Chapter 16 – Detours
August 29, 2502, 10:00
General's Office
Vempari Segment HQ
As he perused the reports, troop deployment data and other information his rank allowed him access to, Kain frowned. Piecing together Mengsk's long term strategy was still proving to be a challenge. Knowing of his longstanding feud with the Queen of Blades narrowed his focus somewhat, but the details were still unclear, concealed under myriad layers of military bureaucracy and countless more mundane operations such as the subjugation of unruly colonies or the abduction of possible new Ghost candidates. He did, however, find some notes regarding an elusive group of breakaway Ghosts known as the Specters. It seemed to the vampire that whatever the Dominion was doing to its inductees, the process was neither voluntary nor particularly pleasant, which would explain their animosity. Kain knew very well that hatred was a powerful motivation, having been both driven by it and having used it in order to drive others.
He turned his attention to the Protoss for another moment. They seemed to be making progress in clearing a path towards Char, no doubt aided by his former right hand. While Kain had no particular plans regarding the Protoss, he knew it was only a matter of time until they crossed paths, especially if he were to find Raziel and lure him back in order to finish the task at hand. All his schemes before the unexpected side trip had been focused on one overriding goal, and he was still hell-bent on achieving it.
The Pillars, and Nosgoth itself seemed tiny and trivial in comparison to the myriad of worlds now open before him, like specks of sand, but they were his specks of sand and he would make those responsible for toying with his world and with his entire path of existence pay dearly. Still, the hooded figure's words haunted him.
"Your pawn is far more important – and dangerous – than you realize."
That statement had left him a little on the back foot, but the words that followed had been somewhat worse.
"The Wheel of Fate has turned many times for that one. Far more than you can imagine. All in an effort to keep him oblivious and contained."
"All this just to keep one entity trapped?" Kain scoffed, knowing that his office was soundproofed and he had found and disposed of all the concealed surveillance equipment. "Even if it's him, the notion is ridiculous!"
While Raziel was a vital piece of his plans, the notion that someone had been tampering with the entire world just to keep him out of the way was inconceivable.
"Nosgoth was meant to be both another conquest for the forces that orchestrated the downfall of the Circle of Nine… and a prison."
The memory of that remark turned Kain's attention to another angle. The Hylden were still a threat, scheming from the confines of the hellish dimension they had been banished to. While Kain was loathe to listen to self-professed sages and oracles, he couldn't help wondering if they were still pulling the strings behind the scenes… or whether another outside force was also involved.
"The Circle… the Pillars." Kain pondered. "How does it all tie together beyond what I know? Are there even more layers to this deception?"
He knew the Pillars to be the tumblers on the cosmic lock keeping the Hylden trapped, but clearly there had still been some who had been able to slip through, even before their fall into corruption. Kain suspected that there was some form of temporal manipulation involved, which led him back to Moebius, but there were still too many pieces missing. He also couldn't help finding the Ancients' design choice questionable at best – a locking system tied into the primordial forces holding the world together and whose corruption would in turn twist the selfsame forces? He could not understand their reasoning, or even what kind of power it had taken to carry out such a feat.
"Damn you Moebius. Damn you Mortanius." Kain growled in frustration. "Damn the whole Circle, the Pillars, the Hylden and whoever came up with this entire twisted web!"
Unable to make a breakthrough, he decided to go for a stroll across the Segment base. While the uneducated, barely literate masses of the Dominion were grating on his nerves and he silently wondered how they had ever been able to spread into other worlds on their own, he realized he had developed an appreciation for gazing out into space from the base's transparisteel windows.
Eventually making his way to a hangar bay, he paused to gaze outside in silence. That did not last long, however, as one of the technicians working on a dropship with a fusion cutter accidentally let one of the sparks hit the open bottle of moonshine he had carelessly left on the floor next to him. A sudden burst of flame erupted out of the bottle, singing off the man's eyebrows and eliciting a shout. In a panic, he kicked the bottle, spilling the rest of the contents on the floor in a spray of shattered glass.
With his moment of tranquility shattered, Kain furrowed his brow in annoyance and turned, glaring daggers at the man. Raising his right hand, he pulled the hapless grease monkey into his telekinetic grip.
"Are you some sort of inbred imbecile?" Kain hissed. "Clean up this mess and stop acting like a fool, or I will throw you out the airlock and replace you with a trained chimpanzee."
As he saw the wet stain spreading across the man's trousers, the vampire groaned and released his telekinetic grip, unceremoniously dropping him on the floor before storming out.
"I am surrounded by fools." he silently lamented. "How did these inbred, borderline illiterate mongrels ever spread across the stars?"
August 30, 2502, 00:00
Unknown Barren Planetoid
After pacing through the entire diameter of the barren wasteland twice, Raziel was certain of two things. First, he appeared to be stranded, without any apparent way back and deprived of his escort. Second, he was utterly bored, having never been idle for so long since emerging from the Lake of the Dead. Revenge had become his single overriding purpose, and being unable to pursue it or do anything remotely worthwhile. At this point he would have even welcomed another Zerg attack, despite the fact that they presented no real threat to him.
Once again, the wraith found himself cursing the loss of his wings, though he doubted they would have been able to carry him beyond that barren speck of a world. Lacking anything better to do, he finally sat down, sifting through his memories as he stared into the distance.
Invariably, his thoughts turned to hatred and vengeance, but eventually, recalling his interactions with Patmos and Zolmus, something else came to mind – the strange, fragmented visions he had experienced after being whisked to this strange new sea of stars and the matter of his own memory.
"Why is it..." he wondered. "That I can recall my days at Kain's side, but nothing before that? Was he responsible for this, or is there something else at work here?"
He had simply assumed that Kain, being the bastard spawn of the abyss, had simply done something to his memories upon raising him from the grave, but as time went by and he found himself questioning what he knew, he found himself struck by doubt. Not about his purpose – destroying Kain was still his obsession – but almost everything else.
His thoughts were interrupted by a familiar voice.
"Howdy stranger. Headin' our way?"
Startled, the wraith glanced around, only to realize that the voice had come through the Protoss communicator mounted on his left gauntlet.
"Raynor?" he called back, wondering how the transmission had come through without any ships or Protoss infrastructure to relay it.
"Who else, buddy?" the rebel leader replied in an unusually playful tone. "I gotta say, you're makin' a habit of this."
The black dropship Raziel had seen before on the remote moon descended into view in front of him.
"How did you…?" the wraith tried to ask.
"Somebody tipped us off." another man's voice, which Raziel recognized as belonging to the Specter by the name of Shepard elaborated.
Once the dropship touched down and extended its boarding ramp, Raziel sprinted inside. In the sparsely decorated metallic interior of the passenger hold, he found two more humans in the same style of black armor he had seen Shepard wearing, ornamented with a strange hand-painted insignia – some sort of stylized black skull on a crimson background. Their faces were covered by visored helmets.
"Strap in." one of the figures said, a woman by the sound of it, with her voice filtered through a breathing mask.
"Did you find anyone else on the way here?" Raziel asked.
"Can't say we did." the figure next to the woman, a man by the sound of it, replied.
"That is strange..." Raziel pondered.
"Whaddya mean?" the woman asked.
"There was someone else with me." the wraith explained. "A Dark Templar who saved the last shuttle on the Vesperia to get me out of there. The shuttle is in pieces, though, and he is nowhere to be found."
"We can run a scanner sweep of this rock before goin' if that'll make you feel better." Raynor chimed in as he stepped into the passenger hold. "We gotta get outta here in less than three hours though. There's a huge bunch of Zerg headin' this way."
It had always baffled Raziel how the creatures were somehow able to fly through space and spread their cancerous presence to other worlds, but this was definitely not the time for such musings.
"I am not in the habit of discarding my allies." the wraith said with a hint of bitterness, recalling Kain's previous treatment. "I would appreciate if you would spare a moment."
"I thought you'd say that." Raynor said with a nod. "I guess that's one more thing that sets us apart from those bastard emperors."
After half hour running sweeps of the small planetoid with the assistance of the Hyperion's systems, however, there was still no sign of the strange Dark Templar.
"Sorry pal." Raynor said with a frown as he checked the readouts on one of the monitors in the dropship's cockpit. "Wherever your buddy is, he ain't here. We gotta get goin' now before Queen Bitch's pets find us."
"I suppose we have no choice at the moment." Raziel reluctantly conceded, not particularly eager to risk getting stranded yet again or endanger those who had gone out of their way to assist with his predicament.
The dropship's thrusters fired up and the craft began to make its way to the Hyperion.
"So..." Raziel wondered. "Who exactly told you where to find me?"
"Some Protoss tipped us off." Raynor explained. "No idea who. They dropped us a transmission when we were on our way to another place. Voice only."
"Strange..." the wraith pondered. "I did not think anyone in the Vesperia knew of my whereabouts."
"Looks like you got somebody lookin' over yer shoulder." Raynor remarked. "Some kinda guardian angel?"
"Perhaps..." the wraith pondered further. "Though this was no random attack. This was the second time I was set upon by strange assailants. Their garb and abilities were reminiscent of the Dark Templar, but they were clad completely in black and there was something wrong about their presence."
"Dunno what to say about that." Raynor said. "I guess maybe somebody ain't too happy about the Dark Templar teachin' ya their tricks, but even the Protoss have their whackjobs. The Tal'darim come to mind, but that doesn't sound like their style."
"Tal'darim?" Raziel asked.
"I've never seen 'em myself but there are all kind of rumors about them out there." Raynor explained. "Some kind of third Protoss faction that broke off from Aiur before they even had their whole Templar and Dark Templar bullshit divide."
"What kind of rumors?" Raziel asked.
"Well, the folks from Aiur and Shakuras are still learnin' to play nice with each other, but if there's one thing they can agree on other than the fact that the Zerg gotta go, it's that the Tal'darim are major assholes."
"Yet you said this does not appear to be their way of doing things?"
"From what I hear, they're a bunch of war crazy assholes and anyone in their sights is fair game." Raynor elaborated. "I don't think they give a shit about subtlety though. If they want someone dead, they just go and try to get a piece of 'em."
"So stalking me all the way to Shakuras and then to a warship… would not exactly fit their usual methods." the wraith reasoned.
"From what I hear. All I got is second-hand stories though. If you want the whole package, I suggest going to Zolmus or maybe Athame."
"Ah yes… Athame." Raziel said. "Quite the eccentric, is she not?"
"Who?" Shepard chimed in, a little curious.
"Some kinda Protoss scholar." Raynor explained. "Watch yourself if you decide to go down to New Talematros."
"You make it sound like she's dangerous or something." Shepard remarked, a little taken aback.
"Not really." Raynor said, shaking his head. "She's just really into us Terran folk."
"Oh? You mean..."
"Not that way." Raynor clarified. "She's one of them history buffs. Collects a lot of our stuff. She'll talk your ear off if you let her."
"I see…" the Specter said. "Well, I just so happen to have an interest in such things."
"Really?" Raynor asked, a little surprised.
"Before I was forced into the Ghost Program and Tosh broke me out..." Shepard reminisced. "I had dreams like everyone else. I suppose much of who I was burned out with my homeworld, but I still like a bit of culture."
"Burned out?" Raynor asked. "Was it…?"
"No, not the Protoss." Shepard clarified. "My world wasn't infested. Pirates. My homeworld managed to stay under the radar during the days of the Confederacy, but after Tarsonis got wrecked a lot of outlaw groups started getting bold."
Raziel glanced at the man. In their previous encounter, Shepard had guarded his emotions well, but whether it was due to his growing mental awareness or simply the man's barriers faltering, the wraith caught a glimpse of a mass of anger and regret akin to his own.
"Bastards went in shooting." Shepard said, clenching a fist. "Grabbed what they wanted, burned the rest… and then the Dominion came and picked clean what was left."
"Sounds like Mengsk all right." Raynor remarked with contempt. "He wanted to be at the top and stepped on anyone who got in the way, but once he was there he didn't give a shit about the people underneath him."
"All because of what the previous regime did to his world and his family?" Raziel recalled.
"Right." Raynor confirmed with a nod. "Thing is, all the people responsible are already dead. I'd call him a petty asshole, but he's more than that. He's a goddamn monster."
"Even before he made himself Emperor he was luring the Zerg to Confederate worlds." Shepard recalled.
"I do remember you mentioning that." Raziel said, not bothering to conceal his contempt.
"I was there." Raynor said with a haunted look on his face. "Antiga Prime. Tarsonis. Bastard didn't give a shit about how many billions died as long as he got to stick it to the Confederates. Tarsonis was the last straw for me. He did it again on an even bigger scale than Antiga Prime, then when the Protoss came in he ordered Kerrigan to go down and stop 'em."
"Wait…" Shepard realized. "Kerrigan? As in...?"
"The very same, from what he told me before." Raziel said.
"I… see..." the Specter said, at a loss for words.
"I was gettin' to that part eventually." Raynor said. "Guess it's not public knowledge, but she used to be one of the Confederation's Ghosts before he broke her free. Later I found out that she was the one who offed his family back in Korhal, when she was just a puppet."
"So he used her to do his dirty work with the Sons of Korhal..." Shepard realized. "And then he left her to die when he had no more use for her."
"Pretty much." Raynor said bitterly. "As you can see, it came back to bite us all in the ass. I dunno what the hell the Zerg did to her, but the sweet gal I used to know is gone… and it's my responsibility to put down the monster she's become."
"Sweet gal?" Shepard asked.
"Between the time she got broken out from the Confederacy's mind control and the day Mengsk left her to die, I got to know the real gal under the Ghost suit." Raynor said with a look of regret. "It was probably one of the few times in her life when she had any control over it."
With a growl, Raynor abruptly punched one of the cockpit walls.
"Doesn't matter now. She's gone and I've got a job to finish."
An awkward silence descended upon the cockpit as both Shepard and Raziel, sensing Raynor's foul mood after delving into such memories, decided to give him some space.
As the dropship finished landing in one of the Hyperion's hangars, the wraith and the Specter glanced at the rebel commander as he sat there, turning a single gauss rifle bullet in his armored hand.
"Well then..." Raynor said after a long pause, standing up from the chair. "Where you go from here is up to you Raz. We can getcha back to the nearest fleet or..."
"Or?" Raziel echoed.
"We could use your help with something, if you have the time."
"Do tell."
