orange ones as well. Tashara couldn't tell if there are any more differences, maybe apart from lack of psi-blade generators, but still Maeltras looked rather glorious in it. In his hand he carried a richly ornamented stick. On its side there was a tiny, rectangular hole. Maeltras raised the weapon, activating it.

"A psi-axe," marveled Tashara, getting up,"You look magnificent."

Maeltras glanced at the axe, which was made out of a violet beam. He noticed that something was wrong.

"Where is Fenris?" he asked, but immediately read Tashara's memories.

"We have company. Dominion military. It is not just some fighters. A squadron of goliaths supported by a ghost is on the first line. Then the wraiths that Fenris was talking about. What the last one consists of - Adun only knows."

Tashara quickly ran up to him and they hugged each other, as they always did when they faced a really threatening situation.

"Try and prepare this ship for battle," he said slowly, „I will help Fenris. And tell Michelle to come over, as soon as she wakes up. If we are to be lost to the Khala..."

"Then lost we shall be..." she whispered softly. Maeltras let her go shortly afterwards and sprinted out of the carrier. Tashara stood for a time, but when she realized that the moment is gone she got to the main screen and started her adjustments. She didn't even detect that Michelle ran to battle right after Maeltras.

Unfortunately, after clicking a few panels, Tashara was sure of one thing: setting up the craft won't be an easy objective.

"I was such a proud being and now...? What have they done? How DARE they? They will pay. I need revenge. I need it. Like hell. Oh, and what do we have here? Mmm...yummy, a dozen of goliaths. Anything else? Ho ho ho! A ghost! That dumb head probably thinks that I don't knows he's there. Huh! Cloaking is nothing for the sight that they equipped me with. And who is down there, now? Hey Maeltras! Over here! And Michelle as well! Now that's some company. Never mind. I have to kill. Wreck enemies. Wreck 'em all!"

Maeltras heard a strong roar so he turned around, just to see a gigantic Ursadon running behind him. He was glad that Michelle was close, for together they had a higher chance for success. He stopped to set his armor to a special mode and charged on the goliaths. He knew that Fenris will be attacking their left wing, so he had to strike the right one. Even though the cyborg was in rage, from the tactical point of view he was still thinking clearly. Maeltras watched with respect as he destroyed a leg of one of the mechs, causing it to fall on another one. The other one also lost its stability and pushed a third walker, so in just a shot Fenris neutralized three goliaths! The remaining nine agnized the stupidity of their formation and spread out. When Maeltras was near enough them, the vehicles opened fired from their twin canons. Even so, their shells were too weak to damage his armor in any significant way. The powerful terran rushed at one, took a swing with his psi-axe, cutting both of the goliaths legs and letting the turret break on the ground. He acted analogically with another two that happened to be not far. His friends were also quite busy. Michelle-Ursadon easily ran over two goliaths, burying them under her hooves. She also impaled a pilot a pilot of a different one on her tusk, and then threw his machine at an incoming walker. They fell in the process and once again Michelle stamped on them, just to be sure. The last two exploded, as a result of a shock canon bombardment they were gifted with from Fenris. No sign of the ghost indicated that his courage was probably in pieces.

"You better now?" asked Maeltras as he came up to his protoss comrade.

"Yea, thanks. I needed to ruin something," replied Fenris," Never mind. Maybe I wuz a judicator, but that's no longer truth. Now I'm Fenris and I don't wanna be nothing else....but enough of that lousy talk. When are the wraiths coming?"

"We have ten minutes. But we will not be able to stop them, unless Tashara converts the carrier functional. Even if you possessed a bag pack full of shock canon shells."

Fenris peeped at the ammo indicators on his bag pack. The impaler bullets container was nearly full, but only ten canon shells were left. He cursed.

"Hey! Don't worry, we'll prevail somehow," said Michelle, back in her ordinary form,"I'll change myself to the Kakaru..."

"And you will be ripped apart by a volley of gemini missiles," Maeltras interrupted her, burning out the optimism from her face,"This is no plan. We have to get them clustered up so that my psi-whirlwind could exterminate most of them. Then, you could meta morph in order to finish off the rest."

"Sounds like some good tactics," spoke Fenris,"But how are ya gonna get 'em clustered up?"

"I do have a few ideas, yes." Maeltras answered him, dashing for the carrier.

Michelle zigzagged, as the burst lasers tossed the sand all around her. Being followed by thirty wraiths was hardly her dream. Fortunately, she was not an easy target as the Bengalaas. In the distance she saw Maeltras in his orangish armor, ready to cast. The fighters were not properly bunched up, so it was nearly sure that only half of them will be eliminated in the whirlwind. Suddenly, Michelle heard a familiar sound, coming in from the sky. An enormous battlecruiser emerged, launching its Yamato canon at the wraiths and turning them to ashes in place. Maeltras recognized the battlecruiser as the Hyperion, the capital ship of James Raynor. The Dominion crafts quickly changed their target, unleashing rockets on the new foe. The Hyperion revealed its laser canons and also opened fire, suppressing the light armor of the fighters. Michelle transformed to the Kakaru without thinking and started hammering random wraiths with her armed tail.

"Nothing we can do now but watch." said Fenris to his boss, who looked at him sharply.

"We need to see what the third line is made of. Follow me." replied Maeltras, and so both of them ran to the desert.

The Hyperion looked dreadful. A skirmish with the wraiths wasn't too hard, but a shot from the Yamato canon had a definitely negative effect on the vessel. Four behemoth-class battlecruisers, which composed the third wave, were the worst of nightmares both for Raynor and Maeltras. Tashara, Fenris and their leader desperately tried to make the carrier work, but failed nonetheless. Maeltras told Fenris to continue checking the screens, while he and Tashara will try getting one of the battlecruisers down with their psionic abilities. The whole four was busy engaging the Hyperion, so they had no problem getting near them. Tashara had to strike first. She raised her infested arm, giving a sign to the small bacteria that lived in it to come on to the surface. She waited till enough of them accumulates, roughly as many as the defiler would use to plague an area. Then, she closed her eyes and focused on the microorganisms, throwing them on the battlecruiser with supersonic speed. They rapidly spread all over the vessel, eating up its armor. Maeltras casted his whirlwind shortly afterwards. The powerful cyclone broke the weakened craft into three parts, which later exploded,one after another. They knew that all was lost, for the Hyperion could succumb to the enemy fire in any minute now. They ambled to the carrier and rechecked all the screens. Nothing.

"Let me do this for you." the whole three heard a spooky voice from nowhere. And then, all of a sudden, the carrier lifted up. It opened the down part of its deck, reaveling a massive gun.

THE PLANET CRACKER.

Before the Dominion battlecruiser commanders realized what's going on, their ships were torn apart by the devastating might of the planet crackers blue ray. It literally sucked in the huge vessels.

"So, what are you? And what made you help us?" asked Raynor, feeling a little weird as he spoke to a ball of energy.

"Do not be prejudiced by my appearance, for I have many, James Raynor."said the creature. Maeltras' team was impressed by its gentle and proud manner of speaking.

"You all know something about the Xel'Naga," continued the creature,"Not all of it is actually true, but it does not matter. What does matter is that many of them want to destroy you, as a revenge for the fleet that was overwhelmed, first by the Protoss, and later by the Zerg. But some, like me, found the alliance between the protoss and the terrans beautiful. All we want is your success, so that you will rule the whole sector. But what for now, I recommend you return to Shakuras and lick your wounds. I will speak to you again, when the time comes. No danger awaits you from the Xel'Naga. At least for the time being. Farewell."

The ball disappeared immediately after the voice had finished.

"The best we can do know is listen to that," commented Maeltras," It would be an honor for us if you stayed on our ship for the whole journey to Shakuras, James Raynor."

"No problem, buddy."

Maeltras glanced at the stars. Their beams seem so faint and so weak....and still they are able to travel such a huge distance. He was amazed at how the stars secretly interfered with each other. Not in any spectacular way. Just, with a bit of light. But each bit of light could be reflected.

For reflection is the key.

THE END