«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—»
«Be silent, heretic. You there! Chop the wood for burning!»
—Exchange between Inquisitor Doraelus of Ara and condemned Tal'darim, circa XIVth Crusade
Approaching settlement "Barnett's Bounty," Uilila IV
In theory, the mission was simple.
The specialized stealth shuttle, courtesy of the Venetir 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 Witness I through Witness 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 of the Venetir Scouts.
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. Seemingly 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 freakishly 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 the legend of 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 Witness II through Witness IV. The small machines floated out of the shuttle. As one, the three observers 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 observers 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 observers 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 observers 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 observers cataloged everything under their dispassionate gaze. No children played here. No 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 over-sized, 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 biceps, 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.
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 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,» 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, «Partake of some recreation. 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.»