It was hard. Harder than anything the boy ever was forced to learn. His teacher, an Adjudant from back when they used Cyborgs instead of AIs, had the personality of a brick and the patience of a G-4 Cluster-bomb.
Trigonometry, algebra, military jargon, ship configurations… As soon as Jackson became saturated with one, they would switch to another, stopping only long enough for him to sleep his six hours, then he would wake up to the cyborg setting up the next session. He slept in the 'classroom', an unused monitoring center, filled with electronics and projectors the Adjudant would use to make his point. Every four hours, one of the cooks would knock on the door with Henry's meal; protein sticks and vitamin jelly, then the class would resume.
"The Behemoth-class Battlecruiser was phased out in what year and for what reason?" A trivial question only meant to see if the crewman had been listening.
He had, but his mind hadn't registered the exact year as relevant, "It lacked maneuverability, having only forward facing batteries, and was replaced by the… Uh…" Mengsk had been a real cunt about his fleet after the Brood War, practically switching design every year, "The Hercules or Minotaur," he finally gave up, "Seeing as they were quickly retrofitted then also abandoned for the Gorgon-class."
Gears whined in his mentor's brain as he slammed his fist on an holo-projector. Char flickered in the middle of the room before expanding until the Terran battlecruisers were the size of a small child.
Three of them, however, were twice that size.
"Wrong again! They were never phased out, only retrofitted. The Leviathan and Hercules are the only ships we stopped producing." He smacked the projector again and a Valkyrie frigate appeared.
"What do we use these for?"
He'd only heard of these frigates, stolen from the UED, in hastily written reports and vague suggestions to frontline units, their heavy AA armament and decent cargo capacity allowing them to break through blockades and enemy air to deliver much needed supplies and run like the wind.
"Supply runs, blockade breaking and high-risk insertions.
-Good! You don't have noodles in your head it seems.
-Isn't it a bit stupid, though?" Whatever compassion he'd just earned, he lost instantly.
The instructor's tone was cold as he said "Please do explain that opinion."
Henry thought about it very carefully, Kilburn was a hard man and supremely intelligent, if he considered Jackson's remark as out of place, it most certainly was. Henry went through with it anyway.
"You said earlier we developed the Viking because Valkyries and Wraiths were too unwieldy…" It seemed as though the more he spoke, the less sense his point made. What was he suggesting? Replace the Dropships? Arm them? Speed up the frigates? "We're using an air superiority craft for its secondary features, wouldn't it be cheaper to develop a dedicated model for blockade breaking and high-risk insertions?"
The teacher's face remained blank as he considered his words. His expression was unreadable when he spoke "To what end? What are the Valkyrie's flaws?"
Jackson silently cursed himself and flipped the question around his head a moment, simultaneously reviewing all he knew about the stolen design. "Too slow, no good against ground targets, very costly to manufacture and repair…" There was one last thing, a nudging fact he couldn't quite recall… Something about shields and power supplies… Why would it be relevant? Shields required too much juice to be powered during combat, they only used them in orbital re-entry, capital ships or fighters, Battlecruisers to Vikings, so why did it feel so important right now?
Kilburn's mouth opened just as the information resurfaced and Henry cut his teacher off, "Their shields! Given the shape of their hull and exposed armament, they must keep them powered twice as long or friction will tear them apart!"
The silence dragged on for half a minute, both men looking at each other like poker players, then Kilburn smiled, a rare occurrence that brought a thin smirk on Henry's face as well.
"And?" The teacher encouraged.
He knew the answer this time, however, and replied instantly, "They need bigger reactors or more propellant, which reduces the amount of supplies carried.
-Exactly. Which is why we do have stealth ships to re-supply high priority locations, we merely use the Valkyries when nothing else is available or stealth is not an option, which you should know by now." All trace of the man's smile was gone as he ordered his student to re-read the Dominion's list of space assets.
They would keep at it for a whole week before Henry was even allowed to leave the room.
000
00
0
Legs crossed in the hangar of the rusted up cargo vessel, the solitary human, his consciousness spread thin, almost to breaking point, blanketed the void between this galaxy and the next with his spirit, not touching or prodding anything, just passively listening to the echoes of civilisations dead long before his race rose to the stars.
Anhaka tip toed across the steel floor, dancing with the shadows as she approached the intruder.
This human had interrupted her pilgrimage to the Void, intruding on a sacred moment with his invasive meditation. He intrigued her.
She tried to sense his mind, taste his soul, but they were nothing like a Protoss' and further prodding would have alerted him to her presence. She almost wanted to make herself known, to talk with this unique being, but it would have been far too dangerous, especially to a young Dark Templar, cut off and inexperienced.
Humans, alone, were no match to a Protoss, of course, but they were fast and vicious… Not physically, but in their minds, they could change ideology and attitudes faster than a Protoss could read their minds, making them unpredictable at best.
Or so she had been told, and only from warriors who'd faced them in combat. This man carried no weapon, he wore no armor, clearly he would be no threat.
A discreet, almost timid poke at his vast consciousness caused it to wind up like a trap, folding back within the loner's mind before putting up a psychic wall between his inner thoughts and the outside world. It lasted only a fraction of second and the man merely opened his eyes, relaxed and in control, a far cry from the brutal reaction his spirit had exhibited.
"Welcome, Firstborn," he spoke, his eyes set ahead, far to Anhaka's right, "you have questions, yes?"
His mind remained sealed, how he could have recognized her race by their brief contact went beyond mere telepathy.
"You search the Void," she spoke, refraining from expressing her disbelief, "why?
-Same as you, young lady, I seek wisdom, new truths as well as ancient ones no longer valid…" He scratched his short grey beard, thoughtful, then added, "Not that these two can't be one and the same."
Nerazims knew cryptic, they excelled at it, but that made little sense to her, and she did not hide it.
The man's almond shaped and colored eyes sparked with humor as he replied, his tone professorial, "Of course, your truths are not mine, one does not simply take another's reality for himself…"
Anhaka cautiously stepped out of the shadows, alert to the slightest sign of danger, but he remained motionless, patiently waiting for her to ask her next question.
The Dark Templar thought of many formulations before finally expressing it plainly, "Who are you?" she asked, entering his field of view with as much care as one would show when first meeting a strange new animal.
"I've had many names over the years, most unremarkable, none of them would be known to you, so call me Temujin.
-Why Temujin?" She struggled with the word, not because of the strange accent or odd pronunciation, these were irrelevant to her, but because of its meaning, or its lack of it, at any rate.
"It was my most meaningful incarnation," Temujin shrugged, "the one life that would shape all the others, though it was not the first and I have no recollection of it."
Reincarnation. To the Protoss, this was a ridiculous thought, even for a Dark Templar, but she'd heard of it before, explained by traders and travelers of other species.
"You think you are this Temujin's reincarnation?"
His eyes lost their softness, thick brows twisting in a V shape as he spoke, "You can keep your skepticism, Protoss, because your truths don't apply to me doesn't make me wrong.
-You speak of truth as though there is more than one…" His frown lightened somewhat, but she could see his annoyance remained.
"Yes, it is a stigma our races bear, one that could be attributed to science and religion, but that would be unfair, for we are ultimately responsible of our own paths…" She thought about his words as he sought more to explain his point further. Could he be referencing to the relationship between Nerazim and Khalai? The Khala and the Void?
After almost a whole minute of silent meditation, his voice shook the hangar again, "Truth, reality, is a fluid thing, the laws of physics are immutable until they aren't, until one of us uses telekinesis or remote viewing, until you meet your twin sister and she's now a year older than you because of time dilatation.
Your friends, from Aiur, they join the Khala after death, become one with their ancestor, your people, the Nerazim, return to the Void, that's two afterlife for one race, don't you think there could be more?"
She thought of something to respond, but decided to keep quiet and let him talk.
"Now, if you want a more concrete definition of reincarnation, consider than Temujin was an above average psychic who's mind, after his body's death, managed to take over a weak mind, that of a newborn, for instance, and his memories simply couldn't fit in the yet unformed brain, leaving it with only the psychic's soul and powers…
-How would the child know it is the psychic's reincarnation, then?
-It wouldn't, not without some deep introspection and even then, he would only find fleeting impressions and shadows of his former self.
-Then, it's not really an afterlife, if they have no memories of their past life, it is more like an heritage, passing their powers down to the next generation.
-Perhaps, but consider this; we human can suffer from a disease called Alzheimer, makes us forget who we are, who our loved ones are, but passions and habits can remain, does that mean your mother isn't really herself anymore because of this disease? Does she become a hollow shell pretending to be human? Do not answer, there is no truth here, yours would be as valid as mine…" He got up slowly, disturbing a layer of dust that had settled over his lap and shoulders.
"This has been my quest," He explained, slowly walking over to a pile of luggage in the far end of the room, "over more lifetimes than you can conceive, a single, simple drive has pushed me forward. Perhaps there is a truth, one afterlife, a light in the darkness, a point where physics and her twitchy character have no hold…" He gave her a wolfish smile, "I'm looking for God, heaven, that which came before the big bang, the edge of the universe, in a sense.
-And when you find it?" That caused a giggle to escape his lips.
"I won't. There is no before the Big Bang, time didn't exist then, and the universe is constantly expending, it has no edge, as for God… Well, we are gods to ants, Protoss would have been Gods to medieval Earth, there is always a bigger fish. Even if I meet a being able to consume galaxies, it would only be a god by my standards…
-One man's truth does not apply to the next?" She understood the meaning of these words now. Zeratul would have loved this human… She was wondering how to convinced Temujin he should follow her to Shakuras when the man picked a large duffel bag from the pile and threw it over his shoulder.
"Precisely. Shall we go now? There is no more to be learned here and our quest is only begun."
She did not question that statement, merely following the intriguing being to where her shuttle had docked with his cargo vessel. Temujin abandoned his property without a second thought, as though it had always been its purpose to be abandoned, drifting in between galaxies for all of eternity.